"Under what could just be the longest acronym ever, or a particular recondite sequence known only to the artists, the duo of Matt Greenwall and Phillip Andrew Lewis conjure up the both gently cooed and reverberated hauntings of various imagined transmissions and transduced whispers on their new album of wispy and soothingly effective ambient suites.

Barely above that whisper, these quite but deeply stirring pieces seem to feed a collection of processed video and tape loops into the ether; the returning sound waves, broadcasts now sonic mirages, passages of the American strange, the waves lapping onto a cult 50s soft surf soundtrack, or, the breeze blowing gently across the Appalachian Mountains.

AM/FM radio signals crisply spark as glass birds sound and translucent bulbs ring in the resonance of a drone. The nebulous meets the ghostly; traces of a less fearful Twin Peaks and a haunted theatre are suffused in an ebbing ambient cycle. Voices come and go as movie dialogue is manipulated into echoes of the past. The dreamy spells linger as you catch some hallowed or mysterious presence drifting off into the empirical.

Elements of the semi-classical, trip-hop experiments, European library music, old film image reels and analogue ambient music can all be detected and felt on this both organic but artificially constructed, amorphous album. The opening ambient aria beauty, ‘Angela’s Light’, is worth the entrance fee alone."

~Domonic Valvona
monolithcocktail.com/2022/08/08/the-perusal-34-claude-li-yilei-the-movers-foch-delplanque-staraya-derevnya-brown-calvin/

"We like seasonally appropriate music at ACL – you may have noticed our articles about Summer and Winter music, and if not, may we suggest you take a look at them, at a time that suits? Releasing a record that fits the season plays well with us, so it is pleasing to note that the lead single for SeeUSearching is titled “Autumn,” just in time for the start of that meteorological season. It is a well-crafted portrait, in which you can imagine the breeze becoming fresher, the nights getting cooler, and the sun setting earlier.

The duo of Matt Greenwell and Phillip Andrew Lewis, who record as THLTTLDBB, reinforce the impression left by “Autumn” to create some vivid moments of atmospheric drone-centred ambience. There is plenty left to interpretation: the whispers and hums captured here create the impression of a worn-out VHS tape or some faded polaroids. But these sounds could also evoke the wind whistling across a cold, empty beach or rattling an abandoned coastal warehouse. It’s no coincidence that the cover artwork captures both these mental images in one picture. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however.

SeeUSearching hits a sweet spot between Julianna Barwick and The Caretaker, striking a balance with the unearthly and otherworldly. There are plenty of ethereal voices in the opening sequence, with the second half of the album more concerned with the ghost in the machine. There’s a more industrial edge to the arrangements: the abandoned warehouse we imagined in our mind’s eye is unoccupied but whoever owned it before left the equipment plugged in – and they are still chattering away. Each half of the album has its own little mood disruptor, breaking the flow with a grainier and grittier diversion – it’s a clever approach that works very effectively.

An unusual phenomenon is occurring in nature at the end of August 2022, as the leaves are already turning golden. It does not herald an early Autumn but indicates the trees shutting down as an act of self-preservation as the water runs dry. What should be a beautiful image in October is instead one that disquiets and discomfits in Summer. It provokes a feeling that echoes throughout SeeUSearching – there is beauty here, but under the surface, there is something more sinister. In nature, it is potentially catastrophic. But in music, it is strangely wonderful."

~ Jeremy Bye
acloserlisten.com/2022/08/21/thlttldbb-seeusearching/