I already received plenty of these neat collector items, so many that I must have missed some over the course of time. So, in a way of both making up to that and to support a hard working quality label, I decided to combine a bunch of their releases into one big Brieviews special. I guess the word "ambient" will appear quite often on this page, which obviously is another reason why I like this label so much. 

bandcamp

bandcamp

bandcamp

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Written by Serge

various

One swallow doesn’t make a summer. These words remind us of the sad reality that it is to try to change the world without any support... However, if you are the owner of an independent musical label that made a beautiful charity proposal and dozens of talented artists gave support to your idea, a beautiful sunny week will happen! This is the case of the 'Exhibition' compilation, conceived and released by Submarine Broadcasting Company label (UK), where the profits from the sale of all seven volumes (I said that many artists supported the project) will be donated to The Shaw Mind Foundation, an institution focused on mental health. The compilation's theme is folklore, going from local legends to famous Chupacabras. In addition, three colors separate the seven volumes accordingly to their aesthetics!

Red color indicates that the tracks are the most experimental, so be prepared for any kind of music/sounds that artists had imagined in their minds!

Green color is used for sonorities between experimental and radio-friendly, like ambient music and instrumental music with melodic features!

Blue color is for radio-friendly songs, going from rock to pop and electro!

This is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to listen to musicians from different styles/locations around the world, because there are MANY hours of music with a name-your-price payment. When it comes to charity, any money is very welcome, as long as it fits in your budget and be donated with love, like the music made by each of the more than fifty artists who participated in this project! As powerful as immaterial, music in the right hands can make the difference with compassion and brotherly love. This definitely makes me very happy and hopeful with art! I sincerely hope that you feel the same when participating of this beautiful action, whether listening to the compilation or making a donation of any value!


Glauber

post-metal / doom / alternative rock

dark jazz / ambient / experimental / trip hop

hardcore

acoustic blues

dark ambient / noise

doom / occult metal

death metal

black metal / doom / death metal

post punk / synth pop

breakcore / industrial

alternative rock / blues

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style of Tool and quite a bit of grunge - vocals that remind of Cobain included. So go buy this one if you appreciate something that refuses to fit into one box.

ambient / experimental

Pany Rosas Discos

avant-garde/ experimental / mathrock/ indie rock

Long Time, No See is an album by British Math Rock group Desert Vows, released by Tower To The Sea Records on May 17. A very concise and objective album, only thirty-seven minutes long, it has nine tracks: New Leaf, Lagoon, Miyazaki Frontier, Midnight Floater, 4:47am, Koriko, Standing Under Broken Falls, Templeinthedistance and Long Time / No See. A very gracious and interesting record, with unusual harmonies that breaks its preemptive and ascendant intonations on the verge of its own deeply surrealistic sonorous tonalities, the vivacity and the creativity of the melodies in general on this album are profoundly enthusiastic, quite captivating and evaluative of its own atmosphere.

This album certainly is a sensitive, placid and genuine experience on experimental intuition, that organizes in the deepest longevities of the senses an overlooking amount of perceptive nuances with the sincerity of a groundbreaking ability. While the sound of the group is transcendental and poetic by one hand, on the other, an organic logic derived by a precise, but very persuasive technique, seems to evolve and to be imperative, all the way through. With revolving processes that dilute the harmonies of its sensible nature, at the same time, the band knows how to activate the tempestuous nucleus of its charm, as the music replicates its gracious arrangements around the epicenter of an aligned soul resurgence, that poetically drives the listener into a corner of the universe that feeds the allegorical references of its own existence. 

With harmonies that displays concomitantly qualities like intelligence, creativity, elegance and splendor in abundance, Long Time, No See is an arduous fragrance of sophisticated and proverbial graciosity, that knows how to create pure artistry in an elevating and profoundly genuine musical shape. A testimony of cultural diligence, that converges to a point of asymmetric perfection, that is delightfully pleasant to hear, this album disperses crystallized waves of dense perceptions all the way throughout its notes. 

A very pure and whimsically dilapidated work, that appeals to the reason of human nature as well as its inherent sensibility, Long Time, No See, by Desert Vows, is a curious, selective and astoundingly peculiar album, that certainly showcases in an audaciously singular style a unique paroxysm, that came to be a victory for the entire genre, as a whole. 


Wagner

drone / ambient / experimental

bandcamp

Several years ago, when I first entered the world of experimental music, I became fascinated with the seemingly endless possibilities of live improvisation. Until then, I had seen many concerts, mostly rock and metal bands performing their pre-rehearsed stuff on a pre-built stage. That was all fine and interesting but I soon learned that there were other concerts too. My first non-stage event was in a backyard, organised by a friend of mine. Then I watched a band in a living room. Later in an old fort, and abandoned factory, somewhere in the woods, a train wagon, a WWII bunker, a basement. Suddenly, live music was possibly everywhere and one-man acts popped up like mushrooms. 

The Netherlands are very good at that. There, everything can be a music venue. That is why that country has such a strong and growing experimental music scene. The Dutch gave us groundbreaking noise acts like De Fabriek, Machinefabriek, Kristus Kut and so on and I guess I can easily add Owlbites to that list. This act, formed by Thanos Fotiadis, fishes in the same pool as the aforementioned acts. He as played in the same surprising venues as his colleagues and his music is just as uncompromising too.

The two lengthy compositions on this album have been recorded in January 2018. They are live improvisations, another one of those huge advantages of being an experimental noise act. Frankly, Thanos does whatever he likes, inspired by the surroundings, the reactions of the audience and the array of equipment he brought. The result is an intense and immersive blend of drone, noise and ambient soundscapes, opening with a spoken word introduction on how to fully appreciate the weird and unusual sounds you are about to experience.

While track one, 'The Meditative State', is an hypnotic and often harsh composition, 'Nature Is Satan's Church' seems to take on a more gentle approach, driving on droning strings. The first track feels synthetic, industrial while the other delves into distorted guitars after a while. I can surely imagine this concert as an intense and well-varied musical trip, one that I will definitely enjoy. So yeah, I think it's only natural that I recommend this album to all fans of gritty and creepy ambient music, especially those who often dive deep into the waters of noise.


​Serge

black metal / progressive / experimental

Behind the Sun is an album released on April 27 by American black metal act Stoicism. Almost fifty-two minutes long, the record has seven extensive tracks: Intoxicated Ones, Transmogrification, Decay, Unearthed, Threshold, Four Colors of the Rising Moon and Wanderer. With an ascendant, positive and very energetic sound, the music of Stoicism can be best described as vigorously elusive and fast black metal, oriented by a salutary coalition of surreptitiously power and progressive metal elements, that converges to dilapidate an harmonious picture of melodies laboriously and graciously inserted at the epicenter of its surreal and sensitive cosmogonies. Perfectly equalizing brutal and ferocious harmonies with serene and peaceful interludes, the artistic proposal of Stoicism is to get out of ordinary musical grievances, and introduce the listener to a world of more creative and unpredictable possibilities, which this musician do in a very sophisticated and personal style. 

Despite all of his creativity, the general linear basis of Stoicism’s music is black metal in its purest and most brutal form, although the rapidness of its signature style, and most prominently, agonizingly grasping vocals are the main elemental features of black metal present on this album. Departing from this basic tenure, the sonorous structure of the music is expanded to abduct more intricate forms of expression, with an interesting level of experimentation that is not excessive, and introduces itself with subtle longevity in the correct passages. With rapid, indulgent rhythms, framed by elegant algorithms of intransigent fury, the overall sound on Behind the Sun is a gracious preamble of sagacious vitality, that dilates the harmonies of the songs on the frontier of its more nervous and ardent vicinities, while concomitantly inviting the listener to dive deeply into its introspective universe of abstract splendor. 

Although the sound sometimes appear to be plastic, cohesively immersed in a brute state of sidereal dehydration, the infinite sensibilities upon its omniscient creative instincts are explosive to a certain degree. Despite the fact that certain specific passages sounds redundant, the record has a general integrity and a peripheral cohesion that ostensibly communicates the voracity of its expressive sensibilities in very simple and humane tonalities.  

A beautiful record that, despite having some major limitations – mostly on the sometimes excessively uniform sonorous diagram of its structure, that changes too little times all the way trough – Behind the Sun is an interesting and different album, that has a distinct proposal of graceful and sensible beauty, that discreetly, but competently showcases on its music the coherence of its motivations. Deeply and consistently touching the proverbial nuances of a sound that becomes as drastically revealing as it is progressively dramatic, without fear of truly exposing its content, this work sincerely exhibits a very flexible, sensitive and dynamic artist, that is really attentive to the truth of its talent, and to the perceptions of its possibilities.  

 
Wagner

drone / ambient / experimental / industrial

Sometimes people tell me that ambient music is boring and unimaginative. I usually don't really react to that, mostly because tastes differ but also because I found out that people who say such things are boring and unimaginative creatures themselves. They're usually the kind of people who drive their BMW to the next dance music festival, make asses out of themselves while trying to dance to 78 hours of "boom boom boom boom" and then pass out and cry because they forgot their teddy bear at home. Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah, boring and unimaginative. Well, ambient is exactly the opposite and Witxes once again proves that.

As some of our readers already know, Witxes is the experimental ambient brainchild of French artist Maxime Vavasseur. His previous releases were very well received among fans of everything Denovali has put out. So I guess it's no miracle that Belgian label Consouling Sounds picked him up for a brand new album. And that album is a stunner, a mesmerizing whirlpool of soundscapes, noise, drones and whatnot. My initial reaction was "Zoviet France on steroids", especially after listening to tracks like 'Disruptions' and 'Interventions', which pierce some harsh electronic noises through your eardrums.

The whole thing opens quite impending too. You can even call opener 'Distractions' an in-your-face ambient tune. This is not the quiet, gentle minimalism of your everyday ambient music. Nope, these are soundtracks to imaginary events and yet to be made science fiction movies, stubbornly following their own path. 'Incarnations' even delves into the world of industrial electronics with its repetitive and grainy percussion. Perhaps, because of that, this is my personal favorite. So yeah, I think it's clear by now that this is highly recommend piece of work, one that will definitely keep you entertained for a long time.


​Serge

experimental

Two years after the critically acclaimed debut 'Involves', Karen Willems with a new Inwolves album. With this project, the former Zita Swoon & Novastar drummer steps to the foreground and creates intriguing sonic adventures. For this record, she was helped by Nils Gröndahl, Barkin Engin, Stijn Dickel and Nele De Gussem. Also, for this record, Willems tried to dig deeper, experiment more and fully step out of the boundaries of so-called "normal music". The result is an ambitious album, containing nine songs that explore the vast possibilities of their respective instrumentation. 'Color In The Zoo' is not an easy album, but definitely an adventurous one.

'All Construction' opens the album with the same odd and unusual instrument treatment as 'Involves' ended. On one hand you can easily place this among your experimental ambient collection but to be really correct, you should also add a copy of 'Color In The Zoo' to your jazz collection, your post rock collection, your kraut, experimental, drone, noise and avant garde collections. That's a whole bunch of albums to purchase and categorize.

Then again, I think Karen Willems doesn't care about categorizations. She just wants to explore, although sometimes 'She Needs Air'. In a way, there is plenty of air, plenty of breathing space to be found here. Most of the music is calm but restless, soothing but captivating. 'Wonderwiel' is such a strange and almost contradictory tune, something between jazz and whatever it is that To Rococo Rot or Tortoise make.

On the other hand, 'To Louis Hardin' carries something bombastic, something cinematic and definitely something weird. By now, I'm starting to realize that is more than one step further into experimentation-addiction than the previous album. Frank Zappa would be proud of Karen Willems. He'd probably ask her to record another ninety albums or so. Personally, I wouldn't mind, especially if some of them drone as nice as 'Faith' does.

So, this leaves me with an important question: who to recommend this album to? Well, I guess there are plenty of people out there who like the out-of-the-ordinary, the strange and the bizarre. I think that also covers a majority of the Merchants Of Air readers. If you want something special, this surely is a must-have. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to dance to the energetic 'In Paradiso' for a while.


​Serge

ethereal / drone

drone / ambient / experimental

dark ambient / electronic

electronic / synth pop

electronic / experimental

drone / dark ambient

drone / ambient

dark ambient

bandcamp

dark ambient

dark ambient

techno

techno

thrash metal

stoner metal / sludge

psychedelic rock / stoner / blues

drone / ambient

death metal / symphonic metal

alternative rock

ambient

drone / noise / ambient

dark ambient

techno

symphonic metal / death metal

electronic / experimental / breakcore

Petrol 80

Serge