Review Summary: Radiating nothingness.
What is your opinion on Ambient?
Ambient music is interesting music, building soundscapes out of often very minimalistic elements. And it is often a very nice genre to relax to, to have on in the background, but if it is done correctly, you will find a lot of strengths if you actually pay close attention to what is happening. As it is , it is one of the most hardest genres to produce actually good music in, because the line between redundancy and interesting is almost as small as it may get.
And so, Andrew Huang, being the prolific genre-conqueror that he is, decided to make a whole album in this genre. Having shown his songwriting strengths and his will to experiment without getting too pretentious time and time again, he should be able to create a good ambient-album, right? Well, the answer is a bit complicated.
First of all, let me note that this album is a giant curveball after his last offering, the dreadful You Are The Devil. Here, the production values are back at their best, with everything just sounding crisp, clean, clear and just big, which is a definite plus. Also, the synths and sounds the he chose for this album are very satisfying and pleasant. Every song has its own unique flair and atmosphere, its own set of sounds, so they don't get too samey-sounding, and the soundscapes on here a definitely very pretty.
However, the songwriting on this project is almost non-existent. I'm not kidding. While every song certainly sounds unique, they are build around the same kind of composing, starting out really quiet and then swelling, with one or two, sometimes more sounds weaving in and out of the atmosphere. And by god, do these songs plod around in nothingness. As stated by him, this album was not made to evoke emotions, it was made for enfoldment and catharsis. And while this is definitely an interesting idea to do, these songs really needed some emotion injected into them, because they do tend to run a bit too monotone to last as long as they do.
Of course there are highlights on this, and they mostly are the shortest songs on here, because the soundscapes, as stated before, are pretty, it's just that they overstay their welcome a bit too long, except for the massive Gradients. Taken that this song is 22 minutes long, it's surprisingly one of the most listenable, emotional and diverse songs on the whole album. Other recommended songs are the surprisingly energetic Dotted Lines, the nicely paced Fluid Heart and the beautiful opener Radiance.
In conclusion, Magical Body was a nice idea but with a bit of muddled execution. I can definitely recommend this to you if you are searching for some relaxing music, but don't expect strong songwriting or any kind of depth.
