artist: Ornament country of origin: Australia style(s): Ambient rock, environmental, cinematic, neo-classical, ambient trance essential releases: Bleu (2004, Cyan Music/Psy Harmonics) Simon Polinski as Hesius Dome: Farewell Waltz (2005, Psy Harmonics)

Australian dance label Psy Harmonics occasionally takes welcome detours into the ambient zone. The debut album Bleu from Melbourne duo Ornament (Simon Polinski and Joe Creighton) is one such release and is an absolute gem. It's warm, spacious and alive, with fully-fleshed arrangements and seductive textures. Neither is it the sound of ambient-downtempo you might expect from a psy-trance label. It's less bleepy and synthetic and often less busy too. The mastering seems to have deliberately softened the top-end sounds, creating the aural perception of bigger spaces and more rounded surfaces rather than sharp, well-defined edges. In places there's a classical logic to the album's flow. Two pieces have their own separate "overtures" which give you a main theme before going on to a more extended development of the same idea. Highlights include "The Jesse Tree", a slow and sexy 4/4 rock jam with guitar soloing that's extended but restrained. "To Love Is To Laugh" is based around an oddly touching narrative sampled from a documentary about Eskimos. Best of all is the breathtaking choral-based piece "Yehuvaroom". Its looped, chiming melody establishes a powerful sense expectancy and mystery to which string sounds and other melody lines are added, all bathed in carefully timed choral swells of exquisite beauty.

Polinski has also recorded solo as Hesius Dome and the second HD album Farewell Waltz is of a similar high standard to the Ornament release. It too is not the kind of ambient that psy fans might expect from the label. This one more emphasises guitar in various guises - acoustic, electric, sampled - and the album literally glistens and shimmers with its sound. The opening "Gamelan" is driven by fast, short cycles of gently chiming guitar notes rolling over a synthetic multi-coloured landscape. Its a kind of psychedelic minimalism with ringing string sounds not unlike Robert Fripp's experiments with "guitar orchestra" on his The League Of Crafty Guitarists (1986). The gorgeous title track - despite its name - is a peculiarly Australian piece of environmental impressionism. You can almost feel the sun, smell the ocean, walk the deserted beach, revel in its lonely Antipodean beauty. Here the composer uses delay effects to spread out his simple melodic guitar phrases which again he wraps in lush electronic sounds of indeterminate origin.

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