Reviews of Mount Carmel [12k1090]

The use of dobro, lap and pedal steel, with their unmistakable sound and inflections, fired neurons in a completely different part of my brain.

Mike Grigoni explores an electro-acoustic constellation linked to the environment nature and the impressions associated with it.

Everything, the lazy roar, the scraping and rattling details, the still disordered guitar playing, is still wrapped in the cotton wool of shy intimacy, until at some point the rising California sun floods the room.

A fascinating and inspiring trip into another world

Discreet, humble and honest.

Mount Caramel’s asynchronous electronics achieve one of the best things that ambient music can do, which is to pull you, taffy-like, away from the center of something and hold you at a deliberative, transformational distance. 

M. Grig manages to incorporate folk instruments into a sound that doesn’t feel like folk but is at the same time distinctly American.

Mike Grigoni explores an electro-acoustic constellation linked to the natural environment.

[It] shows how attentive the musician is to all these tiny clues of life and memory, everywhere, at any moment.

This has as much in common with ambient music as it does with folk, and perfectly blurs the lines, so much so that I even find it difficult to continue typing, it’s that soothing – but less in a sleepy way, more of a fresh breath of mountain air.

For a long time I have not heard a record that burned so softly into my memory.

Durham has been a birthplace of Americana, bluegrass and soul, and with this incarnation of Grigoni’s sound, a new special elegance of ambient.

There’s more going on here than warm-hearted nostalgia. Grig applies a layering technique that sets acoustic and electric sounds against one another while maintaining a distinctly ambient, even sensuous vibe.

You get the feeling of the weather and the way the winds would change the complexion of things.

An ode to childhood.

The call of memory and the response of nostalgia are beautifully represented here in unique fashion.