space rock / alternative/ electronic music

Monitor is an album released by Australian alternative / space electronic music act Laedj, from Melbourne. released on June 15. With an interesting, original, exceedingly vibrating musical style – deeply rooted in the preeminent density of expansive harmonies deliberately conceived as a tenacious space-oriented creative dissolution – Monitor reveals itself from the beginning as a marvelous, splendid and highly genuine work of art, whose authenticity defies ordinary genre boundaries, and deals profusely with an audacious and sovereign degree of introspective artistry, that not only aspires to be something inadvertently genuine, but expressively singular, unforgettable and most of all, ostensibly inimitable.  

The only terrible fault of this album is the length: at only thirty-three minutes long, Monitor is too concise. Nevertheless, when the album is over, you can appreciate it again, as I did the first time I’ve listened to this majestic and formidable masterpiece (I’ve heard two times in direct sequence). With only four tracks – Monitor, Kwingy, Heard From Space and Bad Buzz – the first and the last songs are the longer ones, having both little more than ten minutes each. With a very expressive, consistent and diluted sound, whose impressive originality designs impeccable and profoundly graceful creative harmonies in a very abrasive and elegant surface of organic elements, the marvelous and astoundingly extraordinary capabilities projected by this album is easy to assimilate, but concomitantly hard to embrace, given the fact that its overwhelmingly fulfilling, passionate, beautiful, dynamic and furiously elegant qualities surpasses with an absolute disposition the general standards currently seen in the underground scene.  

One of the most marvelous albums that I ever had the pleasure of listening, Monitor is a fascinating sonorous synergy driven by a colorful festival of original, unrestrictive and extraordinary creative audacity. With gracefully cohesive and pristine harmonies, that perpetuates the diagram of its diffusive density over the majesty of its own creative lucidity, this sensational album is a sonorous spectacle full of highly sober and vivid colliding atmospheres, that dance over the shadows of a fading horizon, in the somnolent placidity of an everlasting, but sincerely captivating personal disturbance. Although the entire album is absolutely incredible – literally out of this world –, if I have to highlight two tracks, they would be Kwingy and Heard From Space, (which, surprisingly, have vocals); the second and the third, respectively. This are two amazingly marvelous, beautiful and effectively rapturous songs, that strikes with deranged virtuosity the soul of the listener. 

Full of qualities, and with an exceptional degree of originality – never seen in the genre before – Monitor is an unforgiving, fantastic and splendorous masterpiece, whose fabulous degree of artistry deserves to be massively highlighted. With a huge potential to make history, Laedj. is a groundbreaking musical act, whose formidable level of authenticity can make them the next starlight of the alternative rock scene. 


Wagner

experimental / electronic

Zona Watusa

A slice of the Barcelona underground starts with a berating outburst intro. The cursing, yelling woman (Alozeau) makes you want to skip the track but if you are patient enough you will notice that the expletive voice gets tangled in noisy electronica. The track becomes more interesting and sets the beginning of a wild variety of DIY sound explorations.

Barcelona, town of Gaudi, capital of the Catalan rebellion against the Spanish government is  a vivid source of underground music and ready to burst like a ripe pimple. Zona Watusa is a label that is fed up with harmful negativism. Barcelona’s underground had to morph into ‘zona confusa’. A space where anything goes and impossible mixtures become realities. This compilation contains twelve very different tracks in style, genre and structure.

The road is full with confusion on this release. From jazzy tunes to noise, from vocal supported electronica to weird experimental mixes of deep emotional explorations. Zona Confusa shows the reality of a secret underground movement. Forget the beautiful Spanish sky, follow the weird and hidden world of the invisible talents of Barcelona who are creative enough to explore and conceive new dimensions in DIY compositions. 

The bands Blood Quartet and Turing Tarpet use jazz based sounds and dwell in psychedelic realms. These are (to us) the best and diverse tracks on this tape release. The avant-garde touch is present in each track on A Slice Of The Barcelona Underground. The unfathomable sound art of Zona Confusa is a must have for sound diggers. This very interesting release is available on a limited number of 40 tapes on the Zona Watusa Bandcamp page.

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Patsker

post rock / post metal

noise rock / jazz / experimental

doom / sludge

psychedelic / doom / stoner rock

ambient

house / techno / electronic

dark ambient

ambient / experimental

electronic / downtempo

bandcamp

heavy metal

black metal / death metal

ambient

Audiobulb

​Serge

electronic / synthpop

Club Mayz is the DJ and producer alias of Belgian artist Matthias Yzebaert. The multidisciplinary approach in his music shows the various talents of this Ghent based artist.  Club Mayz embraces the spirit of synth pop music with a dreamy twist on his third release. Matthias Yzebaert is a visual artist, graphic designer, gallery owner, DJ, performer and producer.

The music sounds easy, Utopian and has some interesting paths to follow. With a relaxing mood the synth pop floats from a cinematic like style to a soft melancholic temper. The gloomy pop vibe has a special effect in the music, which has its inspiration in the synthesizer music of the 80’s.  The smooth retro style contains some vocal parts (Mirage) that reminded us of Brian Eno’s singing in the early days of his career.

The Gift Of Surrender is an album with inertia and psychedelic plies that encourage the listener’s brain cells to make space for new ways of fantasizing. Club Mayz created a sonic universe with surprising atmospheres producing an addictive effect. The woolly moods are the perfect company for long dreamy drives through the lonely night.

This piece of work gets better and better and reveals more details after each listening trip. The catchy desolate slackness grabbed us into the electronic creations and soundscapes of this album. The Gift Of Surrender is the first release of Club Mayz on vinyl, limited to 200 pieces. Club Mayz delivered the perfect soundtrack to stare at sky and watch the fluffy clouds slowly passing by. Top gloom pop.

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Patsker

electronic / post rock / ambient

Well, isn't this one of the most correct album titles in the history of music releases? Time does indeed fly and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Luckily, there is the divine gift of music, which can make it feel like time stands still or even goes backwards in time. I mean, halfway through 'Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop' I had a huge throwback as my mind wandered to Dunk! festival 2018, chilling and enjoying some neat post rock. That being said, this music by American one-man act Our Alarm Clock would fit perfectly on the small stage in Zottegem. For starters, it's post rock, but it's also electronica, quite often quite glitchy. It's also a bit shoegaze-y and very indie-y.

Our Alarm Clock is Ben Rosenbach. His message is one of love and you can definitely feel that in this music. Opener 'I'm Alive. I'm Here.' is a neat ambient tune, functioning mostly as an intro for that awesome post rock tune I mentioned in the opening paragraph. 'Pictures' is a gloomy, slow indie pop song with dreamy vocals, almost like a light version of Jesu, remixed by Autechre. 'Narrow Passages' raises the tempo a bit with playful percussion and shimmering melodies. I think this is my personal favorite here.

There is a total of twelve songs to be found on 'Time Is Short' and they come with quite a lot of variation. Throughout my first listening session, all kinds of acts came to mind. From ambient gurus like Harold Budd over downtempo geniuses Boards Of Canada to post rock giants like Explosions In The Sky or Mogwai. The combination between electronics and guitars comes close to perfection, resulting in massively enjoyable tunes like 'A Sealed Up Secret Wish' or 'Like A rising Tide'.

The most remarkable title on this releases is 'Looks Just Like Cameron Diaz', which coincidentally also is the most experimental tune, driving on vocal samples and soundscapes. In a way, it mostly functions as an intro for 'A Way Home', another blissful downtempo post-whatever tune. I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised by this effort. Furthermore, I'm sorry, guy who hates us for writing ourselves into our reviews, but this album is going to accompany me during my late night writing session today. I'm sure it will have an effect on the story.

Anyway, this is a great album, one that certainly comes highly recommended!!!


​Serge

electro / minimal synth

Wool-E Discs

Well, it’s time for a blast in the past with some old school electro presented by a collaboration between Unidentified Man and Chroma Carbon. This underground duo created a varied approach of dark, retro electronic (body) music called Memento Mori . 
Francois Ducarn aka Chroma Carbon is singer of the French cold wave band Factice Factory and co-singer of the synth project Sine Silex. Unidentified Man is on the other hand an analogue synth project, founded in 2013 somewhere in Belgium. With no musical skills and boosted by DIY ethics the Unidentified Man started experimenting with analogue instruments and a field recorder. 


The music on Memento Mori  is a blend of dark electro and electronic underground pop music  from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s. The tracks don’t add anything new to the genres but show that the love and interest for EBM and electro with a dark attitude is still alive and potential. The black and cold content of the songs is high, thanks to Chroma Carbon’s creepy burial voice melted with the beats and retro synths of Unidentified Man.

The duo has experimental drift and brings the nostalgic electronic body music memories and the legendary periods of the starting new beat period back to the surface. We could mention all the big names that appeared in our head while listening to this album, but we have decided to keep them unidentified. Buckle up and play this retro limited vinyl. The vinyl edition includes a download code that contains the bonus track Acrylique,  a previously unreleased Unidentified Man / Chroma Carbon demo track. The dark electro wavers won’t regret to have this release in their hands.

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Patsker

electronic / ambient

Sound In Silence

Sometimes, when my motivation to write for Merchants Of Air decreases, I look at my collection of releases from Sound In Silence. The majority of my CD collection is nicely organized, alphabetically, but this label (and Krysalisound) is an exception. These neatly crafted albums are placed in a different box in a corner of the room, close to the stereo. Whenever I decide to sit on my balcony and enjoy a nice, relaxed evening, one of these albums migrate from the box to the stereo and it's spot on every single time. Yeah, I love Sound In Silence. All their albums are worth the effort, and in that aspect, 'Prowess' by Western Edges is no exception.


Western Edges is the ambient/electronic solo project of Richard Adams, a name that might ring a bell for fans of Leeds band Hook. 'Prowess' is a new collection of ambient songs, here and there enhanced with electronic percussion. In that aspect, 'Solid Gold Soul' is an enjoyable and dreamy techno tune, something between GAS and Biosphere. The only thing is, it's pretty short, clocking off at a bit over two minutes. Many of these tracks are short. Tiny shimmers of ambient tunes, driving on minimal soundscapes and meandering loops.

Opener 'You Look So Beautiful From Up Here' and 'Very Good On The Rushes' are my favorite tracks here. The first is something for fans of acts like Eluvium while the others is a dark dancefloor filler with mildly distorted beats and hints of synthpop.  Closer 'Absence' is the longest track and surprisingly it nudges more towards shoegaze and post rock than ambient. Yeah, this can be a well varied genre, something that this album certainly proves. So no complaints there, on the very contrary. 'Prowess' is another one of those splendid releases this label. Collectors know what to do.


​Serge

electronic / psychedelic

bandcamp

Meiosis is an album released in April 10, by an unknown American sound artist, from Twin Falls, Idaho, whose alias is From the Flora. A marvelously beautiful album, with splendid harmonies and gloriously poetic vocals, the first song, “Nigredo”, already unfolds a spectacular level of graciousness, majestically devised by a soft and philosophic degree of immaculate serenity. With an exceedingly proverbial sound, the style devised by this project is deeply authorial and hard to define precisely. Nevertheless, the album is majestically wonderful, and certainly will please everybody that loves a more genuine, distinct and depressively calmer sound. Undoubtedly, this is an album whose spectacular degree of rapture defines its own level of sentimental redemption. 

Almost forty-eight minutes long, the album has nine tracks: 1) Nigredo; 2) Red Turtle; 3) Orange Orchid; 4) Yellow Liana; 5) Green Hermit; 6) Blue Lion; 7) Indigo Mushroom; 8) Violet Octopus; 9) Albedo; with lucid harmonies marvelously crafted into deeply imponderable sonorous devices, Meiosis is a formidably pleasurable experience from the start. With surprisingly innovative and unexpected musical features, the originality and the graciously audacious level of creativity present in the work certainly deserves to be highly emphasized and appreciated. Incorporating elements from alternative music, electronica, neoclassical and even hip-hop, the style that emerges from this album is superbly unique, and its sensational singularity displays such a powerful degree of virtuosity, that you immediately perceive yourself to be listening to an extraordinary and resolute masterpiece.   

Despite the simple sound structures, every song on this album is a majestic work of art, made from the quintessential perceptions of the artist’s visionary sensibility. With a pungent, dense and vibrant atmosphere, the glorious symphonies delicately displayed by this work reveals profound and erudite musical ambitions, efficiently filtered by a lucid, albeit fearless sense of dynamic inventiveness. Although all the tracks are fantastically wonderful, my favorite songs are Nigredo and Blue Lion. 

With the right degree of experimentalism precisely inserted into its effervescently expansive musical diagram, Meiosis reveals itself a gracious and impressive artistic effort, preciously conceived as a singular universe within the artist’s soul. With a serene, beautiful and graciously poetic musical style, a colorful horizon of hope emerges from Meiosis, without renouncing the depressive darkness that resists at the epicenter of its galactic despondency. A deeply peculiar and exceptionally singular album, Meiosis definitely deserves to be categorized as one of a kind; certainly one of the best underground albums of the century, without exaggeration!   


Wagner

psychedelic rock / garage rock / stoner rock

experimental / jazz / drone / ambient

Ormo Records

doom / stoner rock

drone / ambient / experimental / noise

Attenuation Circuit

electronic / techno

bandcamp

drone / doom / shoegaze

ambient

equanimity. Those twenty minutes of Sublime Silence contain healing and reposeful sounds which are welcome in this over-stressed society we live in. If you are into this kind of meditative sound creations, there is a lot to discover from this artist on his Bandcamp page.

ambient / dark ambient

Dark and melancholic ​moods change into spacey ambient tonalities, sometimes kittenish, other times filled with doom. The world of Sílení is covered with alienated sounds and moods. This is an excellent piece of work. Dark ambient lovers, if you listen to Sílení’s Long Forgotten Bowers, you will get hooked. We sure did!

dark ambient

Mother Destruction above standards in this genre. The album is a varied piece of work caught in a deep haunting, emotional prison. Sacrifice and dedication are translated in penetrating sounds and choruses. The nightmare never seems over in this pungent journey of hellish fires. 
Another quote from Empty Chalice: ‘… the lost ones are retracing the path of the oldest fairy tale: coming home’. Well, we did come home and we still feel home between the moods and vibes of this wonderful dark ambient recording.

dark ambient

Winter Light

over a ten year period. Nimh is active since 2001 and has already more than twenty physical albums released. Sound chasers will be pleased and excited with the multi-layering of soundscapes, field recordings, voices and the experimental manipulations of samples this album contains. The sustained drones create darkened and emotive moods. Beyond The Crying Era is an outstanding soundtrack for a SF/horror movie that does not exist. It’s time to dig deeper in Nimh’s music history. Speaking about a discharge!

dark ambient

the world of Anantakara. We’ve noticed psychedelic influences appearing in the mysterious structures of  the tracks. The eight adventurous ambient pieces on Momentum Lapses are filled with a variety of lovely compositions and moods. Rumors told us that this album will be released on CD in the future. Anantakara stands for “ to make infinite” in Sanskrit. In some way this album does.

Serge (1-6)
​Patsker (7-11)

electronic / ambient / space music 

Solar Walk II is an album released on March 21, by Russian electronic space music artist Dmitriy Redko, better known by the alias Astropilot. A marvelously imponderable, graceful album, that salutes and revitalizes the introspective cosmogony of space ambient music with a vividly expansive harmonious and dilated layout, this album is a fantastic state of the art work, that comes to aggregate a whole new conjuncture of elements into a wider and more diluted sonorous paroxysm. With a calmer, serene and profoundly abstract splendor, its perfunctory wonderful grace exposes a simple atmosphere, that can be felt as dynamically as it is exposed over an imponderable and magnificent layout of authorial playfulness, revealing slowly a wonderful horizon of sensible majesty. 

The music of the album is amazingly beautiful, primordially elegant, relaxing and graciously sophisticated. Aligned with sensitive musical parameters that innovates the mordacity of its own splendid and peaceful fugacity, Solar Walk II uncovers an ocean of spiritual amazement and rapture that liquefies at the axis of its impenetrable realm of everlasting density; everything becomes involved in a dense hemisphere of sound that defines a new type of perception for the essential vitality of conscience. And as the sound evolves, you become more and more fascinated, until the perception of the colorful universe around you dilutes into an infinite grace of extremely satisfactory and energized nothingness. 

Seventy-nine minutes long, the record has nine extensive tracks: 1) Gravity Free;
2) Inverted Worlds; 3) Hidden Planet; 4) Languor 2.0; 5) Earth-Moon; 6) In The Middle;
7) Betelgeuse; 8) Night Meeting (Verges Of Time); 9) Sanctum; a marvelously great album with a style of its own, Solar Walk II is a sensational space ambient opera, that overcomes the glory of its own methodic structure. Despite a general linear simplicity, there is so much reverberating grandiosity inside the parallax of the sonorous flexible tenacity of this work, that its preponderant sensibilities creates an entirely new universe of detached splendor, that captivates the conscious perception of sound without the dissolution of its mostly unified atmosphere.

A glorious album that displays a genuine and deeply cohesive sense of artistry, Solar Walk II is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard on the genre. With a consistent and firmly conceived musical style whose strength departs from a salutary perception of lucid beauty, Solar Walk II reveals itself as one of the most splendorous and fascinating albums ever released in the history of progressive space ambient music. For enthusiasts of the genre, it’s an epic moment of celebration, without any exaggeration.   



Wagner