3 out of 5

Label: Mystic & Quantum

Produced by: Ed Upton (mastered by)

If not for the fact that we have, approximately, nine million Ed Upton releases to compare Whispers Of An Ancient World to, I might be a bit less guarded in my take on it. Tangentially, though I’m not a huge fan of author Jorge Luis Borges, themeing an album around a classic (and certainly quite visual) story like his The Library creates a naturally high bar for oneself.

So consider both of these impacts on my review of these nine ambient / electro tracks, which boils down to this set being interesting, but ultimately pretty slight.

The sparseness with which the album begins is pretty promising, as it’s a stripped down, experimental mode in which we rarely hear Ed operate. Which suggests the text likely has meaning for him; the track isn’t very illustrative or impactful on its own, but it excites as a prologue. But with the next track, which is fairly standard electro, there’s a continued lack of depth – the song is neither as tight or smartly nuanced as the vast majority of Ed’s work, and though the followup tune has a good beat, its relative poppiness feels way astray of any potential narrative.

Infinite Staircase Ascending gets closer to what I think was the intention: its sparseness finally feels suggestive of The Library’s weird environs. But onto the B-side, it’s almost all beat-based stuff that is tonally tempered from Ed’s pop instincts, and had some fitting quirkiness, but, again, doesn’t really sound like DMX Krew, and also doesn’t necessarily add to the “story” of the album.

To clarify: the music’s good! But again, knowing this comes from Ed makes it seem a little underwhelming, and then pairing it to a well-known story further distracts from its positives.