Omns

Like a lot of his ambient peers, Lichens both suffers and benefits from a remarkable sense of sameness. These soft tones wave like flags in a light breeze, a single fabric in constant gentle flux. The result is at once cool and becoming, inviting but diffuse. OMNS may not be the ambient record to win over the unconverted — Keith Fullerton Whitman's stomach-loosening Lisbon holds that title — but it offers plenty of attention-getting flourishes atop these spare tones, albeit as simple as the guitar flutters of the first track or the piano melancholia of the second. For all its impressive intellectualism, it remains firmly committed to pleasing the listener, even forcing the artist's personality to the point of including a pensive live DVD with the record. This performance is a nice enough addendum but serves more as a visual corollary to the five sanguine beauties from the album proper.