Now I have the opportunity to describe Cole's newest release, The Way Beyond, and I find myself scrabbling at the same phrases I'd written two years ago. I want to warn the reader in advance that I am going to get a little "out there" in this review, but it's the only thing keeping me from gushing uncontrollably about the music. Firstly, this is a vaster work than Cole's previous solo CD--it's comprised of twelve tracks, but each track melds into its successor seamlessly, creating a wavering tapestry of sonic perfumes and impressions. While each cut on the disc has a separate mood or tone, The Way Beyond must be considered as a massive, undulating, living, breathing ambient zone of stillness and, unusually, simultaneous constant change and transition. While the basis of this recording is layered drones comprised solely from Cole's harmonic singing, these layers are overlapped with constantly changing sonic waves and patterns which create the feeling of watching a rushing brook; all motion and churning fluid on top, but a deep, peaceful stillness beneath.

It would be pointless to describe this work on a track by track basis as I do on many reviews. I'm more comfortable attempting to communicate impressions I have while listening; by reading this review, you may in some way have an idea of the places music of this nature can take the willing listener. At around track nine, for example, the deep tones of Cole's voice expand and contract in an almost psychedelic flux, as if one is buffeted upon solar winds. Sometimes while writing reviews of music of this nature, I feel as if I'm the narrator in an Edgar Allan Poe story--swept away describing the effects of his own madness, and leaving no lasting impression on the reader about what he is trying to communicate. This is the difficulty in reviewing The Way Beyond--it calls to mind so many powerful and inexplicably spiritual thoughts, impressions, feelings, that to attempt to put it down on paper is to cheat it of its power in the first place. I'm reminded of the Zen koan (which I will paraphrase poorly) where the student comments to the Zen master: "Master, look at the trees, listen to the birds, watch the sunset dipping below the horizon! It's all so beautiful!" To which the master replies wryly: "Yes, but it's such a shame for you to say so." By the end of track nine, I've thought of this koan and much, much more--a continuous daisy-chain of relationships and correlations within my own conscious (and unconscious) mind. This is inner space music in the highest sense of the term. Cole's seemingly plaintive cries strike as melancholy in track ten, but they are at the same time hopeful. A living embodiment of the pains and pleasures of existence? See? I can't help but get introspective--it's in the very core of this music, which brings one within his or her self to a point of absolute attention to minute thoughts, however ephemeral they may be.

And this is the crux of the matter--at the very core of things, Jim Cole, armed with only looped drones created from his own voice, has somehow unlocked a secret place within just by creating music. Here, as if conjuring a primordial state from the trappings of modernity, we have the ultimate power of ambient music, perhaps (in my opinion) above many, if not most, other types of music. This wordless music, without connotation, has the power to unearth nameless spiritual delight within. There is no question--The Way Beyond is holy music, no matter what your persuasion--it is ageless, and always a valid and enriching experience. As with Godspace (and I believe that The Way Beyond surpasses its predecessor in terms of breadth and sonic diversity from the same essential sound sources), I find the music herein to be unquestionably one of the finest ambient/atmospheric releases of 2003. This is the kind of music that reminds of why one became an appreciator of the genre in the first place--it makes you feel good, larger than yourself, and, most of all, connected to the artist and music in some way that is difficult to describe with words that always seem clumsy by comparison. This disc goes “way beyond” Godspace, and that's really saying something. The Way Beyond gets my highest recommendation: it's paradigm shattering work by one of the brightest lights in today's ambient scene.