Underwater in Bloomington, MN

Underwater
is decent, though not groundbreaking,
electronic
ambient
music that is neither
new age
nor
experimental rock
or
electronica
. It's for people who like
who are looking for something a little more daring and more disturbing, perhaps, or
trance
music aficionados who want something that's often placid in its textures, but still challenging.
Johnny A. Rodriguez
and
James Sidlo
are the multi-instrumentalists that create most of the soundscapes, with some help from a couple of friends.
Rodriguez
's synthesizers supply the dense
, room-filling eerieness that will probably land this on your noncommercial
/
program.
Sidlo
's guitars and processing are on the whole more keening and foreboding, displaying an impressive range of dive-bombing and buzzing timbres, at times getting into dark and vaguely apocalyptic territory. Spooky, Gregorian-like deep vocal-electronic effects are skillfully deployed in
"I Frequency, Dream in Soundwaves,"
's guitar takes on an almost desert Southwestern feel (albeit heavily processed) for
"Brief Moon."
~ Richie Unterberger