Remastered.

Original Notes by Glenn Sogge: Studio presents you the first Silas/Candy L collaborative album to be released in two years. Scenes from a Forest. A collection of ambient, with a bit of dark and experimental in the mix. We both hope you enjoy our creations.

It's always a nice thing to get a preview listen to new music, especially when it is made by a couple of your favorite collaborators working together. Cousin Silas and Candy L have taken the core of contemporary ambient and dark ambient music into their very souls and let it back out again through fingers comfortable with keys, strings, frets, and synthesizers.

The best "concept albums" are about ideas -- not just telling stories. With "Forest", musical evocations of different aspects of the idea of a forest are explored. What follows could be one story out of many possible stories.

The journey begins as "As We Enter A Dark Forest" with only hints of foreboding peeking through the sensuous leaves and branches of lush pads, long guitar tones, and occasional ripples of a piano like a slow stream sparkling.

It's always a nice thing to get a preview listen to new music, especially when it is made by a couple of your favorite collaborators working together. Cousin Silas and Candy L have taken the core of contemporary ambient and dark ambient music into their very souls and let it back out again through fingers comfortable with keys, strings, frets, and synthesizers.

The best "concept albums" are about ideas -- not just telling stories. With "Forest", musical evocations of different aspects of the idea of a forest are explored. What follows could be one story out of many possible stories.

The journey begins as "As We Enter A Dark Forest" with only hints of foreboding peeking through the sensuous leaves and branches of lush pads, long guitar tones, and occasional ripples of a piano like a slow stream sparkling.

We can feel that "Autumn Is Coming" with strings and pads blowing gently, but coolly, around giant trunks. The temperature is getting lower but glints of earlier setting sunlight still break through. The background stills uncomfortably shifts around as if hiding behind those trunks.

"Dewdrops" remind us to look down, to watch our steps, even as we delight in pockets of watery light showing us the way. Nothing happens too quickly as we gaze from place to place. We are deeper in the woods but take comfort in the sounds that have grown familiar with their edge of unease. Fragments come and go, resembling each other like water-jewelled webs that are still unique.

It must be night now. We can only hear the 'Something Unseen." It could be the wind. Or it could be something else. Something closer.

Deep in the grove, we hear "A Poem". The low tones put an ominous minor feel to the lighter lines of voices luxuriating over each syllable of the lines making the stanzas. Some of the wildlife awakens and tries to chirp it's way above the still present ground of dark being.

Eventually, though, "The Birds Stopped Singing" and one begins to hear hints of other things around in the wood.

Soon, it sounds like owls and other denizens of the night are the only critters under the "Dark Canopy." Well, except for that occasional scrape of metal, the rattle of something woody, a repeating pattern of an abandoned machine, a branch falling through other branches, a flurry of wings (too loud for an owl.) Low drones have settled in for the unsettleness.

And, then, "Snow Arrives". Not with the gentle drifting of flakes but with changeable weather and storms that remind us that snow can bring avalanches, too.

A "Forest Drone" brings us out of snowfall to just a shiny sheet that may lie in a clearing or beyond the forest edge.

We end on "The Old Road That Suddenly Stops." Are we finally all the way in? Or did we leave by the wrong fork?

The underlying sense of uncertainty and anxiety never leaves although it is more prominent is same places than others. This is clearly an unfamiliar forest, one that we don't know as well as the one we built forts in as kids. This forest has so many corners that could be hiding something.

That was the album I heard. I don't know (and won't even ask) if that was the album that Candy and Cousin hoped to make. But the one I heard is beautifully executed and plumbs the depths of ideas and technology. Music is a way of decorating time. With "Forest," everything takes the time it takes -- no more, no less. It is clear that Cousin and Candy have worked together over the years. Other than Cousin's signature guitar lines, you can't tell who is responsible for what sounds. (I might even be wrong about the guitar as Candy is a talented multi-instrumentalist, too.) This is a quite enjoyable 77 minutes that drags ideas, glimpses, and gut feelings through the mind.
-Glenn Sogge

Originally released August 8, 2019

Cousin Silas & Candy L (Lozier): All compositions, synthesized and live music with sound.

Cover photo by Oleg Tishkovets with photo manipulation by Studio.

Our heartfelt thanks to Glenn Sogge for the following:
The excellent album mastering and the lovely review!