Emuul is a new artist and this is his first micro-edition release ltd to only 40 luxuriously bound copies. Based in Washington, Kyle B. Iman creates ambient works full of imagined landscapes and filmic surrealism. ‘The Ghostwood Estates’ comes in a small pouch of evergreen corduroy, tied with a soft woollen chord. Inside is housed two 3”CDRs each with beautifully printed light on dark text upon a wood grain effect card. Each CDR is indicted its running order by a single or double dot. The first CDR contains three tracks comprising of over 20minutes of music. The music was inspired by the artist re-visiting the Twin Peaks series. This starting point triggered a 40+ minutes of exploratory sound.

The first track begins in almost silence as the barely audible gradually builds to a bubbling of electronics and wavelike field recordings. Tones dance within each other’s lightness. This is a definite for fans of contemplative electronica, think Mountains, or even BJ Nilsen. The ricocheting notes and burning, reduced electronic bleed, make an utterly hypnotic opener and establishes Emuul’s sound beautifully. The second movement has a deeper resonance that drones with guitar and notes of tranquil, ethereal quality. This builds slowly with lightness and soothing, then evolves to issue breathy bass you might find on a Windy & Carl album. This gradually ascends to towering pillars of sound that rise and crash without being absorbed into the terra firma. The final piece is a bookmark to the central epic. Once again various guitar drones and plucks are quietly woven to fragment dreamscapes of blissful quality. The restrained lulled dissonance is absorbed into your very being.

Part two has a more equal division and is thus split into for shorter movements. The first shifts between light and dark with a direct hand that keeps the Badalamenti styled drones from becoming wistful. The tones are melded smoothly but seem to transcend emotions with certain bluntness. The second piece is a bass driven affair which houses noise and analogue destruction, almost like Machinefabriek at his more restrained. All gathers smog in thick haze rumbles that sound alongside the ambient soothing tones. The third section blasts into action with what sounds like a power electronic splurge from the pedals of Pan Sonic. This darkness growls across almost 5minutes, nearly birthing a rhythm through pulsating crackles. A welcome doom touch to a light project. Things then conclude with a low, quiet tone that remains almost beyond the audible. Some far-reaching sonics that warrant good equipment are hidden in this sparse ending. The entire project works well in two halves and the format serves the project as the correct medium rather than simply an aesthetic gimmick. Emuul is one to watch and you can expect more quality releases in the near future. 8/10 -- Peter Taylor (1 September, 2009)