drone / ambient / electronic

Sea of Tranquility is the most recent album by an unknown electronic music artist, known only by the alias of Realm. Thirty minutes long, the record has only three tracks: the eponymous Sea of Tranquility, We Will Return to the Stars and Majestic Embrace. With a quiet, subtle and introspective musical proposal, that deeply perpetuates at the alignment of its obscurely serene melodies the confluence of a sonorous secrecy bound by the terrain of virtuous and intensely glorifying harmonies, Sea of Tranquility is a silent ghost among shadows, trying to duplicate the inspirational vicissitudes of its graceful healings in a liquid world of voracious opacity, upon which all states of consciousness rely quiet on a single element of musical confinement. 

Superficially, Sea of Tranquility can be described as the traditional ambient/ drone album, although the record really has unexpected qualities, and a very singular style of its own. With somber nuances, and a marvelous stream of darker intonations – without being de facto a mostly obscure album – Sea of Tranquility really has a pervasively subtle layer of ambiguity deeply entranced into the sound. It is almost possible to feel a wonderful lust for sincerity ostensibly evaluated at the axial truth of its sonorous perceptive guidance, located inside the primordial hardline of the voracious symptoms of its delusional sense of artistry.

Definitely a very interesting album, that expands the colossal greatness of its veracity inside the dense spectacle of its relentless musical dogma, Sea of Tranquility seems to fulfill the sensibility of a wider scale of nobility into a very pragmatic level of darkness, upon which the senses gets used to a very profound type of descendant wave. And all that you can feel, suddenly, is another kind of universe touching your skin, your senses, your mind, and finally, your soul. A warm journey profoundly exhilarated by the greatness of an exacerbated sensibility, conducted by an ambivalent musical vehicle, that departs from the engines of your own spirit.

Definitely, Sea of Tranquility is a very perceptive and introspective album, upon which the listener will be able to wander, in a perpetual dream-like state, that closely resembles a unity with nothingness. A profound intimacy with the unknown deep space, this album really enables anyone to find the deepest treasures of one’s own truth.   


Wagner

electronic / ambient

bandcamp

Chime is an album by an unknown artist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known only by the alias of Quietest. Released on May 12, Chime is a rather eccentric, but beautiful album, whose genre is described as “generative ambient inspired by wind chimes” on the artist’s bandcamp page. One hour long, the record has only six numbered unnamed tracks, ten minutes each. A very good album, pretty effective for the purposes of relaxation, Chime is a subtle, but efficient work of minimalist tendencies, upon which your mind would do the work, way more than the music itself.  

A very interesting album, despite minimal musical proclivities, Chime can inspire the mind of the listener to wander through a great vastness of colorful, dense and sensible universes. If your emotions were deeply aligned to the serene and sentimental waves of the work, you will certainly have the most pleasant journey throughout a world of perennial beauty, profoundly seen by the vivid illusions of infallible perceptions.

Nevertheless, the listener really has to be exactly on the same level of introspective serenity, and interior relaxation, as unveiled by the music, otherwise the sonorous experience will be too much monotonous. And what could be a marvelous perceptive journey throughout one’s own inspirational and personal world will turn into a despondent and anxious tedious task.  

Chime is perfect for relaxing moments. Besides the music being beautiful, the length of the work offers greatly surreal experiences for perception and meditative exercises. Although the music itself doesn’t have too much value alone, it is amazingly brilliant if combined with the correct ambience, and directed towards a very specific purpose, like the aforementioned meditation. For people who have already a certain kind of affinity towards relaxing music, Chime is a highly recommended album. A gracious work, splendidly conceived at the height of the most precious and refined style of the genre, the album has profound, but subtle melodies, perfectly solidified at the heart of the miraculous vicinities of its own pure purposes and delightful perceptive intentions. 


Wagner

ambient / downtempo / post rock

On the somewhat quieter sound of the musical spectrum, we find Indian one man project Mixtaped Monk and his deeply emotional music. On 'Urban Lonesome', the project flirts with ambient, post rock and downtempo music, be it in a very minimal style. The tracks on this album are slow, atmospheric pieces of music with soundscapes, electronic percussion and a few oriental influences.

Other acts that come to mind while listening to songs like 'City Of Changes' or 'Lonesome Drifter' include Plaid and Boards Of Canada. In fact, this albums would fit right in between the works of these acts and probably some other Warp residents too. On other occasions, as in 'Futile Festivities' elements of cinematic post rock shine through, driven by gentle guitars plucks and soundscapes.

Perhaps, if there is one point of criticism to be given, it might be the somewhat sterile sound of the album. Although the tracks are quite immersive pieces of music, I still miss something. I'm not sure what it is but I think I can explain it. This project has been around since 2016 and is still in the process of careful experimentation. For now, that resulted in a splendid album, one that certainly deserves you attention. Yet, I think in a few years, Mixtaped Monk will realize that this was just the beginning and grow ever prouder of his most recent work.

The verdict? 'Urban Lonesome' is a splendid album, best to be enjoyed with a good glass of wine and a decent meal, or in a comfortable, meditative position. It shows an artist worth keeping an eye on, certainly if he decides to take his experimental efforts to a next level. Only time will tell what he comes up with in the future but I bet it's interesting enough to follow. So, check it out and judge for yourself. A talent might be blooming here...


​Serge

post rock / ambient

Transition is a post rock/ ambient album by Iranian musician Moein Roshan, released on April 12, under the alias of False Horizon. A beautiful, sensible and lucid epic monumental masterpiece, the record is eighty minutes long, and has thirteen tracks: Trauma, I've Fallen For You, Floting Memories, Solitude, Let The Rain Wash Away Your Pain, Fate Falling Upwards, Who Am I, Last station, Face Your Fears, Transition, Lights, Walking Barefoot on Grass and Set Your New Clock, Meet Your New Life. With highly energized and sensible melodies, Transition is a pure, introspective and fugaciously delicate record, majorly consistent and superbly conceived. With inspiring harmonies, and a very subtle take on life, the rhythms are increasingly soft, and outwardly profound, as they descend into a demanding, but nevertheless beautiful synergy of natural sonorous convergences, that comprehend the indulgences of an extremely serene and calmer universe, hidden within ourselves, but almost always invisible to the dense solitude elements of our own intrinsic nature. The exceptional redeeming component vehemently inserted into the songs materializes a fragile perception of beauty within the listener, and all that you can claim for is for this astounding universal perception of highness to never end. 

Transition’s music is profoundly exacerbated within the uniqueness of its own elements. With a calmer configuration of dissonant sounds, the atmosphere upon which the work reproduces itself finds an echo in the ethereal walls of your soul, and elevates to the masterful principles of our origins the transmuted benevolence of our own beliefs, even to the point of reprograming its own recidivist thoughts of marvelous acquiescence towards the harmonious sentiment of a divisive time, filled by the sonorous neighborhood of a wonderful past. 

Although the artist’s style can be regarded as quite simple, and the plain atmosphere of the music as ordinary and uniform, there is a genuine and very audacious flavor, that inherently captures the most vivid idiosyncrasies within the scope of his work. Abundantly shaping delicate and passionate harmonies on the sideline of a graceful and perceptive atmosphere of sincerity, the artist’s profoundly dilapidated style reveals pungent and effectively sculpted melodies, that always grew at the ardent epicenter of its own magnanimous origins. 

Transition is a very magnificent and whimsically absolute work. At the axis of its own complete artistry, False Horizon dwells to conform to the higher standards of a marvelously fantastic sonorous universe, where everything that you are searching for was already masterminded in fabulously omniscient elements, perpetually hidden inside the labyrinths of your soul. The music’s vibration is able to awake all of these excruciatingly intense points of potential. So, let the music fill its purpose. 


Wagner

ambient / darkwave / avant garde

Darkness Is Dressed Black is an album released on May 8 by darkwave/ ambient/ avant-garde electronic musical project Deadly Oak, designed by Spanish artist Vadym Sycantrhope. With nine tracks – Abducted By Stranger, Try To, Hold Me (My Monster), Blood Is Life, Zero, Aethetic Apocalypse, Occasional Tragedy, Underneath The Surface and Stay – Darkness Is Dressed Black is a terrific and superbly unexpected album, and has on the virtual despondencies of its lurid insinuations the majestic – and thoroughly relevant – force of his artistic persona. With the darker nuances of sagaciously somber melodies, that seems to act as sideline hallucinations to the subtle grievances of his extraordinary and pervasively expansive musical dimensions, the album carries on the conspicuous and unforgiving grotesqueness of its style the drastic and more vivacious elements that Sycantrhope always brings with him, under the Deadly Oak moniker.    

A marvelous album, that has on the experimental verve of his seemingly audacious creative compositions a relentless desire to break sonorous boundaries, Darkness Is Dressed Black has no fear in what concerns the outline of its own deeply fugacious, but consistent sonorous configurations: relying on an almost perfect elaboration of a creepy and sordid atmosphere of infamous expectation the laborious art of a genuinely afflictive despondency, upon which every track seems to be opening something sinister towards the unknown. The atmospheres are evidently eager to celebrate the incongruous density of a bizarre planetary isolation, where all delusions of its virtual sensibilities perpetuate the solitude upon which your soul gets deeply confined, while the sound vividly promotes in your perfidious melancholy an intense conflagration of emotions. In the practical axiom of the imperiously consistent worlds created by the intangible density of the sound waves that thoroughly dissipates the anatomy of your soul, the harmonious emancipation of musical allegories that you feel masterly aggregates in your genome the insidious and tempestuous sensation of a world doomed to end in a matter of instants. 

Masterly creating anxious, afflictive and agonizing atmospheres of a hyperbolic lucid exhilaration, Darkness Is Dressed Black is overwhelmed by what Deadly Oak does best: the majestic confluence of several different electronic genres and musical elements, to conflate them into an abrasive set of melodies, adorned by the convoluted rapture of unsolicited shadows, that dream of escaping to the real world, while offending – and feeding – the irrational instability of the artist’s – as well as the listener’s – creative devices. 

More subtle and ambivalent than his previous Deadly Oak work, Darkness is Dressed Black leads the listener to a profound abyss of surreal – and almost pathological – nothingness, that literally feeds your imagination with whatever the things you dare to keep inside your head. Being the perfect soundtrack to a day in a parallel dimension of everlasting fugacity and ecstatic eternity, this album literally has the power to bring about the most elusive and despondent lethargy that you keep hidden within yourself. With the power to attract a symbiosis and a multitude of creative collisions inside a conspicuous myriad of emotional turbulent distances, Darkness Is Dressed Black is another demonstration of the incredible artistic power of Deadly Oak, always ready to surprise its audience, in the best and most inconceivable way possible!     

 
Wagner

post rock / ambient

Roaming In Teesdale is a collaborative album between English ambient/ soundscape artist Cousin Silas, and post rock Hungarian musician Black Hill, released on May 8. It is not the first time the pair collaborate: under these same aliases, they’ve released together a beautiful album titled Bridges of the South, released exactly two years ago, which, if I recall correctly, was the first album I have done a review.

Roaming In Teesdale, somewhat continues from where they departed in Bridges of the South. Melancholic, but very uplifting harmonies imperatively create a serene, but audaciously dense universe of gregarious confluence over the edge of their brilliantly intertwined efforts, that complement one another so overwhelmingly, although quite vehemently each artist maintains the brilliance and the harmonious intensity of its own distinctive qualities, effusively converting the sound into the major protagonist of their melodically infinite grievances, exposing in the process a work of amazingly conceived nuances and objectifying calmness, that tranquilizes the spirit, being capable of sending your soul to a very distant, but peaceful part of the universe. 

A very concise album, being only thirty six minutes long, Roaming In Teesdale has ten tracks. Black Hills songs are Grassland blues, Storm above Egglestone, Low Force, Nightwatching and Ghost hunting in the Raby Castle (tracks 1,3,5,7 and 9 respectively). Cousin Silas tracks are Summer view, Bradshaw Hill in autumn, Hamsterley, Snow falls over Mill Beck and Beneath the treeline (tracks 2,4,6,8 and 10 respectively).

For the ones who are used to the style of both artists, it is quite easy to identify their respective tracks. The amazingly translucent, but exponentially vibrating guitar lingered harmonies are Black Hill’s songs, while the most ethereal, elusive and infinite ambient melodies are Cousin Silas’ music. At first, you may question yourself, about what they could possibly have in common, for a collaboration to stand for? And the answer is: nothing. This is what we can highlight as so brilliant about them. And yet, they manage to work amazingly well together, intertwining their pieces along so beautifully with one another, that you have in the end the perfect soundtrack for an everlasting dream of colorful and endless infinities. 

With the condensation of an amazingly lucid, but exceedingly diluted atmosphere of majestic sensibility, what Black Hill and Cousin Silas have created in Roaming In Teesdale is another formidable – and astoundingly proficient – intercalation of styles, that masterly diffuses upon their own vicissitudes the imponderable cosmogonies of their highly concentrated synergy, that deeply disperses in the dilated, but at the same time expansive tissue of their sound the effervescing elements of their unusually splendid artistry. Literally, this is an album that you can’t afford to miss. Its consistency is majorly underlined with the sagacity of a sonorously synchronized serenity, profoundly inebriated by the marvelous rapture of an infinite universe.     
 

Wagner

ambient / downtempo / electronic

Escape From Reality is an album released on April 27, by Spanish electronic music artist Alex Cortez, here attending by the alias of Ashnaia Project. Almost eighty four minutes long, the album has eleven tracks: Losing Awareness, Born in Space, Dualities, Peaceful Loneliness, Celestial Purple Haze, Escape From Reality, Childrens of the Universe, Frozen Memories, Between You and Me, Empty Your Mind and Decompression. A marvelously epic, delightfully beautiful and profoundly fascinating ambient album – certainly one of the most poetic, wonderfully amazing, astoundingly resonating and significantly lucid ever to be created –, Escape From Reality is an extremely groundbreaking and audacious record. Sidelined by a majestic expressionistic minimalism intertwined by intrinsically beautiful melodies, the album has a signature sound of its own, and ostensibly shows the powerful scope of expansive tides correlated with an introspective universe of sensational infinity and everlasting majesty, preordained by a drastic sensibility that excels its extraordinary alignment of dynamic contingencies over an exceptional layer of laborious harmonies.

Reproducing the sound of a universe lost in the intrusive configuration of a gigantic celestial hope that always seek the weakness of endless gray days, Escape From Reality is an irrevocably unforgettable work that seems to have been conceived in a distant part of the galaxy, where sound reaches a level beyond its ordinary grievances, and unusual melodies of monumental beauty collide directly with the creative reality of an expansive instinct, lost in the interior shadows of our own decadent glories and convoluted confabulations. 

A brilliantly original work that mixes elements from several other genres as well, with special mention to traditional Indian music, Escape From Reality is a vast, extensive and extemporal work, that seeks in the universe of its own indefinite mirages the outstanding beauty of worlds unseen, where day and night are simultaneous, and the visibility of our shadows never forgives the ongoing weaknesses of our own sordid, but imperceptive, intrusions. 

A marvelous album that transports the listener to a delusional dimension where everything can be as instantaneous as it is overwhelmingly distant, the superbly fascinating and impeccable work that Escape From Reality revealed itself to be elevates the work above all the other albums in the genre that were released so far. Thoroughly surprising, and reverberatingly omniscient, each and every song on this album communicates itself ostensibly with the listener, in such a sagacious and unprecedented manner, that inevitably you will be asking yourself if this work, indeed, was not created, conceived, recorded and produced in another part of the galaxy. Because it seems almost impossible for such a beautiful and marvelous work to be a product of our ordinary world.

Escape From Reality is a vigorous and perfect masterpiece. One of the most undertaking, complete, intense, captivating, beautiful and marvelously conceived chillout/ ambient music albums that I have heard in my life, this record has a fabulous potential to enter into the history of these genres. Certainly, this work is a strong motive to commemorate, to celebrate, to boast, to electrify the entire scene. This album has to be spread everywhere. No ambient music enthusiast should ever commit the mistake of not listening to this magnificent, striking and astonishing album!          


Wagner

electronic / ambient / psytrance / downtempo

The Study of Change is an album by electronic music artist Amit Marco, under his nom de plume of Coam, released by Mindspring Music on April 28. With seven tracks – Bun Bo Hue, Me Ya, All Of Life, Outspot, Inspiration Fields, Spectrum Of Love and 4 2 8 – The Study Of Change can be essentially categorized as a psybient music album, with flavors of chillout, psytrance and psydub. With a pronounced angle of colorful atmospheres, the album shapes in the nucleus of its effervescent ashes a labor of transient sonorous devices, disposed in fractal melodic tunes, that let all the harmonies go free throughout the simple universe upon which the rhythms manage their own expansive virtues. 

Interestingly, the melodies constantly reshape themselves in an inclined strand of hallucinatory angles, which oversees the work as a sensible and unpredictable symphony of delusional sequences, being withdrawn from a universe undergoing a beautiful metamorphosis. With a pronounced signature sound that comprehends meticulously the diagram of its own harmonic structure, The Study Of Change reveals itself all the way through as a whimsical record, underlined over a chemistry of rhythm and dissonance. 

A very peculiar album – certainly a milestone in the genre –, the energy that overflows from the melodies are undoubtedly monumental, and the poetic sensibility that undergoes its ostensibly fragile sympathies scores a horizon of highly dissolute sonorous tendencies, exceptionally compatible with the universe projected within the introspective nature of the work, perfectly aligned with the amorphous contiguous zone of flexible perceptions evoked by strength of its characteristic atmosphere.          

A formidable album that works in a very precise intuition several subgenres of electronica – masterly tying all of them together – The Study Of Change is a sensational album, that severely underlies a coherent set of musical patterns, overwhelmingly combined in a style that ably projects a world of dreams by the astoundingly monumental uniqueness of its sound. Certainly, this is a record that deserves to be heard over and over again, as it is a celebratory triumph that concerns the evolutionary development of a genre. A victory to be exalted for the years to come.  


Wagner

drone / ambient

What would happen if you asked five musicians to improvise a soundtrack for a presentation of your film in a church in Paris and record it? That's what Ho Tzu Nyen must have asked himself, and I'm very glad he realized this. His post-apocalyptic film Earth must be very impressive according to what I've read about it, but also according to what comes out of the speakers. 

French drone quartet Foudre hadn't met neoclassical composer Christine Ott before the day of the concert, which adds to the magic of this album. The eerie tones of her ondes martenot match perfectly with the equally nostalgic and intriguing sounds generated by multiple analog synthesisers. Guitar-driven drones and several electronic effects make the general atmosphere complete: an expert level of immersion... 

Give a shoulder massage to a cat and you'll see the same effect as this music has on me. I'd purr equally loudly if I could. But restricted by my human form, I just sit motionless while the soul balming sounds do their work. What an album! 

For fans of all things that drone out of the box. 


​Eline

ambient / drone / experimental

Polar Seas Recordings

Another album from from Polar Seas Recordings and mesmerizing piece of ambient. 'Up Below' by April Larson is a dark, mystifying and inspiring album that every fan of (dark) ambient needs to check out. I put the word 'dark' between parentheses because I'm not exactly sure if this is meant to be a dark ambient album, but it damn well is. The eight tracks on this one are eerie soundscapes and quite often sound like the desperate cries of doomed souls.

Not that I mind, on the very contrary. This album only came in a few days ago and it is already a constant in my ever growing ambient playlist. With good reason too, it's a brilliant album. It's so good that I only have one point of criticism: seven of these tracks are way too short. Like many of us, I am a fan of long, elaborate and stretched out sonic landscapes which seem to last forever. Oh well, I guess I'll just put them on endless repeat.

That being said, you might also say that this album lacks variation as pretty much everything here consists of these haunting soundscapes and drones. However, we ambient aficionados really don't mind, as long as the atmosphere is right. And in that April Larson definitely succeeded. This album comes highly recommended to all ambient fans, bright or dark, doesn't matter. I strongly suggest checking it out. You will not be disappointed.


​Serge

ambient / experimental

Polar Seas Recordings

This is probably one of the most adventurous ambient albums I have heard in a while, and certainly the one with the most tracks. There are no less than twenty-five of them on this album, most of them short studies of a certain instrument or soundscapes while others are nicely elaborated pieces of music. I have been playing this album a few times in the past few days, mostly while writing my book, and I have to say, this one never gets one-sided. It always makes you wonder, "what is coming next?"

I'm not going into a song-by-song description with this one, but I have to pick out some tunes, just to show you how diverse this whole thing really is. It starts with an opener which features the voice of Veronika Zakonjšek. She appears on more songs, but out of those, 'Moje Misli' is my favorite, a mysterious soundscape, luring the listener in. The song is followed by my absolute favorite on this album, 'Sepastia', which reminds me of both O Yuki Conjugate and Deutsch Nepal. It's a rhythmic track and a damn immersive one too.

'Cutter' is a strange, otherworldly piece of music, short but certainly captivating. 'Vertigo' is an eerie track, one that reminds of either very experimental ethereal music or stripped down post-rock. 'ColourEyes' is possibly even stranger. Then there are vintage old school ambient passages, dark drones, classical arrangements and uplifting plucked snares. With that being said, this album just never ceases to grab your interest, even if the songs are rather short. You still have a seventy minutes lasting sonic adventure here.

But now the hardest part, who exactly to recommend it to? Well, see it this way. 'Ghost Folk' is one of those albums that has the power to get you acquainted with new things while still containing everything you like about ambient music. It's relaxing, it's spooky, it's surprising and it's incredibly diverse. So yeah, this is one that every ambient fan should listen to, at least once. Check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised here and there...


​Serge

dark ambient / black metal

Astronomy is an ambient music/ atmospheric black metal album released in April 17, by Spanish musician Iván Ferrús Fernández. Almost one hour long, the album has only five tracks: Trappist-1, Disloyal, Forgetting... Is Time, Recalling In My Thoughts and Winds. With a very organic principle, and a predominantly serene atmospheric soundscape, Astronomy is very quiet, lucid and down to the ground. With beautiful and poetic melodies, Astronomy allows the listener to efficiently undertake a legitimate journey throughout the sensibilities of one’s soul, with a genuine layout of correlated virtuosity, celebrated by the possibilities of a complete process of undeniable discovery, that foretells precious allegories surrounding our own versions of universal truth. 

With a consistent musicality, surprisingly, for an album that does not feature a heterogeneous sonority, the work doesn’t sound monotonous in any moment; on the contrary, it can be strongly appreciated. With an interior vivacity of its own, there is an ostensibly atmospheric sonorous beauty attached to the life of the music. Dispersing a calm, delightful and abundant reality through the vicinities of a peaceful and relaxing sound, Astronomy masterly creates an alternate universe where everything that dwells deep inside your soul is enthralled in the eyes of the unknown.

Despite the somewhat ecstatic – almost frozen – nature of the music, Astronomy is a remarkable album. With an unforeseeable intensity that culminates – and perfectly juxtaposes – into the fascinating galaxy of its lurid propensity of eternal dreams, you have unexpectedly the wonderful opening of a marvelous atmospheric black metal layer, permeated by the astounding sensibility of cohesively written guitar lines, that draws a universe of soul’s disillusion into the absence of a monumental correlated sorrow, that creates beauty from the innermost abysses of melancholy. Summarizing it, an achievement that resulted in a splendid and very artistic record. 

Working in a brilliantly sculpting style the ambient music, as well as the atmospheric black metal passages, consolidating a marvelous mixture of both genres – as well as perfectly delineating a frontier and a limit in between them in the record, as both styles have its different moments of highlight – with discreet, but pragmatic elements of post black metal wonderfully added to it, Iván Ferrús has created quite a unique work, efficient in the sonorous torrential expansion of the harmonies over its infinite diagrams, provided by the primarily philosophic melodies ambitioned by the purpose of the work. 

Astronomy is, undoubtedly, a great record. Although it has a stronger appeal to ambient music enthusiasts, the general outline of the work is mostly solid and competent. A lucid and firmly created work, this is an album abundant on powerful qualities, capable of opening new horizons of sensibility, towards a fundamental principle of audacious, intelligent, renovated and highly independent originality.  


Wagner

ambient / neo classical

Reflection of a Higher Realm is the debut album by neoclassical/ ambient music project Ēirikura, released by Wrotycz Records, consisting of artists from several different German bands, plus Irish poetess Johanna Doyle. With thirteen tracks – Reflection of a Higher Realm, Wassara, Flowers, Eirikura, Annabelle Blue, Oh, roses for the flush of youth, Fornocht do chonac thu, Today's Eulogy, Dance into Images, Like an out-dated Pre-Raphaelite, Gerds, Ramawas Warta and Reflection of a Higher Realm (reprise) – this is a beautiful, formidable and astonishing record, probably the best neoclassical album that I have heard. Fulfilled by references of art and literature – with original and adapted poems as well – Reflection of a Higher Realm is a fantastic, bright and marvelous journey throughout a serene, ordained, sensible and sincere universe, where a colorful ocean of hope can be seen involving worlds of incommensurable delight, in a warm and complete embrace of patience, immutability and beauty. With great tenderness and delicacy, the music of Ēirikura is a marvelous journey throughout an intelligent and thoroughly elaborated universe of supreme art, created with the sentimental, but pragmatic axiom of a truth that comprehends all the virtual and literal necessities of the human soul. 

Reflection of a Higher Realm couldn’t have been a better title for the album, because all tracks in this outstanding and vigorous work – without exceptions – seems to transmit exactly this sensation: reflections of a higher realm. You almost feel you are looking, touching or making contact with the omnipresent consciousness of a higher dimensional existence, parallel to our mundane and ordinary world. These songs appear to descend from a transcendental reign of underlying and subjective, but overwhelming beauty, that came to rescue us from our suffering, fatalist misery and insignificance. With folk and regional elements beautifully inserted in the songs as well, the pure and consecrated density of this work goes beyond the infinity of its majestic tenures of beauty, aggrandizing artistry and emotional virtuosity.    

With a succession of beautiful songs that cohesively forms in the universe of its sensible context a marvelous cosmos of original creative strength and sagacity, Reflection of a Higher Realm is an unbelievable, sensational and monumental record. Its imperial, but graceful and gentle expansive movements liberates the engines of a fragile and hidden existence, made primarily of tenderness, humanity, art and a genuine capacity to sonorously create, evoke and reproduce higher dimensions of dense and meaningful sensibility.  

With wonderful songs like Fornocht do chonac thu, Today's Eulogy and Like an out-dated Pre-Raphaelite – the seventh, eight and tenth track, respectively –, which are my favorites, Ēirikura offers you the possibility to travel to the extremes of your own soul, making you discover and decipher, in the process, the most profound and consistent devotional diagrams hidden in the depths of your own consciousness. But even if they were devoid of this ability – although they aren’t –, the music itself will be a reason strong enough to make anyone anxious to embark on this fantastic symbolic journey of expressive moments, filled by delightful redemptive skies of infinite grace.  


Wagner

electronic / ambient

KrysaliSound

Today is a beautiful day. It's so beautiful that I'm not even angry at Jehovah's Witnesses for waking me up so early in the morning. Normally, if those people ring my doorbell at that hour, I just start throwing black metal cds at their faces but not today. Today, all is calm. The sun is shining. The coffee is good. Plus, I am listening to an equally beautiful album, courtesy of Italian producer Federico Mosconi and sent to me by KrysaliSound, who by now are synonymous with "quality".

Yet, writing reviews about ambient albums is never an easy task. I can start writing to musical landscapes, ever changing figures in smoke, nighttime walks through endless forests and amorphic audio structures. All those comparisons would be correct and I can easily compare this music to acts like Biosphere, Tim Hecker or Fennesz. But still, this album is way too good to throw some review-clichés at it.

There are eight tracks on this album, with the first two already being brilliant highlights. Federico Mosconi creates music where ambient and noise perfectly seem to coexist. There is a certain darkness in the music, represented by deep drones and haunting soundscapes. 'La Fabbrica del Vapore' becomes a bit more noisy, harsher and even somewhat obtrusive while follower 'L'Immagine riflessa' is friendlier, gentle even, at least for a while

That way, the album calmly floats on, filling the entire room with these soundscapes. The tracks are somewhat alike, which is quite normal in this genre, but also come up with the right amount of variation. Federico Mosconi explores vintage ambient music, blends it with today's droning sounds and eerie loops, turning the whole thing into one narrative adventure. One you surely don't want to miss if you are an ambient fan.

So obviously, this one comes highly recommended to all you ambient and drone fans out there. Like many times before, KrysaliSound comes up with a high quality and quite versatile album. I'm not going to describe all the tracks but I can assure you that you will like each and every one of them, from the most minimal one to the massive bombast in some of the ones I mentioned earlier. 


​Serge

ambient / experimental / shoegaze

metalcore / metal

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hard rock

classical / ambient

drum & bass / industrial metal

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progressive / thrash metal

nu metal

synthpop / new wave

techno / industrial

alternative rock

post rock

death metal

dark ambient / black metal

experimental rock

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gothic / industrial metal

punk

ambient, electronic, IDM

Infinite Waves

This album came in quite a while ago but I kept on postponing this review because of the release date, which is tomorrow, March 30. However, this is not the first time I am listening to it, on the very contrary. Almost all of the tracks have already become constants in my day-to-day playlist and quite often I simply play the entire thing. Sometimes to be enjoyed quietly as gentle background music, sometimes loud as a sonic trip. It's perfectly suited for both, and that's an excellent property for music to have.

First things first. Soft Armour is Christian Hougaard, a Danish producer. 'Multi Terrain' is his debut full length, after two ep's. The album is a mesmerizing marriage between ambient and IDM, loaded with soundscapes, field recordings, bass lines and dynamic electronic percussion. That being said, don't expect typical techno, drum & bass or dubstep beats. The ones on this album seem to breathe their own air, go their own way and drag you into an immersive audio adventure. Think Autechre, µ-Ziq or Squarepusher, that will get you closer to the sounds on this album.

Now, in the first paragraph, I mentioned that "almost all of the tracks" have reached my day-to-day playlist, which leaves out the intro 'Coast'. To be brutally honest, this is my least favorite track, an experimental ambient-noise tune without most of the other elements I have been writing about. In all, 'Coast' is a fairly decent intro for what later on proves to become a brilliant album. That being said, on to the glorification of this album, because it really deserves that, at least in my opinion.

'Dune' then comes up with the drama and gentle bombast that would occupy most of the other tunes. It reminds me a tiny bit of Bersarin Quartett and other acts in that genre, but I also notice an urge for originality. Where 'Coast' didn't manage to suck me in, 'Dune' did. Slowly, I am getting into this sound, this atmosphere and these immersive rhythms.  'Moor' follows that example, be it a bit darker. Here, Mmoths comes to mind, another one of those projects that manage to stand out in the vast world of electronic music. 

'Desert', the track we are premiering on top of this review, is a gloomy and quite heavy piece of downtempo electronics and ambient, driving on distorted beats and blissful soundscapes. I think this is one of my favorite tracks, but there are plenty more to be found. The dark, weird and highly experimental 'Macadam' for example, or 'Tarmac', one which evokes visions of late night dancefloors, somewhere up in space. 'Aerodrome' is probably the most haunting track here, even nudging towards the obscure dark ambient scene.

Closer 'Urban' does its job in style, coming up with broken techno and eerie soundscapes. If I have to rank these tracks from best to worst, this one will be somewhere on top. However, I don't want to do that, mainly because I like this album as a whole, even though each track seems to have its own character. In all, 'Multi Terrain' is exactly that, a wide electronic playground where everything is possible, to be discovered again and again, by anyone who wants to. My suggestion: get your hands on a copy of this thing. You will not regret it.


Serge

ambient

Aeon V is an album by electro space ambient duo Solaris, released by Synphaera Records on March 21. With ten tracks – Ritual, Levitation, Inward, Waiting, Roundabout, Intrinsic, Circular, Dominant, Reception and Contemplation – Aeon V is a very interesting, subtle and captivating album, with the title of each track elucidating the objectives of its fairly comprehensible intentions. With concealed and discreet nuances of proverbial beauty, the record is compressed under an imponderable sense of calm and antagonistic majesty. Over the stars, from the dust that emerges between the corporeal sound of gentle and persuasive harmonies, there is an entire universe of solicitude that contemplates the unforgivable rapture of the soul. Permeated by the soft, delicate, ecstatic, vivid and exultant aspects of infinity, a stream of interchangeable intonations realize a correspondence between the realm of thoughts, and the freedom of reality. There is a vast terrain of sensibilities to be wisely explored. And the music of Solaris is the perfect complement, as well as the formidable juxtaposition, for the permanent traces of calmness that delineates the flagrant diligence of serenity that creates galaxies of insatiable magnitude and vehemence in the coherent expansive force of their sound.

Aeon V is a major ambient music album. Displaying the highest qualities of the genre, the atmosphere is concentrated in a symbolic, but virtuous degree of exonerating immutability. Nowhere to be found, new galaxies are created in an instant, by the intrinsic devices of transitory moments, that seems to be stuck in time, although they can be redeemed by the graceful power of inventiveness in the music. And yet, there are no worlds to be properly assimilated, or fully recognized by the total alignments of the sound.   

Redemptive, striking, meditative and sublime, the overall triumph of Aeon V emerges from the strength of a style that transcends the limitations of a conscious rationalization. By the perpetual sense of an infinite coalescence of permanent harmonies, the sound captures the reason of your essence, and for sixty seven minutes, you undergo a dream-like journey of indistinguishing and delicate sensibility, that foretells with astonishing precision the profoundness of the oceans upon which your principles are floating, as well as formidable explanations that describe with precision the reasons for distant planets – the ones that revolved around the banished thoughts and solitary assignments that you used to maintain in secrecy – to became inexistent. 

Aeon V is full of intrinsic qualities and intricate objectives. Nevertheless, it can be firmly categorized as an almost perfect ambient album. With a solid style, but a soft alignment of harmonies, the subjective sense of elusiveness that inhabits the soul converts itself in a large part of the universe. No other definitions will ever be prescribed. This is what the music of Solaris engraves in your soul: a delightful cosmos of imponderable omniscience, creating in your life a perpetual state of grace. 


Wagner

ambient

A Hint of Eternity is an album by Swiss-based ambient artist Silvio Pfiffner, better known by the alias of Nyctalgia, released on March 20. A more concise effort, the album, thirty five minutes long, has only five tracks: One Heartbeat Away, the eponymous A Hint of Eternity, And Then There Was Silence, By the Coast of Broken Dreams and A Sudden Break in the Clouds. With the majesty of a vigorous serenity, A Hint of Eternity has all the classical aspects of the genre: calm melodies, continuous and profound sonorous intonations, a mordacious intensity and a profoundly dense musical cohesion, with interchanging qualities that keeps in the heart of its artistry a similitude of characteristics able to fortify the cohesion of a clean and dynamic unity.  

Displaying great and diversified technical abilities, supported by the infinite amplitude of possibilities allowed by the genre, Nyctalgia creates in the apex of its musical sensibilities a universe of simplified allegories that translates music into human feelings. The paradox of despair is profoundly described and delineated over the colorful grievances of serene and logical harmonies, able to promulgate on the strength of its main components the power to dissect the interior of the soul, as well as its primary intensities.

Within the scope of a categorical and meticulous sensibility, A Hint of Eternity display in the majesty of all tracks the sonorous rainbow of a visceral cycle of solitary melancholy, sidelined by a considerable platform of emotions, that converts the beauty of life into a precious and unique sonorous phenomenon. Exhibiting a wise and exceedingly confident musical sensibility, the peripheral labyrinths inserted by the artist in the expectancies of its sensorial particles validates the precious experience conceded by the record.     

A Hint of Eternity proves itself to be an intriguing ambient record. Although it lacks more vigorous elements, a stronger and consistent premise highlights the subtle – almost invisible – harmonic and expansive nature that is felt and witnessed throughout the whole album. With an astute, intelligent, appreciative and intuitive musical sagacity, Nyctalgia has created an interesting and responsive work. Unfortunately, as beautiful as it is, this record will remain restricted to circles of ambient music aficionados. Due to its profound and intense hermeticism, this album is virtually incapable to attract a new audience, or anyone unfamiliar to the genre. 


Wagner

electronic / ambient

Once is the most recent album by Dutch electronic music artist Eelco van Westen, better known as Taktyle, released on March 17. With an effective, inventive and cohesive mixture of electronica subgenres, like ambient music, neoclassical and progressive, this seventy three minutes album is an epic coalescence of visceral harmonies. With subtle melodies and enduring atmospheres of a prominently colorful symbiosis of deeply resonating sonorous intonations, Once can be described as a splendid record. With twelve tracks – Inside the Box, Green Sheep, Faith, Follow Me, Pinched TB, Mainstage Falafel, Pioneers, Bobbekeen, Vacuum, About Big-Eyed Barking Dogs and Electro Cats, Orange December and Waltz Macabre – the songs are usually very long pieces, where you can almost travel through the tissues of time, undergoing a progressive journey by the intrinsic expansion of your own sensibilities. With a formidable sonorous approach, explicitly lucid and exceedingly vivid, Once reveals itself to be a major record, one that really has come to change each and every aspect of underground electronic music, launching a genuine revolution in the shape, the consistency and the elemental sincerity of the sound.     

With an aggrandizing sense of beauty and eccentricity, Once is a graceful and innovative ambient electronic record. Although the album has its fair share of monotonous passages, the overall score of the album is outstanding, deeply rewarding, precisely intense, and favoring a prominent mosaic of dilapidated tapestries of reinvigorating beauty and splendid majesty, throughout the ocean of its miraculous musical proposal. Like small particles reunited in the functional diagram of a conscious display of infinity, every track in Once exhibits the veracity of a sentimental ordination, unseen in the sonorous waves spread through the lines of its unwavering melodic expansion.  

Once is an album to hear in a quiet place, to appreciate profoundly, in a very serene and sagacious state of mind. From the songs, a splendid universe of sound emanates subtlety, in such a condescending, but at the same expressive manner, that you really will find yourself situated above the clouds. Possibly, even in another planet, or another galaxy. 

Unfortunately, as beautiful as it is, Once is a record that can reach only a very specific audience. It will hardly be appreciated by anyone outside the progressive/ ambient/ neoclassical electronica underground scene. But if you are one of those enthusiasts, do yourself a favor, and listen to this album. With a marvelous ascending intonation, a subtle rainbow of creative audacity, and an impeccable sense of brave originality, the beautiful melodies of this record will enchant you deeply. Taktyle’s music will penetrate the essences of your soul, bringing the whole universe with it. 


Wagner

drone / dark ambient

Years ago, my musical endeavors focused mainly on dark ambient and ritual industrial. I devoured everything that labels like Cold Meat Industry released. In later years, pretty much after the demise of CMI, I start wandering into different territories to satisfy my dark ambient needs. Those eventually lead me to love and respect our own Belgian drone and ambient acts, including CHVE, Barst, Dirk Serries, Stratosphere, Ashtoreth, acts who inspired me to make my own little steps into the world of ambient, drone and noise.

Empusae, the alter ego of Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe is no stranger to me. During those old days, I often listened to his music, often in playlists along with acts like Sophia, Deutsch Nepal, Sephiroth, Raison D'Etre and so on. However, for some reason both forms of ambient have always been separated, at least to me. But at one point Empusae found his way to Consouling Sounds and started cooperating with Barst. Now, after all is said and done, there is this new album, one which once again proves the Belgian dominance in this scene.

'Lueur' consists of two tracks, each lasting a bit over twenty minutes. If you want a short description, you can see this as a perfect marriage between Sephiroth and CHVE or between Sophia and Barst. Both worlds of ambient and dark industrial come together perfectly well here, thriving on Empusae's talent for gloomy but immersive music and the brilliant guest appearance by Colin H. Van Eeckhout (CHVE, AmenRa). Track one alone, named 'Guiding Light' is a massive piece of constantly evolving dark ambient, sludge and drones.

That being said, this album is just as inventive and adventurous as 'The Western Lands' by Barst, although that one has a lot more tempo changes and eclectic elements. 'Retinae Tenebrae' seems to focus more on a mix between neoclassical and dark ambient, which is just as welcome in my book. Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio comes to mind here, but also some of those epic sludge metal bands, in a way. That cannot be just Colin's influence, that must be decades of experience in all sounds dark and heavy.

The verdict? As I said, this album only confirms everything I said about Belgian ambient acts. Of course this comes highly recommended. What else did you expect?


​Serge