pau torres - hostile (testing ground) the atmosphere on the album 'hostile' by pau torres is not settled down within the realm of only one musical style or genre, but it can be said that it hovers around the crackling ambient mood that's mostly characteristic about the music on this album. it's obvious that the general atmospheric and a bit quiet mood is present through the whole album, but it's not like a kind of, let's say, space ambient music. what's also present in this music is a specific jazz sense (a bit like the mood on the soundtrack and in the great movie 'angel heart'), but it is very discrete, a bit hidden beneath the surface of the silence, which somehow takes too much space in the music on the album. it's a bit vague to be pure ambient and there are specific aspects in it that are usually common in improvised music, but probably that improvised approach should be more pointed out, as a contrast or opposition to the ambient sound. occasionally various field recordings are used (more of them may bring in more diversity in the sound) and also sounds of acoustic percussive, string or wind instruments are appearing (sampled or maybe played by guest musicians; in the tracks: 'brown dog', 'banjo insult', 'haunted chuck', 'the girl who', 'booth', 'm' and 'frank's') and those moments, when the sounds of those instruments interfere with the electronics, are most attractive and should be further explored and combined more often, so that way the music would sound more full and the tension might be greater. jazz and improvisation vs ambient is a nice musical territory, when all styles are equally present, while here it seems there's a bit of lack of jazz in the improv (or the other way around), or a lack of improv in the ambient, for the sake of the atmosphere of ambience, that's mostly present on this release. (br)