Hotel Gromada, a French duo, has put together an interesting set of field recordings. It sounds wonderful, haunting, dislocating, and mystical, like a good batch of field recordings should. “Amazonian Rovers” takes listeners out of the current surrounds and drops them off in the heart of wherever the field recordings were made, which leaves them in some limbo dreamland – because who knows where the recordings were made?

The only problem with all of this is a volume problem. The recording starts off so quietly it’s nearly impossible to hear, and that goes on so long that one thinks the whole disc will be like that. Only it’s not. It gets louder and louder, and eventually the listener has to get up to turn down the stereo, which is frustrating. You could say this adds to the “field” aspect of the field recordings, but I don’t buy it. Overall, a really intriguing release, just be prepared for some ups and downs – physically and literally. 7/10 -- Shannon Smith (28 July, 2010)