Atrium Carceri - Ptahil

[Click on image for official Atrium Carceri website]

Country - Sweden

Composer - Simon Heath

Released - February 2007

- Tracklist -

1. Quarantine (feat. Antonia Simonovic)

2. Entrance

3. A Place to Call Home

4. Observatory

5. Memory Leak

6. Reincarnation Chamber

7. A Path Through Remembrance

8. Static of the Kapnobatai

9. Reborn

10. The Council of Seven

11. Meltdown

12. Inside the Womb

13. End Titles

- Review-

It was just a matter of time until I reviewed an Atrium Carceri album. This will be the first of hopefully many, so I will start on my personal favorite AC release, Ptahil. I've always felt this was a masterpiece of Ambience, it seems grittier than AC's other releases, not saying that they are not good (oh no far from that), but Ptahil was primarily the album that got me into this genre (good start hey?).

Where to start...

Compared to much of AC's other releases I feel that Ptahil is much more experimental and  conceptual. The music covers a wider range of styles from seamless industrial ambience ('Entrance'), beat driven dark electronica ('Meltdown') and even a little bit of , and i am just guessing here, middle-eastern folk ('Quarantine').  Captured sound is stringent through the thick layers, leaving no gaps in the music. The virtual sound is distorted enough to give an almost grungy texture to the music and the reverberation also helps give a fuller and thicker wall of sound.

Simon I know has put so much effort into this album, and I feel that Ptahil is his opus.