The popularity of ambient and drone music has been growing and growing for quite a while now. Though it hasn't reached "trend" status yet, there are a handful of musicians making a name for themselves. CJ Boyd is just one of them. Aerial Roots is a more accessible approach to ambient and drone, though it leans more towards the ambient spectrum rather than the drone. Boyd isn't just holding down one keyboard note for 20 minutes and having those (insert obscure animal noise here) intervals in between. No, Aerial Roots arises from the pile of drone CDs, CD-Rs and tapes, and gleams of originality.
Aerial Roots isn't an entirely new sound you'll stumble upon, but it's pretty damn enticing. The closest sound it can be compared to is Mark McGuire minus the tape hiss and samples. It consists of three tracks, "Everytime I Don The Ski Mask" (a little Don Cab-esque, dontchathink?), "Pensive Pez," and "We Know Time," all of which blend to make one consisten and cohesive album. And just as we suspected, the majority of them are pretty long. However, do the songs fall into tedium after the first five minutes? They surprisingly don't! Sometimes though, you're waiting for something huge to happen (maybe some distortion explosion or a wash of reverb) and it doesn't provide you with what you wanted. Then again, that's how we all like ambience, right? You don't know what to expect because there's no verse-chorus-verse structure. So, CJ Boyd doesn't want to have a freak-out that'll totally excite you, but he's promising. He'll keep things clean, but add some twists here and there, melodically.
So, is Aerial Roots worth buying? Yeah, it won't keep you listening for weeks, but it'd be pleasant running into this months from the last time you heard it. It's one of those albums you know you'll forget about later on, sort of like how I am with Fennesz's albums.
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