Meticulously prepared, conceived and performed, this collection of live recording sessions is warmly recommended to anyone interested in vigorously emotional, delicately evocative and cinematic soundscaping excursions. Pioneering instigator, composer and sound designer in the field of multifaceted spacey-ambient electronica, Ian Boddy has newly published a live release, mixed and mastered at his DiN laboratory. The [...]
Post Tagged with: "Ambient"
BOARDS OF CANADA :: “Reach for the Dead”
With word lately heard that a new full-length would be coming in June, and their promo campaign people playing out a slow tease that’s not totally pleased, Boards of Canada have just let slip a clip to trail Tomorrow’s Harvest. BoC-bies hoping for the head-rush of a “Davyan Cowboy”—from their last outing on Trans-Canada Highway [...]
Marc Barreca :: Tremble (Palace of Lights)
Tremble comes at you like a cloud of bacteria, nigh impossible to distinguish specific elements. Its only purpose is to move, spread, collide, and thrive. So the only thing to do is gaze deep into its midst without searching for a centre. Marc Barreca has mustered all manner of instruments and “sources,” both acoustic and [...]
ALAN LOCKETT :: Ambivalentine mix
Tons of tones—some dissolved in beats, some beatless treatments—in a continuous mix of current ambient and electronic goodies. Igloomag’s Alan Lockett, via audio-meddling alter ego, albient (mixcloud | soundcloud), pours more than a score of ambi-valent shapes and etheric waves into an occluded reverb-trail echo-veil mood-stream. Ambivalentine. Listen… New transmissions come from old familiars Boards [...]
Гибель тургруппы Дятлова :: Souterraine (Knick Knack Yoda)
In this new sonorous adventure, Rawmance and Lamanna explore radical assaultive sonic sound textures and obsessive echoing litanies connected to the true tradition of 80s pioneering works in sculpted industrial experimentalism, Гибель тургруппы Дятлова is a newly formed musical project coming from Rome, headed by Matéo Monteiro (alias Rawmance) and Luciano Lamanna with the contribution [...]
Úlfur :: White Mountain (Western Vinyl)
White Mountain is addictive and wonderful, and if you’re into electroacoustic exploration, colorful ambient, or just searching after new and peculiar sonic worlds, bound to put you under a strong spell and become one of your favorite pearls in your collection. White Mountain is Úlfur Hansson’s debut under his own name. A sublime cinematic web [...]
Bogger :: per_haps EP (Digital Gadget)
Shuffling machine drum bleeps, low-end synth deformation, oscillators gone astray and rhythms breaking apart in a wash of percussive acrobatics. Shuffling machine drum bleeps, low-end synth deformation, oscillators gone astray and rhythms breaking apart in a wash of percussive acrobatics—Jeff Pils returns as Bogger, and per_haps is his finest snapshot EP yet. The title track [...]
Red Stars Over Tokyo :: Double review (Testtoon)
Testtoon are doing what very few labels are. True the sounds of Ambient and Industrial are having a revival, but in many respect they are being relegated to digital releases. The Belgian imprint are bringing to wax evocative and engaging electronics and giving new artists the full vinyl treatment. As the Summer cracks through the [...]
Blakbody :: Atmos EP (Acre)
Blakbody’s abstract vision of electronics—and the motion of molecules on offer—teases the listener (again) with what might hopefully be the workings of a full-length release. Blakbody inhabits microtonal space delivered by exp-electronics composed of the tiniest known substance—the atom. These atoms move into and out of focus around five sonic fractures detailed through UK-based Acre [...]
Clark :: Iradelphic Sessions (Self-Released)
Layered feedback, looped vocal samples, soft rhythms, acoustic instrumentation, and full spectrum pad-work are all loosely sewn together into a beautiful patchwork of disparate and harmonious sounds. I, a relatively recent convert, who first experienced 2009′s Totems Flare, always had Clark down as a riff maestro, whose frenetic brand of techno somehow managed to sculpt a [...]
Osmiroid :: Double review (Self-Released)
There is not so much a defining sound as a characteristic approach that serves as a crucible to shape and distort hearts and minds as well as sounds. Osmiroid is a shadowy league of shadowy figures purportedly laying low in London, Oxforshire, Paris and points beyond. Though only about a year old, it has released [...]
Jeanne Vomit-Terror & Ed Sunspot / Three Legged Race :: Double review (Acoustic Division)
It’s been a while since I’ve written about Acoustic Division. The US label comes from the South West, an unlikely location for electronics. Acoustic Division keeps the electronic oasis verdant with two recent releases. Jeanne Vomit-Terror and Ed Sunspot introduce The Seat of Same. This twosome come from Resonant Hole, a “a mutant collective cultivating [...]
Loscil :: City Hospital (Wistrec)
Malcolm Lowry (1909—57) was an English author whose prodigious talent lay in direct inverse proportion to his heroic abuse of alcohol. His Under the Volcano is both widely-read and universally accepted as one of the best novels of the twentieth century. Before the eventful trip to Mexico that inspired that book, and in the midst [...]
Zen Lu :: River (Etalabel)
Zen Lu demonstrates a growing interest to the sonic realms of complex sound textures, also bringing to the fore a corpus of stylistically compelling emotive melodies. Zen Lu is a young sound designer and musical alchemist from China. His work consists of tonal ambient minimalist soundscapes, subtly connected to spiritual aspects of life through the [...]
Minilogue :: Blomma (Cocoon)
Blomma defies the idea of recycling, rehearsing and planning ahead, and offers two voyages without a destination to the outside of reality, two improvised streams on which techno, space ambient, house, trance and misty jazz hues coexist engagingly, depicting special places where our imagination can blossom freely. Therefore the word blomma (Swedish for blossom and [...]
PETE NAMLOOK :: Tribute Release
News has emerged lately to lighten the heavy hearts of Pete Namlook fans and FAX-ophiles alike. For the uninitiated, Namlook (Peter Kuhlmann) had a major impact on the electronic music world, particularly as part of the 90s blooming of the new wave of Ambient and IDM-related, as an artist and curator of cult FAX label—as [...]
Northcape :: Exploration and Ascent (Sun Sea Sky)
Northcape raised his sights beyond the realm of cultural plundering so there are no Tibetan/Nepalese samples or “world music” modal influences in evidence. Instead, the tracks aspire to capture timeless characteristics of the Himalayas and high, mountainous, (strangely?) isolated places more generally. Since 1999, Charleston Illinois-based Sun Sea Sky Productions has been quietly releasing independent [...]
Greg Haines :: Where We Were (Denovali)
No commercial potential. Where We Were is the antithesis of mainstream music in 2013. It’s raw and impulsive rather than polished, calculated and forced; it’s erratic rather than predictable, and it reveals its allure gradually with each listening session instead of revealing it all at once. An album that rewards the attentive listener pursuing the [...]
Tay0 :: Possible Futures EP (Nophi)
Tay0′s sound is one filled with erratic yet consistent elements of exp-electronics that must be examined over repeat listens for full absorption. Fans of early Toytronic and Neo Ouija take note. If There is a Shining Point Where All Lines Intersect (High Grade Media, 2011) represented sparkling electronic flutter than Possible Futures is its brisk [...]
Aksutique :: Notch Fields (diametric.)
Rather than pander to the “dub” crowd, this EP takes what has become quite a saturated genre and elevates it with ambient subtlety and a gentleness of spirit. Matthias Falkenstein (aka Matthias Springer) is one of the most prolific artists that I’ve never come across. For more than a decade, and under a spread of [...]
Strom Noir :: Standing Out Against the Sea (DataObscura)
Strom Noir’s ambient is amongst the most subtle on record, distant and place-less but richly varied and embrasive. Emil Mat’ko has been releasing music at a steady, even pace since 2007, yielding more than a dozen long- and extended-players to date, each as skillfully nuanced and uplifting as the next. In betrayal of his dark [...]
Atiq & EnK :: Fear Of The Unknown (Tympanik Audio / Mindtrick)
A swirling mix of electronic, classical, trip-hop, dubstep and breakbeat influences permeate Fear of the Unknown, creating a wonderfully cerebral and intriguing experience. Listening to Atiq & EnK’s excellent debut album, Fear of the Unknown, it’s surprising to learn that Pim Arnoldus came from a predominantly metal music background, Guido started off in the promotion [...]
Richard Chartier & Yann Novak :: Undefined (Farmacia901)
Developed as one long title, Undefined is a resonating-sinuous droning sound tapestry which demonstrates a totally absorbing exploration through infinitely subtle waving tones and micro interferences. Undefined is the new splendid and intensively evocative electronic release published by the Italian based label Farmacia901 (launched a couple of years ago by the inter-media artist and sound designer Fabio Perletta). [...]
Tape Loop Orchestra :: In a Lonely Place (Facture)
Fading time-stretched tunes, recursive arcs and dives unravel in a flux of melodic micro-variations, self-cannibalizing loops succumbing happily to the hiss, run through by fraying threads of saturated tonalities. Andrew Hargreaves has acquired a certain caché as a musical practitioner of distinction, chiefly as one of the captains of The much-feted Boats. But his own [...]
V/A :: Colonization: Empty Channels of Mars (Lagunamuch)
Colonization: Empty Channels of Mars is a beautifully diversified and cinematic sci-fi sounding album which admits intense synth psychscapes and haunting pulsating looped studies. Colonization: Empty Channels of Mars is a new digital album signed by the very interesting and promising Russian micro-label Lagunamuch Records. This album is part of a trilogy—including Main Control Board [...]
V/A :: Sampler Vol. 2 (Architects + Heroes)
If you are looking for a smorgasbord of music to tide you down for about an hour or if you want to pin down a particular musical strain, snap up Sampler Vol. 2 to find out where each unique musician takes their transmission. Eleven leaven tracks spanning a variety of gritty genre bents has Architects [...]
dreamSTATE vs Heiki :: The North Shore (Paper+Sound)
There is great beauty in the fact that though evoking such a variety of winter conditions, there is never a sharp edge or crusty ridge. Permafrost is the permaculture of the Canadian mind and The North Shore captures its essence. In her book Survival, Margaret Atwood popularized the notion of the “garrison mentality,” the effect [...]