ambient / experimental

Alting Falder I Samme Rum is an album released on May 31, by Danish ambient musical project øjeRum. Almost forty-five minutes long, the record has six tracks, all named after the album title, numbered from one to six. With a prominent experimental layout, and a dynamic degree of minimalism, the album definitely displays a monumental tenacity, that overtly dilates its expansive sonorous features. With calm harmonies that delegates to its dispersive majesty the eternal shadows of otherworldly dimensions – for the soul to rest in a realm where all hearts perish within the melancholic charisma of absurd lethargy –, the sound present on this album will definitely take you somewhere, possibly to a place where horizons can be touched, and even created according to personal wishes.

With a majestic style that definitely presents itself as a gracious agent of everlasting and genuinely resourceful serenity, Alting Falder I Samme Rum is an almost surreal masterpiece, with a relaxing diagram of captivating proclivities, whose perfectly crafted harmonious alignment defines the grace of its warm, cautious and obliquely discreet melodies. Displaying a sensational musical veracity – whose rhythm drives the listener to a colossal and reverberant state of grace –, this work has a proverbial and eloquent artistic density, constantly revitalized by the pungent mordacity of its own placidity.  

Despite its homogeneous musical layer, there is a certain degree of dynamism into this artist’s music, that elevates its sonorous configuration to a distinct pattern of creative sensibility. Standardizing the cosmogonies of its imprudent virtues, its laborious musical atmosphere is shaped over a candid and volatile intensity, that perfectly understands the reason behind its voluble and arduous sonorous splendor.

With a graceful sensibility that is overwhelmingly cohesive and decently structured, Alting Falder I Samme Rum reveals itself to be a highly spectacular and formidable album, whose marvelous sonority undertakes the pleasure of alternative ambient music to a whole new glorifying level, full of ubiquity and ambiguity. Despite showcasing creative abilities that could be perceived as somewhat limited and restrictive at times, øjeRum nevertheless conceived this record as a singular and fantastic masterpiece, that aggregates subversive, refined and original principles into the genre, inserting a discreet level of experimentalism in the lurid cataclysm of the sound’s musical anatomy, effectively propitiating to the listener the ability to dive into a completely different world. One that can be felt as more affable, loving and tender than this one, even though is also inadvertently ephemeral, translucent and transient.  


Wagner

electronic / idm / ambient

Welcome to the strange and otherworldly universe of Von Tesla, a place where music seems random and futuristic. This 133 minutes lasting double album is like nothing you have ever heard before, unless - of course - if you are a huge Autechre and Aphex Twin fan. In that case, 'Ganzfeld' might not sound renewing or refreshing, but it's still an excellent addition to your weird collection. The album is inspired by the Ganzfeld effect, a phenomenon of perception caused by exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field which can cause hallucinations. (read all about that on Wikipedia). And yes, perhaps this music can indeed cause a few hallucinations along the way.

The album opens abruptly, with the beats and noises of 'Aftermath'. It quickly becomes clear that we are not dealing with a normal ambient/downtempo album. I mentioned the name Aphex Twin before and I think the godfather of intelligent dance music will rather often appear in your mind while listening to this stuff. Complex beats, noises from highly advanced planets and eerie field recordings create unique pieces of music. Sometimes harsh and unforgiving, sometimes dreamy and gently, like in the sweet ambient tune 'Lighted Room'.

'Out Of The Surface' feels like Plaid doing something with breakcore, which is bizarre, thus quite interesting. Although my personal preferences go out to less nervous tunes like the beautiful closing track 'In The Red'. Yet, before we can fully enjoy that, we have to undergo a whole lot of seemingly unstable rhythms. 'Caustic Network', the opener on CD2 threw the Autechre reference into the mix. 'Dream Part' flirts with harsh noise and 'Feedforward' seems to experiment with Speedy J's 'A Shocking Hobby'.

So there you have it, a weird electronic album for weird people but one that will quite often surprise and dazzle you. If you're into any of the aforementioned acts, you definitely need to get your hands on a copy of these two shiny CDs. There is no artwork so there is nothing to distract you from the sonic trip you're about to make, courtesy of Von Tesla. On the other hand, if you want music to be easy digestible and ear-friendly, perhaps you shouldn't be here...


​Serge

free-jazz / improv / experimental

In their brand new release “Lamentations”, RAIC used the concept “An exploration of the American South in sound, vision and text” to make an album that differs a lot from their previous release. Musicians Samuel Goff, Erik Schroeder, Zoe Olivia Kinney, Laura Marina, Jacob Courington, Robert Andrew Scott, Brandon Simmons, John Saint Pelvyn, Paul Metzger; writters Samuel Goff, Abby Cabuno, Lucas Brode, Dylan Fisher, Zach Wilson, Saint Abdullah, Dana Forehand, Dee Martin, Steven Sherrill, Kristin Salsano, John Priestley, Edward Breitner, Charlanne McCarthy, Daynee Rosales, Al Lattin and designer Jakob Rehlinger did an awesome and really impressive job!

‘Lamentations’ is raw from beginning to end, a kind of homage to the great names of experimental music. It has all elements that we can find on it, such as noises, guttural voices, free rhythms, drone music, extended technics, electronic effects and many others working for the music and mixed together in a really particular way. Besides that, there are also fourteen texts and images - one per track - about their homeland, all working 100% for the concept. The deluxe box also shows that their experimentation goes beyond music and prove that they care a lot about their work and their public.

People that loves different sounds, free jazz and non-standard use of musical instruments need to check this out (specially the deluxe box) and follow RAIC at their social networks. ‘Lamentations’ was produced by Samuel Goff, mixed/mastered by Richard Schellenberg and released by the label Arachnidiscs.  This album shows up an awesome music, an awesome box and an awesome concept from an awesome group! I used the word 'awesome' a lot to describe this work, and it really isn’t an exaggeration from my part... RAIC’s art really worth it!

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Glauber

experimental / musique concrète

Raffaele Pezzella is a busy-bee. On his Unexplained Sounds group, and its weekly radio transmission, he showcases some of the most unique sounds from all over the world. From his home town of Napoli to the deep underground of the African continent, Raffaele Pezzella has a talent to find mesmerizing music everywhere. And when he is not selflessly promoting other artists, he does some musical experimentation of his own. Those experiments have lead to releases on Cold Spring and Gravitysrainobowtapes and now leads to an album on his own Unexplained Sounds Group. 'Phantoms' is an adventurous work which every fan of musique concrete should check out.

Opener 'Phantoms' breathes that old, sixties, experimental music air. It's composed from strange noises and soundscapes, immediately setting the right atmosphere. So does the bizarre track 'Shamanic Rite Passing On A Surgery Table Equipped With Azzax and Trumpet'. This feels more like one of those albums with all different kinds of field-recordings to add to your videos. 'Memorex' somewhat follows that example and 'Dahomy Kingdom' turns that into a scary adventure with bird songs, electronic noises and samples.

By now, I realize that we're not really dealing with a soothing ambient album. We're dealing with intense experimental sounds. These are near-psychotic stories, narrated by an array of samples, noises and sounds. But then there is also the brilliant 'Three Options Collided', my personal favorite on this album. This track seems to balance between the first era of electronic avant garde music and the stuff you could find on many Cold Meat Industry releases. Closer 'Orient Out Of Tune' is another one of my favorites, a deep droning dark ambient track.

In all, this is definitely something for fans of noise and weird music. But then again, I think those people already know and follow Sonologyst. Raffaele Pezzella is a highly creative human being with a massive array of influences in his brain, so I guess it's no wonder he creates such varied music. So check out this gem and join us on the next edition of The Recognition Test, the weekly showcase.


Serge

post rock / experimental / alternative

Toska is an album released in May 13, by experimental post rock project Fat Old Donald, from the Czech Republic. One hour long, the record has eight tracks: 1) Ibn Ezra; 2) Tünde; 3) Larva; 4) Toska; 5) Comme il Faut; 6) Lájos Bácsi; 7) Rybba; 8) Neumann; with an enormously introspective, frivolous and dense style, and exceedingly proverbial, lugubrious and somber vocals that reverberates through a clean, vast and expansive perspective a fragile and depressive, but lucid musical cosmogony, the general sound delivered by Fat Old Donald in this sinister framework is slow, diluted and afflictive, and sordidly anticipates the sentient expectation of a darkness that gradually drains all palpable resolutions of life.   

With an interesting, meticulous and methodic style – that can be quite monotonous at times – nevertheless, Fat Old Donald really knows how to properly conceive an atmosphere of dense, restless and pragmatic uneasiness, whose frigid and melancholic guitar lines are gradually revealed to be the epicenter of an emotionally vague, pale and diffusive disturbance. With a sensible beauty that underlines the melancholy of its existential playfulness, the music found on Toska displays a formidable degree of sophistication and pungent audacity, though sometimes becomes redundant, opaque and lost in the endless repetition of a predictable formula.

Despite the fact that there is nothing too extraordinary about this album, Toska displays a virtuous conjuncture of qualities, and a decent degree of originality. The diluted darkness that comes out of the melodies – slowly trespassing a subtle level of beauty that gracefully indulges in the instinctive desperation dispersed by the harmonies – reveals a consistent degree of compositional skills, whose audacious, uncommon and hyperbolic creativity certainly provides to the muscular tissue of the sound a pervasively robust and cohesive musical density. Nevertheless, underneath this spectacular disposition of tormented artistic vitality, there is a sonorous and coherent anatomic contingence, restraining the monumental order of painfulness that integrates the inherent structure of its horizontal grandiosity.

Unfortunately, you will have to undermine your patience, in order to listen to this whole album at once; despite its deeply depressive atmosphere, though, Toska displays a uniquely proverbial and sincere radiance of detrimental, but veraciously artistic agony, on a very personal scale of lugubrious darkness. Definitely, an intriguing work that deserves to be properly felt, appreciated and analyzed, this strange and bizarre, but amazingly effective, fearless and original album proves all the way through to be one of a kind.   


Wagner

post rock/ ambient / experimental

A Moon Daguerreotype is an album released by Italian post rock band Goodbye, Kings, on May 27. Almost fifty minutes long, the record has eight tracks: Camera Obscura, Méliés, The Magician, Drawing With Light, Phantasma, Giphantie, Space Frame Natives, The Ancient Camera Of Mo Zi and A Moon Daguerreotype. With a methodic and exceedingly abrasive sound, the style presented by the band is thoroughly consistent, preciously sculpted and vividly intense. Although the sound appears to be generic at first, as the album evolves, a more authorial and genuine, though pervasively discreet layer of melodies reveals the brightness of its singular and fantastic grace.   

With a serene, but mordacious style, that intelligently explores excruciatingly dense and sober minimalist devices, the music of Goodbye, Kings departs from a delightful perspective of pristine sensibility. Displaying crystalline harmonies that delivers a formidable degree of audacious, though lucid experimentalism, the exceptional level of dense and sagacious musicality gradually revealed by the band showcases a virtuous level of originality, that, intermittently, leaves the listener amazed, in a great and unimaginable condition of euphoric rapture, hardly believing in the gracefully majestic sound slowly revealed, and splendidly appreciated. 

With a formidable and extraordinary level of authenticity, A Moon Daguerreotype slowly reveals itself a truly incredible state of the art work – a marvelously spectacular sonorous journey –, where deeply creative harmonies collide with the brutal strength of inflexible, but brightly sculpted colorful melodies. A wonderfully marvelous and aggrandizing work, whose originality inadvertently transposes musical boundaries with a great deal of audacious excellence, Goodbye, Kings projects the versatility of its groundbreaking talent in an ocean of irreplaceable sonorous elegance, sidelined with a perfectly consistent and solid artistic proposal. 

Definitely a majestic work whose profoundly instinctive originality makes the record a pleasant experience all the way through – besides its beautiful, delicate and poetic style – the sound present on A Moon Daguerreotype is never predictable, repetitive, nor tiresome. Without any fear of creating something entirely different, and developing a very peculiar and sensorial genre of music, exceedingly impossible to properly categorize, Goodbye, Kings has conceived this sensational album to open a new artistic horizon, a new atmosphere of epic grandiosity, introducing a more vivacious and sober element of sonorous sensibility, that certainly has all the potential to make them the next wonderful phenomenon in the worldwide arena of the underground 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

stoner rock / progressive / experimental

bandcamp

Different Layers of Fear is an album released on May 10, by Romanian stoner/psychedelic rock band Methadone Skies. A very interesting and abrasive album, the level of powerful energy, consistency and creative strength demonstrated by this work is simply above all the extraordinary measurements one can imagine, much more by their creative audacity than the beauty of the music itself. With elegant and symmetric, though mostly diluted harmonies, the style of the group gravitates towards a vast and dense cosmogony of dynamic, but synchronic musical tonalities, where a modest degree of experimentalism and graciousness showcases a proverbial and dispersive sense of lugubrious tenacity. 

Seventy-one minutes long, Different Layers of Fear has seven very extensive tracks:
1) Where Were You When We Were Into the Void?; 2) God Help Us All; 3) Focus; 4) Contra; 5) Ol' Painless; 6) A Glitch in the Sun; 7) Manos; though the album eventually resents itself of some degree of monotony – given the length of some songs –, this beautiful work has a formidable set of qualities, intrinsic to its exceedingly peculiar, delightful and audacious musical style. With expansive melodies and a dynamic density that lives by the color of its graciously designed and sculpted sonorous atmosphere, the general creative diagram displayed by the songs revolves around a rhythmic synergy between creativity and technique, that proves to be a major point of cohesion in the axis of the group’s restless, but competent style.  

With a gracefully vivacious sound that departs from the horizon of its sometimes slow, but consistent patterns, this album is a collection of lovable dream-like symphonies, that definitely creates a peculiar, but methodic universe of harmonies within its diluted introspective existence. As the album evolves, the sound becomes more serene, perceptive and transparent, showcasing a stylish lucidity whose clear visibility exposes a strong and visceral degree of musical authenticity, whose standards definitely highlights the most formidable virtues – stability, cohesion, serenity – displayed by the band. 

With vocals eventually surfacing a little after forty-minutes, this additional surprise comes as a pleasant quality that aggregates a gracious element of sensibility and grandiosity within the band’s musical atmosphere. All along the way, Different Layers of Fear proves itself to be a majorly epic, genuine and ambitious album, whose ostensible levels of excellence, experimentalism and originality certainly will please all enthusiasts of the genre, possessing all the necessary qualities to shake and to take the underground scene by storm, with a natural and inherent artistic authority.  


Wagner

metal

metal / death metal

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progressive rock / experimental

psychedelic rock / doom

hard rock

progressive metal

psychedelic rock /  doom

sludge metal / doom

black metal

alternative rock / psychedelic / noise rock

dark ambient / electronic / noise

Well, time to dive into darker territories and what better way to do that than with a haunting release by dark ambient label Sombre Soniks. For this one, we go to France, where we meet the Arcaïde project. According to the project the album "takes us on an inward journey contemplating the two inseparable and indispensable phases: fire and ice, yin and yang, Solve & Coagula".

Musically, that concept results in overwhelming pieces of music, where dark ambient soundscapes meet intense noise and industrial patterns, all coming with a fierce atmosphere and dressed in sheer darkness.

The album consists of two main parts, "Solve" and "Coagula". Each of them is a collection of four tracks, or parts if you will. The whole thing opens in an intense and crushing matter. This is dark ambient noise with the audacity and atmosphere of black metal. "Solve Part 2" brings me back to the glory days of Cold Meat Industry. "Part 3" is minimal and gloomy while "Part 4" drives on industrial electronics, pounding beats and rhythmic ritual noise, complete with the harsh, distorted vocals. Impressive.

The second half of the album, "Coagula" opens with a long dark ambient set, something impending and mystifying. But this act, too, quickly adapts elements from noise and industrial in order to evolve into a baffling whirlpool of sounds and noises before once again toning down towards calmer areas. No, it's not an easy album but I am quite sure that adepts of harsh ambient will adore this rough and gritty piece of work. 


​Serge