ambient / soundtrack

Perhaps some artists don't like to read this, but over the years I found some of my favorite albums in the sales-bin at record shops. Quite often, those albums are slightly different than most releases, a bit off-beat and experimental. That is also where I discovered Polish composer Jacaszek. His 2012 album 'Glimmer' was on sale, along with several other ambient and downtempo electronic releases. I spent quite some money that day and I went home with a backpack filled with CDs. From that batch, 'Glimmer' has become one of my favorites and  since then several other Jacaszek releases have been added to my collection. Now, 'Music For Film' will join them.

So, Michal Jacaszek is no stranger in this household. His approach here, a mix of gloomy electronics, ambient, classical music and often glitchy soundscapes feels otherworldly yet soothing. On 'Music For Film', a collection of soundtrack compositions, that trademark is still present, although sometimes it does feel like Jacaszek had a slightly different audience in mind while working on these pieces of music: the movie critics. Most tracks on 'Music For Film' are listener friendly, pushing the strangeness of some earlier releases somewhat to the back.

​Which does not mean that this is a sweet, easy listening album. Opener '49' explores the piano in a melancholic and nostalgic way, aided by mild strings. 'The Iron Bridge', second in line, is one of the weirder tunes. Although it contains a certain rhythm it might be best to categorize these sounds as "musique concrete". 'November Early' feels like a piece of classical music written for dark jazz fans. That being said, I'm one of those dark jazz fans and I absolutely adore this track. 'Twelve Years' is a slow and gloomy piece of work, driving on a sluggish beat and lingering strings.

'Dance' combines mild noise with a chamber orchestra, so it seems, and 'Christ Blood Theme' takes us to dark monasteries. 'Liina' excels in minimalism while, another one of my favorites here, 'Encounter Me in The Orchard' visits mystical lands and biospheres. For the last two tracks, I'll have to repeat the words dark jazz and classical music. Yet, don't worry, they're equally enchanting and interesting as the rest if this album.

So, this is 'Music For Film', not only an excellent album but also a great argument when stating that Michal Jacaszek can easily compete with the Zimmers and Elfmans of this world. He can, believe me. 'Music For Film' contains pieces from Rainer Sarnet’s 2017 black-and-white fantasy drama November and the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants, among others. If you're a fan of either ambient, dark jazz, gloomy electronics or classical music, you need to check this out.


​Serge

black metal / neoclassical

A metal quintet consisting of acoustic guitar, electronic bass, two cellos and violin. A quintet consisting of what? Yeah, right four acoustic instruments and an electric bass. 25 years ago most of us would have smirked at such a lineup in context of harder music. But since Apocalyptica “Plays Metallica by four cellos” this is no hurdle anymore. Then a lot of symphonic metal bands followed a path laid out by some bands like Blind Guardian, Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride. As nowadays anything is possible, it is not astonishing at all to hear a band like Hvile I Kaos. The five-piece from the USA call their style of music Black Ritual Chamber Music. The record is to be released via Red Nebula on December 6th.

The sound is dominated by the two cellos which is not a bad thing as their sometimes pretty sharp intonation definitely purveys a lot of darkness that is being enforced by the violin providing a lot of sonorous melodies that lead you onto a path towards the black light. Interestingly, the guitar and the bass are the least-dominant instruments within the ensemble. 

Interesting about the three tracks (not including the spoken word bonus track “Outro”) is that they are not boring but able to take on a journey starting with “An Inviting Afterglow” and proceeding with the second track “Grand Darkness Engulfs” as the centerpiece with its five different parts. It takes you on a path through a blizzard and up the snowy mountain to the summit. On the other side the snow is thawing under a warm black sun and finally along the glacier is melting and everything is swimming away showing the muddy, washed-up Winter Green – the namesake of the final part “A Shock of Winter Green”. 

Whether we can really call this “black” ritual music remains to be answered individually, however, this is not important at all. This is an instrumental album that is more fun than one could imagine when thinking of its predecessors because it can convince with all its harmonies and flow. A well-conceived composition for bleak rituals. 


​Thorsten

folk / experimental / classical

Another return to the impressive stable of Sound In Silence is 'Human, Insignificant' by Sweeney, the solo project of Jason Sweeney (Panoptique Electrical, Other People’s Children and Simpático). Sweeney has been making music for over twenty years, sometimes solo, sometimes with friends.

With this album, spanning around twenty-six minutes, Sweeney delivers eight emotional songs, all gritty, gloomy and accompanied with piano and soundscapes. The result is something so down to earth that you would think it's unearthly. It's folk, shoegaze and ballad pop, but most of all, it's an assault on your tear glands.

The eight songs here all seem to follow a similar path. In the back ground, you can find unidentified noises and soundscapes while the piano is set on "minimal". Then, Sweeney unleashes his fragile, emotional voice. His vocal style is something between singing and crying, which for some people will hit the exact right spot. For others, this might be a bit too intimate to enjoy to the fullest. For those, I will recommend the title track, which could be one of those illegal recordings of Elvis jamming solo on a drunk Sunday night.

In all, 'Human, Insignificant' is a daring album. It could be a big risk to bask in this melancholic sound because truth is, this is not a happy, joyful album. Yet, if you love what people like Luka Bloom do, plus love to dwell into gloomy classical music, this one will hit your right in the feels. Just listen to the alternative tear jerker 'Desire, Decayed' and you'll know what I mean. If you're in for a 26 minutes lasting emotional cleansing, this album is definitely a must-have...


​Serge

noise / dark ambient / experimental

bandcamp

electronic

dSound In Silence

progressive / metal / black metal

heavy metal / thrash metal

downtempo / electronic / post rock / shoegaze

facebook

psychedelic / doom

sludge / black metal

ambient / modern classical / experimental

bandcamp

drone / doom / noise / experimental

ambient / electronic

noise rock

stoner rock / grunge / alternative rock

facebook

​Serge

ambient / alternative / contemporary / neoclassical

Reminiscence is an album released on March 28, by Swedish soundscape ambient artist Martin Mileros. Forty-eight minutes long, the album has eleven tracks: 1) Map of meaning; 2) Saudade; 3) Sonoluminescence; 4) Hands holding truth; 5) Eternity in an instant; 6) Take us somewhere nice; 7) A place for shelter; 8) Flutter, chaos; 9) Metamorphosis; 10) Distant lights; 11) She soars over the stillness; a beautiful album with incredibly serene, graceful and calmer songs, Reminiscence expresses the pragmatic, though melancholic delicacy of an artist whose despondent soundscapes seems confined to a symbolic, but paradoxically mordacious periphery of solitary and conspicuous desolation, a vortex of resolute arbitrary thinking, where a resonant soul displaces into its nefarious dissidence a conjuncture of simple, but cohesive harmonies,  fulfilled by an inherently salutary and creative consistence, that displays behind its organic synergy an infinite river of vivacious artistry. 

With fantastically dense and sober minimalist tendencies, the music of Martin Mileros has a vigorous, but deeply concentrated dynamic axis, whose creative impetus departs from the vortex of its own lethargic, but omnipotent desolation.  Despite the fact that the music seems almost frozen at certain passages, there is a passionate and virtuous glory that highlights the everlasting possibilities of its discreet melodic vastness, whose expansive tendencies devises a hyperbolic sense of infinity, that rises within the fantastic sensibility of the artist’s spectacular perception of sensorial splendor.  

Almost designing a perfect world of sonorous tranquility and nostalgia, Reminiscence creates a perception of sound that invariably displays the integrity of its own accessible and gentle grandiosity, without ever appearing megalomaniac, pretentious or egocentric – its genuine beauty unveils a fabulous and sensitive degree of sagacious originality, whose creative majesty revolves around the tenderness of a primordially peaceful and introspective style. With a beautiful rhythmic layout that rises from the horizon of perennial and placid, but primordially delicate musical densities, the restless harmonies that graciously rise from the bottom of this lucid universe of unbreakable serenity definitely open the gates of a kingdom of quintessential elements, whose stagnant echoes glances at the most solemn aspirations of the human heart.  

A gracefully conceived work, whose discreetly diluted symphonies depart from the ghostly features of its own melancholic and lugubrious volatilities, the sensible cantilenas that emerge from the imaginative kingdoms of humane glory that best describe the music of Martin Mileros certainly transpose a fragile, but sincerely ardent victory of pungent artistic splendor. Exposing without fear a passionate vulnerability that revolves around the veracity of the human nature, Reminiscence reveals a formidable degree of sensibility, that unequivocally displays a singular talent on the rise. Definitely, Martin Mileros is a superb artist, whose spectacular level of audacity might surprise us all in the future.  

 

Wagner

post rock/ neoclassical / experimental

Emitter is an album released in March 29, by British neoclassical experimental group The Pirate Ship Quintet. One hour long, the album has nine extensive tracks: 1) First; 2) Companion; 3) Third; 4) Emitter; 5) Fifth; 6) Wreath; 7) Seventh; 8) Symmetry Is Dead; 9) Ninth; a formidably exceptional and majestic album, with beautiful, inventive and creative harmonies, the music of The Pirate Ship Quintet can be classified as something of an otherworldly beauty. Its glorious splendor displays majestic melodic devices, that definitely captures and invites the listener to embark in an everlasting journey of sensible and delightful intensity, within an expansive and lugubrious universe of deliverance and rational grace.

An album that you wish never to end, Emitter has predominantly calmer and serene melodies, that underlines its own atmosphere of striking and profound vagueness. With an impeccable technical structure – that expands from the vicinities of its discreet, but mordacious neoclassical aspirations –, the audacious creativity of the band has no limits whatsoever, as you can hear saxophone and cello occasionally, marvelously diluted into the dissonant and almost somnolent horizon of a translucent, expressive and insurgent coldness. 

With a sonorous indolence that is essentially indebted to post rock, all the general additions the band has incorporated into their musical framework proved to be vital and exceedingly functional elements to conceive a very distinctive and singular style. One hour long, the album is never monotonous nor homogeneous; its fortuitous qualities impregnates the proverbially abundant tonalities of its horizontal creative line, that effectively dissipates over its sober artistic cosmogony such a superb level of authenticity, that it’s impossible not to feel astounded while listening this splendid masterpiece. 

A magnificent and highly impressive album – something extraordinary for a work that is essentially quieter, discreet and serene –, Emitter displays a graceful, even nostalgic, neoclassical atmosphere, that aggregates an interesting concept into its fundamentally unorthodox and unique musical features. With a profoundly innovative and original proposal, The Pirate Ship Quintet reveals itself to be a sensational and tremendously aggrandizing musical group, whose genuine sonorous identity is consistent enough to take the underground scene by storm. 


Wagner

ambient / neoclassical 

With four tracks – Salts Ēnaiss, Wynneta, Māris Dāncis and Winnatautas Pintega – Māris Tensīlis, the latest release by neoclassical sound artist Āustras Laīwan, despite its general conciseness, is a gracious, dynamic and poetic musical effort, deeply authorial, genuine and sensible. As the music flows deeply in the waterfalls of a restless and intuitive creative sagaciousness, the imperial desolation that emanates from these everlasting melodies seems to revolve around centuries of dense and somewhat nefarious sentimental obliteration.


​
The sonorous style prevalent in this album is mostly melancholic and despondent, though a gracious and delicate beauty is always present. The minimalist harmonies can be quite rapturous, as they ascend to a platform of absolute serenity, where no fatalist demise can be properly acknowledged without its respective level of suffering. Nevertheless, there is an abundance of gracious elements of despondent displacement, something reminiscent of an omnipotent sadness, inherent of an endless rainy day, that circumnavigates the brutality of its own acrimonious agony.  

While the album has a mostly dark and dense musical layout – almost mythical in some passages –, the general style is beautiful, emotional and quite original. With a formidable style of his own, Āustras Laīwan, a project solely created and developed by musician Aleks Āulaukis, that is involved in several others musical acts, with deeply authorial and genuine creative layouts, delivers a formidable and translucent paradigm of fugacious, though exceptional beauty, that standardizes a graceful horizon of distinctive features into a distant realm of elegant lethargy and perennial sophistication of sensitive perceptions. 

Beautiful and intriguing, Māris Tensīlis reveals itself a marvelous mosaic of endlessly audacious creative possibilities. With a post-classical outtake on sentimental sincerity that incorporates life delivered as a quintessential form of art, this majestic work deserves to be heard and consecrated as a refined, though modest milestone, that embraces existence as a poetic hyperbole of the human soul. Definitely, this is a work that would leave its audience in rapturous excitement, and desperate for more releases of Āulaukis, as soon as possible.  



Wagner

ambient / classical

Sound In Silence

experimental / noise

alternative rock / psychedelic rock

death metal

post rock

ambient / classical

doom / black metal

black metal

hardcore

metal / death metal / metalcore

facebook

ambient

Krysalisound

Sometimes an album works so inspiring that a lot of words flow through my keyboard without actually describing the album itself. This album, a remastered reissue of  Paw Grabowski's 2015 release, came in for review a while ago. Yet, instead of become the subject of a review, it became the musical guide for the opening scene of my new book, or at least for the atmosphere. While these six gloomy but beautiful ambient pieces floated through my speakers, my mind wondered off and inspiration came in huge numbers. So for that,  Paw Grabowski, thank you. Now, let's go into the music itself, because that is what we're here for, isn't it?


Actually, this review could be very short. 'The Forest Is Sleeping Within The Trees' is a six track album, built around the piano and the pump organ. One of the keywords here is "minimalism" as the sounds of both instruments seem to dance with and around one another. Fans of artists like William Basinski , Tim Hecker or Stars Of The Lid will easily appreciate these six tunes. The whole thing is gloomy, driving on looping organs and quite often repetitive piano touches. The latter give the music a neat sense of pulsation.

It's not easy to select a favorite track, perhaps it's 'Part 1', a somewhat rhythmic and enticing piece of music. 'Part 2' is more experimental, a bit harsher. It still wanders through ambient landscapes, but feels rougher. 'Part 3' is dreamy and seductive while 'Part 4' drags the listening along dark drones and eerie soundscapes. The others are up to you to discover and I really recommend checking out this gem. Piano ambient doesn't often come this narrative and immersive, I can tell you that!!!


Serge

drone / ambient

death metal / grindcore

death industrial / dark ambient

Exabyss Records

post rock / ambient / electronic

ambient / classical

funeral doom

gothic rock / alternative / metal

drone / ambient / folk

dark ambient 

alternative rock / funk rock

facebook

indie / dreampop

industrial / electronic

Perc Trax

​Serge (2 & 3 by Patsker)