Kites Sail High - Alone / Secrets

Don't really know anything about Kites Sail High and the press release doesn't give away much either. That said, this is a tasty sounding slab of wax. From what I can gather from the Myspace, this is a solo outing from some San Francisco based feller. He's created vast layers of ambient psychedelia using sample loops that may or may not have been composed by the author. It's kinda spaced out stuff with samples evolving in tone and pace at all times. Things get pitched up and down creating that woozy effect that I'm hearing a lot of nowadays, like a tape played on a dodgy old machine...whir whir whir etc. Occasional vocal contributions are vague spoken word efforts that add to the uneasy yet blissful tone of these arrangements. I'm particularly pleased by the swampy, almost hip-hop style drum loops which help bring a consistency to the constant experimentation with melodic samples, making it almost danceable stuff... sort of. Whatever's going on, I like it.