Subotnick

This is the ultimate Neil Diamond record. Not necessarily the best — he’s at his most appealing crafting in the studio — but certainly the ultimate, capturing all the kitsch and glitz of Neil Diamond, the showman.

Like its predecessor in 1994's Recurring Dreams of the Urban Myth, Wireless draws from the urban environment in assembling dense, disorganized soundscapes of subtle beauty. Unfolding slowly over the course of an hour, Wireless, as its name suggests, utilizes radio waves in combination with treated electronics, with results closer in feel to electro-acoustic experimentalists such as Carl Stone and Morton Subotnick than the warm, often more active ambient the Fax label is known for.

It may be tempting to reduce Convocations into a longform ambient anomaly within Sufjan Stevens’ vast catalogue. It is, however, neither an anomaly nor entirely ambient. This is not a side project. From his numerous dance scores for New York City Ballet to instrumental albums such as Enjoy Your Rabbit, Aporia, and The BQE, Stevens spends at least half his working life making largely instrumental music, as he has for decades.