This earlier disc from Encomiast has been out of stock for awhile, but I finally got more of this in. It's one of my favorite releases from Ross Hagen and his long-running dark ambient project, it's the first album of his that I ever picked up actually, and is still one of his finest collections of dreamy, shadowy drones and powerful orchestral drift.

Winter's Enbd is the 2001 debut from ENCOMIAST, one of our favorite drone-ambient outfits. Firmly situated next to mid-90's dronescapers like Robert Rich, Lustmord and Thomas Koner, this is supreme glacial isolationism, super slow moving melodic repetition buried and drifting, with wordless vocals floating through the ether. Ominous and beautiful and brooding, formed almost exclusively from richly textured layers of icy synthesizers. Like the title suggests, these dronescapes imagine dark, wintry wastes and frozen cave chambers, with minimalist melodies hanging suspended like icicles over the crawling fog of deep tones. Monastic chants drift through"If I Dream I Have You", and "Without Fear Of Wind Or Vertigo" exposes minimal piano and soaring female vocals. Ancient organs keen sadly in the shadows. Gorgeous.