progressive / post metal

black metal / doom

electronic / coldwave

heavy metal versions of eighties hits

progressive / psychedelic rock

noise rock / industrial

noise rock / sludge

stoner rock / psychedelic rock

death metal

alternative rock

alternative rock / dream pop

indie rock / alternative

death metal

death metal

death metal / black metal

ambient

alternative rock / grunge / stoner rock

heavy metal

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doom / drone / black metal

post rock / progressive rock

ambient / experimental

It's Sunday afternoon. The sun is shining, keeping my coffee warm. My muscles ache from three days of heavy duty. I have just finished writing a review for a heavy doom metal album. For now, I'm done with the harsh areas in the world of music. I need something else.

My inbox guides me to Omrr, the stage name of Omar El Abd, a self-taught musician, guitarist and sound artist based in Cairo, Egypt. His new album is a pearl, so gentle, so calm. It is exactly what I needed today.

Although it contains the simplicity and the calm atmosphere of ambient music, the track on this album are more than that. With electronics, microsounds, field recordings and elements from glitch and modern classical music, Omrr creates instrumental songs with a minimal yet immersive approach. 'Illicit' might be the most traditional ambient resembling song on 'Devils For My Darling' but this too contains something extra, like an own identity.

Throughout the album I can hear influences from acts like Laraaji, Brian Eno, Biosphere but also hints of Autechre and Aphex Twin, along with classical piano. Yet, most of all, I can hear a self-taught musician finding his own little path in the vast world of experimental music. This is an incredibly beautiful universe, created by a very talented artist. Each one of these eight track can stand on its own but if you listen to the entire album, which I obviously recommend, you'll be blissfully smiling all the way. I know I am...


​Serge

ambient / krautrock / spacerock 

The world of music can be a perfect representation of how the world we live in can actually be. I mean, put four politicians in one room and they'll be fighting and arguing immediately. Put four seasoned musicians in a room and you almost always get something magical. Something like this Orchard album.
Orchard is a quartet of Aidan Baker (Nadja, Caudal, B/B/S/ - guitars), Gaspar Claus (Pedro Soler, Angélique Ionatos - cello), Franck Laurino (Zéro – drums), & Maxime Tisserand (Chapelier Fou – woodwinds). Assembled by Ici d'ailleurs label boss Stephane Gregoire, the group came together in the studio in Nancy, France in October 2016.

The musicians had never played together before, which might explain why the album takes its time to find its drive. The opening track, 'A Day, Staring At Eternity' is a long stretched piece of ambient and drones. It's a gentle track, flirting with elements from modern classical music and jazz experimentalism. 'Drawn With The Wind' brings in the drums and from then on we're slowly being lured into an immersive space/krautrock anthem. The band seems to find its drive. By now, I'm convinced that this will be a highly recommended album, but I already expected it to be.

The third track, 'After All The Sun Is Awakening' follows it predecessor's example but you can feel that the band is a coherent and well attuned group by now. Still roaming around jazz, krautrock, ambient and space rock, things are now turning into something that can best be compared with Caudal. This is definitely my favorite track on this album and then there are two more to come, two shorter ones,.'Fructification'  and the jazzy 'We Host You'. 

In all, this is a very successful experiment and an interesting album. It contains plenty of variation, even though the overall overtone is calm and gentle. Needless to say perhaps, but this one comes highly recommended. I'm sure that many - if not all - of these tracks often appear in my day-to-day playlist from now on. 


​Serge

ambient / experimental

Infinite Waves

This 12" reached me a while ago and I have been listening to it several times since then. Not because I have to review it, but because this is such a diverse and intreguing ambient album that I absolutely love it.
Besides, I quickly decided to postpone this review until a few days before the actual release. It would be a shame if this one goes unnoticed and fades away into the huge pile of reviews before people can actually buy the album. So, therefore, the review appears today and if you're too lazy to read further, I can tell you that this is a must-have for fans of experimental and somewhat unusual ambient music. 

Sofie Birch is 28-year old composer from Denmark. Perhaps you know her for her ambient and humorous scores and sound designs on a long line of animated shortfilms. For this solo album, she wanted to create something that made sense in her own head only, coping with dreams and emotions. In a way, I think she succeeded in that, as this is a rather unique piece of ambient, stubbornly following its own course.

Yet, another part of me wants to claim that these tracks make sense for me too, and perhaps to a large part of the ambient community. The six tracks here are made out of field recordings, a plethora of instruments, electronics and Sofie's own voice. The result is an adventurous album, where ambient music meets the avant carde of sound design and the nervous nature of free jazz. Laraaji and Eno come to mind, something that doesn't often happen.

But yes, I think I know how Sofie must have felt while making this album. Comfortable but somewhat uneasy. Certain of her musical qualities but doubting tiny aspects. Trying to play it safe but not being able to withstand to experiment. Being an ambient producer myself, I can imagine the recording process and I wish I was there to witness it. But since that's not possible, I will just keep on enjoying this breathtaking album and I urge you to do the same. 


​Serge

ambient

Released by American independent record label Synphaera Records, Flows is the debut album of Russian electronic music artist Mihail Glukhov, better known by the alias Germind. The record has eight tracks: Flows, Humanity Cycle, Anabiosis, Mind Stream, Exodus, Regeneration, Time Paradox and Intergalactic Voice. Despite the fact that, in general, the album closely follows the traditional sonorous features of the genre, Flows, nevertheless, presents to the audience an extraordinary and somewhat virtuous approach, genuinely standardizing the patterns of a latently harmonious cosmogony, whose intense hermeticism replicates an asymptomatic universe, where a deeply introspective charisma interprets in a vastly personal intuition the diffuse nature of a music primarily characterized by a serene and resigned sense of desolation. One of those albums that can be defined as perfect to relax, Flows, given also its extensive length, can be surely categorized as a record that deeply reflects – and intelligently improves – the most visceral, dense and primordial aspects of ambient music. In a sinister and discreet maze of a slow moving, profoundly intensifying, but paradoxically petrified sound, where the sensibility of your soul is hostage to varied degrees of perceptive stagnation, Flows reveals itself to be a deeply impressionistic, perennially harmonious configuration of an emotional galaxy, aligned to the solitary sensibility of its own peculiar dimensional existence. That will be there, even if you do not acknowledge its omniscient presence.    

An interesting album that certainly has everything to please the enthusiasts of the genre, Flows has a discreet, but vivacious and pragmatic appeal, that eagerly creates an alternative universe, where the detrimental collapse of a monumental emptiness seeks to enlarge the splendor of giant melodies, embraced by silent symphonies, that reflects the ardor of its essence directly into the spirit. Undoubtedly, a marvelous work that sensibly communicates the primacy of its sentimental elegance with firm plausibility, these captivating melodies are simply delightful to hear, and amazingly superb to contemplate. The abyssal serenity of the soul urges the senses to closely enjoy the primordial veracity of its corporeal vastness. The fourth track – Mind Stream – deserves to be highlighted: brilliantly compresses in a marvelous tune the major qualities of awesome ambient music.    


Wagner

ambient / post rock

Moderation is an album released by Deer Park Ranger, a project of American musician   Trevor Humphrey, on August 17. With only six tracks – Shipwreck, Another World, Another Time, Old City, Time and Distance, Passenger and Selling All the Shelves –, Moderation is a beautiful and elegant album, with relaxing and poetic compositions, filled with ephemeral, but profoundly reflexive, serene and vivacious passages, that easily extrapolates the density of a virtuous conscience, eager to undermine the conflagration of its own thoughts, vicissitudes and restlessness, as a pretext to start a marvelous journey through a perennial and sensitive path towards a miraculous existence, where everything that is graceful can be felt with senses and urgencies never experienced before.    

The delicate melodies and the imponderable harmonies that imperatively comprehends the value of its planetary possibilities conduct the listener to an invisible universe of transcendental calmness, that understands the majesty, the colossal emptiness and the extraordinary necessities of the soul, where everything is evaluated from a sincerely useful perspective, formidably trained to appease the anxieties of the spirit. With an atmosphere meticulously built by the strength of a compassionate indulgence, Moderation easily transmits to the heart a feeling of quiet and reliable completeness, sustained by the increasingly harmonious substance of a consistent fragility inherent to the human nature. 

A beautiful record, that easily impresses by the standards of its delicate melodies, Moderation is a work of salutary benignity, that subtlety vibrates at the vast axiom of its bright majesty, magnificently expanded by the light of its sonorous eloquence, whose serenity can configure into the vastness of a gentle conscience the pragmatic equivalence of a divine interference. And as soon as the record is over, without any desire of interrupting the journey, you will rapidly turn it on again.        

Moderation is a fabulous record for the easy-minded, and for the ones who really love the marvelous experience of overcoming their own personal dimensions of sensibility, expectation and freedom. With splendorous songs that intensifies our perceptions to more dense and alternate states of grace, Moderation is a sensational, glorifying and profoundly meditative album, already tuned in the correct frequency of our hearts, minds and overall senses.

 
Wagner

electronic / ambient

Refractions On The Lake is an album by Floating Machine, released on August 25, by Mindspring Music. Almost fifty five minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Unexpected Visitor, Momentum, Strange Things Happen On The Fields, Deforestation, Train From Vienna, Taboo, Someone Knows Our Plan, Refractions On The Lake and Second Chances. An exceedingly good, lucid and vivid minimalist album, its relaxing and serene atmosphere is deeply surreal, but at the same time committed to a realistic paradigm of evolutionary and creative principles, that expose salutary melodies aimed to incorporate the essential substance of an emotional significance. With simple, but beautiful harmonies, Refractions On The Lake is a subjective, but fundamentally aggrandizing work, that seeks on the horizon of its primordial enchantment the true existential composition of a subtle, yet extraordinary musical cosmogony. 

The intricate nature of its artistic proposal vehemently contrasts with the simplicity of its musical anatomy. With a sonorous integration that feels pure, although entirely abstract from the beginning, at the same time it’s possible to feel profoundly circumstantial perceptive elements emerging from the music, and displaying a state of sentimental correlation that corresponds to the perennial quest for a higher purpose, upon which the soul desperately searches for.    

With a calm and seductive horizon that conquers the infinity in a quest for knowledge and transience, Refractions On The Lake is the perfect album to relax; your mind will travel to the most distant and everlasting places of the universe, that seems to be subtlety elevating to a dimensional scale the perceptions of your own glorious sensibility, where all essential permanence escalates to real possibilities, adjacent to the realm of a conscience eager to be displayed as the monarch of a veracious elemental substance that consolidates the strength of your existence.   

Undoubtedly a beautiful album, Refractions On The Lake is a wonderful and attractive work, that can be qualified as a secure, reliable and excellent choice for ambient music lovers. Although you can’t expect exactly anything new, this record is a great option for enthusiasts of the genre, and certainly, has creative merits that deserves to be appreciated.   


Wagner

ambient / experimental

ambient / electronic / downtempo

doom / sludge metal

ambient / classical

punk / antifolk

progressive metal

death metal / industrial

black metal

shoegaze / alternative rock / dark rock

facebook

ambient / downtempo

electronic / techno / experimental

Hypermedium

black metal

drone / ambient / minimal

noise

techno

post hardcore

ambient / electronic

A reasonably good work, Perennial Expansion is the 95th album released by American net-label Cold Fiction Music, which has been officially out since August 12. Despite its irrevocable extensive lenght – at ninety five minutes long, it is certainly one of the most extensive albums that I have heard on the genre –, and following the usual ordinary patterns of ambient music, Perennial Expansion has, undeniably, a lot of qualities to be categorized as a favorite. With twelve tracks – being them Escape Velocity [Mix I], October Dub, Perennial Expansion, Lumi, Zodiak, Escape Velocity [Mix III], Freedom of the Heart, Perennial Expansion II, Zodiak II, Desert Wind, TB4E and Leaving Orbit –, the record undoubtedly explores intelligently the wider probabilities offered by the genre. While there is absolutely no innovative elements, or anything that you haven't heard in a lot of other albums of the genre before, there is a genuine veracity and a consistent atmosphere of electronic intensity brilliantly inserted on the musical horizons of the work.   

The length of the album certainly compromises a little the mutual integrity of the work, and only if you really like this genre of music you will be completely satisfied and capable of appreciating its reasonable artistic merits. Nevertheless, its quite fascinating, and like most albums on the genre, its perfect for meditative and relaxing moments, that virtually introduces the listener to an ever increasing gradual device of a perpetual iconic dream invariably lost in a descending perspective of intense serenity. Which is something transmitted through the abyssal vastness of sincere melodies, expanded throughout the primordial horizontal vicinities of discreet harmonies widely elevated at the sensible sidelines of the dimensional body of the music.   

While there is a certain lack of originality permeating the creative ordeal of the general musical framework, Perennial Expansion is an interesting exemplar of ambient music with subtle and discreet techno soundscapes and colorful nuances, with the highest chance of becoming a favorite among genre enthusiasts.    

Highly recommended for its ethereal, intense and marvelously intelligent scope, Perennial Expansion provides to the listener a great time of major and soft electronic easy-listening music. If you are an ardent enthusiast of the genre, you will not be disappointed in any way, whatsoever. Almost terrific at certain passages, Perennial Expansion lives at the greatness of its title: the music certainly engineers a perfect pathway for a drastic, pleasurable and perennial expansion of mind and throught.    


Wagner

ambient / chillout

A marvelous chillout masterpiece by American electronic music artist Tony D'Oporto, better known by the alias Gnomes of Kush – or only The Gnome, if you prefer –, Drift was released recently, on August 14. A little more than sixty three minutes long, the record has eight tracks: A Slow Step Towards Bliss, ASJ-0.1, In A Moment, Watching Earth, Echoes From A Distant Horizon, Drift – the title track –, As Blue As The Sky and It Is What It is. A fine, elegant and sophisticated easy listening electronic ambient music album, Drift wisely propitiates to its listeners the possibility to dive in a mysterious, consistent and eloquent, but wonderfully serene universe of tranquility, peaceful thoughts and relaxation. An intense album that marvelously creates a pure atmosphere of delightful rest and easiness, you are invited to relieve all your tiredness in a formidable and translucent source of sonorous light.   

A fine, delicate and expressively soft record, Drift has everything necessary to make a marvelous, intense and cohesive electronic ambient music album. With soul, veracity of content and an intricate sense of artistry, the music on Drift has everything to steal your mind, and drive away your thoughts to the most distant horizons of the universe.     

Of course, on the other hand, there is nothing on this album that you haven’t heard a thousand times before, if you are an ardent enthusiast of the genre. But while certainly there isn’t anything new or extravagant about this album, Drift emphasizes the beauty, the brilliance, the sonorous eloquence, the expansive melodic range and the harmonious elegance of the genre; all of these qualities executed with a formidable technique, that highly fulfills all the basic and most preponderant proposals expected from this type of music.   

A beautiful album perfect to be appreciated when you are completely alone at night, in the darkness of your room, Drift will certainly lead you through the most overwhelming, fantastic and fascinating uninhabited spheres of the universe, enabling the listener to explore an imponderable and delightful galactic vastness, assembled in a magnificent sonorous journey that will extract fabulous feelings and sensible places that where within you the whole time, but in a dormant state. The soft, sincere magic of The Gnome’s music will wake up the graceful symphony that is hidden inside yourself.    


Wagner