J Orphic, the Milan based dark ambient, experimental artist has an interesting set of influences and motivating forces. Nature, fog, Christian religion, and his instincts are the much repeated influences that push J Orphic to compose music. Nature and fog: sure. Instincts: of course. Christian religion? I’m not entirely sure what part of Christian religion influences the music of J Orphic. Perhaps it is a love for the organ as exhibited on “Come Neruda,” perhaps the influence comes from a fear or suspicion of the Christian religion rather than a simple love for an instrument, but I can’t be sure. This bit of mystery adds an air of intrigue to Sulla Terra.

The opener, “Come Ingrid,” is an absolutely wonderful introduction track and is perhaps one of the finest openings that I have heard this year. Droning bagpipes meander without real intent until “Scotland The Brave” is played full force while deep rich ambience and slight rhythmic accents flow over the bright lead of the bagpipes. Hissy background sounds, slow sweeping strings loop and swell as a woman speaks in French. The song finally ends with “Scotland The Brave” fading into space creating an effective altering of ideas and tones while keeping an overall mood present.

There is a surprising amount of activity going on in each song considering this is an ambient, minimal album. The majority of the songs have a spoken word segment with speakers ranging from Charles De Gaulle to unknown samples, as well as found sound elements and field recordings. “Come Neruda” features lyrics by Pablo Neruda and transforms from a rather bright, harp infused spoken word piece to a menacing, sci-fi-esque, cathedral organ liturgy with more Neruda lyrics to match the new tone.

“Echi,” penultimate in length only to the album opener, begins with a punchy, modern trombone performance that is later overshadowed and replaced by choral singing and an unknown sound recording of forceful speech along the lines of Mussolini or Hitler. The drone of the synth sounds is a wonderful compliment to the mysterious spoken word elements that come from unnumbered corners of the world. However, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the trombone? I waited to hear more trombone and synth interplay throughout the piece, yet the trombone is treated as more of an attention grabber that gets left behind. This is a little disappointing.

Each song on the album tends to progress in way similar to “Echi” -- catchy intro, followed by a generally well executed transition, which leads into the main drone portions. This structure is acceptable and works with great success for J Orphic, but the loss of the introductory material makes the album feel too choppy or pieced together in comparison to the main material of the majority of the songs. This is perhaps the only shortcoming of Sulla Terra. The songs could be a little more polished and put together in a more suitably flowing manner. “Quiete” is how the entire album should have progressed. Some interest is spawned in the beginning moments with unique tones and rhythmic patterns, but the tones naturally progress and become infused with the main material rather than just fading out to make room for the headlining content. This compositional method works well with the material that J Orphic is presenting and hopefully it is a peak into future releases.

While the disjointed nature of the songs may be intentional, the more polished sections of the album lead me to believe that J Orphic can achieve greatness with a little more careful consideration of flow from one theme to another. That being said, Sulla Terra is an album that explores dark ambient music with some great experimentation with live recordings without being too heavy handed. It is not dark for the sake of darkness; there are motives behind the darkness like fog, and the Christian religion.

-Greg Norte