ambient / experimental / avantgarde

Unexplained Sounds Group

There are people on this planet, with a devotion for music, who are willing to dig as deeply as possible into the underground scene. The result of  Rafaelle Pezzalla (also active as Sonologyst)digging is almost unlikely. The sympathetic Italian is the driving force and seeker of the Unexplained Sounds Group label, which focuses entirely on the contemporary experimental and alternative electronic music of our overpopulated planet.

With the new Unexplained Sounds Group release 'Anthology of Contemporary Music from Middle East' he presents a new chapter of the Sound Mapping project with special attention to non-Western countries, following the selection of contemporary electronic music from the African continent.

This compilation focuses on experimental and alternative music from the Middle East and includes artists from Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Afghanistan and Cyprus. This anthology shows a very interesting look at the productions sounds of artists rooted in their traditions with a progressive look at the new limits of their music.

These (as yet unknown) sound paths explore both experimental and radical improvisation, disturbed electronic tribal sonic structures, and psychedelic noise-drone escapades that sublimate the grains of sand in steaming ground breaking soundscapes. Anthology of Contemporary Music from Middle East reveals here an incredible sound puzzle in which the listener will find his favorite way to new places of architectural music constructions.

Speaking of a musical mind fuck, this compilation is a must for fans of experimental and cross-border electronic music. We have been stunned by this collection in a supernatural way. Top!

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Patsker

ambient / experimental / avantgarde

Unexplained Sounds Group

And yes, the sound mapping series of the Unexplained Sounds Group continues. After more than three years, the CD version of the previously only digital Persian experimental underground survey, focusing on experimental and alternative music from Iran, is finally out since November 30th 2019. 

Rafaelle Pezzalla had a lot of help from inside the Tehran scene to discover and compile this unique compilation. The artists delivered shining musical diamonds that have an eclectic content and various emotions. We were immersed in experimental electronic sounds, avant-garde, drones and ambient. The roots of the artists are woven in their sound sculptures and breathing rare buoyant atmospheres.

More known names in the genre, like Alphaxone and Xerxes the Dark have already released work on the American dark ambient label Cryo Chamber. The digital version of Anthology of Persian Experimental Music contains four bonus tracks. Reza Solatipour delivers to our opinion, without question, the most intriguing bonus track. The dark drones, mystical electronic pulses and a wide range of unique voices display an amazing world of deep sound ambiance.

For more than two thousand years the Persians had already developed and imprinted the core of the theoretical framework in the music of Middle Eastern origin still valid to this day. The local underground scene explores the ancient sound vibrations with a new vision and modern approach without losing their identity. The abstruse and complex quality tracks provide a soul-searching survey in the avant-garde music of Iran. We could only think of one word to end this review: brilliant!

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Patsker

ambient

When creating a minimalist album everything has to surrender the approach you take for such an album cannot simply “be made” - it needs a framework in order to make sense of itself. It is nothing you can simply do, right? Hell, no! Sometimes minimalist recordings can be created out of nothing, but only if the people involved know what they do and how they need to do it. Simpletons cannot create minimalist music for improvising such an abstract version of music needs a lot of skill, knowledge, craftsmanship and experience. 

Fabio Anile and Michael Peters, two very experienced musicians with more than 50 years of making music shared between them, are such connoisseurs and aptly skilled instrumentalists stemming from very different backgrounds. While Fabio was trained in composing and performing classical music, Michael comes from the rather avant-garde corner of punk and direct interaction. Both artists share a sense of closeness when performing together, which they did over a longer period of time. The recording of “Presence” took eight years, probably because they did not follow a pattern but improvised everything together which, of course, is pretty difficult considering you must really get a feel for where your partner “is heading” with this one sound and this one idea. 

When you combine that with an immense feeling for beauty, for just the right amount of using the elements of Peters’ guitar (looped through some effects and such, sometimes even certain software) or the right pressure on Anile’s keys (also incorporating field recordings of natural sounds) in order to make it sound like a perfect soundtrack to a day off in the dark, newly erect skyscraper before it’s being furnished or amidst the rain in a dense, moss-covered wood with the first rays of sunlight just stretching through the clouds and touching you while simultaneously the last drops splash heavily onto your shoulders and neck.

This is a really, really beautiful ambient album made by two musicians who know themselves, their instrument and each other so well that the product inevitably had to be either a forerunner for next year’s album of the year among post-rock and ambient fans or a late dark horse for this year’s lists full of such sounds and spaces.


Thorsten

Winter-Light is a Dutch label specialized in ambient, experimental and drone soundscapes. During the year 2019 the label released a number of high quality productions like Rapoon, Sysselmann, NIMH and Abbildung. We took with pleasure the time to listen further and deeper in their beautiful catalogue of 2019.

drone / dark ambient

Trances is the sequel to the album Zwischenwelten of the German drone artist Seetyca. The album was conceived and recorded during several summers. No warm seasonal tunes appeared, on the contrary, deep and dark signals of winter spheres are introduced on this mysterious album. The drones and soundscapes shiver like sharp ice rain slicing away the last pieces of the so hopeful winter light. Trances is a hypnotic piece of work with a lot of hidden layers like piano sounds, distorted humming and floating soundscapes, proving that Seetyca is a sound wizard like no other.  We were very pleased with the mental climate change this album induced. Trances is a detailed beauty on ice.

dark ambient

With chiming bells on a bed of dark drones presented on the first track, Rngmnn introduces his new work. RNGMNN aka Ronny Engmann from Germany, previously released albums on Noctivagant and Reverse Alignment, as well as a collaborative release on Cryo Chamber with Dronny Darko. Arctic Interference contains eight tracks with polar ambiance ranging from drifting pieces to tight, rhythmic and dark pulsating soundscapes. The industrial moods lurk behind the corner of this sharp edged electronic release. The tracks were recorded in the month of December, over a period of five years. RNGMNN uses field recordings, elements of percussion, samples and darkened electronic paths creating a desolated world where the only orientation point is the silence behind the ocean of sound structures RNGMNN produced. An awesome album for the darker parts of life.

ambient

The music of Kloob beholds profundity. Barcelona based Dani Kloob focuses his creativity in deep ambient music since 2010. Unpredictable Signs is a fascinating descent into a maze of cryptic caves. The ambient soundscapes howl like eroding winds against the damp walls. Kloob uses all kinds of manipulated voices and field recordings to detail his compositions. Perplexing sound structures amplify the feeling of never coming back to the surface. This recording feels like entering a bottomless chasm without beginning or end. Kloob created an irresistible mesmerizing world filled with soft drones and refined electronic tunes. We are obligated to say that this ravishing album is very addictive.

ambient / experimental

Atomine Elektrine is a project of Peter Andersson, the artist behind the Swedish dark ambient project raison d’être. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious analogue computer, Peter Andersson  bundles his experiences as a sound creator in a new project. The enormous variety in approach and experiment with electronic based sounds makes this album not that easy to absorb. The Antikythera Mechanism sounds like cosmic clock, not only questioning time with creative squeaking and ticking of sprockets, but also using soundscapes, exploratory accents, glitch and sequencing. The result is a unique multidimensional melting of enigmatic sounds with a slight dark and edgy punk attitude. The Antikythera Mechanism is also available on vinyl and CD.  


​Patsker

ambient / folk

A band that is as much Wardruna, Heilung and Tenhi as it is Boards of Canada, Plaid and Tim Hecker is definitely a very interesting idea. Often there are musical realms whose ideas or rather the concepts which they indirect represent are in a way diametric. Pagan folk is a music tied to a world long gone, lost before the Dark Ages and the final rise of Christianity after the first millenium AD. Ambient artists on the other hand are very often associated with a futuristic idea of mankind, a mankind post-mankind where a kind of mechanical, spherical interpretation of human life and interaction has become the norm. 

Now sometimes a band can combine such disconnected realms and thus challenge our concepts of music and what is stands for. Osi and the Jupiter, the two-man project from the woods and hills of Ohio is such a band. Fronted by multi-instrumentalist/singer Sean Kratz, the band is able to purvey such an authentic image of Scandinavian pagan music that it is not primarily ritualistic like Heilung’s but rather contemplative like Wardruna’s that one can hardly believe that Kratz and his companion Kakophonix (what a stage name!) are from North America. You need to listen very closely to the vocal parts in order to hear some kind of American accent. 

The attentive reader will challenge my notion of an ambient act – and that might even be true, but there are moments of ambient in this record. Listen to the soft pluckering and spacious background for opening track “Fjörgyn” or the intro to “Nordlige Eik Tre”. This is definitely ambient but they are so perfectly surrounded by natural sounds like a violin or even some field recordings that it is really hard to grasp the electronic nature of these sounds. And that is something where I must admit being a bit awestruck by Osi and the Jupiter. They combine these two worlds and in some way it makes sense. The pagan origins of their music and the post-Christian idea of ambient music blend in their denial of values dictated by the Roman church and all its antecedents. This is a kind of post-modern pagan music, connecting two different sound systems with equally anti-Roman ideals and an idea of mankind trying to look for its lost destiny. An idea deeply rooted in the notion that man must live in connection to nature – but not deny the beauty of modern achievements. Eisenwald Tonschmiede has released yet another eclectic non-hectic musical masterpiece. 


Thorsten

ambient / black metal / experimental

Mosaic – a word for a stone puzzle picture comprised of hundreds of colored stones that only makes  sense when looking at the whole picture. Band names should not be overestimated but with Mosaic from Eastern Germany the name is really a namesake. This album is as much medieval market square as it is modern black metal auditorium, as much ritualistic wooden-ness as it is metallic clang in the modern world. There are lyrics that are as simplistic as “Come on!” but there are also lines where famous poets are quoted and their words interwoven with those of mastermind Martin van Valkenstijn. 

Martin is not only the composer and singer for Mosaic, he’s also a multi-talented guy who plays the majority of the instruments on the record himself – some clearly old-fashioned and medieval like the Nordic lur, others as normal as for example the bass guitar. He also recorded the field recordings for the record which is to be released soon via Eisenwald Tonschmiede and which shows a very cleverly arranged mix of black metal and medieval scants. 

However, van Valkenstijn doesn’t like being alone in the recording studio so he invited numerous guests including his wife or genre reps like Werian-drummer D.E. or Empyrium’s Schwadorf. Those artists comply with his line of thought and his wish to deliver another blackened medieval folklore record that hardly faces competition this year because of its brilliant songwriting, for example in “Ambrosia XIX” when simple bagpipe sounds are interwoven with deep chords and enchanted vocals just before the modern clever singular drum kicks set in and the track flows into a totally different direction yet never forgetting where it started. 

One might argue that for a band so obsessed with lyrics the vocals are too far in the back of the mix but at the same time it should be noted that they can be read off from the lyrics sheet so that you still get an impression of Martin’s love for literature which he also displayed on All Saints’ Day publishing a musical cover of Georg Trakl’s poem “Allerseelen”. But on the other hand one should note his musical vision: His music is part of a ritual, sung around a fire by the bard. 

The idea of a mosaic is on full blast here as every bit of a song is as well-structured as the others. Martin van Valkenstijn is really able to set another stone into his very personal mosaic giving us a brilliant collection of new songs. 


Thorsten

electronic / space ambient

Exosphere Music

Woodland Structure is an album released on October 27, by Exosphere, a sublabel of American Synphaera Records. Work of British-based space ambient sound artist Sean Costello — under the alias Isostatic —, Woodland Structure is a formidably serene, magnificent work of art, whose delightfully pleasant, sometimes lethargic sonorous atmospheres conceive a world of homogeneous tranquility, where everything is made to renew calmness as a primary element of reality, but without renouncing to the exhilarating power of sensible harmonious dissonances, that reinvigorates the dispersive fragrances of the melodies, to be perceived as a distinct degree of colorful vitalities.  

With eight tracks — 1) Canopy; 2) Woodland Wakes; 3) Hollow Oak; 4) Falling Leaf; 5) Glade; 6) Sycamore Seeds; 7) Ash; 8) Woodland Sleeps; — the general anatomy of the music is simple, but full of vitality and splendor; with a creative guideline that can be as profusely versatile as discreetly diffuse, the artist's proficiency is displayed on the technical sensibilities and stylistic expansion of the melodies, that anticipates the major horizontal distinctions between the restless boundaries of the harmonies, and the serene formalism of the musical tonalities, that imperceptibly converge to make the sound more dilated, cohesive and clean, as the essence of its consistency gradually becomes more and more defined. 

The salutary serenity of the harmonies dive deep into the dark realm of its sonorous vicissitudes; but with an impeccable technical disposition, Isostatic delivers to the listener a more virtuous version of reality, that is entirely subjugated by the proverbial sensibilities of sound. With a subjective system of dispersive possibilities delineated by an intricate pattern of smooth sonorous cosmogonies, the musical diagram established by the artist can be perceived as being somewhat restricted, given the structural standards of his continuously expanding atmospheres; nevertheless, the abstract tensions subtly dispersed by his diligently sculpted harmonious configurations deliberately increases the value of his spectral dissonances, that grow over the renitent distensions of its own dense and dynamic vastness. 

With amazingly crafted tracks — that reverberates over the vicinities of its own splendid and serene, but distinctive and protuberant densities —, Woodland Structure, by Isostatic, is one of the most marvelous, pungent and genuinely sensible records recently released by Exosphere. With a vigorously impeccable and consistent, but at the same time soft and organic atmosphere, Isostatic conceives a delightful world of personal solitude, where everything that is human is celebrated in an introspective realm of purely existential fugacious light. 


Wagner

experimental / electronic / dark ambient / ambient / noise 

Nostalgie De La Boue

The world is all that is​.​.. is the most recent release by German electronic underground experimental noise artist Hans Castrup. With six tracks — The concept of sinking, Popular imagination, Full of used notes, Paradox difference, Clarification of geometry and Upon a hill —, on this work, like his previous albums, Hans continues to dive deep into a realm of lugubrious, melancholic and sinister sound experiences, where he clearly heads towards a stylistic direction of impious, responsive, nihilist and fatalist demise. Each and every album released by Hans Castrup seems to be the perfect soundtrack for a H.P. Lovecraft horror story. 

Already in the first track, the dense, epic and monumental The concept of sinking, we clearly see that the artist — deliberately or not — establishes his creative efforts towards a prominently dark ambient musical cosmogony. With pulsating, almost afflictive sonorous reverberations, the sensitive pluralism that emanates from the expansive and digressive agonies that subtlety comes out of these tracks certainly makes this album one of the darkest in the artist's discography. 

Nevertheless, there is also a lighter side in the music — albeit ostensibly dispersive —, that sounds as a more discreet, reasonable, proverbial uneasiness allocated in the background, that ocasionally flirts with our projective sensibilities, gracefully establishing an harmonious pattern that can be as decisively obscure as it is delightfully stimulating. 

The music gradually reveals itself as it is: as complex — in the darker depths of its relentless and dissolute darkness —, as it is majestically simple and objective, in the way it calmly delivers its pungent and uneventful dimension of poingnant mortality smoothly to the listener. Just as impressive is Hans' remarkable ability to progressively reinvent his music with more diluted elements, while never losing his virtuous and graceful sonorous identity. 

With the conception of an exceedingly dense, cohesive and robust musical atmosphere, it looks like Hans Castrup has crafted The world is all that is​.​.. as a pervasive parallel dimension destitute of acessible colorful sensibilities, whose mandatory elements are all indebted to a relentless and abrasive sonorous tissue, made entirely of an unforgiving, infinite and ruthless demise. 

As the perfect sonorous background for a surreal hallucinatory black and white alternate reality — like the ones shown in old sixties television anthology series like The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond —, the music conceived on this marvelous album by Hans Castrup transports us to a whole different, more diluted, arbitrary and conspicuous diagram of existence, where the fugacious ephemeralities of life seems dormant, because they were never what they seemed to be, in the first place. 

Your sensitivities will be all confused, before they would be entirely configured in a completely different sonorous perception, diametrically opposite to what you had expected. In the end, The world is all that is​.​..  is a fantastic descent into a world of gloom, solitude and demise, without any possibilities to return. 


Wagner

drone / ambient

Sietse Van Erve is already more twenty years active as Orphax and runs the Moving Furniture Records label that is specialized in experimental and electronic music. Circles, his last drone recording, was played live for several years in various forms and growing into a new direction. Van Erve’s found his biggest inspiration in the drone and minimalist work of Eliane Radigue. 

Life Circles has no beginning and no end. This thirty-six minute drone can be played endlessly and dislocating the receiver’s grip of time awareness. Orphax whirring drone patterns have a property to liquefy the surrounding world and intensify the listening experience.  The recordings were made in London and Birmingham, the first one in a relaxing state, the second with uprising tensions. Both registrations were melted together into a strange emotional journey.

To drone or not to drone? Well, at the first listening adventure of Life Circles, the humming sounds had a lack of depth.  Once we used our headphones, the strange world of Orphax was audible and the obvious purpose of the artist was in reach. Life Circles demands a certain input and an open minded view from the listener. 

This sonic adventure will be candy for the ears of the drone lovers, to others this will be only sound. By all means we favorite this recording and enjoyed the sonication of our brain cells. Let us drone again on the endless circles of life. This recording is available on cd and digital formats on the Moving Furniture Records Bandcamp page.

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Patsker

electronic / ambient / post rock

I know, I 'm getting behind on all the albums coming in to review. I'm afraid due to a whole number of different circumstances, some of those releases will eventually get lost in the pile but there are some beauties I definitely want to check out and recommend. Surely, I don't want to miss out on those amazing releases from Sound In Silence, which, throughout the years, have become one of my favorite labels. Their output has been one of an exceptionally high quality, not only because of their stable of talented artists but also because of the recognizable artwork and packaging. So, even though this album dates from July, I need to write about it.

Of course, Wil Bolton is no stranger to Merchants Of Air. For over fifteen years, Wil Bolton has been creating sonic works of art, mostly situated in the ambient scenes. 'Surface Reflections' is his glorious return to Sound In Silence, after the highly acclaimed album 'Whorl' in 2014. Once again, Bolton treats us to enigmatic pieces of music. There are five tracks on this album, good for forty-four minutes of soul warming ambient and blissful meditation. The album opens with the lingering 'Shrouded', which can best be described as a lengthy soundscape.

'In The Air Of The Morning' is a bit more playful but still remains on a gently, soft level. This one comes with an appropriate title as well. You can almost hear the city wake up. You can almost see men and women dragging themselves to their day jobs. In fact, this tune is where I decided to add "post rock" to the set of genres. Although you cannot compare this to bands like Explosions In The Sky or Mogwai, this music has a similar, narrative atmosphere in which you can easily loose your self into.

Even though it mostly follows its predecessors' example, 'Shallows' nudges more towards the noisier side of the ambient spectrum. It seems to drive on static noise, with vague samples and melodies interfering. Something similar can be said from the other tunes, with closer and title track 'Surface Reflections' being the absolute highlight. Soothing yet a tiny bit uneasy, calm yet somewhat impending. That is the music you can find on this excellent album. Ambient fans will know what to do...


​Serge