http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17958146

vitalweekly.net // could have been created for Brian Eno’s ambient opus Apollo … an album of shining beauty

igloo mag // Top 10 album of 2007

ruckusruckusruckus.blogspot.com // the cover artwork is photos taken by Kevin Martin, they’re all haunting shots of the Lebanese state railway that’s fallen into disuse, to the extent that entire trees grow between the tracks. The first impression of the pictures are of charming light, only a second glance reveals the turmoil… there’s loads going on in the interior, unlike some of his contemporaries. They bear repeated listening exceptionally well - the music doesn’t give up its secrets, or become transparent or formulaic with familiarity. I read some reviews which drew comparisons between ‘Lost Tracks’ and Ulrich Schnauss’s shoegazing styles… They both take warm, melancholy tinged motifs and wrap themselves up in sustained sounds that embrace and decay. But while Schnauss is into an MBV ‘Loveless’ wall/sound, Spectre works out at a purer, clearer pitch.

tokafi.com // Some will not be able to fathom how Aaron Spectre could come up with an album like “Lost Tracks”. Didn’t this man just unleash “Grist”, a brutal Metal onslaught under his alter ego Drumcorps? … Only two months later, he is back with a work of sweetness, optimism and hundreds of melodies from a place where there is always music in the air. This contradiction, however, is easy to dispel…. There is always a sense of longing and unfulfillment lingering in the spacey robotic electronica, which keeps one’s attention focused - you never know whether all of the happiness was just an illusion. Which only goes to strenghten the impression of Spectre as a man with a romantic inclination. If you think about it, there were similar moments with Drumcorps as well, when the guitar madness and the percussion frenzy stopped and made way for short atmospheric interludes, which took listeners out of time and away from a one-sided perspective. It is not such a long way from “Grist” to “Lost Tracks” as some may think.

igloo mag // one of today’s new breed of hybridizing electronic sound practitioners… a proficiently wrought album of slightly doleful downtempo and faintly shadowy atmospheres

tokafi.com // pure, unchannelled energy

deafsparrow.com// Drumcorps gets to me because even its drum and bass backbone has a real feel to it, like it is truly flesh and bones, not machine made or mass manufactured

invisibleoranges.com // Drumcorps appeals to me, and not just because he samples metal; DHR and gabber have done that already. Rather, Drumcorps fuses metal and drum & bass without trying to be either… Hyper-chopped breakbeats explode and mutate through shuddering edits. Drums and guitars pitch up and down through timestretching that wallows in gritty digital artifacts. Songs veer through various speeds and time signatures, with ambient bits in between. Bands sampled include Botch, Converge, and other sources I couldn’t place. Unlike your average over-produced d&b 12″, Drumcorps lets the grit and edges hang out

disquiet.com // Grist builds on the legacy of metal-tronic hybrids like Godflesh; it switches gears expertly, locating choice samples amid the riffage of Slayer and the splattered beats of Drum & Bass

liarsociety.tripod.com // Drumcorps advances the evolution of extreme mechanical music a step or two. Owing an equal debt to Big Black and Slayer, Grist is really the album Ministry should have made by now. Other bands have merged a hurricane of guitars with an electric chair of spasmatic breaks, but this is the first time I’ve heard it fused and explored so successfully over the length of an entire disc

Drumcorps & Aaron Spectre recent press.pdf [1.4 MB]
articles & reviews from Vice, XLR8R, Pitchfork, Knowledge

Aaron Spectre Lost Tracks press kit [4 MB]
Lost Tracks promo sheet, high res art, high res photo, bio

Aaron Spectre press kit.zip [4 MB]
high res photo & bio, more jungle/breakcore oriented

Drumcorps press kit.zip [5 MB]
high res photo & art & bio

Aaron Spectre returns to his roots here, offering up unreleased tunes that people might’ve heard when he was playing ambient rooms and running the Share night at NYC’s OpenAir (ie. his dreamy side where he manages to pull on everything from Eno to AFX to Slowdive). Lost Tracks is nine nearly perfect pieces that interlock whirring, clicking, granulated beats with a drawn-out, distorted combination of instruments that could either be analog synths, guitar, or the dulcimer. The end result is that rarest of creations, an ambient album that has a pulse, a life, and a dark narrative without being cheesy. It’s the sweet side of one of the world’s greatest and most versatile producers.

http://www.xlr8r.com/reviews/aaron-spectre/lost-tracks