Keith Berry - Viable System 5 (2022)

Some ambient artists fastidiously list every piece of gear used in a production, as well as provide background details about the project as a helpful entry-point for listeners. London, UK-based Keith Berry, on the other hand, provides nothing but the material itself and track titles that while allusive are ultimately enigmatic; any number of possible interpretations might be gleaned from a title such as “Synhistanai” or “Natsukashiik,” for example.

None of that matters much, however, when the music is so striking. This fifth volume in his Viable Systems series shows Berry's refined his art to a point where the beauty of the timbral palette and the hypnotic impact of the musical patterns speak for themselves. Unlike some artists associated with the ambient genre, Berry eschews distortion and rough edges for tracks whose polished surfaces gleam.

As endlessly as Eno's cited when talk turns to ambient music, it's next to impossible to review the release without mentioning him. Berry's tracks exude a delicate, radiant glow that calls to mind the terrific ambient material Eno issued during the ‘70s and ‘80s, and settings such as “Sicilian Defence,” “Quiet Desert Failure IV,” and “Cloud Seeding” rival the best that Berry's colleague created. In the latter, soft, flute-like tones drift across a glimmering backdrop, their overlap reminiscent of the tones' staggered appearance in Discreet Music. As a lower-pitched woodwind emerges to join the warbling flutes in graceful counterpoint, “Cloud Seeding” grows all the more transfixing. No lapse in quality is evident in the eight peaceful, time-suspending, and entry undulating soundscapes that follow, each one a testament to its creator's command.

Details do differentiate the tracks. The sound design for “Corbusian Utopia,” for example, works bass guitar in amongst its flutes and electronic washes, and bass clarinet-like sonorities similarly breathe life into the sleepy warble of “Natsukashiik.” And while most pieces last three to five minutes, two eighteen-minute pieces appear on the seventy-four-minute collection. With sleepy cricket sounds punctuating its convulsing haze, the shimmering, piano-sprinkled oasis “Pollen Drift” could conceivably be programmed to run forever; “Terminal Beach,” surprisingly, could pass for an alternate version of “Pollen Drift” when it shares many of the same sound details. Still, as absorbing as the two are, the shorter pieces are actually more potent, perhaps because their concision ensures listening engagement never strays.
However much Viable Systems 5 is grounded in generative strategies is impossible to determine from listening; regardless, it's the musical result that matters, and in this case it's generally spellbinding. For all I know, Berry's got the sixth set already completed and is perhaps envisioning something on the order of a tidy ten-volume total.