I suppose we can coin a new term for this magnificent music out of Breton dark ambient composer Eric Latteux (who composed under the name Internal Fusion): Kosmische dark ambient. I seem to be finding a fair amount of music like this these days, and our dear friends at Mahorka have released another gem.
Chris Child & Micah Frank are two incredible composers out of the New England area of the United States. From this particular release’s Bandcamp site:
Tape Pieces Vol. 3 represents the final installment in the collaboration between composer/producer Chris Child (Kodomo) and sound artist Micah Frank.Volume 3 culminates in a rich cacophony of noise and emotional charge while still remaining subdued in a contemplative state. Chris and Micah continue exploring simple asynchronous micro loops, layering upon them until what emerges becomes a rich ecosystem of interwoven parts, embracing unexpected noises and sounds disintegrating. It is perhaps the most experimental of the three, yet also has a maturity to it, highlighted by its diverse compositional palette.
creditscredits
releases May 3, 2022Chris Child – Composition / Mix / Sound Design
Micah Frank – Composition / Mix / Sound Design
Our dear friend Raffaele Pezzella is not only a label empresario of note, whose works are featured here frequently due to the incredibly high quality – he is also an amazing composer.
Interdimensional is bleak and heavy, with heavy drones throughout. If you like artists like Lustmord, this will appeal to you.
Uzu Noir is the monicker used by Finnish audio engineer-mixer-producer (having worked with Richard Dawson & Circle, Brian Eno, The Tindersticks, These New Puritans, Ulver, Natacha Atlas, Pharaoh Overlord, The Utopia Strong, Cyclobe, Old Man Gloom, etc) Antti Uusimäki. With such an incredible résumé, one would expect that his debut EP would cover interesting sonic terrain. I’m happy to say that he does!
Though he identifies the release as ‘ambient’, a buzzword I’m beginning to dislike only because of the lack of consistently about what ‘ambient’ actually is, I’d say that his ambient music is something along the lines of the Berlin School, being comparable to music like acts like Tangerine Dream and Coil (which was a pleasant surprise) meeting soundtrack composers like Graeme Revell.
Marcus Webb is a sound designer and composer based out of New Jersey in the United States who creates “foreboding soundscapes and craters of bass and noise serving as the constants within alternating conceptual constructs of city life and drones wrapping around cavernous spaces with clearly defined tones from his modular synths.” Truth in advertising, as he makes great use of his studio to produce a sound that has the vibe of old ritualistic ambient cassettes of the early 1990s.
Igor Vasilev, working under the nom de plume Novogradska, has produced music in various genres, including darkwave (with Alexander Veljanov of Deine Lakaien), Mizar and his own solo work in electronic music. He has also become a sought-after soundtrack composer. This particular work, for the Dina Duma-directed Sisterhood, has an air of tension that would make it music appropriate for a David Lynch soundtrack. There is an ominous foreboding in each track, which, to my ears, seems to be affected by everything from Hans Zimmer to easy listening music with a noir underpinning. The highest compliment I can give this album is that it stands alone beautifully, even without the accompaniment of the film. It’s not saccharine, not synthetic sounding. The orchestration is tight, dark, and in many places, lush. Well done, indeed.
This is one of those unsolicited posts that make blogging a pleasure. now|here are a dark ambient/post-Industrial music project out of Italy whose work reminds me, in a very positive way, of acts which used to appear on Sweden’s Cold Meat Industry imprint. The sounds here are cleaner, doomier, and loaded with a synthetic classical underpinning I like. Perhaps I can say that this is a better-produced dungeon synth. Enjoyable.
FRKTL is the nom de plume of British-Egyptian composer Sarah Badr, and her work straddles so many genres that it’s quite hard to describe accurately (a wonderful thing, as it means her work is incredibly fresh-sounding).
There are, of course, long, drone-y elements to the music, but once you go into tracks 3 and 4 (Hverfa af himni heiðar stjörnur and Hart er með hölðum, respectively, you start hearing elements of techno (!), bleak synthetic choruses sounding like the angels reciting the liturgy over the bowels of Hades (or, in this case, Hel, in order to maintain a proper cosmology). The pulses are warm, it maintains a consistently interesting rhythm, and the percussive effects sound as though soft bombs are continually going off, gently hitting the ears with a sense of force that somehow remains pleasant.
One of the most remarkable things about the series of compilations released by our friends at Unexplained Sounds Group is the great number of new artists they come into contact with, and serve as a launching board for.
Of all the artists on this compilation, only Ryo Murakami’s work rings a bell. Masayuku Imanishi’s work sounds like a newsroom printing press staffed by Throbbing Gristle and Hélène Sage. USG continue to release the finest in post-Industrial music.
Perhaps I’ll need to renew my subscription to The Wire or spend more time on other blogs, as I can’t believe I missed the work of Los Angelina Geneva Skeen. My hometown is producing so many fine artists working within ambient and electroacoustic music that it has become (happily) difficult to keep up with this wellspring of talent.
Double Bind defies proper categorization, sitting somewhere between academic musique-concrète, noise-style improvisation and a touch of mysticism in Skeen’s work. Though bleak, there is a feeling of being inside of a warm, pulsating, silvery ocean in these compositions. The one which won me over was the second track, Leveled Ground, Bottomless Pit. These compositions are, in every sense of the word, alive. The listener will feel the sounds go in and out of the ears and tingle the bones a bit.
She has made me a fan, and I look forward to hearing the rest of her catalog. Touch Music and Room40, among other labels, have unleashed a treasure.