Please take a look at this for my views on overuse of the term dark ambient, because I'm sure Communique will have been described as such at some point, perhaps even by Mr. Padbury himself for the sake of argument. Well, it isn't ambient, and it isn't generically spooky noises through a reverb with the decay time lasting longer than the rest of your life. Much, or possibly all of what you hear is either electronically derived - hence the name - or treated, and the mood is pensive bordering on overpowering, but things happen in sonic terms and there's a feeling of progression. If anything Communique, which I gather is a compilation of the best of the last decade or so from the numbered series, reminds me of modern classical, and specifically Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. All sounds are muted and never obviously mechanical, textural more than noisy, with an occasional suggestion of hope emerging from the drone in the absence of the rays of sunlight which we both know you're not going to get. The music of Salford Electronics - and yes, it is music - often seems to represent something like recovery or reflection, even healing in the wake of trauma. This is obviously just how it sounds, or at least feels, to me, but in the absence of artwork and with just titles to guide us cautiously down this dark alley, one hand compacted into a fist just in case, it doesn't feel like I'm just spewing out words at random - at least not on purpose. We have come to bring rain, claims the mission statement, and even in the event of it being the downpour anticipated by Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, it's also kind of refreshing.
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