This time Pound applies his musical focus to the essence of being a wolf. From that creature's environment to its habits to its spirit, he has captured each nuance with appealing exactitude.

While the electronics retain an ethereal delicacy, they still manage to express a sense of unbridled freedom, capturing the beast on the prowl as easily as they do the wolf sedately surveying its prairie domain. Throbbing texturals bestow those territories with expansive properties, as dark pulsations approximate a pensive nocturnal environment.

Winsome flutes contribute an airy disposition to this panoramic outlook. A sense of spiritual reverence is generated by the presence of breathy didgeridoo and shamanic chants, not to mention the ritual beats of distant percussives.

Several tracks put the listener on the move, riding along with the wolf as it races through the night. Softly urgent electronics instill a compelling sense of constant motion.

These melodic compositions are elegant and powerful. The instruments generate lavish soundscapes of prairie splendor, moody and evocative. There is a fine balance of predatory tunes and ambient auralscapes, each track offering vital stimulation to portions of the listener's psyche.

www.soniccuriosity.com/sc465.htm

From Aural Innovations #42 (May 2011)
www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue42/danpound.html
Northern California composer Dan Pound makes a very personal music, like painterly sketches of landscapes and natural phenomena whose intimate detail and expansive scope reveal not only the eye of the artist but his soul, as well. On both Wolf Moon and Aurora, Pound's debt to new age soundscaping and tribal spiritualism is made evident by his choice of instrumentation, including an array of synthesizers, flutes, didgeridoo, Native American percussion, and guitar. And while Pound clearly has his influences, they're submerged in such a way that they only evoke half-remembered echoes deep below the surface of his music. Wolf Moon resonates with nocturnal ambiences, inky textures and haunting sound silhouettes, placing the listener within the very heart of the sonic terrain Pound ably explores. Tracks like "Watching Through Trees" and "Unknown Territory" remind one instantly of the mystery and melancholy of Popol Vuh's soundtracks to various Werner Herzog films throughout the 70s. A deeply meditative calm pervades such tracks with their crescendo of percussion and their ritualistic flutes. Sequencer-driven pieces such as "Always on the Run" and "Making Tracks" careen through an enveloping mist of hovering synthesizers, environmental samples and chanting voices. "Making Tracks," in particular, illustrates Pound's deft control of his art, its wholly static sequencer ostinato serving as counterpoint to shimmering curtains of modulated pads and a haunting lead synth line that dissolves through the mix like quicksilver moonlight on a wintry crystal lake. The futurist tribal aesthetic of both "Ancient Spirit" and the title track combine percussion, electronics, flute, didgeridoo and spectral voices into mantra-like s�ances that merge the listener into the sounding silences of shadow and self.

CD's   MP3's