Jeff Gburek – The Dunning​-​Kruger Effects

Today is an auspicious occasion as this post will mark 1,000 consecutive days of posting music for my readers and friends.  It’s most appropriate that number 1,000 would be someone who has appeared quite a few times on the blog, but Jeff Gburek offers an album that is as (primitive) bluesy as I’ve heard in some time.  The playing is mournful in parts, but it wraps your ears up and demands your attention.  Most importantly, I think this is the first time I’ve heard Jeff sing.  His voice sits perfectly in the point where blues, psych and acid folk all merge into each other.  This is really a sublime piece of art.

Skyphone – Oscilla

Our friends at Lost Tribe Sound have released yet another gem in their catalog.  This release is from the Danish group Skyphone, and their Bandcamp release page explains further:

“The new Skyphone record original began as a project to explore long form close-miced acoustic sessions. The trio worked to record and capture the intimacy of various acoustic instruments. The recordings were very meticulous and long, and were largely meditations over harmonies and fugue-like movements of guitars, bass, synths, piano as well as mandolin, bells, wind instruments and acoustic drums. The trio spent a lot of time building the right sound, exploring endless loops and atmospheres before editing and deconstructing everything to capture the essence of the sessions. This slow chiseled refinement left a real depth of sound to the final songs. Hints of field recordings coloring the periphery, while lumbering rhythms hold a steady pulse, freeing the guitar and bass to create a myriad of melodies and counterpoints opposite the synthesizers. The record also features an incredible barrage of effects, in large part thanks to the 80’s era TC-2290.”

SALA – Jurmala Revisited​/​Breath

Audrius Simkunas operates as SALA, a Latvian composer whose work straddles ambient and nature recordings.  From the release’s Bandcamp site:

Jurmala Revisited/Breath documents SALA’s return to the shores of Latvia, as a sort of audio postcard. The cover photography was taken during the trip and has been treated to look like a fading memory. There are two images, one for each piece. The first is hazier and more feint, suggesting a distant recollection of events, whilst the second image is slightly clearer, as if the memory has been jogged during a listen to this EP.”

Takashi Kokubo & Andrea Esperti – Music For A Cosmic Garden

We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records (charming name, better known by its acronym WRWTFWW) has released a rather unique album.  It pairs Japanese ambient/environmental legend Takashi Kokubo (Ion Series) and Italian & Swiss trombonist Andrea Esperti (Esperti Project) working under the name of Music For A Cosmic Garden.

From the label’s Bandcamp site:

“Takashi KOKUBO is a Japanese environmental musician who produces healing music that gently resonates with people’s hearts. He has recorded “sound scenes from nature” in countries around the world using a binaural “CyberPhonic” microphone of his own invention, and incorporates these dimensional sounds of nature in his work. The founder of Studio Ion, he has released more than 20 albums that include the highly sought-after Ion Series. His track “A Dream Sails Out to Sea, Scene 3” was featured on Light in the Attic’s Grammy-nominated Kankyō Ongaku compilation.

Andrea ESPERTI is a Swiss trombonist and composer originally from Puglia (Italy). He plays in multiple genres (classical, pop, world, electro, jazz) in an eternal approach of exchange and encounters. He travels the world, listening to others and interacting with their cultures, crystallizing his globe-trotting emotions through music projects. More info at andreaesperti.bandcamp.com

For fans of environmental, ambient, cosmic escapes, the works of Midori Takada, Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Satoshi Ashikawa, meditative atmospherics, and gardening in space.”

Benjamin Aït-Ali – Essai sur des sons oubli​é​s

This is perhaps one of the most beautifully stunning acousmatic works I’ve ever heard.  Every percussive strike of the piano had me transfixed while listening, so much so that I wasn’t able to do my normal routine of working while listening to music.  Our dear friend Benjamin Aït-Ali took a bit of time away from composer serious music, but has come back to it with a vengeance.  It’s a gripping work, this.

Groove Paradise – Rodrigo Cano

Groove Paradise are a Spanish vaporwave band that sound like the smoothest of smooth jazz.  “Rodrigo Cano” would have been a radio-friendly smash in the late 1980’s, when pastel clothing was the norm and life wasn’t so full of modern complications.  The cover art looks like it should be for a remake of the soundtrack to the Italian classic Zombi, but nonetheless, the music steals the show.

O Yuki Conjugate – A Tension of Opposites Vols 1 & 2

We had the pleasure of O Yuki Conjugate’s release earlier this year reviewing Volumes 3 & 4 of this series.  The old quote still holds:

““Two years after the first two volumes of A Tension of Opposites (ATOO) were issued OYC return to the form they created to house their looser more exploratory works. ATOO allows them to expand their musical horizons and release their music more expediently.

The original ATOO was born out of 2020’s virus state where both OYC members were left working in isolation. Two types of music emerged spontaneously, and rather than try to combine them OYC decided to present the results separately, two sides of a contrasting whole.

In need of a suitable format and frustrated by their usual lengthy release schedules, OYC returned to the quick and dirty compact cassette – the place they started back in the 80s.

ATOO is ‘Dirty Ambient’, a phrase coined by OYC for the process of working quickly and instinctively, embracing errors and honouring imperfections. It’s also a jibe at what is sometimes a hideously manicured genre.

SOUNDFOG – How High Hang The Bells?

Our friends at Muteant Sounds have released a very mellow, relaxed free jazz session by SOUNDFOG.  The band features Bernd Grohs-Ophoff on drums, percussion and carillon, Frank Wilke on a very relaxed trumpet, trombone and voice, and Sven Emmerich who playes synthesizer and adds samples and field recording.  Not a violent racket-fest at all, but a rather whimsical take on improvised music.