Labradford Prazision CD

With this oddly named 1993 debut, the Richmond, Virginia duo of Carter Brown and Mark Nelson helped reinvent the concept of ambient music for the then-emergent electronica generation. Labradford were unmistakably influenced by Brian Eno's pioneering ambient efforts, the deceptively simple minimalism of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Terry Riley's increasingly meditative solo experiments, and-most obviously-by the '70s Krautrock of Can, Faust, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, and Kraftwerk.

PRAZISION LP veers from such turn-of-the-'90s dance-oriented ambient house artists as The Orb and The KLF by entirely ignoring rave culture in favor of the more solitary, personal experiments of The Spacemen 3, an extremely influential British guitar/noise band. As a result of these influences, the album has an insular, distant, yet oddly comforting feel, with such extended songs as the aptly-titled "Listening In Depth" unfolding slowly before finally dissolving. This is an important milestone in the history of '90s electronic music.

Additional Tracks

Recording information: Belt Trade Center; McKinley Hall.

Labradford: Mark Nelson (vocals, 6- & 12-string acoustic & electric guitars, loops); Carter Brown (Korg Poly-Six, Memorymoog, Polymoog & Moog Taurus II synthesizers, Roland vocoder).

Personnel: Mark Nelson (vocals, guitar, acoustic 12-string guitar, loops); Carter Brown (Moog synthesizer, vocoder).

Alternative Press (4/94, p.69) - "...a stunning work, brilliantly conceived and executed...it will go down as a landmark recording of the '90s..."
Option (8/94, p.109) - "...This Richmond duo does some incredible ambient mood instrumentals. Layers of scraped guitar and feedback mingle with warm droning analog synthesizer--delicate grindings, chiming chords, keening sheets of controlled noise, all swathed in gloom..."
NME (Magazine) (2/10/96, p.46) - 8 (out of 10) - "...a strange collection of even stranger songs determined to wriggle its way out of classification and comprehension....its roots [are] in '80s post-Velvets guitar trancery but its eyes [are] most definitely set on something a little more celestial and dreamlike..."