A year after releasing her breakthrough full-length debut,
Birds (In My Mind Anyway)
,
Doc Sleep
returns to San Francisco's venerable
Dark Entries
with her second album,
Cloud Sight Fade
. Like her previous record,
focuses on dreamy ambient techno and IDM with impeccable sound design. While less clubby than the artist's earlier EPs, there's still a steady propulsion to optimistic tracks like opener "Professor Eucalyptus." The tracks are smooth and spacious, with fractured breaks occasionally popping up, floating around and bouncing off the walls like they're in a space pod. "Palm Reader" has the album's heaviest kick drums as well as its trippiest echo-chamber effects. "Water Sign" is a diversion down a dark corridor, sounding closer to hollowed-out industrial techno than the rest of the record. The title track has shifting hi-hats and billowing synth melodies, putting it closer in spirit to the atmospheric side of Detroit techno. The crunchy, crackling "Enchanted Static" ends the album, sounding more like a vision of undersea life than a cityscape or space travel. Another truly fantastic release inhabiting a similar space as the artist's impressive first LP. ~ Paul Simpson