"«Darren McClure comes from Japan and brings seven pieces of introspective and spatial ambient, of the dark kind. Opener 'Tap' breeds an intense drone since its childhood into a full blown adult, all in under four minutes. An excellent start. From here, Darren starts fiddling with a very wide pallete of sounds and frequencies: breaking glitches and examining computer entrails on 'Container'; Bleeps, digitized encounters, walls of low-frequency vibrations and melancholy on 'Pines and fall foliage'. Fall, indeed. 'Thaw' will either put you to sleep after 2 minutes, or put you together with your favorite drug for a 5 minute trip. This is the one you'll want inside your iPod, next to the Brian Eno ones, I hope. Next, we come to the title track. 'Unmoored' is the real dark one here. Heavy bass drones wrap around our heads, taking you to a landscape of electrical circuits. It's night, and the leds going on and off are the stars in the sky. The gravel under your feet feels like cinder, as you walk into an 'Afternoon walk'. Again, heavy drones whisper in the distance, like a storm announcing itself at your path. You'll arrive by 'Removing the last pieces'. Closing time for Darren's amalgam of bleeps and ubiquous drone sequences. Bleeps start unfolding, shutting down systems, winding down, going into sleep mode. Fade out.
Oddly enough, Darren's music doesn't fit the genre as we'd expect. His pieces are rather short, never getting to see the six minutes mark. They're concise, compact, everything included. In such a way that we'll come back for more, repeatedly.
One of my personal favorites this year. Thank you, Darren.» - Pedro Leitão" (From the Test Tube's release page)
