"Cheerful Gloom" and "Detailed Sparsity" is the self-description of the second release from Ozone Player, the musical child of multi-instrumentalist Otso Pakarinen from Helsinki, Finland with some writing and arranging contributed by Paul Ellis. Other contributors, who are unfamiliar to me, provide horns, drums and bass.

This fully instrumental album takes references from contemporary classical music, ambient, a little world beat, but mostly early Tangerine Dream or Johannes Schmoelling. Other similarities include Hidria Spacefolk and some of the more structured Ozricks. In fact, the structure to these songs is what kept my attention. Pakarinen avoids the unstructured noodling trap of electronic music artists, which is a hazard of my profession, causing attention deficit problems and too much sleep.

The author calls the music experimental, but maybe I've heard too much electronic music because I did not find it so, not like Edward Artemiev's atonal noise. The experiments seem to lie in the arranging and how it brings the listener through multiple layers of mood and interest. The track "Infer No. 21" includes non-ugly dissonance and noise making. "Dog-matic" morphs from electronic danciness to electronic silliness (including input from a talented dog).

In sum, Ozone Player has developed the electronic orchestra into an imaginative and very entertaining instrument - a refreshing offering.

BrianG, Progressive Ears