The last physical copies are in stock here:
echospace313.com/album/2508035/home

It's been nearly 5 years since Brock's highly acclaimed "White Clouds Drift On And On" debuted on Echospace earning a plethora of critical acclaim including many coveted top albums of the year list from RA to The Wire. Brock returns in beautiful form with what he's said to us is his most personal and self defining moment in his fruitful musical career. This album however strikes on a very different chord from the last, rather than find contentment in repeating himself he's sculpted a unique sound slightly out of focus from his previous work, a sound one could only say is like drifting in and out of consciousness. A place where early lsd experiments reveal third dimensions of the mind and evoke emotions so powerful they haunt you forever. Here we see Brock's true dedication to vision, maturity and growth, the reason why so many people have gravitated to his heart tugging productions. On, "Home' he paints a near 3 hour exploration so beautiful and hypnotic the listener feels as if only moments passed by, a second to forever. This is a welcome return to form in the one place Brock refers to as, "Home" here on Echospace. If Burial were to meet Eno in the studio of a BBC radio workshop session with Tape masters sent to Steve Roach for further deconstruction this might be the unique result, residing somewhere in the ether. Brock has truly blown us away yet again with another stunning masterpiece.

Thoughts + Press:

"You know, as the world turns and feeds off its own collective insanity, creating nothing useful but pain and suffering, I try to step back, close my eyes and simply breathe. In those moments I often turn to Brock Van Wey, and his truly blissed-out music. Thankfully for me, there is plenty from his catalog to choose from. Besides a few releases under his real name, of which Home is only the second on echospace [detroit], Wey has recorded over 20 full-length albums under his bvdub moniker, and even a few releases under Earth House Hold and East Of Oceans projects. And although at times it feels difficult to keep track of his ambitious output, it is the complete opposite feeling of being immersed in it – an effortless waft in the ocean of sound."

"The work of Brock Van Wey has appeared numerous times on these pages, through album reviews, interviews, studio specials and even a few fan-dedicated mixes. Yet over and over I feel drawn to his output, compelling me once again to write these words. As I have already alluded, Home is a followup to Wey’s 2009 opus, White Clouds Drift On And On. The latter, also released on echospace, came with a second disc full of dubbed out interpretations by Stephen Hitchell as Intrusion. The sequel (if it may be called that), now nearly five years later, is also a double release, this time without the remix offering, but still, nevertheless, just as compelling."

“Brock returns in beautiful form with what he’s said to us is his most personal and self defining moment in his fruitful musical career. This album however strikes on a very different chord from the last, rather than find contentment in repeating himself he’s sculpted a unique sound slightly out of focus from his previous work, a sound one could only say is like drifting in and out of consciousness.”

"The ten long tracks on Home, all over 10-minute each and some approaching even 20, showcase some of Wey’s beautiful sound perfected throughout the years. Here are the gorgeous multi-chordal pads, spreading over barely recognizable major scales. Here are the looped female vocals, layered, delayed, reverbed and then layered again. Here are the stunning waves of phrasing, crashing upon the empty beach of your consciousness, and then receding into complete still after the storm. Here is the illusion of time, stretching nearly to three hours yet feeling like a single brief moment. It’s easy to get lost in Wey’s overlapping and sonic-rich tiers, only to find yourself wrapped in a thick blanket of sound, slowly drifting away into nothingness… and that’s precisely where I want to be… as the world turns…"
-Headphone Commute

"Home is virtually devoid of beats and rhythms, a trait that actively works in the albums’ favor, especially given its epic running time.
When you look at Brock van Wey‘s canon on paper, in the simplest terms he has released twenty albums from 2010 to the present day. An immediate reaction to this might be that he simply releases too much material, but if you actually parse the track listings of many of his releases, it quickly becomes apparent that any one album may only contain between three and six tracks, a number more often associated with the EP than the album. It’s his extended exploration of a single idea within each track that results in running times of anywhere between fifteen and thirty minutes per track."

"The limitations of the physical media on which albums are still distributed consequently dictate the number of tracks of this length you can actually release on any single “album”, blurring the lines between quantity of material and the time it takes to actually listen to it. Some people love this approach to music, while others believe it to be a tad self-indulgent. Perhaps it is, but I suspect van Wey’s work would be substantially less celebrated if he kept his work to a more traditional four to eight minutes per track format. Releasing under his own name is something van Wey has only ever done via Stephen Hitchell’s echospace [detroit] label. His first release as Brock can Wey was 2009’s White Clouds Drift On An On, was effectively a joint release, the first disc containing five original tracks by van Wey and the second five palindromic “Interpretations” of each track by Hitchell’s Intrusion moniker. Home takes the concept even further this time, however, featuring ten brand new compositions across a packed two-and-a-half hour 2CD set, with a 2CD set of complete Intrusion Interpretations set to follow later in 2014. Each disc has it’s own title, however, indicating that it is perhaps intended that you listen in two sessions."

"Followers of Bvdub who prefer his music vocal-loop-free are going to be disappointed by Home as almost every single track features them to some degree, and in most cases are utterly essential to the tracks’ success. Also like its predecessor, Home is virtually devoid of beats and rhythms, a trait that actively works in the albums’ favor, especially given its epic running time. In much of his other work, the presence of percussion and beats draws attention to the extended nature of the track, whereas their absence here actively adds to the timeless, drifting nature of the material. Disc One opens with Home‘s shortest track (a mere ten-and-a-half minutes!), “Mountains Will Keep Your Secrets,” featuring the kind of shimmering, pads, dizzying drones and glowing halos of sped-up vocal loops that can be found the length and breadth of the double album, accompanied by a slow, tribal drumbeat."

“Empty Houses From Above” plays on turbulent strings and reverb drenched vocal loops in its first movement before a surprisingly rare event occurs: bass. After falling into an echoing chasm, a loping, subterranean bass beat pounds the eardrums from beneath the earth as a gauzy, distorted melody buzzes and assorted vocal loops both deep and soprano echo across the soundstage. “A Heart Of Darkness” effectively follows the same pattern but is, if anything, even more memorable thanks to Van Wey’s choice of vocal loops and music box melodies. It’s only when you look back at the album in retrospect that you realize quite how free of traditional rhythms, percussion and bass Home really is. Van Wey’s walls of sound simply don’t need them, and one can’t help feeling that their presence would actually diminish the impact of the album in general. Another pleasant surprise is that none of the tracks that approach or exceed the twenty-minute mark, are allowed to stagnate as they typically consist of several distinct movements."

"Just three tracks in van Wey presents us with what is probably the pinnacle of his career to date. The majestic choirs of voices, cathedral organ keys, searing strings and a lone, perpetually sustained vocal aaah of “You Built A Kingdom, But No One Said Its Name” roll toward you like a heavenly wall of indomitable sound that washes over you like a tidal wave. A crackling buzz stings the skin at the eight minute mark, shortly after which the throng is joined by probably the purest and cleanest vocal loops on the whole record. This is van Wey at his most emotionally devastating."

“Than To Have Ever Lived At All” is a multi-spired cathedral of sound, a softly looping angelic choir accompanying grandiose, Gothic church organ drones, choral voices and strings that build in intensity until they are almost overwhelming. For some these moments may smack of excess, but for those who appreciate it when things are turned up to eleven once in a while they are simply essential. The second disc opens with “G"ot To Carry On,” guitar strumming oddly reminiscent of “Times When I Know You’ll Be Sad” from Bioshere’s Substrata, leading into a noticeably repetitive vocal loop. It simply doesn’t hit the melodic or atmospheric high notes that made “Mountains Will Keep Your Secrets” on disc one so memorable and is one of the very few weak links on Home. The second disc also prominently feature piano, another van Wey staple that is absent from the first disc. It first appears in glittering, jangly form on “I Wish I Could Say More Than This” and remains a primary feature through the first six minutes. There then follows a sudden lull before Secede-like field recordings of human chatter, cries and general ambient noise envelop deeply evocative strings before the whole thing is swallowed in Global Communication style pads, washes and crooning vocal loops that recalls Pentamerous Metamorphosis their delirious Chapterhouse rework album."

“We Build Steps To The Sky”—the last of Home‘s truly defining moments—begins with misleadingly loungey piano that dissolves into operatic soprano siren calls and organ treble before being joined by one of Home‘s catchiest vocal loops. Van Wey then pours on ever-increasing layers of organ bass, until the room literally shakes with it. In the second movement the sound stage is drowned in panoramic oceans of salt spray washes and a contralto vocal drone. “Can’t Go Home Without You” presents more of the same but this time over a rather too soupy and unstructured nineteen minutes that lack the spark and immediacy of other tracks, while album finale “Walk Through Walls (For SH)” is nice enough but doesn’t really possess the emotional weight or melodic hook one might have wished for. That said, reaching these final two tracks is something of a Herculean effort in any case. Arguably, Home is too grand in scale and epic in duration to be digestible in a single sitting, and it’s certainly an experience you have to carefully plan for. There can be little doubt, however, that Home is one of the finest expressions of Brock van Wey’s work to date, as epic in structure, density, atmosphere and emotional weight as it is in length. You need this!" -Igloo Magazine


Five years ago, this San Francisco DJ/producer released quite a massive, remarkable, and distinctive ambient epic called White Clouds Drift On and On, his first album under his own name.  Home is its follow-up and I have no idea quite what to make of it.  In some ways, it surpasses its wonderful predecessor in its lush, melancholy grandeur.  In other ways, however, its extreme length (almost 3 hours) coupled with its narrow, unwavering aesthetic serve to exaggerate its charms to the point of caricature or folly.  There are still some wonderful songs here, of course, but too much of a good thing yields rapidly diminishing returns.

"I seem to be covering a lot of albums lately that can be completely summarized in just one sentence, a trend which Home does not disrupt at all.  In this case, that sentence is "billowing and warmly hissing swells of oceanic bliss."  There are a couple of things that set Von Wey apart from artists treading similar territory though.  The main one is probably scale, as Brock's "ambient" works sound absolutely symphonic in their complexity (and in their length).  If I wanted to be unfairly reductive, I would say that most of Home sounds like one of the more beautiful instrumental passages from The Cure’s Disintegration layered and expanded into near-infinity, as it certainly has a similar narcotic feel and Romantic sadness.  In reality, however, these pieces are far from unchanging loops–they just evolve from movement to movement so slowly as to be near-imperceptible."

"The other trait that sets Brock apart from other ambient artists in this vein is that he is coming from a techno background rather than a drone one.  That manifests itself most obviously in the ghostly loops of soulful vocal hooks that pervade the album, but also results in an occasional bass thump or dub-like flourish.  Those elements are most effective in "Empty Houses Seen From Above" and "A Heart of Darkness," particularly the latter, which makes excellent use of obsessively looping female vocal snippets.  The overall effect is quite an unusual one in Van Wey's hands, as he seems to be operating on a completely different timescale than other humans (for better or worse).  The best summation I can provide is this: Holy Other sounds like sexy R&B blurred and slowed into a drugged haze-–Home sounds like Holy Other sucked into a black hole and spat out the other side in an almost unrecognizably stretched and slowed form."

"While that is admittedly a very cool and inventive feat, I have a few issues that prevent me from quite falling in love with this album, most of which are highly subjective.  For one, its predecessor was more unusual, as it incorporated chopped-up and digitally mangled snatches of non-English vocals that favorably recalled Peter Christopherson's The Threshold Houseboys Choir.  I liked that.  Of course, switching to exclusively using more conventional soul/dance vocal snippets is probably more "honest," given Brock's background, so I will give him a pass on that.  Another issue is that listening to Home feels uncomfortable voyeuristic, like I am eavesdropping on another man's cathartic tour de force of sadness, though that would not have bothered me as much in my younger years (in fact, I probably would have loved it).  Finally, Home is just absolutely monolithic in its aesthetic and scope, which is a double-edged sword: for me, a casual fan, this is simply way too much of the same thing.  For someone more unambiguously enthusiastic about Brock's vision, however, this is probably an absolute godsend (it certainly sounds like he spent several years crafting it).  In any case, Home certainly feels like a hugely impressive achievement, albeit quite a highly personal, obsessive, and narrowly focused one." -Brainwashed