Filalete are a project released on the estimable Borenail Records, who specialize in weirder, more neglected scenes like witchhouse, vaporwave and the like. The band produces a really pleasant sweeping sort of ambient, easy to drown your thoughts in. My favorite track was Sweet Nectar, which manages to balance electronic music and post-rock sublimely. A fine record.
Though the birthday was absolutely dour, I managed to cheer myself up with a release of experiments done by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, the beloved magus of ambient music. These were sketches, apparently, that he would record, analyze, and then turn into new ideas. Comfortable listening.
Post Doom Romance is a project between Mykel Boyd and Seah, and their collaboration produces a collection of sweeping drones dedicated to their supporters, immortalizing them on disc. A noble project, but more importantly, the sound is engaging and hooks the listener into a pleasant ambient lull.
Reverse Image are a project out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who produce absolutely stunning ritualistic experimental music. There’s a hint of early Nurse With Wound mixed in here as well. All respect is due to their label, Khatulistiwa 赤道, for alerting me to this gem.
Our friends at Jettenbach, a fascinating project from England, have prepared for us a Martian travelogue. The concept sounds like something taken directly from a sci-fi movie, dialog and all, and it’s quite an interesting thing to hear. The music drifts from floating experimental ambient to hard-beat. This shifts genres rather quickly, so listening was a bit of an adventure, though a worthy one.
Our dear friends at Lost Tribe Sound have on offer an ambient album perfectly designed for headphone listening by a project new to me called Drawing Virtual Gardens, a Belgium-based artist called David Gutman. From the promo material, which does a wonderful service introducing David’s work: “At the core of Drawing Virtual Gardens ’22:22,’ there is a keen sense of the nocturnal, and a blurring of lines between the waking and the dream state. Focusing on small synchronous events within these hypnagogic periods, Gutman takes inspiration and translates them into musical cadence. Blankets of dense sub-bass coat minimal dub-like rhythmic…
Robert Scott Thompson, the ambient music alchemist, has released several new albums recently, but I wanted to start with Placid, a rather chilling work that references works by the maestros (Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Klaus Schulze), a touch of Warszawa-period Brian Eno/David Bowie, and his own more musical compositional bent.
I came across a “composer” (really, a duo) based in Riga, Latvia called Domenique Dumont. The pair consist of Latvian multi-instrumentalist and producer Arturs Liepins and vocalist, ethnomusicologist Anete Stuce, and they have produced a shimmering, gentle piece of electronic music. From the release’s Bandcamp site: “People On Sunday is an original soundtrack to the 1930 silent film variously known as Menschen am Sonntag, Les Hommes le Dimanche and People On Sunday. The film is a key work of interwar German cinema, based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder. Part documentary, part fiction, People On Sunday follows a group of…
Danish composer øjeRum has recorded for and with some of the best ambient and electronic music labels active today, and this latest release is published by the estimable Room40 Records out of Australia. From the release Bandcamp site: “While recording, radio waves and static electricity interfered with the signal – sometimes subtly, sometimes more pronounced – supplying the recording with an accidental ghost accompaniment. This chance encounter let me to contact Scanner as I knew of his use of radio waves and police scanners. The result was the two remixes accompanying my piano recording. “Vågnende Jeg Ser De Døde” is…
I’ve been a fan of ROHS! Records out of Italy (HT: Ivo Petrov – thanks!) for some time. They put out consistently good ambient music and organic electronica every month, it seems, and this release from Lorenzo Bracaloni, who goes by the monicker Fallen, is a delight to listen to. It’s not a normal album for ROHS! – rather, it shifts a lot. The music starts with what sound like processed field recordings and blend their way into more structured electronic music soundscapes, then drift back into a spacious bit of guitar playing. There’s a slightly rough edge to the…