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

electronic / ambient / psychill 

Mindspring

Eschew is an album released on March 8, by American independent record label Mindspring Music. An electronic music project of musician Kri Samadhi – better known by the alias A Pale Void –, on this marvelous album, the artist is truly inspired to showcase the expansive potential of a very personal style of space music, loaded with a modest degree of tempestuous dissonances, renewed by an imponderable and majestic conjuncture of dense harmonies, that display the sonorous virtues of latent echoes, eager to disperse throughout an endless and lugubrious universe a sensational platform of genuine artistic restlessness, that seems consciously desperate to revitalize the obscure vicinities of a vast array of creative possibilities within the genre. 

While the style of A Pale Void is drastically diluted in the peripheries of mostly calmer and serene melodies, the sound is predominantly vague, opaque and dilated at the epicenter of its sensibilities. With beautiful and peaceful tonalities that ostracize the gentleness of quiet and discreet thoughts, the sonorous style prevalent on Eschew is elegant, though ordinary and predictable to a certain degree. Nevertheless, there is a hidden grandiosity present in the harmonies, that effectively highlights the somber nuances of its most relevant qualities. 

With seven tracks – 1) My Love For You; 2) The 11th Hour; 3) Dragontree Rituals; 4) Eschew; 5) Immense Subtlety; 6) Palace of Dreams; 7) Rivers; –, this album presents some beautiful harmonies that ostensibly filters the grandiosity of its own genuine artistic ambitions, something that becomes evident in the title track, a wonderfully magnificent space ambient sonata, whose cohesive sonorous unity navigates over the ocean of a sagaciously effusive and abnormal creative axiom, that rejuvenates into the graceful sensibility of its virtuous horizon of splendor the latent ambivalence of an ambiguous and isolated nefarious rhythm, that desperately wants to conceive in the interior sentimental placidity of life a dark galaxy full of emptiness and solitude.  

An intriguing album that has bizarre, but profoundly authentic sonorous virtues – relevant enough to aggregate an innovative set of elements into the genre –, Eschew is a sensible, sinister, technical and methodic album, whose fearless, fugacious and underground experimentalism definitely highlights its proverbial qualities, that are lucid and meticulous enough to create a dense and pristine musical layout, whose ambivalent textures conceives an entirely new and desolated universe, that effectively instigates a projective and inspirational talent, wise enough to completely innovate the space ambient music genre, with a whole new set of amazingly pungent and sinister elements. 


Wagner

electronic / ambient / progressive / psychill

The Invisible Sun is an album released in March 29, by Serbian electronic music artist Branko Stojiljkovic, best known by the nom de plume Argus. An exceedingly imponderable, vast and effusive album, whose consistent and omnipotent atmosphere extends over diluted realms of gracefully harmonious and abstract infinities, the music of Argus filters and rejuvenates psychedelic elements in a delightful and wonderfully methodic prism of colorful algorithms of splendorous patterns, displaying an organic synergy of dynamic sonorous proclivities, that overemphasizes the exceptional fluidity of a fantastically elongated creative tissue.  

With nine tracks – 1) Questions; 2) Holy Smoke; 3) The Invisible Sun; 4) The Forest Sings; 5) You Are The Power; 6) Clouds; 7) Aurora; 8) On a Lonely Path; 9) Sadness; – the album is a veracious and genuine psychedelic journey throughout a marvelous spectacle of sounds, whose gracious sensitivity revolves around a vivacious ocean of serene and peaceful melodies, exposed in an expansive scale of revolving tenacity, that compresses the constrained essence of its own reasonable, introspective and gregarious grandiosity.   

With a lucid creativity that departs from the diluted tenderness of an infinite dispersive soul, the sound that irradiates from this album is a profoundly instinctive humane cosmogony, whose arbitrary exasperations are projected from the fertile grounds of its own originally distant musical sensibilities, although the amazingly beautiful compositions that are appreciated the entire time anticipates the fragmentary vitality of a gracefully pungent ordeal that unveils a formidable parallax of creativity, unable to stop at the pragmatic level of a splendorous and highly innovative versatile excellence.  

A formidably lancinating, cohesive and spectacularly fascinating psychedelic electronic music album that doesn’t fear being radically innovative and vastly different, The Invisible Sun is a colorful mosaic of perceptive sounds, whose immensely overwhelming and gracefully diligent style circulates within the vicinities of a cosmic dissidence, in a furiously creative turbulence, virtuous enough to reinvent a type of music that can understand the summary of its own objectives. A fantastic album whose original qualities basically creates a new sonorous diagram, The Invisible Sun is an audacious, pioneer and intuitive work of art, that defies genre boundaries and creates its own musical parameters within a diluted, but constructive dynamic of sound. 


Wagner

psybient / psychill / ambient / downtempo

Seduced Senses is the most recent album by an electronic music artist better known by the alias of Mystic Crock, released in March 8. Sixty-seven minutes long, the record has nine tracks: 1) Seduced Senses; 2) Interspace Trip; 3) Critical Mass; 4) Aldeberan;  5) Outer Loop; 6) Calling An Alien; 7) The Shining; 8) Eerie Way Back; 9) Seduced Senses (Continuous Mix); with elegant, though somewhat lethargic harmonies, whose stagnant features overwhelms its volatile and discreet sonorous placidity, the style of Mystic Crock is lucid, dense and pervasively efficient; its diluted peripheral tonalities becomes easily dispersed sensibilities expanded throughout an ocean of invisible insurrectionary causalities, splendidly delivered by an authorial conjuncture of delusional minimalist tendencies.  

While the style of the artist is meticulously slow and apparently vague, the molecules that comprises the synergy of his creative deliverance dissipates an abundant level of dynamic and mordacious consistency, whose musical anatomy revolves around its own abrasive and methodic complacency. Unfortunately, there is not too much melodic variations nor innovations on this album; the sound is inadvertently homogeneous, but delivered in a very elegant and veracious style, that definitely improves the genre in a very cohesive pattern. 

One way or another, Seduced Senses manages to be a proficient and competent work, with several exceptional moments. Following closely the general sonorous standards of subgenres like Psybient and Psychill, the artist delivers a somewhat conventional work, but done considerably right, in a marvelously correct and majestic musical disposition. Certainly a relevant creative wave exceedingly skilled in the obscure art of underground electronic music, Mystic Crock, with Seduced Senses, has improved the subgenres he masterfully dominates, respecting its stylistic boundaries, while at the same time projecting discreet horizons of genuine splendor, without any excesses or imprudent displaced developments.     

A master of timing, calmness, density and oblivious serenity, the salutary and unquestionable disposition of Mystic Crock for elongating the tissues of time is a legendary virtue, that dilates the intrinsically ordinary sequences of the harmonies, exposing its analogue devices through the infinite labyrinths of a rapturous musical sensitivity. Definitely an interesting and very incisive work, Seduced Senses – despite some minor limitations – is a gracefully authentic and skilled demonstration of refined artistry, that elevates the psychedelic subgenres of electronic music into an art category of its own. 

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Wagner

electronic / ambient 

With only six tracks, The World of Similitudes – the new album by Remote Vision –, is another dive into a marvelous ethereal, resonant and expansive universe of infinite cosmogonies and delusional melodies of delightful splendor. While the sound is better comprehended and defined by an abstract serenity that liquefies into an elusive kingdom of peaceful tranquility, dense and fragmented melodies delivers the quintessential principles of the genre, concentrated in a style made of everlasting harmonies, whose peripheral sonorous diagram tries to expand into a slow and discreet space, where an invisible, but colossal sound defines the densities and the cohesion of its own placid rhythms.  

While there is not anything too extraordinary about this album, the excellence of silence in between the spaces, and the expansive serenity of the restless sound around the vacuum of the notes, creates a universe of dense – occasionally lethargic – but ambivalent horizontal expectations, where it’s possible to feel the slowness of the melodies, and the anatomy of its virtual impulse departing from a singular sentimental vortex, that revolves calmly towards the epicenter of a darkness that will never be entirely diluted into the vastness of the human conscience.  

While the sound can be somewhat predictable – at least to a certain degree – which, given stylistic limitations, is a fault of the genre more than the artist, The World of Similitudes in a general evaluation never disappoints. If you like a pragmatist creative density that elaborates space and silence as a serene and complacent complement of sound – to the point of delivering a discreet degree of minimalism –, as well as sound meticulously sculpted as a pervasively methodic and cautious lucid dream, than you will find this album a beautiful conception of a colorful, though sometimes despondent timeless cosmogony.  

Sporadically flirting with the more sinister genre of dark ambient, The World of Similitudes is the type of album that can be perfect to relax. While far from being a masterpiece, it’s a wonderful exemplar of space ambient music. Delivers with competence, efficiency and an overall genuine style a marvelous journey into the most abrasive depths of the darkest human sensibilities. 

​Wagner

psychedelic / chillout / slowtrance

Elemental Garden is the most recent album by an electronic sound artist known by the alias of Kaminanda, released on February 15. The artist’s seventh album, Elemental Garden – seventy-three minutes long – has nine tracks: 1) Waters Within; 2) Exotic Flowers; 3) Jungle Claws; 4) The Crucible; 5) Saffron Mountains; 6) Philosopher's Stone; 7) Dreamscape; 8) Blood and Tears; 9) Elven Forest; with pretty harmonious, dense and exotic grooves, Elemental Garden certainly is one of the most beautiful, versatile and creative albums that I’ve ever heard in the genre. With exceedingly synchronic and dynamic drumbeats, and ostensibly surreal melodic tonalities aligned with discreetly ascendant rhythmic devices, the style of Kaminanda is progressively dilapidated throughout the sensible resonances that abundantly floats in the periphery of the music, navigating tangentially in never-ending hyperbolic sonorous possibilities, that revolves around its own psychedelically vibrant pragmatism. 

With an intuitive discretion that overhears its own perfectly cadenced sequences, Elemental Garden displays a gracious set of profoundly cohesive and delightful harmonies, whose melodic impulses are driven by an insanely secure, though audacious creative splendor. With a majestic level of authenticity, that understands the grace of its own meritorious vivaciousness, the album – with all of its horizontal and objective grandeur – seems envisioned as a very singular and opportunistic reassessment of the genre, showcasing throughout its ordeal a vast degree of monumental cohesiveness and impressive elegance.

While the album eventually exposes itself to some degree of ordinary homogeneity – which is something difficult to avoid entirely in this genre of music – it’s easy to identify and recognize in the artist a truly graceful and severe degree of originality, that in its most consistent passages, reveals an entirely different perception of artistry. With a music that understands the gravity of its own singularity, the sound circulates within a very dynamic universe of genuine sophistication, where rhythm and melody revolves around the color of its own latent, dispersive and imperative sensibilities, never to fully return to its previous state of sonorous dilated density.

With a very diluted style that seems to emerge from the colors of a fading rainbow frozen in the horizon, Elemental Garden reveals itself a majestic and gracefully pungent, exceedingly vivid album, all the way through. With a fresh degree of originality that comprehends the availability and the precision of the melodies – moreover how to work them correctly to be permanently functional in the genre –, Elemental Garden is an album full of love and essence, that displays a mordacious degree of technical proficiency, that is developed side by side with the natural creative dispositions of the artist, being the final result an exceptional album of majestic splendor. I think I can positively write without any fear of being wrong that Elemental Garden, the most recent album by Kaminanda, is a marvelously great and fantastic state of the art work, with enough qualities to begin a new chapter in the history of psychedelic electronic music. 


​Wagner

ambient / post rock

The high quality label Sound In Silence release the brand new album by London, UK based duo AMP. Formed in 1992 by Richard F. Walker, AMP has been cooperating with an impressive list of artists so far, including members from bands like Flying Saucer Attack, Part Chimp and Loop. You can find an extended list on the bandcamp page.

In recent years, Amp became the duo of Walker and and Karine Charff. 'Entangled Time' is their first studio record since 2011 and the first release on Sound In Silence since their collection of live recordings 'Switched On And Live', released in 2016.

The album contains five tracks and delves in the world of electronic music, shoegaze, post rock and ambient. Opener 'Drifting' is a slowly meandering ambient track with minimal shoegaze or dreampop vocals. Fennesz comes to mind here and so does Loveliescrushing. With droning bass lines and heaps of guitar effects, Amp creates and minimal but often overwhelming sound. If you add electronic beats, resembling acts like Gas (Wolfgang Voigt), you get a gloomy dancefloor filler, which is exactly what 'Will-O Dreams' is. Unexpected beats but nice.

For excellence in minimalism, you have to check out 'Opal Tears', a slowly meandering blend of drones and soundscapes. The album closes with an extended remix of 'Will-O Dreams'. Sixteen minutes long, repetitive and immersive. If any song deserves the sentence "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes", it's probably this one. The almost industrial beats beneath the wailing guitars and lingering vocals of Charff will certainly get you in a state of trance.

Neat album, and another one of those must-have gems from Sound In Silence.


​Serge

electronic / experimental / noise

Here is another one of those albums that not only defy the laws of music but also smash all genre boundaries to pieces in order to create something utterly unique. In fact, this thing often crosses those boundaries so blatantly that even the term "music" is no longer in order. Welcome to the strange but wonderful word of Juhani Silvola, composer, musician and producer working across multiple genres and disciplines. Juhani has a master’s degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he studied electroacoustic composition with the world-renowned composer Natasha Barrett. He also worked with Sara-Jane Summers and several others.

And then there is this album, a confusing and often suffocating mishmash of electronic ambient, freaky synths and harsh noise, coming at you in six unique and bizarre pieces of music. The whole things opens with 'Ritualrytmikk', something that brings back memories of the old electronic noise and musique concrete pioneers like Pierre Henri or Karlheinz Stockhousen. 'Machines Of Loving Grace' adds some Merzbowian noise, or any other crazy Japanese harsh noise act you can image. Another artist that comes to mind is Machinefabriek. So yes, noise, mostly noise.

'Vaster Then Empires' feels like the soundtrack for an avant garde sci-fi movie while '20th Century Meditation' delivers at least a hint of calm, soothing ambient. Title track 'Post-biological Wildlife' sounds exactly as you would expect: electronic animal noises, a bit like a haunted house. Closer 'Speculative Phonography Pt.1' feels like some sort of megamix from the previous tracks. I know that sounds dry and unimaginable but this album is simply weird.

Fans of noise and avant garde electronics will undoubtedly love this. For them, this is another unpredictable sonic adventure. Other people might frown upon these eerie sounds. Strange, weird and odd, those are the keywords here, but the second half of the closing track is simply brilliant. 


​Serge

dark electro / synthwave

The NightStalker is a solo project of Bram Van Cauter. This Belgian artist has a very keen vision of combining different styles of music. Deathbringer is his personal ode to the eighties’ horror and sleaze culture. His fascination for crime, serial killers and dystopia are the guidelines through his solo debut album.

Deathbringer starts with an intro, narrating the atmosphere of old horror movies. A mysterious organ sends us back into the seventies. Footsteps in the dark and deadly female screams start a soundtrack of Gothic and other terrifying stories. The NightStalker shows how a mix of metal guitars and synths can work perfectly in harmony. The tension on this album is high and surprising. The samples of conversations and whispering during the mostly instrumental tracks create a strange feeling.

Bram Van Cauter was the guitar player and songwriter of the extreme Belgian metal band Herfst. He worked together on some of their recordings with super producer Dan Swanö. His metal inheritance on the guitar sound and riffs played on Deadbringer is obvious. But no, this isn’t metal. The album has a very high electronic body music level mixed with soundtrack-like parts. Repulsive Compulsion is the best example. This pumping track takes you deeper into the thoughts of a serial killer. The electro beats and guitar riffs bring a Gothic mood of threatening darkness.

The guitars on the tracks are tightly played while the synths and orchestrations create a cinematic vibe. This music gives you the feeling of a long night ride on an endless and abandoned motorway. The audio of this old school horror movie soundtrack is obscure but still recognizable.  On Grave Pleasures the saxophone parts sound even deadly sexy. 

The NightStalker presents with Deadbringer a world of fear and swarthiness with a large variation of music styles melted into a beautiful attainment. Tape and vinyl of this surprising and wonderful album are available through the artist’s Bandcamp page.

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Patsker