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)

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

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!

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Glauber

free-jazz / improv / experimental

RAIC (Richmond Avant-Improv Collective) released ‘Multiplicity’ with this description: “A long series of forays into a wide range of musical genres & styles, as executed by a shape-shifting collective of forward thinking musicians”. This is a pretty cool text that really describes the diversity of this record! RAIC is formed by Samuel Goff, Abdul H. Bilal, Erik Schroeder, Zoe O. Kinney and Laura Marina. For this record they also had a lot of guest musicians: Jacob Courington, Richard Schellenberg, Tim Harding, Sam Byrd, Rei Alvarez, Jimmy Ghaphery, Tristan Brennis, John Priestley, Tony Nowotarski, John Bliss and Lucas Brode. All of them collaborated a lot in the final result of this work.

‘Balance of the Three’ begins with a free-jazz line that changes to a percussion pattern which reminds of some 60’s latin big bands just to dissolve and slowly disappear; ‘Brugmansia’ brings us a heavy drone music as if Glenn Branca’s guitar ensemble played with Mike Patton’s free-improv vocals; ‘Occlusion’ is a good case of musical pointillism with awesome drum lines; ‘Leaves Continue to Fall’ could be considered as “the ballad of the album” with beautiful and really sad sax lines (maybe a tribute to cool jazz); ‘Agitato’ was recorded directly from a time machine that traveled uncontrollably across medieval times, Eastern culture, and 20th-century classical music; ‘Pinguina’ is a short and animated jazz prelude that prepare us for ‘Silene Udulata’, a mantra that relax us from all this fantastic experience for a short period of time just to became a REALLY heavy music - with influences from drone metal and grindcore - that could put RAIC easily in any great metal festival!

It's absolutely awesome to listen to a work that came from a really postmodern ensemble (in the best possible meaning of that word) which plays many different music styles in the same record without looking like a nonsense patchwork, because RAIC plays avant-garde music with the lightness of a plume that fall through the air! Wide range and shape-shifting are the correct keywords to appreciate ‘Multiplicity’ as RAIC really doesn’t have the need to continue the chronological line of the "music evolution" in a record that was made as if time could go in any direction, from present to past. So open your mind, open your heart and open your ears, because this album will give you a fantastic and unique experience!

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Glauber

it's complicated

When Dirk Serries announced his transition from the ambient scene to the world of freejazz, my drone-heart wept a little. I had been fascinated by most of his ambient works. I was sure that his absence from that scene would cause a certain void, one which other talented artists would have to fill. But then I discovered one of the so-called jazz acts Dirk had gotten himself involved in. The guitar-scapes guru got company from one of the world's most mesmerizing drummers, Tomas Järmyr, and from renowned jazz musician Kristoffer Lo. Together they formed Yodok III, a trio that quickly became one on the most baffling live acts on this planet.

Their newest album, to be released on Consouling Sounds, is a one track, sixty-four minutes lasting epos. It was coined to us as something for fans of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Swans, Cult of Luna, Sigur Ros & This Will Destroy You. For a certain part, those names are quite correct but I don't think Yodok III has much to do with post-rock. Sure, there are the enigmatic drones and soundscapes, slowly building up. Very slowly in this case. There is a calm, gloomy atmosphere and the vague melodies but post-rock, nah, this is something way beyond classification. 

What sets Yodok III apart from the aforementioned bands (and from 99% of the musical acts on this earth) is the unpredictable nature of the music. You just don't know what will happen next. In that aspect, this album is a musical thriller; dark, chaotic and captivating. While the first twenty minutes are mostly calm with meandering soundscapes, the whole thing slowly evolves. The guitars gain distortion while the drums introduce themselves as the impending and forward pushing drive behind the whole band.

The beauty of this albums is, you can enjoy it at several different volume levels. It can be a calm, yet gritty, ambient album when you play it on a low volume. It can be adventurous background music on a medium level. But when you play this thing loud, as loud as a live concert, this becomes a massively compelling piece of music. In the end, yes, perhaps this is best to be compared to Godspeed You Black Emperor, but, even with half the personnel, Yodok III easily manages to deliver something more powerful, more frantic and more explosive.

This is simply awesome. Some albums come in like a comet, others like a freight train. 'This Earth We Walk Upon' comes in like a gargantuan glacier, leveling everything in its path.


Serge

ambient / drone / experimental

Consouling Sounds

It was a profound year for the Belgian quality label Consouling Sounds. Dark Night Mother is the last of the twenty-two CD launches the label made this year. Stefano Pilia and Massimo Pupillo are two Italian musicians behind this project. They know each other more than a decade and started to record their acoustic home sessions. These creative meetings formed the foundation of Dark Night Mother. 

The broad experience in different music styles, the artists worked with, makes it difficult to catalog the recording. Stefano Pilia as bass player and Massimo Pupillo as guitar player are improvising musicians with a keen view how to melt their chemistry into mysterious and ethnic musical journeys. With the help of four female vocalists (Olivia Arebalo, Lucinda Mahua, Alexandra Drewchin and Sandra Canessa) a strange world of native singing, ambient and acoustic sounds was established.

The duo prepares precisely and patiently the listener to enter a world, not so easy to discover in one bite. After several listening trips it became clearer what the artists tried to achieve. Emotions of the past, present and future are molded in beautiful sound constructions. Indigenous voices bring a shamanic atmosphere and produce a strange hypnotic effect. The female singers have a very important contribution to the sound structures on this album.

Dark Night Mother had a weird outcome in how time moves when you are grasping deep into the music. In fact there is no darkness to be found in this recording. Beautiful, peaceful vibes with some melancholic parts create a new perspective of combining the uncombined. The weaving of world music, acoustic music with minimal electronica is what Dark Night Mother stands for. Stefano Pilia and Massimo Pupillo  shaped a beautiful world with abstract minimalist moods, grown from improvisations.

This music for the mind shows its splendor with patience and will be appreciated among music explorers like the fans of Hector Zazou and David Sylvian.


​Patsker 

ambient / experimental / jazz / idm / glitch

Krysalisound

Sometimes it's good to step out of your musical comfort-zone and into strange sonic territories. I guess that's what the good people from Krysalisound must have been thinking when they signed this odd duo. Mostly known for their soothing ambient releases, the label now unleashed something unusual, to say the least.

​klās'tĭk is the duo of Andrea Koch and Masaya Hijikata. One lives in Berlin but has Italian roots, the other resides in Warwaw although born in Japan. So the cultural background of klās'tĭk is quite eclectic, so I guess it's no surprise that their music is quite eclectic too.

It all begins with a song called 'Chauvet'. At first, the song calmly explores the regions of experimental ambient and live looping, only to evolve into something ritual with eerie vocals and  glitchy percussion. 'Airtight Decoration' then drags the whole thing into the world of jazz, mostly characterized by the drums. Somewhere in the back of my imagination, Tom Yorke is jamming with Autechre and the Dale Cooper Quartet. 'Torque', a brilliant piece of drone-jazz somewhat follows that example, but without the vocals. That's probably why 'Torque' is my favorite track on this album with its pulsating soundscapes, complex drums and an almost magical atmosphere.

Every track on this album has its own story to tell, and it's rarely something easy-digestible. 'Night's Highest Noon' is chaotic and strange, and so is its follower 'Commuters'. Yet, here too, beyond the intense elements of free-jazz, there are unexpected loops and sounds, turning each song into something you have probably never heard before. I guess it's up to you to decide if that's good or bad. All I know is that this is a baffling debut, one that needs time and effort to be explored. Or in other words: this is glitchy jazzbient at its very best. I don't know if that is a genre but it covers the load quite well. Interesting debut....


​Serge

jazz fusion / rock / electronic

'No Pussyfooting ', by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno (1979); E2-E4, by Manuel Gottsching (1982); Warsawa, by Praxis (1999) and Manifesto, by Stringmodulator (2018). This is how this album imposes itself after listening to it: as an updated continuation of works that used the electric guitar and electronic sounds together (since Les Paul and his modified overdubs). This style has been in continuous developing until the present day, either by using a simple backing track, some loop pedals, or simply the super interesting concept that this German duo "condensed" just using one bass, one guitar, electronic equipment and a two channel recorder (with no overdubs, something almost unbelievable).

It all starts with 'PROLOGUE' creating the right mood for the tracks 'THUMP & SHRIEK' and 'GROWL' which, together with 'WHITE NOISE', have excellent flirting with darkwave; 'BEETWIXT & BETWEEN' and 'ECHO CHAMBERS' could be classified as Nile Rodgers playing some "hard industrial music"; 'HORROR VACUI' has an excellent mix of ballads, industrial rock and soundtracks from 80's low budget horror movies that, along with 'GUITAR SABOTAGE ', reminded me - a lot - of some tracks from John 5's solo albums; 'MILES' BACKING BAND' could be a dubstep version (with lots of energy drinks) of an imaginary band for Miles Davies' electric period, possibly a tribute to the jazz study of the duo's members; 'A QUIET PLACE' could be an 80's style ballad (seriously, it seemed like Sting was going to sing at any time up to 40 seconds of music). This last track seems to involuntarily refer to the famous story about the creation of Dream House style, by Robert Miles, where there was a need for some quieter music to be played before clubbers get their way home, thereby reducing the number of car crashes in the Italian 90's clubbing scene. This kind of "calm down" was something needed to give maximum contrast on such an interesting album!

Of course the comparisons I made may even sound like an anachronism, at the same time, this is the best characteristic of this work, because "old" electronic music styles are evident in what concerns the aesthetics that they were influenced by, however, there is an update with the ocean of styles that have emerged till this days (something that may even be unconscious). This is what makes 'Manifesto' such a good album, because Jan and Fabian had the ability to perform an excellent re-reading of krautrock, electronic music and even jazz without intending to become "cults", and this lack of malice, in addition to an extremely freedom of creation, is the power that can make 'Manifesto' a remembered album trough the years!

Glauber

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Here we can see how the duo play the song Flow (from their first EP) in a live session

avant-garde / jazz / metal / experimental

Self-Extinction is an eccentric, but extraordinarily fantastic album by experimental jazz metal group Inhumankind, released by I, Voidhanger Records, from Italy. With nine relatively small, concise experimental tracks – Double-Headed King, Annihilation Of All Inferior Thought-Forms, Against All Odds, Citizen Qayin, Land Of The Shells, Blue Skin, Antinomic Self-Cosmogony, Self-Extinction and Eternal Sleep – this album is a great example of a genre rarely practiced or exposed nowadays, which is, more or less, conventionally described as jazz metal. Doing a fusion of several different, apparently disparate styles of music, and incorporating elements from jazz, contemporary and classical music in a very peculiar and evocative, but at the same time increasingly discreet disposition, the general artistry of Inhumankind is difficult to conceive or understand, but it’s delightful to hear and to experience. Ingratiating a colorful infusion of melodies into a gracefully splendid mosaic of textures and intonations, Self-Extinction is a horizon of opium barbiturates fully immersed in a solution of compulsory and hallucinatory caffeine, upon which a sonorous wave of curious serenity integrates your soul, to test your willingness to dive into the universe of a surprising and exponentially fascinating category of sound.

While the overall disposition of the music is simple – even ordinary by more inflictive and postmodern standards –, its somewhat fragmented nature makes each and every one of its artistic components and cells seems awkwardly impregnated with light cavities and low densities, that craves beyond the unitary dispositional structure of the music. While its curious anatomy, exceedingly impressionistic in form, saturates the epicenter of its own sonorous perimeters with the dead anxiety of its technical precision, there is a curious, but salutary consistence in between the musical notes, that makes everything quite majestic, despite the apparent simplicity that is obviously denoted throughout its notoriously subtle context. 

The quietness between the notes, and the intelligent use of silence as a musical component is quite a remarkable feature within the framework of its expansive sonorous embodiment, that amplifies the impressionistic nature of the tunes. And while there are not too much melodic variations throughout the album, it’s distinctive and deliberate harmonious predispositions are sagacious singularities, that works intelligently within the artistic concept that is generated by its inherent effect. 

While I haven’t particularly loved this album – mainly because of the genre, which failed to captivate me –, I certainly give credibility to its originality, audacity and creativity, that deserves to be highlighted and properly complimented. If you look for something very unusual to hear, and want to be surprised in a very unexpected way, you have to listen to Self-Extinction, by Inhumankind. Undoubtedly, it will be one of the most unique musical experiences you will ever have in your life.  


Wagner

jazz / ambient / electronic

To ambient aficionados, ECM addicts and electronic music fans, the name Jon Hassell will certainly ring a bell. Countless of solo releases and collaborations with the likes of Björk, Talking Heads, Carl Craig and Brian Eno have rightfully given him the "pioneer of electronic music" title. 

Now, he returns with his first solo album in nine years, to be released on his own new imprint Ndeya. This label will publish new material as well as selected archival releases. So perhaps 'Listening To Pictures', a sweet blend of ambient, electronic music and jazz can be seen as a new start in solo recording.

"Pentimento" means: Alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his or her mind as to the composition during the process of painting. Musicians face something similar. Compositions can alter, change and evolve over time with only vague traces of the initial composition still present. Ambient and jazz have always been compared to (landscape) painting and with good reason. They share many similarities, which explains people's often ecstatic reaction to either a song or a piece of art. Somehow it feels like that is exactly what Jon Hassell has been doing on this album, changing, altering, reworking. 

There are eight tracks on this album, each on with its own identity and speciality. Perhaps it's not surprise then that different acts and artists come to mind with each tune. Opener 'Dreaming' has a similar feels as many Biosphere tracks. 'Picnic' throw that sound into an Autechre branded blender and goes wild on the glitches. 'Slipstream' takes me to the reals of acts like Zoviet France and O Yuki Conjugate. I love the percussion in this track. So far in this album, 'Slipstream' is my favorite, even when the jazz influences come shining through. 'Al Kongo Udu' is another favorite, an exotic and adventurous ambient tune.

On 'Pastorale Vassant' we go all jazzy with the nervous percussion and the free floating soundscapes. Perhaps this is one of the most experimental sounding tracks on this album, definitely not the most radio friendly but it still is an interesting entity to have floating through the room. 'Manga Scene' is what would have happened if Autechre and Dale Cooper did a jamsession, or Sknail of course. Glitch jazz is almost always awesome. 'Her First Rain' gently follows that example. And yups, I've turned this thing into a song-by-song thing. Well, in that case, 'Ndeya' is up to you to discover. All I'm going to say is that it's definitely worth it and that counts for this entire album. 


​Serge