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

darkwave / alternative 

I've always been rather fascinated by male/female duos working on music together. Here in our little country, there are the electronic couples of Vive La Fète and Nid & Sancy. English duo The KVB have been delivering high quality new wave tunes for quite some time now, and let's never forget about Eurythmics.

For the record, I do not know if these duos are real life couples or not, but you have to admit, sometimes something magical can come forth from the chemistry between a man and a woman. Let's just be glad that they mostly deliver music, not babies.

Tempers is a duo from New York. 'Private Life' is their third album already, and I can imagine how it came to life, especially if I look at the album cover. Jasmine Golestaneh and Eddie Cooper, hanging out in their living room, bored with their day jobs and superficial friends. They remember having a bunch of synths, guitars and whatnot standing there so the just start jamming. Shortly into their jam session, the entire neighborhood is drenched into a gloomy atmosphere but everybody is simply dancing. First and foremost those who grew up with the synth pop and dark wave from the eighties.

Because that is exactly where 'Private Life' is heading to. From opener 'Capital Pains' to the gnawing ambient tune at the end, 'Exit', this album is a tribute to the dark eighties. We do not have to wait long to find a first highlight, by the way. That is 'Leonard Cohen Afterworld', a slowly meandering dance tune that will wake up the goth in many forty year olds. That being said. Most of the music here is perfectly suited for the dark dancefloor, but if you're one of those people who like to drown in nostalgia and melancholy, these songs work just a well. I mean, if 'Piece Of Mind' doesn't bring back those black dyed tears, nothing will.

I mentioned a couple of acts in the beginning of this review, mostly to compare Tempers with other man/woman acts, but as far as influences are concerned, I need to add bands like Tubeway Army, Suicide, Joy Division and so on. In the more recent regions of dark electronic music, Tempers would fit right next to acts like Austra. 'Daydreams' is my personal favorite, perhaps also one of the speediest tunes here. I love this repetitive hammering and the emotive vocals, which even bring some old 4AD bands to mind. Follower 'Guidance' seems to take some DAF electronics into the mix, along with dance elements from the nineties. Again, a splendid idea.

Well, I guess by now you should know if this is an album to add to your collection. If you're a dark eighties addict, the answer is a resounding "yes". If you are one of those people who feel that modern day electronic music is just too unimaginative, emotionless and stale, allow Tempers to change your mind. This album is a pleasure to listen to, to shake your ass to and to reminisce about those good old days of dancing to the darkest of beats.


​Serge

experimental / breakcore / electronic

The stubborn musical act Mathlovsky has  already dumped his second release, Phantoms, in our mailbox this year. This creative artist from Ghent Belgium is also the drummer of the black/post metal trio Kuar Nhial. He has a huge library of recordings that are ready to escape from the dark digital memory banks. According to Mathlovsky Phantoms contains ten tracks, in fact misfits, that remained between two different worlds and actually don't belong anywhere.

A bombardment of pounding hard core sets immediately the tone of this album. The subtly balanced crackling is interwoven with all kinds of samples and invites switching into a rave overdrive. Mathlovsky remains an unpredictable sound artist. Various styles are seamlessly stitched together into compelling tracks full of adventurous excesses. Break beat, electro, dark step and dub are cooked into a stew with spiced delicacies.

From breakcore beats with fiddling squeaks and soundscapes to a dub track that comes very close to Burial (Online Cult Leader). Mathlovsky stands for variety.  ‘That Remix I Made For Despoilah’ gives some space for quieter and floating atmospheres with a cinematic outcome. The spaghetti western melody at the end of this resting point bears witness to an approach with a very broad taste in music styles.

The pumping, contrary wire percussion is omnipresent and Mathlovsky is not tempted to fall into the cliche trap. He provides enough input to furnish every track with razor-sharp edges. On the last two tracks Mathlovsky takes his guitar by the hand to provide the pumping beats with surprising string chords.

On Veganopticon, in our opinion the apotheosis on this collection of misfits, all registers are opened and a new kind of metal break core is forged. Heavy, screaming guitar riffs with drums (and beats) are adorned with gargling death metal vocals into a black burnt porridge of sound. The added ethereal vocal lines and the experimental post-rock tending ending on this last track of Phantoms show once again that this Belgian artist embraces various (extreme)styles of music. 
Mathlovsky will not be everyone's friend with this crazy collection of tracks but we are wild about this unpredictable release. This edition is only available in digital format on the artists Bandcamp page.


​Patsker

electronic / synthpop

And now for something a wee-bit different. We don't often review dark pop albums here on Merchants Of Air but this one is too enjoyable to be ignored. Besides, a good friend of mine has just walked in and he loves this kind of music. So right now I'm going to write a review using tips, hints and references from Stephan. 

The Bedroom Witch, a dark pop project of Los Angeles-based recording and performance artist Sepehr Mashiahof. On 'Diaspora' the artist investigates the Bedroom Witch’s origin story as an Iranian-American Trans Woman. The result is an intriguing collection of electronic tunes.

The music on 'Diaspora' ranges from gloomy trip-hop over electronic dance tunes to new wave inspired synthpop. In fact, the first band that comes to mind is Depeche Mode. Not only in the nature of the music but mainly in the vocal lines. Here and there it seems like Dave Gahan is singing. 'At The Gates' could be a Depeche Mode hit. It's also one of my personal favorites here. My buddy Stephan also recognizes influences from Peter Gabriel and I like to add Zola Jesus to that mix. Synthpop galore, so to speak. 

The album opens with 'Shadow Self', using electronic sequences and impending beats before the vocals appear. 'She Told Me She Feels Alone' is a lingering dark synth tune with piteous vocals. The first real highlight is 'Sea Of Insects', a dance tune that opens like Front 242 and swiftly evolves into a potential Pet Shop Boys song. The Influences from the eighties are perfectly clear on 'Diaspora'. That's for sure. An certain moments even Madonna came to mind. Don't ask me why.

Another favorite of mine is 'Shapeshifter', a highly danceable piece of music with gloomy overtones and playful synths. This is a potential fan favorite, I think, but in all honesty, I do not know that much about this region of the musical spectrum. All I know is that 'Diaspora' is a more than decent album, with some highly convincing tunes. If you are a fan of synthpop, you should not miss out on it.


Serge

electronic / ambient

Exosphere Music

Interactivity is an album released on September 24, by Exosphere, a sublabel of Synphaera Records. The work of a masterfully cohesive and skillfully mininalist electronic music artist known as K. Markov, the record has five tracks, all of them more than twelve minutes long. They are: 1) Mind Control; 2) Interactivity; 3) Grand Illusion; 4) Reverse Evolution; 5) Inner Alchemy; with expressive, sensible and overwhelmingly graceful and sinister melodies, the music of K. Markov is primarily engraved by majestically obscure tonalities, that get lost in a cosmogony of dehydrated harmonious indulgencies, that play with the dense and diffusive atmosphere of its own dispersive, abrasive and suggestive style. 

With an ascending, imperative and methodic musical style — whose horizontal vicissitudes alternate between the horizon of its own liquid harmonies and the temporal rationality of its own elemental serenity —, Interactivity immediately reveals itself to be a groundbreaking, genuine, affirmative album, that plays in the space of its sonorous resolutions the demands of deliberately diluted clinical textures, whose resonances perfectly dilapidates the dynamic synchronicity of its discreet catalyst nature.  

Despite the fact that — at least in some moments — the artist falls in ordinary and predictable musical territory, its impossible to deny the prominence of the greatness, the accuracy and the originality of his style, that invariably prevails throughout the album; cultivating beauty in shape and also in the epic length of the songs, each track seems to be a surreal psychological journey towards a distant, fantastic and undisputed universe, where light and sound defines in the vividness of its colossal tenacity the organic tenderness of its pluralistic vitality. In fact, each song sounds like an anthem to the glory of the universe, a personal testimony of striking authenticity, that transpires in the strength of its genuine sonorous graciousness the effective sensibility of an introspective paradoxical beauty, forever lost in the tempestuous darkness of the cosmos.   

Undoubtedly a marvelous album — that has all the necessary elements precisely aligned to make it outstanding —, the original vitality and the spectacular creativity of the artist has crafted an exceptionally formidable and expressively genuine work of art. Interactivity reveals itself to be a marvelous record all the way through, with a mordacious display of sinister overtones, that definitely makes all of its sonorous devices to feel arbitrarily real, at least in our most audacious, unpredictable and turbulent dreams.  


​Wagner

electronic / ambient

There are two projects called Nevel. To avoid confusion: there is the Dutch black metal band Nevel (which released almost at the same time their one track album Leven) and we have Bart Van Meulebroeck’s Nevel. This producer and DJ has been active in the Belgian and international electronic underground scene for 20 years. The Hageland is his debut release under the name Nevel. 

The Hageland is an existing region situated between the Belgian cities of Leuven and Diest. This attractive hilly region with varied landscapes, such as plains, hills and opulent forests was the inspiration for this double CD. All 20 tracks (10 per CD) are named after streets and places in The Hageland and contain field recordings from the region.

The first CD (The Hike) contains more up tempo tracks referring to the electronic music of the nineties. Down tempo and minimal techno are mixed together into stimulating sounds. The tracks are accessible without being too commercial. Nevel uses female vocals to give the music a more mysterious vibe. The happy ambiance gives comfort and has a dreamy effect. CD 1 will be welcomed by the fans of Orbital, Boards Of Canada, The Orb and Horizon 222. This is a catchy IDM CD.

The second CD (Cooldown) is more modest with slow enigmatic ambient and noisy electronica. The tracks are provided with a dark edge and coloured with field recordings. We thought we were listening to Aphex Twin while receiving those weird electronic waves of Baybosweg. Nevel  succeeded to take the moods of his lonely misty morning walks in his music. The music on the Cooldown CD is filmic and decorated with beautiful peaceful ambient sounds.  Doodbroek and Stort show the darker side of Nevel, ending this ambient trip with a murky mood.

Nevel surprised us with a wide-ranging double CD stuffed with a diverse library of electronic music. CD2 is our favourite because of the intense floating varied ambient that took us to the green and hilly Hageland and beyond. This impressive release is limited to 300 physical pieces and is a must have for electronic music lovers.

​
Patsker

ambient / electronic

Consisting of nine tracks, this recent release by Fourth Dimension – titled Ubique – is a restless, though graceful collection of exceedingly expansive space ambient symphonies, whose fundamental elements rely on the dense and dispersive convergence of brilliantly agglutinated and eruptive harmonies, whose intrinsic musical consistencies depart from sensitive, narrow and diluted sonorous peripheries, that discreetly revolves around the eagerness of its own perfectly sculpted style.

With a sensible complexity, but displaying at the same time a subjective simplicity that honors the beauty of its elegant and proverbial atmosphere, the qualities exhibited by the artist reflects purely introspective virtues, whose formidably delineated melodies wander throughout its own volatile and gradually dehydrated peculiarities. As the sound  evolves, its graciously translucent and sober musical tonalities becomes more effusively crystalline, hermetic and discreetly delightful. 

With an amazingly pleasant sound – very easy to appreciate and to enjoy – you can deliberately lose yourself in this fantastic ambient masterpiece, whose splendorous musical narrative displays a genuine, sagacious and intrincate sense of artistic majesty, as well as a coherent and experienced degree of technical proficiency. With an intriguing sense of originality, whose lucid creativity consciously tries to conceive something entirely new, which is successfully achieved with this album, Ubique, track after track, showcases a subtle, but concomitantly spectacular level of versatile and splendid musical sensibilities, that overwhelmingly dissipates a sound that surpasses the general ordinary boundaries of the genre very easily. 

A wonderful work of art that certainly will please all enthusiasts of electronic space music, Ubique, by Fourth Dimension, is a magnificent masterpiece, where each track has its own imperative and distinct  sonorous identity, yet the work in its entirety is perfectly integrated into an elegant and vibrant atmosphere. The amazingly singular and amorphous harmonious contingencies present on this work deliver to the listener an impeccably resonant and cohesive musical universe, that definitely deserves to be qualified as a milestone of the genre. 


Wagner

progressive trance / electronic / ambient

With a virtuous, elegant and very expressive sound, the delightful atmosphere conceived on Gaia is definitely a gentle invitation to travel beyond the imaginary horizons of the psytrance subgenre of electronic music. With a consistent and expansive, though pragmatic and dynamic sonorous layout, this album presents itself as a very diligent and creative work of art. Departing from general ordinary harmonies, gradually, the neutral, but abundant horizontal melodic components that constitutes the bulk of this work becomes involved in a vivacious, but discreet musical configuration, whose vitality revolves around all the majestic elements that are present throughout the whole album. 

Sixty-nine minutes long, the album has eleven tracks: 1) Endless Road; 2) Dreamland; 3) Earthbound; 4) Ring of Clouds; 5) Magic; 6) Breathe; 7) Light; 8) Frozen (a song by the Driftsetters, with an Unknown Reality Remix); 9) Simple Things; 10) Oneness; 11) Soft Transition; with a somewhat lethargic, though gracefully cosmic musical style, the artist delivers to the audience a symphony of unlimited pleasure, whose formidable degree of artistry subtly surpasses the ordinary boundaries of the genre, and astutely explores a more transcendent and splendorous creative paradigm, that effectively dilutes melodies within a colorful timeframe, without interrupting the ventures of its placid cosmogony. Though the artist, Ralph Freund, basically explores the general common ground virtues of psychedelic electronic music, the overall qualities present on this album certainly exposes its primordial grace to more intrinsically somber patterns of introspection. 

Evidently — to enjoy this album —, you must really appreciate this type of music; otherwise, you may become somewhat bored. With this written warning in mind, its primary concern is to emphasize the prominent qualities of this album, whose elemental uneasiness rely on its crystalline surface, that slowly dilates to become progressively more synthetic and flexible. As the sound evolves and reaches the center of the digression of its tempestuous sonorous axis, the melodies ostensibly become more vivacious and perennial, though the calmer atmosphere that fluctuates over the general balance of the style dissipates gradually, in the same way its quintessential harmonies are conceived.   

While this album is not that original, its definitely marvelously conceived, and exposes with a modest degree of sensibility a genuine sense of originality, which hangs gently in the breeze of its formidable and overtly consistent calmness. An interesting work of art that deserves to be appreciated, Gaia, by Unknown Reality, is undoubtedly a very gracious and sensitive work of art, that aggregates a beautiful coalition of sounds directly into the anatomy of the genre. 



Wagner

ambient / electronic

Owann is worried. State of Mind is the third release of Owann (Johan De Paepe), expressing his vexations about the visible climate changes the Earth already faces today. As a mountaineer and photographer for several decades he was able to witness the shrinking of the Alps glaciers with his own eyes. These observations and other issues (caused by humanity) resulting this fickle climate, became the inspiration for this album. 

On his previous CD, Eternal Return, this Belgian electronic artist made a very philosophical inspired  recording. Eternal Return was to our opinion one of the best Belgian releases of electronic ambient music in 2016. We were at first a little skeptical about State of Mind, because of the sensitive topic and the high quality of his previous production. 

But no the less, State of Mind is a journey in thought and humility to honor our planet, holding eight pieces with affections that need to be heard.  The ambient waves are expressively loaded with deep emotional sound effects. Owann starts with sad vibes on the first track The Time Is Now. The listener is instantly aware about the state of Owann’s mind. The tangible tensions of awareness emerge like dark clouds suffocating our only home in this vast universe.  A slow piano guide us through the colorful soundscapes of A Sacred Place carrying deep melancholic tunes. The music speaks to the mind with drifting sounds of despair and hope. 

Varanasi is filled with mixed emotions and voices producing an ethnic atmosphere. This track was composed and performed together with the British ambient guitar player Cousin Silas. Varanasi represents human life and a call for action to make sure these mumbling voices of humanity won’t fade away in a possible critical future. The album ends with The Blue Planet, a stunning ambient ode to Earth, floating on bewitching soundscapes and Berlin School sequences. State of Mind is an overwhelming emotional and philosophical release that grows with every listening trip. Our state of mind after this journey: silently thinking.


​Patsker