There is a really large pool of music that exists at the triangular center of idm, ambient, and ambient trance. That's a somewhat harsh triangulation, and of course doesn't say everything, but it's not so far off either. In fact, with an album like Measured Life, by The Sales Department, I think it's undeniable. By the way, The Sales Department is a project founded by Mike Matheson, who previously founded Beef Terminal.

1. The Measured Life
2. Details And Averages
3. What Made You Thankful in '96
4. World Record
5. Three Furnaces
6. Sifting
7. On Baseline
8. No One Heard You
9. Wrong Place to Start
10. Rain or Snow

For every band there is a canvas. Their canvas is the base in which they grow their songs. For The Sales Department, that canvas is ambient music. Okay, so ambient music is an arguable oxymoron, but that's part of it, what is music? If the basic sounds of nature can be called music, slowly unfolding washes of synthesizer born noises certainly can be. Don't get me wrong though, this isn't all tapping a key every couple seconds and letting a sound play itself out until it's time to tap another key. They have percussion, and it's on the minimal, fuzzy, ever-so-slightly glitchy side. Dream-like audio samples echo in from time to time and sometimes, the music even edges toward an ambient trance sound. The Sales Department take a minimal approach to composition, but in no way is complexity left out.

This is music for lovers of City Centre Offices and those we can't get enough of the ambient leanings of Upstairs Recordings. It's out on Canada's Noise Factory, so that should also give you two clues; one about its sound, the other about its quality.

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