Bill Forth: guitar, mellotron, atmospheres
Pat Mastelottt: Percussion
Jeff Guathier: violin
Ronan Chris Murphy: Keyboards, voice
Produced by Ronan Chris Murphy
Adamandine is only available as a physical CD, it can be purchased through Amazon.
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“Adamantine”
Album review by Journalist Sid Smith:
Whilst California-based guitarist Bill Forth hasn’t exactly got a huge discography under his belt, he’ll be known to some King Crimson fans as one half of the group Ten Seconds, whose self-titled debut featuring Robert Fripp was released on DGM in 1996. In more recent times Forth has been heard as part of Lives Of The Saints – his electro-ambient duo with Ronan Chris Murphy. Their appearance was the highlight of the Destroying Silence sampler a few years ago.
Murphy produces and plays here also and whilst similar elements to Lives Of The Saints are detectable, Forth’s deep-space atmospherics are spread much further over a vast and intricately detailed canvas that alternates between poles of exquisite illumination and washes of encroaching darkness.
The slowly undulating and labyrinthine 32-minute Mourning Doves is the album’s glorious centrepiece. Graced with Jeff Gauthier’s plaintive violin, and mesmeric drones studded with pin-pricks of feedback-derived light, the beguiling mood is occasionally reminiscent of the mournful beauty found in Harold Budd’s extended suites.
Pat Mastelotto guests on two of the eight tracks, scattering rhythmic pulses amidst Forth’s depth-charge sonics and yearning lyricism. Although notionally an ambient music record, there’s a hard edge which piques interest and offers several welcome left-field surprises.