Reading back over this review I have to admit I sort of come off as a Philistine. My conclusion is that I’m pretty sure I don’t understand this album. Read on to find out how I got there and just how ignorant I can be!

First off some introductory info; The acronym ‘Mabh’ comes from the artists’ previous name ‘Mortuus Auris & the Black Hand’ and the title which is in French (as are the words on the album) means ‘Paths that Lead to Nowhere).

Let me start out by saying you have to be in the right mood to listen to this album.

It’s direct in a line from Eno’s music for airports; including mumbled conversations, bird noises, running water, and, of course, not just the music but the sounds of whatever instruments are being played. Not that there are really any traditional ‘instruments’ per say being played other than, I assume, synths.

So thousands of records like this come out every year. Ever since John and Yoko released the music for 2 virgins (I’m too lazy to find the actual title in my record collection rn) people have been making their own imitations of the slice of life recordings. So what makes this one interesting or different?

It’s honestly hard to say.

The release notes say it’s field recordings from a new home in Switzerland following a long and painful hospital visit due to pneumonia. But if the sound that’s been released is supposed to make you feel that way it doesn’t do a very good job, unless said experience was drugged up pretty well and sleepy.

The album is definitely ambient. More music for airports than two virgins screaming.

All the sounds are pleasant and barely register volume, much less alarm.

So perhaps it’s the boredom that’s attempted to be captured here.

Which again, not really.

It’s a pleasant record. The sounds waver between what sound like random conversations and synth passages that evoke either placidity or, at time, a creepy feeling that something bad might happen but it never does.

The first and third tracks are 20 minutes and the second and fourth are 5 minutes each. I feel like I’m either creating or describing a minimalist art piece.

Which I suppose this is.

The description of the project and the person who sent it to me were very friendly and polite. I really wanted to like this.

But even after a couple of listens I just can’t get into it. It’s calm but not in any transcendent way. It’s good as background noise and every now and then approaches music. But in general it just makes me… sleepy. In the way one is when there’s really nothing to do.

One could certainly interpret this as a positive if that’s what Mabh was trying to do. Perhaps they were; if so they succeeded. But intentions and subjective listenings are, of course, inevitably separate and create the entirety of human misunderstanding.

Which is to say I either am not really interested in this or I don’t get it. And I feel that I’ve failed as a reviewer when I say I think you really have to listen to it for yourself if you want to know whether you enjoy it or not. I can say that traditional rock and pop it’s not. Traditional collected ambient field recordings baked into a sort of music or mood though — that it certainly is.

Thanks for your submittal Mabh. Making me question once again something I haven’t since I first heard that album that has John and Yoko naked underneath a cover that had to be hidden on the streets. Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins — that was the name. And Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports. So yeah, a lot of precedents that you might not think of (I’m guessing yours are the kind of in depth Karlheinz Stockhausen/John Cage/whoever put the bamp in the really experimental noise stuff), but that informed my subjective listening of this quixotic record.

-Scott Koenig