by Wagner

black metal

Storm Borrower is an EP released in mid-May by Slovenian atmospheric black metal project Veldes. Almost thirty-four minutes long, the work has three relatively extensive tracks: The Songless Forest, the title track, Storm Borrower and Where Rivers Turn To Ashes. With its genuinely poetic, gentle, reflexive and profound style, exceedingly philosophic and resigned in nature, Veldes has a very peculiar, insightful and dispersive outlook on atmospheric black metal, his genre of choice. 
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With singular and very expansive premises, basically sinister in nature – but that has its energy entirely concentrated on beautiful and melancholic melodies –, on this work, Veldes present to its audience three personal anthems of sad and dismissive, but peaceful majesty, that comes as one with the nature and the cosmogony of his restless mind. As an infinite lugubrious crisis that revolves around the epicenter of its own demise, the persistently serene, but profoundly pungent melodies present on Storm Borrower reveals an experienced and wisely skilled artist, that knows how to convert with dense precision all the sensitivities of his heart into a deeply elusive, giant and delicate sonorous art. Definitely, a work that elevates the genre into an entirely new standard of creative lucidity, highlighting the beautiful propensities of its fantastic qualities. 

black metal

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Foragt is a two songs EP released recently by Danish black metal project Angantyr. A little less than twelve minutes long, the record is very concise, with only two tracks – Foragt and Knækkede Knogler, Brækkede Ben – that brings back and rescues what raw black metal really is, and really should always sound like. With powerfully rude rhythms, vigorous and nervous intensity, tremendously sinister harmonies and an astoundingly rapid musical pace, the work is simple, objective and direct, but certainly has exponential qualities that lives up to the most ardent and crucial elements of the genre. Despite the fact that Foragt doesn’t present any innovations, the work compensates its lack of audacity executing and exhibiting with masterful precision one of the most relevant works on contemporary traditional black metal. While the conventional elements do prevail, the vast degree of loyalty the artist has to the genre is showcased in a very competent, decent, furious, dense and skilled musical labor, that presents at the genuine cohesion of its sonorous integrity the full comprehension of what black metal truly is, for real.  

black metal / avant garde

Echoes of the Past is an EP released in May by epic and atmospheric black metal group Kaatarakt, from Geneva, Switzerland. Twenty two minutes long, the record has five tracks: the title track, Echoes of the Past, The Gathering, Màttr Ok Megin, Little Troll's Tale and Sunless Dawn. With a formidable, gracious, colorful and brilliant perception of artistry, the high level of originality displayed by the group certainly is impressive. Breaking boundaries and virtually consecrating to all the diversifying components of their music a more majestic and imperially sensible degree of creativity, Kaatarakt works with a tremendously great capacity and synergy elements of symphonic, folk and Viking metal; and does that with such a confidence, that they wonderfully display in the sound a very singular style of their own. 
With furious guitar lines, but exceedingly poetic harmonies, that understands and conglomerates the palpable agitation of their vividly intuitive and agglutinating musical perceptions, Echoes of the Past is a wonderfully original, splendid and marvelously conceived musical work. Certainly, it’s has in abundance all the necessary qualities to captivate the attention of ardent enthusiasts of more genuinely avant-garde styles of metal. 

black metal

The Winter Silence is a four tracks EP, released by atmospheric black metal act Remete on May 18. Although extremely simple on its surface, and in the general display of its melancholic sensibility, the work is creatively conceived, and decently executed. Exploring deeply the greatest attributions of the genre, in a collision of imponderable vicissitudes upon which its harmonies dissipate throughout the blackness of a lost and lugubrious universe, The Winter Silence is a sonorous ode to spiritual loneliness and solitary desolation, almost a sacred, silent and discreet anthem to human obliteration on the vastness of infinity. A sentiment perfectly echoed by the second track – that can be described basically as an almost acoustic line of resigned affliction –, upon which the next track is like a heavier and dense continuation. A very interesting, calm and profoundly conceived work of art, that really understands and explores in a majorly creative fashion the most salutary qualities and devices of the genre, The Winter Silence definitely is a spectral lancination of fatidic void and intermittent anxiety, beautifully conceived at the height of a hallucinatory – but vividly sonorous and tense – dark realm of silent despair.    

post rock

Omina is the title of an EP released in the beginning of May by Italian post rock group Augure. Very concise, having only eighteen minutes, and three tracks – Grunesfeld, Eis and Tides Tale – the work has an elegant, sober, precise, expansive and lucid musical perception. Its harmonies display cohesion, intensity and emphatic graciosity, although at the same time a lethargic, tense and heavier sense of depressive anxiety seems to penetrate subtlety onto the voracious vitality of the harmonies, enticing to its latent and disruptive, but blurred designation of reality a melancholic principle, which is greater than what was initially conceived. Although the work is concise, it certainly gives a vast insight about the full potential of the group, which is certainly promising and, to a moderate degree, tremendously impeccable – at the least in their formidable level of technical proficiency – since the band incisively demonstrates that knows with plain authority what they are doing, and what they are capable of. 

black metal

Songs of Mourning is a three songs EP released by atmospheric black metal act Forlorn Citadel. A beautiful, very sinister and incisive EP, permeated by a dense, inescapable and furious – yet exceedingly subtle – atmosphere, the music, despite the echoes of its straightforward simplicity, has a consistent and profound anatomy, sidelined by the specter of peculiar and gracious harmonies. With a generally calmer and despondent melodic layout, almost somnolent at the contiguous and irreplaceable patience of its melancholy realm, Songs of Mourning lives by the height of its title, transmitting to the listener the sentiment of grief upon which its music softly relies. A pure, direct and simple, but gracefully conceived atmospheric BM EP, its precious qualities certainly revolves around the surreal macabre symphonies of its discreet grandiosity, that echoes on the peaceful harmonies of its somewhat restless dissidence the oblivious diligence of its musical twilight.          

black metal

With amazingly great, ascendant and sober guitar lines, and exceedingly impulsive, rational and flexible, but wonderfully delineated melodies, Cult of a Dying Sun is an album released by American black metal act Uada, on May 25. Almost one hour of sinister and grotesquely insane harmonies – that conspicuously guides the listener into the descending blackness of an agonizing realm of emptiness, despair and loneliness – Uada has a tremendously vigorous, impulsive and surreal degree of originality, which encompasses an elaborate sense of timing, and marvelously written melodies, impeccably executed at the dense ordeal of its ferocious twilight of irrevocable abominations. 
The sagacity of their direct style can be described as rejuvenating, intense and astoundingly lucid, being permeated by the logic of a dense and fresh tenacity, that embellishes the ostensibly voracious and antagonizing sonorous perception dispersed by the group’s sophisticated technique. Being a primordially poetic, melancholic and intense artistic milestone from the beginning until its conclusion, Cult of a Dying Sun certainly deserves to be highlighted as one of the most excruciatingly pleasant, elaborated, authentic and elemental black metal records of the year.   

ambient / drone / post rock

Nineteen minutes long, having four tracks – Induction, Displacement, Awareness and Realization – Induction is an EP released by a musician from India, which presents himself by the nom de plume of Phet. With elusive and melancholic harmonies that incisively transpose the epicenter of evasively somber textures and densely consecrated harmonies, the lurid walls of sound created by the artist are consistently dense, sober and almost palpable. With a rich and colorful conjuncture of melodies that obey what appears to be an ascendant logic of greatly punctuated resonances, the general musical layer found in Induction is simple, but brilliantly conceived and executed. With a deliberate convergence of elements that ably works altogether to dilapidate the genre, and achieve the best result possible, Phet masters the glorious lucidity of a singular style that circulates within the sensibility of its own apex. Wonderfully achieving a full creative labor that definitely has understood the anatomy of its sonorous principles, Phet has proved with this concise, but impactful EP, that he certainly has what it takes to be a major reference in the underground scene.    




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Selection and reviews by Wagner

I already received plenty of these neat collector items, so many that I must have missed some over the course of time. So, in a way of both making up to that and to support a hard working quality label, I decided to combine a bunch of their releases into one big Brieviews special. I guess the word "ambient" will appear quite often on this page, which obviously is another reason why I like this label so much. 

bandcamp

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bandcamp

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Written by Serge

jazz / ambient / electronic

To ambient aficionados, ECM addicts and electronic music fans, the name Jon Hassell will certainly ring a bell. Countless of solo releases and collaborations with the likes of Björk, Talking Heads, Carl Craig and Brian Eno have rightfully given him the "pioneer of electronic music" title. 

Now, he returns with his first solo album in nine years, to be released on his own new imprint Ndeya. This label will publish new material as well as selected archival releases. So perhaps 'Listening To Pictures', a sweet blend of ambient, electronic music and jazz can be seen as a new start in solo recording.

"Pentimento" means: Alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his or her mind as to the composition during the process of painting. Musicians face something similar. Compositions can alter, change and evolve over time with only vague traces of the initial composition still present. Ambient and jazz have always been compared to (landscape) painting and with good reason. They share many similarities, which explains people's often ecstatic reaction to either a song or a piece of art. Somehow it feels like that is exactly what Jon Hassell has been doing on this album, changing, altering, reworking. 

There are eight tracks on this album, each on with its own identity and speciality. Perhaps it's not surprise then that different acts and artists come to mind with each tune. Opener 'Dreaming' has a similar feels as many Biosphere tracks. 'Picnic' throw that sound into an Autechre branded blender and goes wild on the glitches. 'Slipstream' takes me to the reals of acts like Zoviet France and O Yuki Conjugate. I love the percussion in this track. So far in this album, 'Slipstream' is my favorite, even when the jazz influences come shining through. 'Al Kongo Udu' is another favorite, an exotic and adventurous ambient tune.

On 'Pastorale Vassant' we go all jazzy with the nervous percussion and the free floating soundscapes. Perhaps this is one of the most experimental sounding tracks on this album, definitely not the most radio friendly but it still is an interesting entity to have floating through the room. 'Manga Scene' is what would have happened if Autechre and Dale Cooper did a jamsession, or Sknail of course. Glitch jazz is almost always awesome. 'Her First Rain' gently follows that example. And yups, I've turned this thing into a song-by-song thing. Well, in that case, 'Ndeya' is up to you to discover. All I'm going to say is that it's definitely worth it and that counts for this entire album. 


​Serge

various

One swallow doesn’t make a summer. These words remind us of the sad reality that it is to try to change the world without any support... However, if you are the owner of an independent musical label that made a beautiful charity proposal and dozens of talented artists gave support to your idea, a beautiful sunny week will happen! This is the case of the 'Exhibition' compilation, conceived and released by Submarine Broadcasting Company label (UK), where the profits from the sale of all seven volumes (I said that many artists supported the project) will be donated to The Shaw Mind Foundation, an institution focused on mental health. The compilation's theme is folklore, going from local legends to famous Chupacabras. In addition, three colors separate the seven volumes accordingly to their aesthetics!

Red color indicates that the tracks are the most experimental, so be prepared for any kind of music/sounds that artists had imagined in their minds!

Green color is used for sonorities between experimental and radio-friendly, like ambient music and instrumental music with melodic features!

Blue color is for radio-friendly songs, going from rock to pop and electro!

This is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to listen to musicians from different styles/locations around the world, because there are MANY hours of music with a name-your-price payment. When it comes to charity, any money is very welcome, as long as it fits in your budget and be donated with love, like the music made by each of the more than fifty artists who participated in this project! As powerful as immaterial, music in the right hands can make the difference with compassion and brotherly love. This definitely makes me very happy and hopeful with art! I sincerely hope that you feel the same when participating of this beautiful action, whether listening to the compilation or making a donation of any value!


Glauber

post-metal / doom / alternative rock

dark jazz / ambient / experimental / trip hop

hardcore

acoustic blues

dark ambient / noise

doom / occult metal

death metal

black metal / doom / death metal

post punk / synth pop

breakcore / industrial

alternative rock / blues

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style of Tool and quite a bit of grunge - vocals that remind of Cobain included. So go buy this one if you appreciate something that refuses to fit into one box.

ambient / experimental

Pany Rosas Discos

ambient / drone / post rock

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Fader is an ambient and drone musical project, consisting of the combined efforts of an American and a Bulgarian musician. On May 4th, they released their most recent work, titled The Last Years. With exceedingly poetic, surreal and transcendental musical overtones, the album is fifty-one minutes long, and has eight tracks: Coptic, Following the Shade, Wrapped in Wool, Invisible Marks, Voidless, (Elysian Light), Vaquero, and the title track, The Last Years. A very serene and calm musical experiment, The Last Years is characterized primarily by a functional vitality of organic intensity, that comprehends and circulates over the intangible accords of its own placidity the levitating nature of its deeply consistent and flavored harmonious presence.   

With a sentimental purpose that anticipates the linear solidarity of its serene stature, the sound of The Last Years, although exceedingly predictable at the axis of its evolving preamble, is thoroughly charismatic as well as pragmatic. Its strong sense of resilience certainly evokes an intensely human everlasting hope, that emerges from beyond the waves of its gracious sense of peculiar infinity. Touching upon melodies that engrave over the omniscient presence of life its affinity for dramatic and dense intonations, The Last Years’ sonorous style is surrounded by a pungent gravity that ostensibly intimidates the duality of its dilapidated precipices of functional creativity, in the impalpable colors of precisely filtering allegorical harmonies.

A sound perfect to dream, to relax, even to sleep – although it is not monotonous –, The Last Years proclaims over the conscience of the listener the ambition to take over an enormous journey towards a more reflexive and simple perspective of existence, where everything has to be calm, to be felt as precisely as the melodies deliver their peculiar reading of realities. On the technical aspects, despite its overwhelming simplicity, the style of the duo is clearly built on a diagram of extravagant sensitivity, where the sound functions primarily as a soft vehicle to a more comprehensive state on the perfection of serenity.   

Although you can’t expect exactly anything new about The Last Years on the grounds of innovation, the record is an interesting exemplar of organic ambient music, and does expose with a formidable degree of competence the traditional qualities of the music, working along on its wall of sound a major density of continuous tonalities. This album certainly can be felt as a pathway to conquer and to enjoy a more glorious venture on the acquisition of sensibility. 


Wagner

post rock / neoclassical / ambient

Ashes of the Past is an album released on May 16, by Iranian post rock/neoclassical ambient group Crows in the rain. An epic, dense and very colorful masterpiece, a little more than two hours in length, with eleven extensive tracks, the work is very long. The songs are the following: Beyond The Flying Mountains, Meteorite Shower, Lights In Front Of A Dead Sea, For A World That Sounds Like It's Meaning, She, Requiem For A Dreamer, 12/26, Cosmic Dawn, Running Through Paradoxical Dreams (Live in Azadi Tower), I Will Build The Future On The Ashes Of Past Memories and Rain Will Come. With lucid, proverbial and vivid peculiarities, that really deserves a profound appreciation, Ashes of the Past is a very slow, smooth, easy listening and reflexive album, that gently invites the listener to embark almost literally in a sensitive journey to another dimension – to a very secretive, dormant and singular continent of existence – to rest in some place where the divinities of nature, usually excessively distant from the ordinary grievances of the present, finally appear in abundance, to refresh your approach on life.   

With exceedingly soft and outspoken harmonies, the work seems to depart from the unexpected infinity of its inherent and soft nature; here, the listener has to participate in the cinematic perceptions of the sensibility of the music, as the sound evolves from one personal universe to another, denoting the omniscient ambivalence of its melodic purposes with an almost restless and deliberate plausibility. With straightforward serenity and calmness, the music present on Ashes of the Past is severely relevant within its own perspective, as it grows from a sidereal necessity that understands – and explores with subtle intelligence, talent and patience – the perfection of the sound hidden in the silent veracity of harmonious audacities.     

With a sound that oscillates between the verges of post rock, neoclassical and ambient – but probably doesn’t bothering at all with labels and categories – the ecstatic and gracious music of Crows in the rain is a discreet journey into the most esoteric areas of infinity. Deeply resurfacing on harmonious conjunctures that exhibits at the twilight of its own reverberation the continuous atmosphere of a placid existential intuition, the style of the group is severely expansive and impulsive, but restrained at the silence of its own enigmatic sonorous frontiers. Astoundingly innovative and fearlessly original, Crows in the rain fulfills at the axis of its imaginary devices the resolution of their own genuine sonorous affability.  

Despite the general simplicity on the structure of the music, the style of the group is intriguing and profoundly creative. Working some minimalist tendencies as well, their technical competence and timing also highlights itself strongly, denoting for the composition of this work a whimsical dedication, whose final result certainly advocates the excellence of their phenomenal, but exceedingly dilapidated qualities.  
 
Despite the fact that Ashes of the Past is a very beautiful album, it’s more recommended to audiences who already enjoy a great familiarity with the genre. As the rhythm of the album is severely calm and slow, it certainly will sound monotonous for people who aren’t used to this kind of music. Nevertheless, for its entire run, Ashes of the Past resounded the tempestuous brilliance of its formidable creativity and originality, certainly deserving a special place of honor on the history of ambient rock music. 


Wagner

krautrock / psychedelic 

psychedelic rock / krautrock / neo folk

doom / blues

techno

electronic / darkwave

shoegaze

death metal

ambient / downtempo / post rock

death metal / power metal

americana / alternative rock / indie

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stoner metal

drone / ambient / experimental

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Several years ago, when I first entered the world of experimental music, I became fascinated with the seemingly endless possibilities of live improvisation. Until then, I had seen many concerts, mostly rock and metal bands performing their pre-rehearsed stuff on a pre-built stage. That was all fine and interesting but I soon learned that there were other concerts too. My first non-stage event was in a backyard, organised by a friend of mine. Then I watched a band in a living room. Later in an old fort, and abandoned factory, somewhere in the woods, a train wagon, a WWII bunker, a basement. Suddenly, live music was possibly everywhere and one-man acts popped up like mushrooms. 

The Netherlands are very good at that. There, everything can be a music venue. That is why that country has such a strong and growing experimental music scene. The Dutch gave us groundbreaking noise acts like De Fabriek, Machinefabriek, Kristus Kut and so on and I guess I can easily add Owlbites to that list. This act, formed by Thanos Fotiadis, fishes in the same pool as the aforementioned acts. He as played in the same surprising venues as his colleagues and his music is just as uncompromising too.

The two lengthy compositions on this album have been recorded in January 2018. They are live improvisations, another one of those huge advantages of being an experimental noise act. Frankly, Thanos does whatever he likes, inspired by the surroundings, the reactions of the audience and the array of equipment he brought. The result is an intense and immersive blend of drone, noise and ambient soundscapes, opening with a spoken word introduction on how to fully appreciate the weird and unusual sounds you are about to experience.

While track one, 'The Meditative State', is an hypnotic and often harsh composition, 'Nature Is Satan's Church' seems to take on a more gentle approach, driving on droning strings. The first track feels synthetic, industrial while the other delves into distorted guitars after a while. I can surely imagine this concert as an intense and well-varied musical trip, one that I will definitely enjoy. So yeah, I think it's only natural that I recommend this album to all fans of gritty and creepy ambient music, especially those who often dive deep into the waters of noise.


​Serge

ambient / post rock

Travelling can have serious effects on people, so it seems. Back in 2010, Sébastien Touraton made a trip to Iceland. He was so impressed by the breathtaking beauty of Sigur Ros' and Olafur Arnalds' country that, once back in France, he decided to create a piano-driven ambient project.
That project is heklAa and it's highly influenced by classical music, post rock, ambient and movie scores. Perhaps, taking all of the aforementioned information in consideration, it might be no surprise that at first listen heklAa sounds like something between Olafur Arnalds and Sigur Ros, but better and I'll tell you why.


The EP contains four tracks, opening with the title song '14971'. Yes, "song". There are vocals on this record. People who know me, know how I feel about vocals, especially in post rock related music. I don't like them in Sigur Ros, I didn't like them on Arnalds' 'For Now I Am Winter' album but I love them here.  Sébastien Touraton did a fantastic job with these. Furthermore, and then I'll stop comparing this EP to those two acts, heklAa delivers a darker sound, one that comes close to acts like Le Seul Element or Blackfilm. And that I do like.

'The Sky Below' is probably my favorite track on this EP, but once again that is not an easy choice to make. I just think this is an outstanding set of ambient compositions, sometimes introvert and calm, sometimes epic and dramatic. And I am damn sure that several tears will flow with the breathtaking 'the road has been leading to you, always'. So yeps, I recommend this one to all fans of slow, emotional and immersive music because this is a perfect example of how great that kind of music can become...


​Serge