ambient / post rock

A Reason To Travel, is a solo project that hails from Copenhagen, Denmark. If you were to attempt to tag or label his sound, it would probably nestle itself under the covering of “Ambient Post-Rock”. His sound has been heavily influenced by the warmth and emotion that This Will Destroy You can create, and in particular “Tunnel Blanket”, and note that these are his own words!. So if you are a fan of richly layered atmospheric expanses., then this album should connect with you immediately.

"Kingdom" is his second album and It follows the journey of a new king, from the moment he takes his throne and builds his empire, until greed and corruption lead to his downfall. Musically, It’s a beautifully crafted journey and commands your full attention. It's an album for headphones, peace and privacy. It's a little safe haven for you to escape the mundane, and immerse yourself in its rich warm tapestry of sound. 

"Coronation" kicks off with a sombre marching drum beat that is joined by rich cascading soundscapes. The music is rich and layered and fills all the space. It's signalling that a great event is taking place, the crowning of a leader and the beginning of a journey.

The second track, “Fleeting bliss” begins soft and subdued, giving off a tremendous sense of calm. Its empyrean and near celestial sound tends to lend itself to Jakob's "Solace". It's beautifully textured, and flows without interruption, into the following track “Stolen Gold” with its delicate and subtle presence. 

Tracks like “Hubris” pick up the pace and delve more into the post rock genre with its lush guitar picking and its brush stroked percussions. However, there is something that binds this whole album together and it's the atmosphere that is there throughout. While each track draws up something different and distinctive, there is a mood and an aura that stays with the album from start to finish.

“They will tell stories about you” is the track that has been released early and it is a highlight for me. It begins  in soothing fashion, calm and atmospheric with restrained drums, and hazy guitars. Just when you think you're comfortable and calm, a tsunami of sound crashes in and engulfs your senses. You sit there enthralled, tightening your grip as a wall of guitars and drums immerse you. It’s a huge crashing crescendo and is one of the bigger moments in the album.

“Equinox” and “Iron skies “are warm and inviting tracks and continue the theme, with its dreamy and elysian presence. Whistling winds and calming reverbed notes create some Pink Floyd moments in the closing track, “Turmoil”.  Its slow and distorted build up, along with its rolling drums create all the drama needed to close out an album. The noise and emotion reaches fever pitch and finally explodes, leaving you elated and ultimately satisfied. Its a beautifully crafted and thought-out album and will be an instant hit with anyone who enjoys the drama and beauty the TWDY and Jakob create.  There is some fantastic merchandise accompanying this release, so be sure to check it out on Bandcamp.

​
Pat O'

post metal / ambient

Have you ever experienced a time when you are drawn to an album for the first time and it’s not by the music, because you have yet to hear it?  You find yourself pulled in by either the thought-provoking artwork, or it may be the unsettling album title that has struck a chord with you. It's that feeling of warmth and excitement that sweeps over you when you finally sit down and bask in the glory of what tweaked your curiosity, and proved a masterstroke. This album gave me all of that.

The sombre, bleak and misty photograph along with the downcast album title had me captivated immediately. I love my music melancholic and emotive, dark and almost uncomfortable. I found that in this release by Felperc, an artist who hails from Vienna, Austria. He informed me that Inspiration was channeled from the music of Yndi Halda and that alone was enough justification to spend a dark winters evening in the company of this album.

"Five Stages of Grief" is a concept album, and a soundtrack to how we come to terms with something we all must face at some stage in our lives, Loss.  The opening track and the first of five stages is “Denial”. It begins with a slow subdued intro, with a sullen beat and forlorn keys, gradually building with the introduction of delicate guitars and moody bass. It slowly gathers momentum until the first crescendo cascades in and overwhelms you with soaring guitars and crashing drums.

Stage two – “Anger” has the same structure as “denial”, but the build-up has more aggression and tension, just as the title suggests. It’s still pouring out emotion and melancholy, but with a bit more intent. This music is truly elevating. Even through such a dark and often taboo theme, there’s something incredibly uplifting and comforting in its delivery here. 

Stage three – “Bargaining” begins with lush guitar picking, and a prominent bass line that takes the lead and drives the music to that all so familiar crescendo. However, it’s the warmth and honesty in the melody that sets it apart. Swirling guitars, heavy bass licks and rapid firing drums fill the air and see out the track.

Stage 4 – “Depression” begins with a distorted bass chord played over some clean guitar melodies, and is soon joined by a myriad of drums. Pace gathers and resounding drums begin to race along at speed, creating a moment where the music just let's go and doesn't follow structure. This album is so well thought out and executed that it almost becomes a story. You become entranced and deeply immersed in it.

Stage five – “Acceptance” is the mind finally accepting things as they are, and somehow finding comfort and solace, This track is all of that. The guitars are calm and serene like a passage taken from "Old Solar's" album "See". Then music pauses....and restarts with a glint of positivity on the horizon, a slight shift in thinking, that conjures up this great wall of sound that lifts the spirit with its soaring guitars and elevates the listener to one last glorious moment before, alas, the music fades out into the far distant light. The sorrow remains but it's not all as dark as it once was. 
​
Felperc has a huge discography, and I must admit, I have yet to delve into his world fully. This album simply resonated with me at first glance while roaming through Bandcamp, and I’m so glad I got the chance to hear it and feel it. Many bands out there are doing this style of music like Sleep Dealer and April Rain. Its emotive, heartfelt, instrumental post rock and there’s definitely a time and place for it. There are so many great artists out there to be discovered, it's just that sometimes you just need to do a little bit of rummaging to find the gems.


Pat O

ambient / post rock

When you feel music washing through you, stroking your eardrums and radiating through you like a heater in a shop doorway on a cold day… that’s the feeling you get from Efflorescence – In Inertia’s debut EP. 

Relatively new, In Inertia released a flurry of songs in the second half of 2020, then released this six-track EP – which doesn’t contain any of the already-released songs – in December. The group, originally from Indonesia, but now relocated to Japan, wear their influences on their sleeves.

Drenched in reverb and delay, the guitars move seamlessly from Slowdive-y, layered walls of sound to melodic runs. They employ atmospheric synth drones, giving the proceedings a cinematic feel. The second song on the EP – Finding Your Silver Lining – is a great example. Opening with a single guitar and synth drone, it builds into a wash of sound before deconstructing and reconstructing itself throughout.

The third song on the record – White Lotus – seems to be a seven-minute exercise in channeling Ryuchi Sakamoto through a reverb pedal. Which is a good thing. Like all of the songs, it employs a beautifully choreographed dance of ambient and melodic dynamics – rising and falling like breathing in. Very. Slow. Motion. 

With the guitars and synths stealing a lot of the scenes it would be too easy to focus on those, but the drums and bass are flawless throughout this record. Only ever stepping in when needed, they drive the songs forward when progress needs to be made – like that friend who gets you out of the house for a walk after a long week of lockdown. “Get off the couch, you lazy bastard! We’re going to feed the ducks.” 

Takao’s Smile – the fourth song on the album – is a great example of this in action. Heavy on the delay and reverb, a lone guitar opens with a pleasant chord progression before being joined by the atmospheric, but incredibly subtle, synth. A couple of bars later, a second guitar joins, tracing an Explosions In The Sky-type melody line with a very polite drum pattern. This carries on evolving and metamorphosing until 3:20, when the drums say, “Come on, lads. Let’s kick out the Jams for a while!” And they do: the Jams are well and truly kicked.
​
When I listen to music I want to feel something. I want to know exactly what the band is trying to convey, not just through the lyrics, but also the tone, volume and emotion. A case in point: The Great Gig In The Sky has absolutely no discernable words whatsoever, but the listener is dragged along by Clare Torry’s wordless vocalizing and Richard Wright’s piano. Post Rock has a similar approach for me. The key is in the pacing, the dynamics, the textures and the emotions behind the songs. In Inertia themselves say on their Bandcamp page for this record, “Efflorescence is the emotional complexity that describes our respect towards memories and upcoming life.”

Granted, across the EP there isn’t a diverse texture in the songs, relying as they do on being soaked in reverb and delay. But where In Inertia excel is in their mastery of dynamics. Bringing the listener up into the crescendos and laying them to rest in the diminuendos. This is the key to making sure that the listener isn’t just a passive consumer, but a passenger in the music.
​

Ben

drone / experimental

bandcamp

Sound artist Eric Quach is one of those musicians that bombards us already for years with an unpredictable amount of releases under the alias Thisquietarmy. Quach is also active with drummer Aidan Girt (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) as the duo Some Became Hollow Tubes. He has released work with Belgian experimental artists like Dirk Serries (Yodok III, Fear Falls Burning) and drummer Tom Malmendier.

This time Quach joins forces with fellow countryman Michel 'Away' Langevin who is known as the co-founder and drummer of the Canadian progressive metal band Voivod.  Away is also the designer of the Voivod album covers and is responsible for the artwork of The Singularity- Phase I. The two Canadians started to record in secret with an eye on multiple releases. Two extreme worlds with an eruption of ideas merge into a maze of Sci-Fi drone metal. 

The typical guitar sound of Thisquietarmy is present but raves with both soft and abrasive string signals, drones and post rock. Away shows excellent drumming on this creative experiment and pushes this project to higher standards of quality improvisations. The gentlemen leave room for quieter parts embedded in a sinister and futuristic rim. The chemistry that develops between the two Canadians debouches in enthralling and powerful bursts of blissful sonic dreamscapes and crunching metal that evoke images of an imaginary future.

Quach had many interesting collaborations with artists such as Aidan Baker, Yellow6 and Year Of No Light, but on The Singularity-Phase I he shows a more experimental side to his guitar-based soundscapes. We have delved into this album and conclude that this is by far his best work. Curiosity about the sequel of this album has been aroused. This highly recommended album is available on digital and vinyl formats.

​
Patsker

This edition of our Brieviews is a special one to me as it is about one of my favorite labels – Eisenwald Tonschmiede from Thuringia, Germany. They specialize in everything black metal and have already brought us some awesome releases this year – Ashtar, Fluisteraars, Fellwarden. They have collaborations with two of Europe’s best black metal collectives, the Haeresis Noviomagi label for which they produce the vinyls and the Helvetic Underground Committee (expect a bigger article on that group of aficionados soon) bringing some of Switzerland’s bleakest records to date. If you combine all these releases plus some re-releases of Mosaic, Germany’s finest medieval black metal artist, you see that their demands for a release are not simply pure black metal fury but that the act fits to the roster, it must share something with all the others and that – in my mind is a very naturalistic approach to music, with traditional folk-segments and references to nature as a sacred entity. These elements may vary in depth and level of elaboration and prominence on all of the records but they are certainly noticeable. 
Today I want to focus on some of their very last releases to further showcase the variety of this label. You can find all of their releases in their webstore at http://www.eisenton.de.

black metal

Eisenwald is a label specialized in everything black metal and its niches. With UADA they have a kind of melodious, near-pop variant of it, with Mosaic they serve a kind of folkloristic version of it and with one their latest releases, Svabhavat’s debut they seem to pay respect to the beginnings of the bleakest and darkest version of black metal. “Black Mirror Reflection” is black metal in the pure vein of Darkthrone or Mayhem. Even though they come from the Pacific Northwest (like their labelmates UADA), there is none of the typical elegiac elegance of many of the black metal bands from that region, think of Mizmor or Hell. The duo plays what they call Ritualistic Black Metal and truly this can be the soundtrack to the exorcism of just about anybody. They often start their songs with very short highly interesting sound ideas, but then blast them away with bloodthirsty fervor not too often found on Eisenwald’s roster, maybe Death.Void.Terror being the only similar artist. This here is a ritual but not in the meaning that only the music is important, here we do not witness shamans singing to a blood-red moon, but more two Luciferian monks screaming their lungs out in the depths of a church where they are igniting the candles. Sometimes they are able to very effectively hide their songwriting skills behind a veil of thunder, for example in “Abhicaara” where the song breaks down into an atmospheric middle but when the riffs collide again they do not lead to another hellish fire but rather to a more re-defined, slowed down ending. If the band follows the latter path a bit more – like they show on the title track at the end – then we are on to something great here, because the two definitely know how to raise hell, they only need to show that there ritual doesn’t start with blood and gore but also with igniting the candles and slowly giving it the pauses it needs for the incantations to work its magic. A very promising addition for Eisenwald.

black metal

When talking about Eisenwald we should not forget that UADA released their latest opus magnum “Djinn” at the end of September. A few months years ago, one of Germany’s most important political magazines “Der Spiegel” (similar to TIME or NEWSWEEK in the US) published an article about UADA (Latin for ‘the haunted’) and it surprised me to see an article about one of my favorite genres in there. Their claim was that black metal had turned into some kind of hipster thing with some bands like Deafheaven and UADA leading the way for those who need to be able to say “Oh, so you like Flaming Lips? Well, if you need to, I always find it to poppy, for me it needs to be bleak and dark, so my taste is much more refined than yours!” Snobs at their worst, right? By now they have turned their back on the genre again and the loners are together again without them. Some might find that disappointing, others don’t, the author figures himself somewhere in the middle. I can understand the awesome-ness of the success bands like those mentioned have had because that also means that they were able to benefit from it in some way. Probably not monetary but maybe it made it easier for them to travel the world and that might be the biggest thing for them anyway.
“Djinn” has everything it needs to be one of the most successful black metal albums of 2020 – hell, it even deserves to be! It’s moving and melodious, it bellows and bites, it shows rage and refined songwriting skills with a knack for transporting Thin Lizzy into the genre without tuning it too low but with just the right amount of dirt and grid. UADA and its mastermind Jake Superchi show an anthemic version of black metal that no one has waited for, but that no one can turn its back on either. If you can do that while listening to the title track or to “Forestless”, tell me how, as I would like to get those earworms out of my head. 

folk / ambient

And to round out this trio of awesome Eisenwald releases throughout the last couple of months, we must have a look at this wonderful release by my favorite American Ambient Folk duo, Osi and the Jupiter. Their new EP “Appalachia” is a wonderful supplement to an already brilliant body of work as these 21 minutes are literally wonderful and at first glance do not fit the Eisenwald roster at all. However, bear in mind that Eisenwald also releases Mosaic and its folk tales. The Ohio duo here uses their home Appalachia in Eastern Ohio as inspiration and in some way also as their musical mindmap. The songs are windy, they are sparsely instrumented with not more than some strings, a some acoustic guitar lines and sometimes something that sounds like a huge organ, but which actually is Sean’s synth that’s also used for the few drones. The central piece on “Appalachia” is certainly the final track “The Binding Will of Mountains” with its nearly 13 minutes resembling the slow approach towards the Appalachian mountains and its sometimes sunny, oftentimes dark peaks. The forests in this region of the second-highest mountain ridge in North America also surely gave the guys some inspiration. Sean strums his guitar as gentle as Kakophonix plays his cello. That the two have a very deep connection is obvious when Kakophonix seldom but highly effectively joins Sean in his vocals; when both sing together there is some Cantrell-Staley  magic going on, even though their voices sound nothing like the Seattle superstars, it is more their connection that is so strong and moving. When the final track opens up for its second half there is this short, short pause as if the pioneers are preparing for their final move up the mountain and against the wind that is so cold against their cheeks. 

When we look at all these releases it becomes obvious that Eisenwald is not interested in releasing big-selling records, most of their records are not putting up numbers big enough to make a living off it. But their roster and its songs show a label doing it for the soul, their own and their audience’s. They all buy into the idea that music is a part of nature and our environment and that we should therefore treat it with respect and care. We shall not simply rage over it, but we should it respect it – just like we should respect people of any belief system and personality. Basically its orientation is nothing short of the Golden Rule – treat everyone like you want to be treated by everyone. Oh, by the way – did I mention that they also just simply release some of the finest records lately?


​Thorsten

ambient

ZeroK is a sub label of the Italian Unexplained Sounds Group. Label owner and sound mapper Raffaele Pezzella (Ra Sonologyst) has an unlikely nose for discovering exciting and challenging music. The ZeroK label is focused on experimental ambient, with a nod to scientific experimentation, expressing moods and feelings evoked by the ornateness of science-fiction.

Joel Gilardini is a Zurich (Switzerland) based experimental guitarist and sound designer.  The Age Of Space is a progressive ambient release based on experimental guitar loops. Gilardini, a self-taught  guitar player, was already involved in several interesting and diverse projects like  Aborym, Mingle, Eraldo Bernocchi,  Jacopo Pierazzuoli, Ballett Zurich, dancer Benoît Favre, and the collective House Of Pain. He is also the mastermind behind the experimental-doom-metal act The Land Of The Snow.

The album starts with floating ambient tunes drenched in scratchy waves of distortion. You immediately feel a beautiful cosmic tension in the immersive soundscapes. Gilardini explores new avenues in manipulating his instruments and tools. His textures create a hazy and mysterious atmosphere that makes the adventure of his compositions extremely fascinating. By using live‐looping and improvisation techniques, Gilardini blends unique elements together. He shapes a hybrid wave of soundscapes sublimating into powerful resonances. 

The Age Of Space comes to you in healing waves of cosmic pulses that navigates the auditor through alien cinematographic worlds. This album has dreamy sounds with darkened moods. Gilardini introduces an experimental space ambient journey with a surprising outcome. This is just blistering splendid experimental ambient music!

​
Patsker

ambient / drone

There seems to be a weird correlation between living in so-called troubled times and the flow of artistic output. Sometimes it looks like artists simply thrive during crises. The pandemic we currently wrestle with is another neat example. During the lockdown several artists suddenly found themselves available for projects, cooperations and compilation albums.
Time was on their side, for once, and the corona-zeitgeist provided plenty of inspiration for new atmospheric releases. 'Between Worlds' is one of those long due cooperations and it has become something to enjoy for a long, long time, even after this whole craziness is behind us. 


I don't think I need to introduce either Ashtoreth nor Stratosphere to the Merchants Of Air audience. Both acts are residents here and most of our writers are big fans. Besides, they have worked together before and those cooperations, too, have been highly acclaimed on our website. You can also quite often find them on a festival line-up together, or better, you could have, since enjoying live-music is now a dangerous threat to society. Anyway. let's just say that Ashtoreth and Stratosphere are no strangers to one-another. They have earned their stripes in the ambient scene with their high quality soundscapes.

Yet, there is a difference between both artists. While Stratosphere mainly focuses on cleanly produced guitar drones and soundscapes, Ashtoreth tends to dive into the darker, occult side of things. One is the technical perfectionist, the other loves to jam and improvise. It's that "opposites attract" feeling which makes "Between Worlds" such an interesting album. It combines both worlds so well, it might as well lure in a whole new group of ambient fans. Why? Because this is a surprisingly accessible piece of work. Most of the songs are rather short, thus perfectly suited for DJ's to play them in between Brian Eno and Eluvium. 

Opener 'Evoke' is a gentle song. Yes, an instrumental song, not an ambient anthem. For that, you'll need the fascinating closer 'Between Worlds'. That's a seventeen minutes lasting masterpiece of drone ambient. Nothing less. For me, that is the absolute highlight of the album but certainly not the only brilliant tune. Second on my list is 'Distance', a bit more intense and harsher than the others. Trippier too. That's a word now. Number three in my top is the dreamy  yet impending 'Awake'. That being said, although I immediately liked the overall sound of the album, I feel like it's a grower. I'm currently playing it for the fourth time and it gets harder to pick out the favorites.

The verdict? Overall, I'm convinced that this is an excellent cooperation between two highly talented artists who know each other quite well. The production is clean and modest, which every fan of drones and ambient will appreciate. Seriously, these dudes deserve their place between the ambient-elite by now so I recommend this album to every fan of the genre, as well as to post-rockers, shoegazers and psychrockers who feel like relaxing for a while. I am already looking forward to their next output because I feel that there is a lot more to be explored and discovered between these two brothers in drones...


​Serge

ambient / drone / classical

There is something about former Yugoslavia that draws people to it, and I am not talking about the hauntingly beautiful but yet terrorizingly overcrowded cities on the Istrian and Dalmatian coastlines but rather about the inland with the forlorn wastelands of Bosnia-Herzegovina being the center of attraction for some negative reasons as well as positive hopes. Arms and Sleepers’ Mirza Ramic was born in Mostar with all its ancient charm and globally famous white bridge that was destroyed during the Bosnian War of 1992 to 1995. Ramic and his mother fled the country during the war and he has been living in the USA now for a long time; however the memory of his origins never seems to have left him. His solo project Saigon would be Seoul, a project combining minimalist approaches with intimate recordings, circles around his time before, during and after the war that drove his family apart, with his father dying in the war.

The foundation for SWBS songs is the piano, which Mirza’s mother taught him to play since he was 6 years old, that he uses to purvey his emotions of sadness, loss, and sometimes even despair. The minimalist spheres in the backgrounds are often combined with samples from his home. Ramic says that the full-length is basically threefold with the first part being the years before the war amid the turbulence of life in crumbling Yugoslavia, the second being the barbaric years of war and the last part being the years after the war. During the latter part people had to cope with the human stain of not being complete, with the struggle to process all of what has happened and torn apart communities and families. Painful years without any real suture; still obvious if you visit Bosnia Herzegovina. The few vocal samples are often painting blood red atmospheres of a country at war with the enemy and afterwards a society at war with its own trauma. Ramic uses only few samples, most of the songs are instrumental but still telling the attentive listener a lot. 

Ramic uses the synth and the piano to allocate himself within this process of re-living your past and relieving yourself from it. Oftentimes, there are only a few layers used in order to achieve this level of close-ness, of intimacy, of emotional connection that drive the listener on without identifying himself with the horrors. We are witnesses not impersonators. The drones are not low-tuned but high-tuned pitches dragging out, often sounding like a cross between a violin and a singing saw. The effect is that of a dream, not necessarily a nightmare, but definitely a highly emotional look back. 

With highlights like “Form and Feeling” (the prancing piano) or “Normal Jungle Law” the record is full of wordless emotion. Comparing this record to others is difficult, but if you want to have some connections, try Peter Broderick, Aidan Baker or the Bersarin Quartet. The use of a vibraphone and of minor keys create a parallel to Bohren & Der Club of Gore, but this is only through sound not through ideas or themes. This is neo-classical music, not doom jazz, even though it becomes noticeable that the parallels between the two might be bigger than the differences. 

Very different to Ramic’s regular output (this is SWBS’s second full-length) with Arms and Sleepers this new record shows him at his most intimate and most vulnerable.  If you like neo-classical and ambient (or either of both) – try this record, as you will get close to an artist and his own version of his life up to now. 


Thorsten

ambient / post rock

Last night, right before going to bed, I stood on my balcony, looking over de street. It was quiet, empty, abandoned. It took me a few seconds before I realized that this was due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Currently everybody in Belgium is supposed to be at home by midnight. In a busy city like Antwerp, silence takes the upper hand.
Then, this morning, I decided to wake from my reviewing-hibernation and simply go with the flow. On my desk was this album by Yellow6, the project by Jon Attwood. The title 'Silent Streets and Empty Skies' immediately grabbed my attention. It first perfectly with the current zeitgeist, so to speak.


'Silent Streets and Empty Skies', released by Sound In Silence, is a gentle yet brooding statement about these troubled times. All tracks were recorded between April and June 2020 during the first period of lockdowns and quarantines. Attwood took the time to become inspired by the desolation he witnessed around him. Empty parks, lack of planes in the sky, people avoiding the streets. It's an odd visual experience but one which Attwood has beautifully translated into a soothing ambient album. 

On this album you will find nine pieces of work, all quite similar and blending into one another which guarantees a 77 minutes listening bliss. Attwood uses minimal soundscapes, tentative guitar melodies and airy ambient textures to recreate these gems. 'V2' is my favorite track here. It seems to nudge carefully towards the ambient jazz scene, something I think Yellow6 would fit in perfectly it he wanted to. On other occasions, such as in 'Broadcast', Attwood strips the whole post rock scene to create something emotional.

That's perhaps the strongest aspect of this album. You will find heaps of emotion in here, a somewhat haunted atmosphere that modestly reflects the world outside our windows. Some of you might shed a few tears while listening to the gloomy 'Panam', others might find hope in the soothing sounds of 'Silent Flight' but I know for sure that every fan on minimal ambient and subdued post rock will highly appreciate these nine pieces of soundcandy. I know I have and I will for a very long time to come.


​Serge

ambient

There were countless musicians and artists imprisoned in their own environment during the covid crisis which lead to a new wave of creativity. Ayver is Jose Luis Arango a Peruvian editor and camera man from Lima Peru. He manages his audio-visual production company (Ayver films) which focuses on conceptual themes, artistic and landscape photography. His last release Healing is closely linked to the quarantine times.

The melancholic piano tones are the indicating direction through this six track ambient release. Ayver transformed three months of total isolation into an ambient album filled with emotions of unhappiness from another world. The compositions’ breath a fairy-like solitude where ambient soundscapes are colored with samples of twittering birds and fading piano. Ayver’s influences and inspirations in his style are situated between neoclassical (piano)music and experimental ambient. The South-American artist even dares to cover a piano track (Serenade) from Franz Schubert with a minimal of electronic effects in the background. He manages to sound with pensive sadness as the original.

Healing shows after a few intensive listen sessions more hidden electronica, detailed audio arrangements and even some glitch. This release ends with a neoclassical inspired track telling a message of hope that comes from a deep internal journey. Ayver got lost in complete estrangement with hardship and loss, but he came back with a refined ambient album.

"Loneliness is not bad if you learn to appreciate its beauty and use it to grow spiritually", is the phrase he put on his Bandcamp page representing his work and way of thinking during the process of these emotionally loaded compositions. This beauty is only available in digital format for a more than fair price. Support this talented artist.

​
Patsker