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Choral Image
Metascore
83

Universal acclaim - based on 8 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

  • Summary: The third album for the Brooklyn-based duo who met at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. After two great albums, Choral sees the duo consolidating all the gains made into its first real classic, an album that ought to delight hardened-ambient fanatics and neophytes alike.
  2. What we’re left with, speakers humming with aftermath, is the possibility of a real and significant realization: that between Hecker and Mountains, 2009 suggests a sea change--and I can’t think of a more appropriately grand term--in which ambient music may just enter a post-Eno peak.
  3. Q Magazine
    80
    The Mountain boys at the--ahem--peak of their powers. [Apr 2009, p.107]
  4. Under The Radar
    80
    Choral is an impressionistic, mellifluous record that persistently beguiles. [Spring 2009, p.77]
  5. Uncut
    80
    Mountains' skillful manipulation of texture and space creates a sound that stealthily envelopes you like an Appalachian fog. [mar 2009, p.92]
  6. That said, try as you might, you can listen a hundred times and not catch all the utterly magical, deeply moving, and beautifully arresting aural majesty to be found on Choral.
  7. Choral sometimes feels staid and a little postcard-y: a pretty gesture that fails to eclipse the experience of actually going somewhere.

See all 8 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. RobertPs
    Mar 10, 2009
    10
    It's one of the best albums I've ever heard. It just puts you in an earthy state of mind. Why go outside?

Awards & Rankings