The Black Atlantic – Darkling, I Listen
Label: Beep! Beep! Back Up The Truck
Release date: 2012
Total running time: 00:23:23
"...From the near classical guitar intro of the opening, brooder-song “The Aftermath”, it is clear that ‘Darkling, I Listen’ is a much different sonic animal than the intimate, and mostly acoustic, affair of The Black Atlantic’s debut album ‘Reverence for Fallen Trees.’ Clocking in at 23 minutes and 23 seconds, ‘Darkling’ contains five fully sculpted songs with a wide array of elements and influences, from 70’s psychedelic folk–rock to Phil Spector-esque orchestrated chamber pop and 60’s Motown soul sensibilities. It also takes informed cues from current indie epitomes such as Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver. The Black Atlantic wears these influences on its sleeve without sounding inauthentic. ‘Darkling I, Listen’ is an immersive listening experience, rustic and pastoral, but without the obvious pretty embellishments. It is impressionistic in its scope, full of wide-open vistas and cavernous sonic swells."
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - The Aftermath (Of This Unfortunate Event) 02 - The Flooded Road (Built on Sand) 03 - Darkling, I Listen 04 - An Archer, A Dancer 05 - Quiet, Humble Man |
Bing Satellites - Time
Label: BFW Recordings
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 00:54:58
Bing Satellites is a prolific ambient shoegaze musician and producer from Manchester, UK. Bing has released several EPs and albums on BFW.
'Time' is an ambient album but it is emotive and psycheldelic, touched by Bing's love of shoegaze and experimental music. The sounds on this album come from a wide variety of sources - synths, laptop, guitar, clapped ot old keyboards and objects lying around Bing's studio in Manchester.
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - Backwards and Forwards 02 - The Bay 03 - I Heard Something In The Distance 04 - Time |
Michael Sandler - Ansatz
Label: Earth Mantra
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 01:05:32
We've oft mentioned how much we enjoy faring along with our friends, the Earth Mantra artists, as they travel down their unique path through the world of sound. Even greater is our joy when we can welcome back an artist who has been long away, to again enjoy the music of a friend we have not heard from in some time. Such is the pleasure we have today, as we release Michael Sandler's first album on Earth Mantra since 2007, a glorious new release called Ansatz.
Folks, we have a real treat in store for you today. We have long believed Michael's music to be among the best the ambient world has to offer, but his latest effort knocks the ball clean out of the park. Blending diverse influences, even a touch of 60's psychedelia, this is the kind of music that simply fascinates. One moment an immense unfathomable drone mesmerizes us with lights and colors, the next we find ourselves floating serenely through the depths of intergalactic space, and the next we lay back on our blanket at the outdoor evening concert, shooting stars blazing a path through the heavens to the ebb and flow of the enigmatic music. Masterful.
Indeed, one of the hallmarks of this powerful album is the strength of its composition. Michael has always struck us as an ambient musician's musician, someone who really hears what he is playing and finds that zone where everything falls into place. With Ansatz, Michael has elevated this craft to an astonishing level. Put simply, we are blown away by what he has accomplished here. Every piece is so lovingly and carefully constructed, each phrase and section interlocking perfectly with those around them, each transition so precisely measured, that the whole is unified with nary a seam. A majestic achievement by an artist who is not nearly so well known as he should be.
So it is our great privilege to unveil Ansatz, the second release by Michael Sandler on Earth Mantra, and the first by him in nearly four years. Certainly one of the most important releases of 2011, and one we are distinctly proud to bring to our audience. In our view, nothing less than music for the ages.
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - Manifold 02 - The Mists of Awakening 03 - Soft Comprehension 04 - Congruence |
Cagey House - Calico Pastry Sunshine
Label: Bypass
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 00:16:32
Bienvenue dans le shaker des illusions perdues! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and above all, be careful, for the paint is not yet dry! Scattered about, are the remnants of formica chips (hell! formicat, comment vais-je traduire ceci? Laminate?) Float now, through a powerfully atmospheric memory trip and experience complete levitation, as everywhere the particles are excessively resistant to your gracious appreciation. Relax and let yourself go completely. Nothing is spared, nothing is restricted. Dave Keifer aka Cagey House may very well be a genius, an iconoclast provoking a demonic revolution...
By now, you, of course can understand the near impossibility of portraying such a character (though this was exactly what ZhangJW asked me) - Cagey House does not respect conventions! Ready to dissect?
"Lower the bubble viewer" which brilliantly opens the release, will not leave you indifferent. If it does, you need to quickly consult a supersonic astrophysicist (I have addresses). Where are we? Too late! Surrounded! Submit to delicious words of love, a french whisper, bouncy riffs, flexible sarabande, and many more temptations to come, but...Scenery change.Speed dating in a flash of high velocity, you're transported to a delightful towering garden, flowering with whiskers. Symbiotically echoing and reflecting, you merge into a piercing laser beam's voluptuous flash with the softness and agility of Barbarella, while the laconic, fuzzy guitar riff brewed into the cut-up advances."You and the Beach Flea" will embrace you gently and will respond to you day and night, enveloping you in a strange, dreamy ballet...a very curious to and fro. If Cagey also shows a bit of a "romantic streak" let's not become entangled in endless, sterile discussions...the rhythm is there! The rhythm is there and does not wait just until the delicate point of rupture-- you will slalom in the mode of "ritournelle".
But where are we? So ready to exit and yet so completely lost.
Could Cagey House have surreptitiously abandoned us? Left us alone, destitute...poor harmonic orphans. But no! Now the ringmaster of this magnificent circus has given us his finest gift, "Ethel of the Rocks". So much like a perfume caressing our eternal desires and illusions...our eternally sweet illusions...lost.
[thierry massard - adaptation by Daria & Solange Gabrielli / feb2011]
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - Lower the Bubble Viewer 02 - Billboard Whiskers 03 - Tu et la Flea de la Plage 04 - Cagey House is a Big Sissy 05 - Ethel of the Rocks |
The Vévé Seashore - Seven Years of Gulliver
Label: Dying For Bad Music
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 00:48:32
The Vévé Seashore is a music combo from New Orleans formed by Elroy Oversex and Lord Fuck. The first edition of their debut-album "Seven Years Of Gulliver" (on purple low-weight vinyl, 2007) was sold out immediately and is now a rare artefact for collectors - though the band never performed live.
DFBM is happy to re-release that surreal sweet music now as digital download.
"Seven Years of Gulliver" - though absolutely incoherent regarding recording quality - unfolds its own strange magic after taking the first sonic hurdles.
Follow the Vévé Seashore on their labyrinthine paths edged with marvelous simple pop hooks and wade through knee-deep psychedelia.
Prepare a cup of coffee for your fears and enjoy.
Available in FLAC!
| TRACKLIST |
Joxfield ProjeX - Hypnotic Wash Up
Label: Clinical Archives
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 00:44:29
“While standing in my kitchen doing the wash up and listening in my ghetto-blaster to the Majestic Pattern City Revisited Evolution suite from the Joxfield ProjeX very strict limited self-release album ‘The Pond Intermezzo’ (2006) I realized how goddamn good it was and that these tracks deserved being properly released. The album was originally printed in about 20 copies which mostly were given away to some of our friends. Very few copies were sold for almost nothing. The story of the suite: For the TPI sessions Yan had made a hypnotic, long pattern to which I made a 20 minutes long guitar improvisation. Due to too many wrong notes it was re-recorded once. There was more guitar terror and even more wrong notes. There was also a short, recorded sung melody. Then Yan locked himself into his room for a couple of months, re-worked the recorded music, picked up some themes from the solos, developed it, mixed it, split it, added the treated vocal parts, added some other freaky vocal parts and finally presented what’s heard here. Maybe it’s a bit accessible to have the suite split into eight parts, but the true reason was Yan’s then car stereo which refused to play too long songs, it had to be split into parts.”
Zack Kouns - Endless Fertile Valley
GENRE: Rock, Post-Rock, Acoustic, Experimental, Psychedelic
Label: Clinical Archives
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 00:42:51
Endless Fertile Valley is very loosely based on the Dhammapada; all of the song titles are garnered from the ancient text of the book. The album title is the only exception and is intended to illustrate the true theme of the album that the Dhammapada can only hint at and words in general can barely brush against (music being the ideal medium for conveying our most esoteric and abstruse intimations.) The theme came to me by accident (or mysterious design) during a 15 kilometer run during the summer. I passed a valley with tall grass that I stopped to admire. Suddenly, I saw the valley extend upward into the sky; it stretched behind me and became the road. I vomited in the prairie grass several times and lost consciousness. When I awoke, everything was back to "normal" and I ran home and wrote the entire album in under two hours. Here is that album, born from a bizarre vision of eternity and the impossibility of ending and certainly open to interpretation.
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - Deathless ground of life 02 - He does not grieve over what is not 03 - Mara 04 - Hard to aim, hard to restrain 05 - Hiding from the freedom of a bird in flight 06 - Death sweeps them away while they are still gathering 07 - White bones cast away 08 - Burst into flames 09 - Alive and alone |
Creative Commons license: Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivs 3.0
Alien S – Eleven
GENRE: Electronic, Ambient, Psychedelic, Downtempo, Soundtrack
Label: Mix Galaxy
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 0:34:59
With this album we continue our release line dedicated to soundtracks for non-existing movies started by Restin in MIXG008. ‘Eleven’ is the first album written by Alien S, the author from Tumen, Russia who used to open or close Mixgalaxy Records compilations with his outstanding productions. And the very first track on our very first compilation is the track which opens this album as well. If you want to know how it sounds like, we can tell you it has something from Paul Oakenfold’s ‘Swordfish’ soundtrack and maybe it could be influenced by Juno Reactor works. So take a sit, turn your audioplayer on, close your eyes and try to create a blockbuster ‘Eleven’ in your head.
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - Eleven Theme 02 - Smiling Man In The Old Suit 03 - Dream 04 - The Walk 05 - Blinding Lights 06 - Following 07 - Jonah Creek 08 - Inane Around 09 - Norton’s Choise 10 - Burning Memories 11 - The Answer |
Creative Commons license: Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivs 3.0
Joxfield ProjeX & Guests - Numbers & Letters
GENRE: Rock, Electronic, Progressive, Psychedelic, Experimental, Improvisation, Kraut-Rock
Label: Clinical Archives
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 2:28:26
Has Joxfield ProjeX become a Big Band with all these guests? And is this The White Album of Joxfield ProjeX? The answer is No on both questions. When we were about to start our new recording sessions in 2007 we had decided we wanted to bring our music into territories where we had never been before. To do so we wanted to involve other people and asked around amongst artists we liked and respected and to whom we could direct a mission - contribute to our music in an open-minded and creative way. Most of those we asked generously brought their inspiration to us and went into the project, sometimes for a specific track, sometimes for many of them.
Very quick we realised it was a huge project and when it all was finished we had about 21 hours of music we didn’t want to split up. That’s why it’s a 3 disc set. The variation of the music is the variation of our minds, that’s how we are. For those who care Disc A - Abstract Numbers is maybe a bit introvert, reflective and the Discs B & C - Concrete Letters A-Z might seem extrovert, a little bit more easy-going.
Most of the music is recorded in 2007 with lots of additional recordings, editing and treatments in 2007 - 2010.
Joxfield ProjeX is still the duo Oax and Yan playing their instruments, programming stuff, adding whatever they find reasonable to add, edit and treat.
What about the guests? Most of them do have a long and deep history of success with various bands etc, but instead of fooling both you and them and pretend this music here sounds like anything what they’ve done with those constellations we suggest you check ‘em up by your own.
Creative Commons license: Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivs 3.0
Of a Star - Finding Gaia
GENRE: Electronic, New Age, Ambient, Psychedelic
Label: Archaic Horizon
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 0:41:13
'Finding Gaia' plays off of some of our purest emotions and allows us to step back to see the larger picture of where we stand as human beings on this earth. John Glaunert, the man behind the moniker, recorded nearly the entire album organically, including percussion, vocals, guitar, synth, keys, field recordings, as well as other odds and ends. Even more, the percussion of 'Everything is Natural' is wholly composed from sticks, logs, and stones, which adds to the song's earthy quality. Each song seems to invoke its own mythic milieu such as in 'Strange Visit to Day Factory', where field recordings and echoing noise seemingly stem from an ancient industry in the midst of production.
While maintaining a cohesive and well produced album, 'Finding Gaia' moves throughout the spectrum of music from more traditionally structured songs, to saturated ambient drones, to dissonant hypnotic noise. This diversity in sonic form only helps to convey the ultimate diversity represented in nature itself. Available in FLAC!
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - Sun Yawn on Me 02 - Cumulus Detour 03 - Rain Spell 04 - Strange Visit to Day Factory 05 - Everything is Natural 06 - Step Into the Ancient Waters 07 - Follower in the Fog 08 - Overgrown Temple 09 - Suspended in White 10 - Returning Home, Having Grown |
Creative Commons license: Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivs 3.0
Contact
Netlabel News
- Paris based anarcho-pop-punk band Louis Lingg and the Bombs return with their new album
- Gregg Plummer - Free
- [HAZE141] VA – Dedication to Pussy Riot
- The Black Atlantic spring dates
- AH042 :: mental health consumer :: same places, different times
- [AUDCST065] Mystyr Mystyry – Magic Ghosts
- Pie Are Squared – (Hungover in) Siberia
Comments
-
If you liked "Songs for Rainy Mornings", try "Sketchbook" of the same musician http://humantracks.blogspot.com/2011/04/cd-sketchbook.html Written by Roxana on 20 April 2011 -
Thanks for your support :) Written by dustedwax on 5 April 2011 -
Thanks! :) Written by Joe, Ruined Machines on 28 March 2011
