Andrew Ostler’s fifth album for the Expert Sleepers label continues his trajectory away from a sound largely based on synthesizers towards orchestral textures and heavily processed saxophone. Building on the string arrangements of his previous LP “Dots on a Disk of Snow”, and taking a heavy dose of sax drone from the earlier “Four Drones for Saxophone and Modular Synthesizer”, this record also adds a full choir, taking the music to another level of spiritual intensity.

The first side of the LP presents three compositions of a similar feel - the drones are, for the most part, relatively gentle, while chant-like choral arrangements drift and weave around and above them. ‘Affirmation’ is quietly confident, with a surge of intensity around the midpoint; ‘Confession’ is perhaps more tentative, the shifting canon of the voices threatened by a distant storm of distorted synth shredding; ‘Adoration’ restores the straightforward choral beauty, building to an unashamed cadence.

‘Meditation’, which occupies the whole of the second side of the LP, is a quite different affair. Here the drones are more intense slabs, the choir is more demonstrative in its emotion, and the ultimate climax the more devastating for it. The journey is longer, but the rewards are greater for the committed.