Had it with the inhibiting musical and thematic structures of the average song? Want to simply let your unconscious flow into a vast array of spectral, spatial keyboards and feeling-defining sounds? Roberto P., also of psychedelic rock outfit Borer Treetops, was ready to let go. Creating the Bee Resort project, Roberto P.’s mission was to let the music guide him, resulting in his very first ambient album, The Bee Resort. Ready for a journey between and throughout undulating multiversal spaces? Ready to be wrapped in fluttering, color-phasing cosmic waves generated from uninhibited human feeling? Then let’s sit in our favorite floating chair, absorb deeply these humming audio spaces…..and hit the highlights.
Wait. Who does what?
Like the Borer Treetops project, Roberto P. does it all – from playing every single synth and sound across various collected devices, to mixing, producing, and mastering.
Listening, and talking about it (i.e., hitting the highlights).
The album’s first immersion, “A Mind Consumed by Meaningless Data,” features a lower range humming underneath slowly struck piano, a panned right chiming, and a distorted, shimmering white noise in deeply reverberating space. You’re traveling through an arterial framework between universes, and this very sound melange slowly seeps through your ship’s inadequate frequency shielding.
“Daylight Scrapings” begins with pitch-wavering synth-flute. Sparkles arrive, and a beeping, awakening arpeggio creates a sense of meter. You’re floating; you’re awake, and lost in a state of suffused super-awareness. You’re sailing in the fourth dimension, and all your actions, divided by time, are instantly accessible between each and every rolling wave. And yes, if you listen to this very music, you too will experience surprising moments of evolved thinking.
“In the Forest” begins with rustling, or the distinct surface munching of soft footfalls. Moments later, the forest becomes glassy as warm synth beams reflect infinitely between transparent trees and crystalline leaves. The objects of the forest ring, sustain, and reflect back to you their collective, embathing call. My advice? Never leave this forest. EVER.
“Interference” is a crystalline droning with mechanical crunching. This is the moment of personal revelation, of acceptance as a turning, squirting gear granting dependable functionality to the universe.
“Lost and Found” is a low, sustained ringing. It’s a ray of cold, slow-moving particles accumulating as frost on a shabby couch. Cornered by darkness, it hasn’t been touched since this frozen home’s inhabitants joined a mass planet exodus several centuries ago.
“Suspended” is a wavering and sustained mechanical chorus. Chimes shimmer in their busy aural colonies, and a bleating synth occasionally imposes its flapping complaints.
The final immersion, “The Right One for Me, if I Were a Different Person,” is a glacial, sand-sifted sound wall – like a sustained, alternative soundtracking of the rain-washed techno-drudgery displayed in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Looking up, vast metal pyramids and flying cars. Below? The grime, the smell, and the sundrous breaking of dissociated lives.
But is it good?
Bee Resort’s debut creates spaces of feeling while extracting feeling from spaces. It’s simultaneously warm, robust, enveloping, immersive, embracing, and at times sparse, thinly sprinkled, and partially shaped. It’s a series of moments, or centuries of inaction. It’s evolution, or the pure bliss of spiritual, present-tense awareness. The Bee Resort, as soundtrack for the mind and places only the mind can conjure, is a resounding success. If you want to lose yourself, both in locales traveled in light years or memories dispersed at light speed, you must, immediately, listen to The Bee Resort. Trust me – you’ll love what you hear, and the aural places you’ll go. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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BELOW: Listen to Bee Resort and check him/them out on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Music, and Instagram. Please support Bee Resort by visiting his/their website and playing, downloading, and/or purchasing his/their music. And, as always, thank you for supporting real music.
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