. Blamstrain is Juho Hietala from Finland, a country that is home to so many talented electronic music artists that find their work respected all over the world. Blamstrain is one of these artists. Via his debut cd Ensi and a 12” on the USA-based Merck Records and a killer 12” collaboration with Brothomstates on Merck's sublabel Narita, we now get treated with Disfold, a mighty work of gritty, evolved ambient that is undoubtedly his most grown-up release yet. It took Blamstrain over 4 years to finish this work and if you hear the depth and personality of the music you can really tell this release and it’s creator have spent quite some time together. When we received the demo of this album a year ago, we were unsuspecting there would be even more to gain out of this beautiful work; it was already so good, it turned the Sending Orbs office into a place where the enigmatic sounds of Disfold determined the atmosphere and sealed the exits to the outside world hermetically. In spite of our anxious impatientness to drop this album off in the world, Juho resolutely stayed loyal to his perfectionism and spent another year diving and digging for more unfound treasures. He, to say the least, succeeded. The album as we know it now is a host of enthralling field recordings from cities all over the world Juho visited (Seattle, Amsterdam, Helsinki to name a few). And precisely, what we have here is some kind of urban ambient: smoggy, gloomy, lonely, claustrophobic maybe. This is not the ambient where you would hear the songs of birds and the rustles of leaves; this is the ambient where you hear braking trains, disorienting subway stations and rain on the roofs of discoloured buildings. Whether it’s the overwhelming drones and heartbeat thumping power of his monumental collaboration track with Brothomstates, the ice cold warmhearted beauty of “Frame Math” or the microscopic, gritty movement in “Diacedita”: Disfold will cast a shadow of sounds over the listener, creating a breathing atmosphere that is oppressive and dark, yet intimate and beautiful.