Excerpt: “Don’t be put off by the title – this is some of the most uplifting music you’ll hear this year. Anthony Saggers is an English ambient drone architect. These tunes, labelled Parts 1-8, are slow-moving glaciers, washes of synths. Absolutely gorgeous.”
The Underground of Happiness radio show Cork Campus Radio: Ireland
Excerpt: “a collection of melodic and environmentally informed ambience that begins with the sound of the sea and ends with bird song. If anything, this is a celebration of life rather than an introspective gaze at its end. Much of Saggers’ previous work has been drone-based, but here the music is much more open and coloured, with drifting, wave-like melodies composed of synth washes and string samples… The key to this music is space. Not cosmic space, but wide open landscapes with sweeping skies. Somewhere to escape to, away from the claustrophobia of modern life. Yes, there is sadness in this music, but also joy. The sort of wondrous feeling that a spectacular landscape or sunset or a clear sky on a pitch black night gives you. It’s Saggers best work yet.”
Excerpt: “While the material Oxfordshire-born Anthony Saggers has thus far released has been modest in amount, there is still enough that a Stray Ghost ‘sound’ has come into focus. The two full-lengths he’s issued, 2008’s Losthilde on Highpointlowlife Records and 2009’s An Avalanche of Swollen Tongues on Dead Pilot, opt for an uncompromising dark ambient style that can make the listener feel as if he/she has been spirited away on a one-way tour through Hell—memorable recordings, for sure, but not what you’d call calm-inducing. All of which makes Each Paradise is a Lost Paradise, Saggers’ first Stray Ghost release (and digital-only release) for Hidden Shoal, such a pleasant surprise: in diametric contrast to the nightmarish ambiance of the album releases, the EP’s three settings are becalmed and beatific. In contrast to a downward trajectory, the direction is now upwards, with some heavenly paradise the implied destination.”
