I had a professional massage the other day, my first. I thought about bringing my own music, figuring I knew a bit more about The Chill than your average bodywork technician, but then I decided to defer to her experience at the last minute. One of the CDs I considered bringing to the Big Rub was this Windy & Carl album. Consciousness would work better for a massage than past albums by the duo, because it has a slightly warmer, more pastoral feel. Absent is the vague dread of Antarctica and the claustrophobic edge that drifted in and out of Depths.

The song titles on Consciousness reinforce the relative buoyancy of sound. I heard the first track a half-dozen times before I noticed that it was called "The Sun," which immediately seemed the perfect title. Consisting of just three major chords plucked on an electric guitar and then run through a delay pedal, it's a simple, direct statement.

"Balance (Trembling)" is the only track that touches on the darker shadings of albums past, but that's quickly corrected by the glowing shafts of light that grace "Elevation." The guitar feedback here is far too controlled to be threatening, and the various synthesizers and effects pedals are programmed to deliver the roundest tones possible. As a kid, I had a dream in which I slowly orbited the Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back. "Elevation" is the soundtrack to that dream.

Indeed, given the tone of many of these tracks, Subconsciousness would have been a better title for the album. Unfortunately, that title was already taken by Japanese ambient glitch project Neina, for their record on Mille Plateaux last year. Windy & Carl seem to acknowledge the hallucinatory quality in this particular state of awareness with "The Llama's Dream." Picking up with the shimmering tones of "Elevation," the tune features Windy's first vocals on the album about three minutes in, as the drone gives way to Carl's Dean Wareham-inspired strumming. The title track is similarly song-oriented, with hazy strums and quiet singing, and then "Resolution" takes one more stab at the ultimate Om.

More than anything, Consciousness documents Windy & Carl's relentless search for the perfect drone. These two won't be happy until they find a combination of sounds that encompasses all feeling, at which point they will then stretch that chord to the vanishing point. Windy & Carl are too committed to their quest to consider variety for the sake of variety, so don't approach this one expecting a major departure. But if you're tuned in, it should turn you on.

-Mark Richard-San