It’s hard to imagine a more technically proficient power trio than the Stick Men. Tony Levin, Markus Reuter and Pat Mastelotto are all King Crimson alumni or associates, and each bring their superlative talents to their instruments of choice. It’s the band’s first new music in six years. Amazing work.
Hear me out on this one. Gang Violins, a duo out of New Zealand, released a single to their upcoming album Inner Realms, and it’s a well-crafted mix of cinematic ambient music and post-rock, but it triggered a memory of the subtle buildup to the song Where The Streets Have No Name by U2. No surprise, as Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno had a lot of input, and made a rather decent pop song start lushly. I’m looking forward to hearing more from these lads.
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…
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.
Andy Meyers is the former guitarist of Toronoto art-punk legends The Scenics. He’s gone off to do more exploratory work after moving to the Vancouver area, and this, his latest work, is a collection of soundscapes set to the poetry and vocals of fellow Canadians Diana Hayes and Susheela Dawne. From the release’s Bandcamp website: Composer/producer Andy Meyers was co-recipient of Canada Council Grants to score two CDs of spoken word with award winning poet Brian Brett. (“an often unsettling meld of orphan sounds and menacing undercurrents, and an offbeat celebration of those old staples: love, experience, sex and death.”…
Our dear friends at Lost Tribe Sound start the year with two powerful releases, though I’ll concentrate on one today (with the other in the next week or so). This one is by Belgian composer ‘t Geruis (a rather unusual name, which, in Dutch, means “The Noise” or “The Murmur“). The album, at least the four rather remarkable tracks available to hear, have a grainy, organic quality to the loops which build and collapse in a still-life manner. The music has more in common with graphic art or experimental film than it does with cold, staid experimental music. Quite an…
Our dear friend Drem Bruinsma, the BlindººCoyote in question, provides a 20-minute track of ambient loops, eerie rhythms and and enchanting soundscapes. From his Bandcamp site: “Inspired by personal hikes into various shadowless desert arroyos, to meet with silence, coyotes, antelope, dust and rocks, leveling with tumbleweeds and sagebrushes from a different perspective, walking on those eroded, shallow dry riverbeds, meandering arid nature’s hidden trails when you lose track of time and where you encounter hiding parts of your identity. This track simulates the immersive, enveloping experience of slow- changing minimal landscapes observed from a ground-level perspective, the shallow dry…
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.
Unexplained Sounds Group has had another stellar year releasing ambient, experimental and post-Industrial music from around the world in 2021. We had the pleasure of reviewing their mid-year compilation on July 28, and now that the year is complete, USG end the year by giving us 35 tracks from artists like Gintas K, Aidan Baker, Echoflex and a cast of many.
Jagath is a field-recorded ritual ambient act from Perm, Russia who use handmade instruments, scraps and metal to make their dark, dank industrial sounds. As quoted from their Bandcamp site, “We do this to share our vision of decaying postindustrial age, to unleash the spirit of deep beyond-world and unveil life in the abyss.”