Dirge. Not the sort of word that has a positive ring to it, conjuring up images of funerals and funereal music. Indeed, a quick look at the dictionary for subtler meanings fails to throw up any definition to go against the perceived translation. "A chant of lamentation for the dead," we're informed. "Any mourning song or melody." Percy Bysshe Shelley uses the phrase "thou dirge of the dying year" in his poem "Ode to the West Wind" (read about it here). The image that the title brings to mind in the context of the poem is of a cold winter landscape, the bare bones of trees standing against a grey sky – which would certainly be familiar to Sempervirens, given his geographic locale.

Sempervirens is the operating title of Margus Mets, an Estonian artist who prefers to keep any extraneous information out of the public eye and let the music do the talking (at least that's the impression one gets from his MySpace page). Dirge Of The Dying Year is his sixth full-length release and according to his label's website, his last  (whether this means he is changing his pseudonym, or simply a typographical error, is hard to tell). Certainly Stellar Auditorium believe he's making music in the future so it is unlikely that Mets is retiring. Although he has a sizeable back-catalogue his releases have been very low-key – the MP3-only release Mainland Rain seems to have had the highest profile and Benekka, the label that released it, has sadly vanished into the ether (or wherever it is netlabels go, taking their files with them).

It follows then that an understated artist produces understated music. Sempervirens has both feet comfortably in the ambient camp, producing expansive drones populated by delicate subtleties – a clip of film dialogue here, a flurry of guitar here. "The Moon Of Madness" ends with a quote from a piece of classical music that has distinct echoes of the work of The Caretaker, as the melody seems to travel across the years from a ballroom or perhaps a bandstand to just float into the range of the listener before moving on. The album itself opens with a convincingly immersive thunderstorm with plenty of rain effects but eventually settles into the calmer ebb and flow that we expect from ambient releases.

The perceived problem with ambient has been debated on frequent occasions, and I'm grateful my esteemed colleague Greg Norte for raising it again in a recent review, complete with a highly relevant quote from Brian Eno, the father of the genre. Essentially, the argument is this: at the heart of the music there should be a functionality that allows it to fade into the background rather than obliging the listener to focus on the work for the duration. If the music proves too engaging then it can really be no longer classed as an ambient piece. There's no problem in the latter scenario where Dirge Of The Dying Year is concerned – even whilst concentrating on the music I found my attention drifting during one of the tracks in which nothing seems to happen. Get lost in a book or dusting the hi-fi for too long, however, and a brief refrain will eventually grab the attention again.

So in terms of effect on the listener then, Sempervirens is a successful ambient artist. I can't help feeling that as a complete work there is something missing – something hard to quantify but very definite in its absence. It is probably that, in the end, Dirge Of A Dying Year falls between two stools – it isn't sparse enough to be considered ambient, but neither is there enough going on to warrant active listening. Even with headphones on I found my attention wandering, but at the same time I wasn't able to switch off entirely and let the waves wash over me. In the end, although there is nothing particularly wrong with this album, I found it curiously unsatisfying.

-Jeremy Bye