Excerpt: “The eight tracks, driven mainly by guitar and/or piano with slight electronic tinkering, straddle a fine line between modern classical and drone. It’s very expressive music, painting ghostly images of barren wilderness and other forms of magnificent desolation… This type of music certainly encourages looking for the little things, trying to search out individual notes submerged in a sea of reverb, and Close, But Not Too Close has a lot of aural Easter eggs waiting to be discovered… less a collection of songs than it is pure mood, an audible fog that seeps from speakers to bathe home stereos in frozen moonlight.”

Igloo Magazine

Excerpt: ‘The discs are loaded with layered, thoughtful pieces rich in instrumentation and heavy on a narrative sensibility…. with pieces that wander and shuffle through bleak and melancholic landscapes like they need a little space to sort things out. Everything is played with a deliberate grace that allows each instrument’s contribution be fully felt, notes slipping perfectly into place at exactly the right time. Willenbring’s approach skirts the edge of minimalism in that there’s nothing here that isn’t absolutely inherent, nothing wedged or crammed in where it doesn’t belong. The notes fall like rain, the backgrounds shift and float like windblown curtains and everything sounds like it’s hanging at the precipice of heartbreak.’

Hypnagogue

Excerpt: “Track titles such as “The Anti-Social Aesthetic” and “I’m Looking Forward to Your Funeral” suggest his music might be so hermetic it’s designed to ward off listeners’ advances, but in fact Willenbring leaves the door open just enough to allow visitors in to share his world. His is an unassuming and rather muted style; he’s not the kind of composer who bludgeons the listener with abrasive extremes but rather lures him/her in with the seductive understatement of fully-rounded and plaintive meditations.”

Textura

Excerpt: “Willenbring peppers his discreet, minimalist compositions with deliberate and interloping melodic accents that promotes active listening but without obligation…Breadth and depth are supplied by adding and subtracting layers of vibrant tonal swells in periodic waves, often times forming shadowy soundtracks to mysterious worlds but just as often providing a serene, hypnotic and majestic soundscape suitable for daydreaming. Close, But Not Too Close entertains in stellar fashion with hauntingly beautiful atmospheric compositions that should please fans of ambient music.”

Adequacy.net