Past Inside the Present US Schallplatten & CDs

Review: This is well known and much-loved ambient album amongst those who follow the genre closely, and after various vinyl formats before now, it finally arrives on CD courtesy of Past Inside the Present. The hugely prolific zake - who often releases several albums a year - and 36 really go deep on this one. It is a quietly epic and certainly adventurous journey into outer space where echoing sonic tones and drifting sound effects all melt into one another as electronic melodies arrive and disappear to soothing effect. There is an almost classical architecture to these grandiose tracks which makes it all the more of an absorbing and beautiful listen.

Review: Los Angeles based ambient husband and wife duo, awakened souls join with Reunion Island native, From Overseas to create Keep The Orange Sun. After hearing each other's individual music, a deeper conversation started about shared musical influences and inspiration leading to the creation of this album. Keep The Orange Sun guides the listener on a thoughtfully curated path. Starting with the certainty of life's changes (Certainty of Tides) to arising self-doubt (Release/Adapt) and celebrating immersion in the present moment as the gateway to deeper connection with nature and one's life (Keep The Orange Sun). The instrumentation present in each track channels elements of electronic, shoegaze & ambient with each artist's distinct musical fingerprint highlighted.

Review: 'Fragments + Distancing' cultivates a profound sense of meditative stasis with the use of a Moog Mother 32, custom built filters, and various Eurorack modular sequencers, modules, and effects. James continues his proven and unique efforts in creating ethereal tones on this latest collection of songs. Fragments was created by using a method of composition James has been perfecting, where he takes small pieces of unreleased music that he has written stretching over the last 10 years, and runs them through different modes and methods of granular stretching and FFT processing. In some cases, the original audio source was no longer than 20-30 seconds long. PITP is honored to share this collection of music.

Review: It wasn't so long ago we were writing about the joys of BVDUB's Fumika Fades, a new double pack in February that sunk us deep into moving ambient soundscapes. Now the Bay Area dub techno titan Brock van Wey is back once again with yet another album - he dropped plenty of them last year too so is clearly in a mad creative patch. Slowly Shifting Lakes comes in multiple formats, this one being a double CD. The ambient here is coarse and textured, fizzing synths stretching out over skittish rhythmic frameworks before sinking into calmer waters on cuts like the escapist 'Searching For Glowing Shores.' Another triumphant album for sure.

Review: "Sound Space Variations" is a delicate and restrained sound bath. A mix of atmospheric, suspenseful drone sounds and meditative aspects. It is an album made for those moments when we just are.

zake has managed to capture the moments that lie between sounds; the unagitated murmurs and atmospheric hisses. The artist connects this in-between-world and our earthly one with calm and sonorous scores, making us think about everything and nothing.

The six pieces on the record do not seem heavy-headed or overloaded but much more airy, wide and open for interpretations. They stimulate the imagination - in a wonderfully unbiased way. In the last track. James Bernhard mixed and mastered the album, written and produced by drone artist zake, at Ambient Mountain House Studio. zake himself provided the artwork and photos himself."

Review: Somewhat surprisingly, Beliefsystems marks the first musical collaboration between Past Inside The Present co-founders Zake and Isaac Helsen. It's undeniably an album worth waiting for though, with the three meditative, enveloping tracks offering a perfect blend of the Zake's droning, densely layered "drone-scapes" and Helsen's glistening and fluid processed guitar sounds. For proof, check 19-minute opener 'Northern Cross', where starry, slow-burn electronics, distant guitars and yearning, unfurling melodies gently ebb and flow across the sound space, and the becalmed, field recording-sporting haziness of 'Knowledge Rooms Parts I & II'. In a word: sublime..