Opening the journey (the only true explanation of this collection of works) of Rooster Wheel and Pope, we find a bubbling of acoustic guitar picking- almost Asiatic in nature. It's just that: natural. Natural meets synthetic in their ambient and meditative ten-track album, (As People). The song that starts the process off is titled after the album, itself, then slides into "Martin Sunlight," scrapped together with a slightly unnerving vintage sound clip of a Southern man reprimanding a child. The simplicity of the tracks lends much to the idea of ambiance achieved through this effort. Clutter is virtually non-existent. Every tick, bass, and harmonic function plays off of eachother.

Following track two, we fall into "Humbl," an almost underwater video-game level that soon emerges onto land and into a tropical rainforest. Electronic African-style drumming holds this scene together, until it breaks into a dramatic and worrisome beat that trickles into the next song, "Dust in a Moment," a short-lived venture (hardly over two minutes) into a vast and empty space full of uncertainty.

"Womb" bounces off of the unsure space of its preceding song and into a curious state of discovery. Very little progresses throughout this melody, except for the quickening of pace around the middle with a few added elements to the tune. The soft sentiment found in the beginning of (As People) returns with the short intermission provided by "See-Through" and furthers into "Dreambodies", a beautiful and wandering dream state. The calm manifested in the previous two tracks is undone with the coming of the album's eighth song, "Outstanding Cloud." An industrial sound is rendered from the combination of mechanical and soft resonations of a robotic quality.

All of this is tossed out of the window with the waking of "Painbodies," a dark and winding lullaby that intrudes and recedes like the warped sounds of a seascape, as a sample reminiscent of seagulls and the washing of the tide can be heard. Mixed in, though, are the haunting moans of whales and ultimately, horror with a sense of being lost.

A resolution is the only appropriate ending and it is given in the form of the album's concluding feature entitled, quite simply, "Comforter." The chiming finale serves as a heady meditation sample that encourages peace and stillness after a disturbing ride through the earlier nine numbers.

Of course, the listener can take what one will from this abstract effort, but the modesty of this project cannot be mistaken in any way, shape, or form for pretension. A basic concept piece is an easy enough description for this anthology. The sounds send the listener on a path through the mind for self-interpretation and a search for personal meaning vis-a-vis (As People).