Review: Past Inside The Present has really gone to town with the re-release of this 36 album The Lower Lights: it comes in several different formats and vinyl versions with this one being a limited, numbered and opaque red vinyl including a download code. Musically it is just as essential as a collection of tracks from a year-long 'Audio Diary' project undertaken by 36 between April 2018 and April 2019. It first came back in May 2019 and soon sold out, such is the quality of the vibrant and eclectic ambient sounds within. This is not sleep-inducing background material, but rather emotionally charged soundscaping with a mix of dark, futuristic and urgent pieces all making the cut.
Review: LILA mainstay Ayaavaaki and ambient veteran Purl speak different languages but used a translator to convey ideas to one another as they made this record. And they very much foment their own unique musical language on Ancient Skies, an album that blends ambient, drone and space music into richly layered soundscapes that are constantly on the move. Each piece is meticulously crafted and suspense you up amongst the clouds, hazing on at the smeared pads and swirling solar winds that prop you up. It's a record that would work as well in the depths of winter as a bright spring day such is the cathartic effect of the sounds. Beautiful, thought-provoking and innovative, this is as good an ambient record as we have heard all year.
Review: Robert Fripp's pioneering work in electronic music reached its influential peak with the so-called Frippertronics tour of 1979. Creating compelling soundscapes out of tape loops might not seem revolutionary now, but it certainly was at the time, and out of the tour came this limited and highly prized album, perhaps the most sincere recorded document of Fripp's creative breakthrough. Now Let The Power Fall is being pressed on vinyl for the first time since its initial release on Editions EG in the 80s, and it comes with additional versions of '1984' never heard before.
Review: Two years ago, long-term musical collaborators Jules Maxwell and Lisa Gerrard, who first worked together during the latter's time with 4AD signed musical mavericks Dead Can Dance, joined forces with James Chapman to create Burn, a critically acclaimed exploration of "euphoric and inventive" sounds that blurred the boundaries between neo-classical, world music and ambient electronica. One Night in Porto captures the pair's performance - ably assisted by Chapman and a small pool of supplementary musicians - of the album's widescreen tracks at Casa Da Musica in Porto last November. With Gerrard utilising her voice to the full - one minute, soaring and operatic, the next singing more sweetly and soulfully in an entirely different language - and Maxwell playing a grand piano and synthesisers, it's a stunningly atmospheric, uplifting and entertaining affair.
Review: High concept and absolutely beautiful don't always fit together in a sentence. Enter St. Swithin's Day Storm, a record which in one way is to the point, but in almost every other completely wild and unique. Working with weather research scientist Nigel Meredith, the pair recorded the sounds made by a geomagnetic storm in space, on a day in June which, according to folklore, is supposed to decide the rest of summer's weather. Captured via the Halley VI Research Station's low frequency receiver, those moments of cosmic disruption, including chorus emissions, which, when played back, resemble birdsong, along with Meredith's explanations of such phenomena and its effect on Earth, then form the basis for a stargaze-worthy ambient journey that feels out of this world.
Review: LIMC's Ramp EP is a perplexing thing. Released by Germany's Inch By Inch this year, it sounds like it was born in simpler times, while also being a complex piece of work by anyone's standards. Downbeat? Certainly in terms of tempo, but perhaps not so much when it comes to how you take in the contents, which are designed to keep you hooked rather than play easy on the mind.
IDM? Maybe, there are few genre labels more fitting, although to us it really sounds more like an accomplished, refined, and sophisticated retro-hued video game score looking for a home and finding one not in the colourful on-screen antics of some bright-eyed playable, but the sound systems of forward-thinkers everywhere. A great, if obscure, one to own.
Review: It's easy to get lost in the sounds MMMD create. The Greek trio shot to the top of any self-respecting ambient-drone geek with 2013's exceptional Som Sakrifis, a piece of work so resolute in its mission to draw you in and then tighten the clasp it gets to the point where you can't see, or hear, a way out, and the three producers have continued to deliver those sorts of goods since. Roto Vildblomma is no change of course. To call the EP oppressive would be unfair, although opening track 'Vildblomma' does come with this sense of dread and a distinctly uneasy mood, organ refrains hitting notes that are hard wired to make things feel a little ominous. Elsewhere, similar senses also prevail, 'Skora''s more whispered approach to unsettling is different yet equally eerie. However, there are also moments of delicate quiet, almost to the point of silence, and a sort of ancient exoticism that's mysterious but exciting and wondrous, rather than menacing.
She Thought Her Life Was Overwhelming Already, But Today It All Changes (19:19)
As She Connects To Lives She Could Have Led, The Real Challenge Is Making Sense Of This Life Here & Now (19:02)
She Fights With Incredible Martial Arts, But How Do You Fight The Meaninglessness Of Infinity? (18:47)
From A Hopeless Place, She Must Learn A New Way To Fight, With Love (21:04)
Review: Son Lux grew from Ryan Lott's solo project into a fully-fledged band with Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia, and their star has steadily ascended from indie hip-hop territory to creating this Oscar-nominated soundtrack for one of the most talked-about films of the past year. It's a sure sign Son Lux are in the premier league now, and following the release of the soundtrack comes the official score, presented across four extended suites taking up whole sides of vinyl. This limited gatefold black and white pressing of the album gives the striking sonics the release they deserve.
Review: Harlem & Irving label partner Brian Kelly assumes his Supplement alias here for a new and limited edition 12" that features two of his tasteful and challenging sounds. Kelly is always out to disrupt and subvert and does so with aplomb here as the a-side title track starts with a whisper but soon grows with layers of found sound, piano, percussion, and ethereal voices. It then collapses before reemerging with melodic and tonal guitars and pulses. On the flip, the same tune comes 'Revisioned' but is much more cold and distorted, edgy and urgent.
Review: Ghent based tape label Dauw branches out for this album from Vil and presses it up to nice heavyweight wax. It's a multi-layered ambient work that is steeped in half forgotten memories, in nostalgic, in longing for a different time and place. There is beauty in that pain, with light, hopeful pads often just about shining through the murk and the mire to bring optimism to the lo-fi and grainy drones. Analogue machinery was clearly used to make this record and that lends it a nice hazy feel throughout. This might be Brooklynite Luke Entelis's best work yet under the Viul guise he has had for some 20 years.
Review: Esteemed ambient auteurs, zake and ossa's collaborative output continues to soothe and delight in equal measure. After Syntheticopia in August 2022 and the dark long-player 'A Pale Shelter' in 2021 between zake, ossa, and City of Dawn comes Module, a collaboration that includes seasoned electronic producer Ruben A. Tamayo, under the alias FAX. The power trio brings forth an eight-track excursion into heavy ambient atmospheres with moody soundscapes and a real weight of melancholy. As always, the textures are grainy and lo-fi, the drones long-held, and the chords which poke through the clouds, bring subtle rays of hope and optimism. It is the latest and maybe the greatest chapter in this ongoing story from zake and ossa with featured collaborators.
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