From July of 2021 we have a release from the French ambient project Esmez. The gentle, dulcet sounds of each of these four tracks have made for very pleasant Sunday listening, and would really appeal to fans of Brian Eno’s earlier ambient works. For Esmez’s motivations on making the album, consider visiting their Bandcamp site.
Land Of Waves, the 6th album by French electroacoustic composer Bérangère Maximin, came out in June of 2020, and when I first heard it, was was left utterly impressed, but I have not had a chance to review it until today. Maximin has an incredible talent to blend together nature, minerals, plant life, animal life, city life, and make it speak in one warmly organized opus. I will have to check if she has released something since then, but, as this is the latest work I can find from her, I can say with some measure of confidence that she’s…
Scott Lawlor is an incredibly prolific composer out of Corinth, Texas. He’s collaborated with scores of musicians and has many fine albums under his belt, but this is a one-track piece clocking in at a bit over 1 hour and 14 minutes. It’s drone laden, cavernous in sound, and surprisingly warm, a bit like going for a walk under a volcano and feeling the magma and steamy water while you journey ever deeper into the bowels of the earth. Well done.
miserable.noise.club is a collective of incredibly talented musicians based in Jordan, China and the US + other collaborators in East Asia and the Middle East. The music they make is, by some miracle, a solid blend of experimental music, a paean to post-punk and lo-fi psychedelic rock. It’s hazy enough to remind me of some of the great music coming out of New Zealand in the late 1990s revolving around luminaries such as Roy Montgomery or The Dead C. Once the radio podcast begins, I have a feeling these folks will be featured heavily. Very impressive. Much respect to Abood…
Mong Tong are one of the most profoundly interesting bands operating out of Taiwan these days, and their work would compare favorably to psychedelic giants like Ghost or even quieter aspects of Acid Mothers Temple. From WV Sorcerer Productions’ Bandcamp site: Mong Tong is brothers Hom Yu, Jiun Chi (they also play in Prairie WWWW 落差草原 WWWW & Dope Purple) and 仝. They listened to what they describe as “Dianziqin music 電子琴音樂” along with video game soundtracks, vintage Asian movie samples and psychedelic music. These inspirations combine with Taiwanese folklore and a love of conspiracy theories to form what they…
From Hreám Recordings‘ website: Originally released as a double-header with St James Infirmary’s ‘Apport’, here now on it’s own and sporting a batch of new jelly-green shelled and cased cassettes…. DF/C30-RW features six re-imagined and re-worked tracks from the first three Damselfly albums. Focussing on some of his more delicate arrangements, Damselfly’s 2020 versions breathe new life into the original soundscapes, where neoclassical meets ambient drone to serve you up an alternative sonic taste of his beloved home county of Sussex. I have to say that this release by D^mselfly is one of the most pleasant ambient discoveries I’ve come…
Our first review on returning to Brno is a burner, naturally. Our friend, man of the world, and experimental music composer Jeff Gburek comes by these pages again with a droning masterpiece. This is not the ordinary drone you hear reviewed on these pages, though, truth be told, nothing I review is even remotely ordinary. The backstory is almost as impressive as these waves of hypnotic (in the best of senses) drones are. To catch the whole story, read Jeff’s writeup on how this fine album came to be. When he advised me of the album the word Kaszubian brought…
For the Halloween season, our friends at Reverse Alignment Records (now run by the Unexplained Sounds Group Empire) out of Sweden and Italy have released an album which has roughly the same spirit as such post-Industrial/dark ambient musicians as Lustmord or Steve Roach. Taphephobia is the brainchild of Norwegian composer Ketil Søraker, and on this album he is joined by the Iranian sound designer Behnoud, working on this album as IDFT. The tones one this album are long, sweeping, and as bleak as black water pouring out of a nightmare. Perfect for the season.
Italian artist Lorenzo Bracaloni composes under the name The Child of A Creek / Fallen, and this release on ROHS! Records is quite a treat for fans of ethereal music. It reminds me deeply of when Harold Budd collaborated with the Cocteau Twins, but in an instrumental form. A truly calming release.
This is one I’ve been waiting to hear for some time, and it did not disappoint. American poet Shane Beck (who happens to be a very old friend) paired up with British electronic musician Dave Onley as Oceanic Vibrations to join their worlds together elegantly. Beck’s voice lends itself to the soundscapes Onley produces, melding a clear, heartfelt and pensive poetry draped on top of music that reminded me of early-period Tangerine Dream or even Cosmic Jokers in the more pulsating parts.