CD/free download, Bottle Imp, 2008
www.myspace.com/brambledrone
“Emergence”, if we are to believe the press surrounding this disc is the result of vocal sound manipulations and nothing more. If this truly is the case then this has been done extremely well as the drones and sub-dark ambient sounds could easily have come from more conventional synthesizer sources.
Bramble toy with space, lots of it in fact. “Emergence” is a cold album. Slow resonating drones, attention to sparse frost-ridden air-like sounds that are reminiscent of lakeside winter days and bleak, mountain forests come to mind as a soundtrack to nature as it beds down for hibernation. Dark Ambient has to invoke imagery as a rule, and if you are an artist in this genre and fail to do so, then it is a disaster, and luckily Bramble do not fail this vital test which I should have hoped they would pass, this being their third album.
“Emergence” is a decent release, but nothing to go crazy about on a deep emotional level. Lengthy gaps of silence between tracks disrupt the flow badly and halt the journey all too often. I prefer albums of this ilk to mould together as one long track with markers in between.
With a little more attention to the way they formulate albums, Bramble could be on to a winner. For now though this duo are way off the upper echelons of dark ambient hierarchy and have produced an interesting, but average album in this field.
[7/10]
— Tony Young