artist: Alan Lamb country of origin: Australia style(s): Ambient, environmental essential releases: Primal Image (1995, Dorobo)

Unique, eerie and strangely affecting, Australian composer Alan Lamb created the soundscapes of Primal Image by recording the sound of wind resonating with telegraph wires in the desert wastes of Australia's outback. The source material is wires responding randomly to the prevailing winds and as the title suggests the sound is deeply primal, by turns as gentle as a Gregorian chant or as harsh as sustained bursts of radio static. At times the deep, cosmic tones sound like abstract electronic spacemusic despite their much simpler acoustic origins. Composers who claim a spiritual source for their work are as numerous as they are suspect, but Lamb may have a point when he writes on the sleeve notes that "it is probably not too far fetched to suggest that wire music is an aural embodiment of some of the most fundamental dynamic laws of the universe."

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