• Music

    Igor Yalivec – Etudes

    Igor Yalevic has produced some of the most gentle and relaxing field recordings and ‘ambient’ music to come out of Ukraine in recent memory in his latest album, Etudes.  From his Bandcamp site: “Etudes is Yalivec’s sophomore album. His 2021 album Still Life came out on Polar Seas Recordings and has long since been sold out. Yalivec’s more esoteric electroacoustic project with guitarist Sergey Yagoda is called Gamardah Fungus and exorcizes a more cosmic and heavier consciousness. Etudes is remarkable in it’s ability to walk a middle path between the overtly melodic and arpeggiated Still Life and the heavy duty…

  • Music

    Ian Vine – Five Strings

    Ian Vine, a composer out of the United Kingdom, provides us with a conceptual piece of classical music.  From his Bandcamp site: “Recently I have written a series of pieces that are concerned in one way or another with the presentation of unique, and yet similar, events or objects. In this work I examine closely a chord played by four guitars and bass guitar. There is no repetition in the piece, except gesturally.. five strings is presented in its original 36-minute version and also as five shorter pieces, five strings I-V. In January 2021 I asked our mother, my brother…

  • Music

    Dimitar Dodovski – D​é​rive

    Norman Records does a far more in-depth job introducing the world to the music of North Macedonian composer Dimitar Dodovski a wee bit better than I could.  From their promo sheet: “”Dimitar Dodovski approaches his craft of granular synthesis from a melodic perspective at most definitely the warmer end of the drone spectrum. Opening track ‘I’ introduces, of all things, mallet-struck chimes amongst the digital layers. The mallets recur on the following track (‘II’), but only when you least expect them. Staccato synth rises from a mist-draped lake of sound, each milky chord change rung by a bell. Pixelated textures…

  • Music

    Seah – Clouds & Spectres

    Seah is an experimental music artist from Bradley, Illinois who produces long, sweeping ambient drone.  There is an organ-like elegance to the compositions, especially with the first track, Unfurling, which meanders in a way that would fit in an old 1920s soundtrack of walking on the tundra.  Many thanks to Somnimage for sending me this evocative gem.

  • Music

    Lumber – The Lotus Bros

    Our dear friend Hubert Heathertoes collaborated with Roger Smith (he of some rather amazing experimental music projects like CHEFKIRK) as Lumber for a drony, well-sculpted collection of noise compositions.  It’s such a pleasure to hear noise that is well-done, well-composed, rather than the boring vacuum-cleaner-like garbage that pollutes most of the so-called harsh noise scene.

  • Music

    George Christian – Nothingness, ou​.​.​. O Vento

    Our friend George Christian has produced an album that is an icy minimal masterpiece.  The pieces, especially Track 1, O Vento, is perfectly named.  I literally felt a chill hearing the tune, replete with faraway vocals and a windy atmosphere, befitting the song’s title. From his Bandcamp site: “Thanks to my friend artist Iarly Patricio, I’ve had an epiphany of an album I could release having her charcoal carving picture as a cover. The cover art blends her picture of a face and an A.I. representation of a picture based upon the art of the painter William Turner. The music…

  • Music

    Of Sun And Rain – The Flutter of Wings

    Starry Earth is a record label out of the United Kingdom offering lo-fi electronic artists with stunningly beautiful minimalist artwork and packaging, releasing cassettes as well as digital downloads. Of Sun And Rain were of particular interest, as the music is hauntingly sparse and engaging.

  • Music

    a world wondered full – มุม

    This album is magnificently weird.  Imagine a band out of Thailand with minimal, ghostly musicianship, slightly ghoulish, off key vocal dronings, the plinky-plonking of piano and spoken words that sound like it might have been influenced by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  This sublime mixture comes from the band a world wondered full, and I have to saw that the album is creepy gorgeousness to it.  I’m now a convert to their music.