Karl Willebrant released an EP’s worth of meditative music that would be appealing to fans of groups like Embryo and Popol Vuh. The tunes are gentle, a bit on the kosmische side, and well-balanced in terms of its sonic character. This is a rather fine little release.
Two masters of drone at their peak after two decades of collaboration. From the duo’s Bandcamp site:
“Since beginning to work together as a duo in the early 2000s, Kang and Kenney have collaborated on sound installations, music for orchestra, choir, and mixed ensembles in addition to releasing numerous widely acclaimed full-lengths: Aestuarium (2005), The Face Of The Earth (2012), Live In Iceland (2013), At Temple Gate (2014), Reverse Tree (2016), Seva (2017), The Cypress Dance (2020).
A hypnotic return to the duo’s unique expression of “unison music”, Azure is among Kenney and Kang’s most pared-down efforts in more than a decade. Its five compositions are underscored by allusions to the natural world and drifting temporalities, producing a profound calm that rises in arcs of tonal color. “
This is a rather glorious single pairing American DJ Earthtones with Ethiopian singer Etsegenet Mekonnen. From the release’s Bandcamp site:
“Selam is a vision of peace. This collaboration between producer/DJ Earthtones and Ethiopian musician/vocalist Etsegenet Mekonnen features haunting vocals sung in Amharic.
Analog & semi-modular synths combine with 909 drums and afrobeats percussion by Earthtones, to weave grooves for Etsegenet’s depth in songwriting, voice and soul. The main version has a dancehall bassline that calls one to movement, while the dub versions evoke mystery amidst long modulated leads + filtered pads.”
László Hortobágyi is perhaps the best known electronic/experimental music composer to ever come out of Hungary. Our dear brothers at áMARXE Records have released Music from Fomal-Hoot al-Ganoubī, a 1991 release, as a remastered edition.
From the áMARXE Bandcamp site:
“Fomal-hoot al-Ganoubī is a mythological Arabic constellation.
It is the planet whose warm milky-mist landscapes are home to the ethereal body-incarnations of deceased Muslim saints and dervishes.
When in the XXII century the white man reached the moons of Jupiter and there transformed himself into a floating changeling to populate the stratosphere of Jupiter, in the same way the souls of the dead Muslim saints and dervishes moved a thousand years earlier to the galaxy of Fomal-Hoot al-Ganoubī, where they found the real great umma, i.e. the world of heaven (jannat), leaving at the same time the earthly realm of jahannam, i.e. Hell.”
The notes for this release are extensive, so it is recommended to go directly to the Bandcamp page to get more of a feel of what this album is about. áMARXE continues to release crucial progressive music!
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 structures. Warm flickers of guitar form brief conversations before seceding to the thick low-end percussions. Elsewhere, muted horns cascade into the recesses lending a weary jazz-like quality, or mimicking a less exotic type of fourth world sound.
While the similarities to fourth world brass are less evident on ’22:22,’ it was the decadent combination of melting trumpet lines and sub-bass that first drew our attention to the works of Drawing Virtual Gardens. Coming in the form of the 2021 release ‘~logues’ for Shimmering Moods, an album which we described as, “Massive earth-churning basslines crawl erratically through uneasy layers of mechanical interruptions, distance guitar, and gaseous noir-style trumpet. Just enough luminance creeps into the music to keep these dreamscapes from turning sour. Opaque. Unsettling. Oddly comforting.”
As for the album at hand, 22:22 is an hour that continuously intrigued Gutman. He began noticing it was a common occurrence to reference his watch at this exact hour during the night. His curiosity grew as he wondered what unexplained consciousness kept pointing him towards this time. The lore surrounding 22:22 is steeped with symbolism, reference to angels, tarot, the Kabbalah, and numerology. The general consensus points towards a positive and aware mind, in tune with the energies surrounding them: able to keep the channels open and tap into that brilliant force.”
Meitei made its debut in 2018 with this freakishly disturbing, yet beautiful, experimental album. It was a revelation for a lot of music critics, and each listen makes you feel like you’re locked in some disjointed Kurosawa film.
Kitchen Music and Evening Chants have combined to reissue this seminal album on its 5-year anniversary, and they have included LP and CD reissues. From Evening Chants’ Bandcamp site:
“In 2018, Meitei shook the ambient world with the release of his debut album “Kwaidan”, a transposition of Japanese folklore into intricate compositions, capturing what he would coin as the “lost Japanese mood”. The album almost instantly received critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, where it was included in their Best Experimental Albums of 2018, Bandcamp, calling it “different than some of the ambient music that has been coming from Japan in recent years”, The Wire and more. Outside of press, he has also received nods from the likes of Rosalía and has collaborated with contemporaries Anthony Naples, DJ Python, Tourist, Chitose Hajime and more.
Cementing his name in the ambient and experimental spheres, Meitei has since continued to cultivate devoted fans globally, with monumental follow-up albums as part of his unique musical canon – Komachi, Kofu I and Kofu II, showcasing his immense musicianship in building a unique sonic world of his own.“
Dirk Serries has kept his Industrial/Fourth World project Vidna Obmana alive since 1984, but this release for metal label Relapse Records will be his coup de grace. Loosely based on Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, this 3-CD set covers all the music genres Serries has worked in over the past four decades. From his Bandcamp site:
“An almost his 25 year existency as VIDNA OBMANA Dirk Serries never shied away from challenges, sometimes to the regret of many of his fans, but it’s when he was offered a record deal with the renowned metal label RELAPSE RECORDS/RELEASE ENTERTAINMENT Vidna Obmana took his boldest step ever. With his DANTE TRILOGY he created his most ambitious, daring and unique set of albums which, for good, made him to be one of the most unique voices in the ambient and experimental scene.
Not only brought he VIDNA OBMANA to a definite conclusion but executed for him that perfect fusion of everything his project stood for since the first release in 1984.
His industrialism, the minimal ambience, the fourth world explorations and his electronic processing experiments went into blender. Utterly surreal, intense and expansive, the 3 albums TREMOR, SPORE and LEGACY showcase VIDNA OBMANA at his creative peak while conceptually the trilogy expresses Dirk Serries’ frustration, disappointment and creative turmoil as his role as VIDNA OBMANA in the ambient scene. This trilogy became that end of the road for probably his most critically-acclaimed and world-wide appreciated project but a change was necessary.“
O Yuki Conjugate are among the top-tier post-Industrial/experimental projects of the past 40 years, and it’s been an amazing experience going over their catalog over the past few weeks in my personal collection. This is archival material and a complement to A Tension of Opposites Vols 1 & 2. From the band’s Bandcamp site:
“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.”
If you haven’t heard the name Max Brody before, you probably know a lot of the bands he’s worked with: Ministry, the Test Apes, the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, the Big Boys, Lubricated Goat and so many others. He was a powerhouse drummer in the Austin Industrial music scene, but has since moved to the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest, where he has been working on projects such as a rock documentary/travel blog which is, sadly, no more.
Of particular interest is the project Fried Smiling which includes my old friend, business partner and a fine video director, Jeffrey Kinart, whose work is influenced by Brian Eno, Jon Hassell and a Fourth World Music vibe in general. He and Max mesh together quite nicely, and I hope Fried Smiling develops further, as the other tracks are simply solid rock, Industrial and ambient music in general.