"Firstly, listening to Robert Scott Thompson's music has been a pleasing experience since the first time I heard his music on Hearts of Space. I've come into a bit of a snag when it comes into reviewing Ambient/ Spacemusic, because it seems like the best stuff is beyond words. But my job is to relate the same to the reader, the same enthusiasm that I have for a recording. I'm sure that I do the music no justice, but if I can motivate you enough to buy the recording or at least check it out, by what I've written then I've done my job to the best of my ability. I want to go over Thompson's 1996 release, The Silent Shore, and then 1998's Frontier. Two splendid recordings that easily make Thompson one of the most overlooked composers working in the Ambient genre today. I'll start this with a quote from the liner notes of Thompson's The Silent Shore. “From an aesthetic perspective I have been able to accept every sound as potential musical material. Contexts spring spontaneously, and the materials to fill them abound - even and most profoundly in silence.” I couldn't put it better. His use of organized sound and silence is inspirational. The Silent Shore is a contemplative, dream space masterpiece.

There are quite a few artists that have inspired me to create; Robert Scott Thompson is one such artist. His music transcends time and space, the thing that Spacemusic and some forms of Ambient music are supposed to do. Anyone who reads my reviews will find that I like to use the word contemplative. Any music that is contemplative to me is at the very pinnacle of its art, from the perspective of listening to music. Contemplative music allows you to step into yourself, music that isn't contemplative can be experienced, enjoyed, analyzed, and all of that. But contemplative allows you to step away from yourself, and know the world. I'll talk a little about Frontier now, another record that is absolutely wonderful. This is the first recording of Robert Scott Thompson's that I was exposed to. It was the fall of 1998, and that recording struck me. When the package came from Mirage I was ecstatic to see it mixed in there, having forgot about it for a while. I put this recording in and played it, sitting thoughtfully and listening as if I were spending time listening to an old friend. Frontier takes up where The Silent Shore left off, yet it takes the listener deeper into the realms of thought and imagination. These two records, for me, are wonderful, thoughtful, and provocative pieces of sound-art. I highly recommend getting these classic recordings if you haven't already." - The Organization of Sound

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"Frontier is Robert Scott Thompson's best and most accessible CD. It is, however, not his most important. (Nor is it his personal favorite.) The album was his second release on Mirage. The heavy-handed — even condescending — liner notes state "any ambient music connoisseur will... (hear) in (Thompson's) music the influence of the genre's pioneers — Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and Steve Roach." While those gentlemen are absolutely pioneers, the statement implies a derivative sound. This album is not, by any stretch of the imagination, derivative. Rather, the CD is totally and uniquely original. Thompson has arranged this soundscape in an almost symphonic manner. The individual pieces are integral and integrated pieces of the whole. A gentle and deep drones recurs, providing the coda that ties the pieces to the theme. The frontier of which Thompson speaks is one of many different worlds. The beautiful artwork depicts a lunar horizon with a subaquatic foreground. The music itself visits inner frontiers of emotional and spiritual possibilities. Revisiting the inaccuracy of Grant MacKay's liner notes, Fripp and Eno created pure background ambience. Roach, assuredly a pioneer and a visionary in his own right, visits such soundworlds in completely different vehicles. Any similarity between Thompson and Roach is most likely the result of a mutual and subtle influence of their predecessors or colleagues." - All Music Guide



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