Encomiast - Malpais

Encomiast is the work of solo artist and sound manipulator Ross Hagen. He's been plying the drone trade for over ten years now so I'm going to assume he's a wizened ambient master by now with plenty to teach these young upstarts littering the scene nowadays. 'Malpias' contains a single piece of music that derives from an unspecified folk song which have been manipulated to the extent that you'd never really know it was based on anything at all. Encomiast predominantly uses effected sting instruments and voice to create his brand of ambient drone but it's always hard to tell what with the advances in post production these days, not to mention the ease with which various sound sources can be merged together and manipulated using the most basic of home studio packages on your laptop. If that's the case here, it's all done with anal consistency and a meticulous attention to detail. I can't begin to imagine what folk song this is based on? Who knows. Still, nice haunting drones. This one clocks in at about twenty minutes and comes on a 3" CD with accompanying 3" case for it to go inside.