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Artist
Tien
12+ albums
experimentalelectronic
about
About Tien A LIEN RESURRECTION Dave Ren - better known as fifty percent of acclaimed electronica duo Lien - has snuck stealthily back into the fold and delivered the long-awaited release under his T'ien moniker in what might just be the most original experimental release of the year. While band comrade Dan McRae took us for a hike round the Antarctic with his 2004 solo album 'Eskimo', Ren chooses to let the listener's brooding imagination decipher the eight pieces he's presented, with no track titles or sleeve notes to give us any pointers. Think Sigur Ros' ( ) but less fey, more grown up and tinged with an altogether more unnerving mystique - in fact, the blurred snapshot of a grinning child etched onto the disc is the only evidence that a human being has had any involvement in piecing these cryptic sounds together. Track one rises sharply from a pit of silence, kicking in like a warm sonic headrush. Dripping with dark ambience and lit only by Ren's swirling electric guitar, it effectively carries on from where Matica's closing track 'Last Generation' left off except tinted with a dreamlike confusion, bringing to mind an aquanaut's flickering consciousness during decompression sickness. This is a sign of things to come: a homegrown genre that shrugs off the stereotypes one by one as the project unfolds. 'Two' - a blend of shimmering synths and soft ambient thunder - sidesteps the ambient cliché by making expert use of some sublime mournful strings, exemplifying T'ien's m
