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)

post rock/ neoclassical / experimental

Emitter is an album released in March 29, by British neoclassical experimental group The Pirate Ship Quintet. One hour long, the album has nine extensive tracks: 1) First; 2) Companion; 3) Third; 4) Emitter; 5) Fifth; 6) Wreath; 7) Seventh; 8) Symmetry Is Dead; 9) Ninth; a formidably exceptional and majestic album, with beautiful, inventive and creative harmonies, the music of The Pirate Ship Quintet can be classified as something of an otherworldly beauty. Its glorious splendor displays majestic melodic devices, that definitely captures and invites the listener to embark in an everlasting journey of sensible and delightful intensity, within an expansive and lugubrious universe of deliverance and rational grace.

An album that you wish never to end, Emitter has predominantly calmer and serene melodies, that underlines its own atmosphere of striking and profound vagueness. With an impeccable technical structure – that expands from the vicinities of its discreet, but mordacious neoclassical aspirations –, the audacious creativity of the band has no limits whatsoever, as you can hear saxophone and cello occasionally, marvelously diluted into the dissonant and almost somnolent horizon of a translucent, expressive and insurgent coldness. 

With a sonorous indolence that is essentially indebted to post rock, all the general additions the band has incorporated into their musical framework proved to be vital and exceedingly functional elements to conceive a very distinctive and singular style. One hour long, the album is never monotonous nor homogeneous; its fortuitous qualities impregnates the proverbially abundant tonalities of its horizontal creative line, that effectively dissipates over its sober artistic cosmogony such a superb level of authenticity, that it’s impossible not to feel astounded while listening this splendid masterpiece. 

A magnificent and highly impressive album – something extraordinary for a work that is essentially quieter, discreet and serene –, Emitter displays a graceful, even nostalgic, neoclassical atmosphere, that aggregates an interesting concept into its fundamentally unorthodox and unique musical features. With a profoundly innovative and original proposal, The Pirate Ship Quintet reveals itself to be a sensational and tremendously aggrandizing musical group, whose genuine sonorous identity is consistent enough to take the underground scene by storm. 


Wagner

ambient / experimental

Tipi Token

Scandinavia has, despite the low populated areas, an enormous source of talented musicians in diverse genres of music. The vast and rough nature inspires skilled artists creating mind buzzing sounds. Arne Borgan is a Norwegian graphic artist and musician who explores de boundaries of electronic music.

Arne Borgan works with analog modular synths adding a rich pallet of electro-acoustic sounds to his music. Asterion is an on ambient based concept incorporating elements of field recordings and soundscapes. The Norwegian works  across numerous of mediums with complex audio installations to accompany his graphic works. Arne Borgan is also half of the Improvising live-electronics duo Cloudbilder, based in Oslo.

The music is intensely built up. The ravel of audio recordings are drowned in a bath of experiment guiding the auditors into a wilderness of sounds. This unusual approach contents deep layers  of transcending complexity without becoming gruel. Asterion was constructed from 80 recorded improvised sessions. The result is a very interesting configuration of tracks.

With a brave view on the concept, the electronic artist generated a daring piece of adventurous work in electronic music. These eleven stunning pieces show a variety of mystery, nervousness, melody and distortion mixed into miscellaneous moods.  We can’t deny the feeling that Arne Borgan drew a new path with this original and stunning piece of electronic music. 

This awesome release can be purchased on CD and digital format the  Bandcamp page.

​
Patsker

space rock / psychedelic rock / krautrock

There is always something magical about cooperations. Somehow, many of these albums have brought out more of each artist or band than you would have expected, often with surprising outcomes. So when I found this gem in my mailbox, I was immediately interested. 

3rd Ear Experience is a respected psychedelic jam band and Dr. Space (Oresund Space Collective) has been lifting my spirits for quite a few years now. Although living in different continents, both acts have managed to create an energetic and cohesive album, a quite varied one, too.


Everything begins with a solid rocker. 'Screams Of Eagle Bone' quickly comes up with the uptempo drums, the groovy bass and the immersive saxophone. Butts will shake and heads will bang, be it mildly. Like 'Anam Cara' and 'Dreams Of A Caterpillar', this opener was created out of jam sessions by 3rd Ear Experience. Later, Dr. Space jammed along with the basic recordings before Rabbi added a few overdubs and mixed the whole thing. 'Anam Cara' continues the kraut/space rock feel, a bit slower but certainly as immersive as its predecessor.

With 'Dreams Of A Caterpillar', the project delves into the world of psychedelic ambient, with space sounds and sequencers. This long track is perfect for a trip, and even to dance to. With this, the cooperation jams along with legends like Ozric Tentacles. 'Coin In The Desert' is cut out of the same sheet (*). It carries the same immersive bass lines, soundscapes and rhythms and just makes you happy. It's like a mild LSD trip without the LSD. In the end, 'Sue's Dream World' closes off in sheer ambient style, beautiful and mesmerizing. 

In all, this is a fantastic album. Psychedelic music you can dance to, shake your head to or just enjoy while lying on the floor with your eyes closed and your mind open. So, my psychedelic friends, put this in your pipe and smoke it. You know you want to.


Serge

(*) free translation of a Dutch expression.

ambient / experimental / improv

bandcamp

The Unexplained Sounds Group comes up with another unusual and murky gem. Seriously, I have no idea where Raffaele Pezella keeps finding these artists. Not that I mind. After all, thanks to him, my hard disk is slowly filling up with digital drones and strange soundscapes.

Many of his releases accompany me during the writing process of my new book and in that, this three track album by Cloudwatchers is not an exception. With a gloomy atmosphere and an experimental yet immersive sound, Cloudwatchers have create a slowly meandering album.


CloudWatchers is an experimental electronic music group, focused on musical improvisation and formed by Andrés Alonso, Iván Cebrián, Coco Moya and Jaime Munárriz. The list of instruments might be even more interesting: electric guitar, amplifier, bass, digital & analog synths, sampler, laptop, audio & midi processors and vocals, plus an array of effect pedals. The gear-fetishist in me is already drooling. Yet, of course, the most important thing about all this equipment, is what they do with it, and believe me, what they do is pretty damn neat.

Three tracks: ten, eleven and over twenty minutes long, all improvised along minimal percussion, neverending drones and soundscapes while the guitar calmly narrates through dreamy solos. 'Piece 1' feels like a long and hot journey through a desert. 'Piece 2' adds an industrial feel through slow electronic beats and harsh samples. Yet, there are also the chanting vocals, adding something shamanic to the whole thing.

A heap of possible influences have come up while I was listening to this album. From a modest version of free jazz to Godspeed meets Ashtoreth meets Autechre meets Troum meets Zoviet France. I don't know, I'm just pleasantly surprised by this album, which brilliantly closes with the lengthy 'Piece 3', a perfect example of the sheer beauty caused by talented musicians doing what they love. If you're into experimental ambient and mild, jazzy drone works, this surely is your cup of tea.


​Serge

dark ambient / electronic / experimental / noise 

Karl Records

Heterogeneous Cell Information is another marvelous release by veteran experimental German sound artist Hans Castrup, that is always pushing up the boundaries in exceedingly original, gracious and unexpected creative horizons. Officially released on mid-March, the album has eight tracks: 1) Cell Information; 2) Beyond Quantization-Free Mirror Axes; 3) Plain Cutting Edges; 4) Re-Finition Of Formal Construction; 5) Opaque Water On Canvas; 6) Perfect Present; 7) Elongated Circulum; 8) Secret Of Fragmented Control; pervasively sinister and nefariously lugubrious – basically turning three hundred degrees to a dark ambient atmosphere – Heterogeneous Cell Information sounds meticulously elegant, as well as ambiguously afflictive. As your sensitivity decreases to a labyrinth of desperate and delusional perceptions, you feel yourself transported to a frivolous dark dimension, where everything is imperiously dense and tempestuous, and you feel yourself susceptible to a horrendous nervous breakdown. The first track, Cell Information, already sets a fearful tone for the album in a very effective spiral of mortuary anguish towards a despondent and aggressive emptiness. 

Definitely, this is the most cohesive, dense and dreadful album on Hans Castrup discography. Within an intuitive layer of agony, anxiety and sometimes even explicit horror, the style of the artist seems more dispersed over the creation of a nefarious world of infinite darkness and abominable obliteration. With a diluted, but at the same time consistent cosmogony entirely made of morbid sonorous tonalities, Heterogeneous Cell Information reveals itself to be an unrestrained, oblique and sensible abstract universe, whose expansive agony slowly captures the quintessential elements of everything unexpected, with the most bestial elements of suggestive human behavior perfectly captured in the metamorphosis of an ocean of sound so flexible, yet so impenitent, that a universe of infinite shadows envisioned in the solitude of distant dreams becomes the excruciating reality inherent to your perceptions.   

Getting close to perfection in the most sinister passages – and with an impressive sense of unity that ties one track to another – this is the best Hans Castrup album so far. With a marvelous degree of originality, yet respecting the boundaries of the genre, the artist’s style becomes somewhat recognizable, while at the same time he is perfectly capable of surprising the audience with an audacious and genuinely effective musical turnaround, but presumably always to a more sinister and deleterious abyss. 

A splendid album – that it’s impactful as it is concise – Heterogeneous Cell Information delivers darkness as it should be: brutal, resonant, malignant, hostile and horrific, for you never to listen to this genre of music the same way you did before. In what concerns the development of dark ambient music, very soon there will be a before and after Hans Castrup. 


​Wagner

ambient / classical

Sound In Silence

experimental / noise

alternative rock / psychedelic rock

death metal

post rock

ambient / classical

doom / black metal

black metal

hardcore

metal / death metal / metalcore

facebook

free jazz / free improvisation / experimental

Glass Modern

‘Klangfarbenmelodie.. And The Colorist Strikes Primitiv' is a very interesting title! If you've heard Arnold Schoemberg's Op. 16 you know what Klangfarbenmelodie is. Schoemberg wrote at the end of his book ‘Harmonielehre’ that the color of the sounds are a dimension itself which could be succeded like melodies. Boulez, at ‘Relevés d'apprenti’, wrote that at that time the timbre was used by itself, functionally. This technique opened several doors, from electroacoustic music to rock. Thurston Moore is a name known for using sounds as colors in “rock paintings” and on this album, with Tom Surgal, he used his instrument directly connected to his spinal cord and his cerebellum. 

The original CD version contains just two tracks: ‘Klangfarbenmelodie.. And The Colorist Strikes Primitiv’ and ‘Phase II’. The first one has more than 30 minutes and the second one has more than 7 minutes. Because of that, the vinyl version has the first track splitted in two parts. All the three tracks of this edition are the recordings of a live set with many different colors created by Thurston and Surgal (plus the audience reactions). There isn’t a conscient way to describe this music because it’s primitive, it’s an experience, and because of that, you need to experience it with your mind and heart opened to any color that they used in this “music painting” with Jackson Pollock’s style!

History needs to be recorded, no matter in which way. A good example is the compilation of the very important Brazilian punk rock festival named ‘O começo do fim do mundo’ (The beginning of the end of the world), which has an infinitely more lo-fi audio and was released on vinyl at 1982. For me, the most important fact in 'Klangfarbenmelodie.. And The Colorist Strikes Primitiv' is that this mind-blowing free improvisation live set was recorded, and even today we can hear one of the most influential names of the electric guitar playing in total contrast to what people expected based on his most famous releases with Sonic Youth. Originally released on CD, this album is available for the first time on vinyl by 'Glass Modern' label. This is a must-have for any lover of Thurston Moore’s free jazz/noise works!

​
Glauber

ambient / electronic / experimental / noise

Unexplained Sounds Group

Here in Belgium, as in most parts of Europe, the Americas and Australia, we know many different musical styles. From autotuned R&B to blackened doom metal and everything in between. If it's possible, it exists, that's the basic idea here. Yet, in all our musical indulgence we often seem to forget that there are other areas with a surprisingly varied musical scene. In the past, we have seen bands from unexpected places, like tiny villages in Siberia or crushing death metal from Iraq. Yet, the public opinion about Africa, music wise, is this: rhythmic, repetitive drums and weird chants, which pretty much explains why the sound of Die Antwoord is far from original. 

Anyway, who else than Raffaele Pezzella to dive into that vast continent and come back with some amazing tunes. Pezzella can be seen as the Steve Irwin of underground music: searching for the rarest gems and showing them to the world with the upmost respect and admiration. This continent is another baffling example of Pezzella's perseverance and passion. The compilation contains fourteen tracks, each one a unique piece of music. I'm not going to describe all of them. I'll leave the joy of discovering to you. But there are some jewels I'd like to pick out.

FRKTL delivered the opening track, one which immediately puts you in your place as far as your knowledge about African music goes. The opener, titled 'Hverfa af himni heiðar stjörnur' apparently puts everything back to Germany, more specifically the Berlin School. Klaus Schülze and Tangerine Dream clearly come to mind here. I wasn't expecting that so I was pleasantly surprised. A few interesting acts follow, combining ambient with traditional instruments and melodies. Fans of acts like Zoviet France might be interested. Flashes of dark ambient, drones, jazz and noise give the respective tracks their own identity. Some are beautiful, others plain weird.

Healer Oran is one of those act that deals in strangeness. Traditional chants and drums seem to have been processed through an array of effects which gives the track 'TaP{-' a somewhat unsettling atmosphere.Abdellah M. Hassak comes up with immersive drones and ritual vocals. His cooperative track 'Yearnings Complacency (feat Aziz Nadif)' brings some works of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to mind. I think that's a pretty neat compliment. In_o 's track '(J. Krishnamurti)' is a glitchy piece of electronics, excelling in minimalism and a pitch black atmosphere.

Then there is the bewildering closer of AMET and the confusing track 'Imposer Le Savoir'. This is definitely one for fans of musique concrete and everything avant garde. It's an adventurous finale for an adventurous compilation, one I will recommend to every fan of unusual, abstract and enigmatic music. Pezzella has done his ultimate best again, resulting in a mesmerizing set of odd tunes to enjoy.


​Serge

art rock / stoner rock / experimental

Heroica is an album released on February 3, by American experimental art rock project Sight, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Fifty-one minutes long, the record has seven relatively extensive tracks: The Call, Contemplations/Refusal, Meeting the Mentor/Crossing of the Threshold, Confrontation/Celebration, Reflections, Finality/Revelation and The Return. A dense and beautiful album, that has great synergy and an imperative sense of artistic grandiosity, this magnificent state of the art work has a genuinely pure essence, with a style that is exceedingly singular, vibrant, serene and profoundly proverbial. With somewhat mythical, inspirational vocals, and sensible guitar lines, that drive the sincere nature of the music’s inherently poetic alignment, the melodies present on Heroica are a virtuous and energetic alignment of marvelous creativity, that impresses the listener from the very beginning until the album’s conclusion.  

While you may not become impressed at all at the beginning, slowly, the album unveils all of its fantastic and primordially definitive qualities. With an impressive versatility that reveals incredibly rapturous harmonies, profoundly engraved at the crest of a pungently audacious degree of musical experimentalism, gradually, the style of Sight reveals its strength, which is the almost symmetric combination of deeply furious melodies with slower, calmer symphonies full of ghosts, shadows and expansive melancholy, that occasionally ends in happier sonatas of elegant, astoundingly graceful and original beauty.

Definitely, a majestic album by all standards, Heroica possesses individual qualities, that conceives an entirely different style of music, that reveals an original disposition of sensibilities, in what concerns intelligent charisma, sagacious sonorous perception and creative sophistication. Despite occasionally flirting with pop music, the vigorous sound of Sight never loses its unusual strength, and the album easily maintains its salutary grandiosity all the way through. 

With a lucid and visionary musical pragmatism competent enough to establish its own creative standards, Heroica is a sensational and remarkable album, that is never limited by ordinary artistic principles, always eager to surpass sonorous boundaries whenever this is possible. With a great display of virtues that is fantastically elegant and mordacious, Sight is an unexpectedly original project, that is marvelously out of the blue in what concerns technical definitions. As a surreal disposition of colors that fell from the sky in the everlasting night of an empty emotional despair, the indefinite serenity that revolves around the music is a utopia old enough to calm down all the urgent vitalities that systematically hides within the vast demise of the human nature. 


Wagner