A Produce

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

The A Produce project is the brainchild of Barry Craig, an electronic musician from Los Angeles, former member of Afterimage, who starts again from the tonal poems of Brian Eno’s On Land.

After The Clearing (Trance Port, 1988) it took a few years before the revival of ambient music brought him back into the spotlight.

Reflect Like A Mirror Respond like an Echo (Trance Port, 1992) is a masterwork of the second generation of ambient music, which learned the art from Jon Hassell and Harold Budd. The abstract world-music of the former is recalled in Native Pulse and Rousseau's Jungle, while the title-track is inspired by the delicate stasis of the latter. Moreover, the keyboardist (Ruben Garcia) and guitarist (Chas Smith) who accompany him are regular collaborators of Harold Budd. The 1997 CD edition includes the extended version of A Smooth Surface.

The trance of Land Of A Thousand Trances (Trance Port, 1994) is even more serene and majestic. In addition to a number of ethnic instruments Craig employs a sinister tribalism, akin to that of his friend Robert Rich. The result is a cerebral version of world-music in the title-track, and a hallucinatory version of cosmic music in Dreaming Room.

Smooth Surface (Trance Port, 1994) offers a long "remix" of the title track aimed at "meditation."

White Sands (Trance Port, 1995) is an anthology.

Inscape & Landscape (Trance Port, 1996) is another compelling excursion into the universe of early Harold Budd.