ambient / drone

What a lovely day it is today. The sun is shining. Outside it's cold but inside it's warm. The magpies and crows are having a serious argument about who is allowed to occupy the massive pine tree in the garden. Below, the robins, finches, blackbirds and tits are minding their own businesses, munching on the rotting apples that fell from their trees. Yet, even through all that activity, there is a sense of serenity in the air, certainly with the audible help from the gem I'm listening to right now.

Because, obviously, we're not here for an ornithology-lesson. We're here for an album review. That album comes from American sound sculptor Tristan McNeil and under his Nude With Lyre moniker. This album started as a soundtrack for a short film but eventually grew into the delightful full length I'm listening to right now. Built-up with soundscapes, processed voices, minimal percussion and sub basses, this thing is as varied as it is hypnotic and as old school as it is futuristic.

'Naked' opens the album with some interesting minimalism. Yet, for my taste, the mesmerizing track 'Purple' is the one that truly convinced me of the quality of the whole thing. The song reminds me a bit of Olafur Arnalds meets Bonobo meets Bersarin Quartett and that's huge plus. 'Climbing' is another nice piece of electronic ambient meets classical folk music before 'There' gives the whole thing a gloomy and dark atmosphere. 'Birds' seems to explore the regions of (dark) jazz and intelligent dance music. Like Autechre meets Dale Cooper meets Biosphere.

I'm going to leave the last four songs up to you, but I promise you that those too are well worth the effort. Fans of ambient music, from Eno to Hecker, will definitely find something they love on 'Blood'. Ok, I will mention that 'Pleasure' is a bit weird, but nonetheless beautiful and interesting. So yes, this one comes highly recommended, not only by me but also by both my significant other and our cat. The latter doesn't even care about the birds anymore.

Serge

shoegaze / dreampop

stoner rock

electronic / ambient

Avian

post rock

black metal / hardcore

heavy jazz / noise rock

alternative rock

doom metal

heavy metal

power metal / heavy metal

hardcore / progressive

symphonic meal / gothic meal

techno

alternative / singer-songwriter

death metal / thrash metal

Serge

electronic / synthpop / darkwave

Nightcrawler is the most recent release by Hungarian electronic music artist Lazerpunk! One hour long, the album has fourteen tracks – as to know, The Message, Virtual Reality, Level One, Worldeater, Miami Mafia, Million Dollar Baby, Warrior, Radio Towers, Night Sky, This Is Not The End, Stardrifter, Nightcrawler, Endgame and The Fading Memories Of Summer And You – that reveals itself to be a very unusual and bizarre piece of electronica. With an intriguing, but exceedingly eccentric mixture of several subgenres, like dark, retro and futurewave, as well as synthwave, amongst others, Nightcrawler relies on too much generic and formulaic electronica devices, becoming a somewhat noisy album, for dealing with so many styles, doing in fact little to aggregate intelligent elements to this generally unfavorable and very conspicuous musical panel of melting electronic subgenres.

Don’t get me wrong. Nightcrawler is not a bad album, but it’s not memorable either. Only if you are a very ardent enthusiast of noisy electronica, you will like this record. Extremely exasperating all the way through, some of its tracks can work in night clubs, but only a handful of them. Some beautiful melodies do emerge along the way, but its principles, in general, are too slow or beaten up to please an audience, and the listener rapidly grows tired of so much sharp and superficial sonorous uniformity, throughout a musical anatomy that inevitably gets excessively monotonous, and ostensibly repetitive. 

There are little elements to describe positively about this album. If you think of it as specifically designed to attend a narrowed niche of electronica, then this work really becomes better understood, and you extract more sense out of it, vividly and functionally. Otherwise, it is just another work full of synth notes and noises, that makes you grow tired – at best, at worst, you die of boredom – while listening to it.

This musician is really skilled and talented in what he does. Nonetheless, he does not challenge himself on a satisfactory basis on this album. He keeps his abilities guarded in a comfort zone, and never leaves. Aside some bright moments, and a handful of good tracks, this album will hardly prove itself to be worthwhile to anyone, unless you are one of those people who can be described as an exception, that fit in the specific niche, upon which Nightcrawler is meticulously inserted.    


Wagner

electronic / psytrance

Fireside Tales is an album by psychedelic psytrance electronic music artist Nibana, released by French record label ADN MUSIC, on December 10. With four tracks – Neuro Diversity, Mysterious Encounter, Warm Colors and A Journey Into Deep Space – this album is filled with deeply melodic tunes, and is literally abundant in a vast amount of elements that has everything to make this album the simplest, yet the greatest, psychedelic psytrance album of the year. Marvelously beautiful, with the correct, but subtle incidence of alternative and progressive elements, colorful and sincere harmonies, as well as a coherent range of wonderful rhythms, makes Fireside Tales a very audacious work, true to the most outrageous principles of the genre. But it has a very courageous overlook, that beautifully looks deep inside the genre’s possibilities.

A unique work in several aspects, the harmonies are intertwined with an integral sonorous segregation, that deeply reverberates into the cosmos of its own salutary development. Relying on more calm, yet profound harmonies, Fireside Tales is an album that reveals and works psytrance in a more reflexive and philosophic context, beautifully underlying the melodies in a more subjective definition, creating rainbows outside the sphere of its lucid, serene and wonderfully energizing sonorous majesty. 

Although the album per se is strictly simple, it is so complete, that the consistence of its poetic harmonies revolves from a more timeless overview of the music, contemplating the grace of its gregarious connotations as a perfect definition of sound, that generates uniqueness as a stream of style, relying on a strength of several peculiarities, that makes this album a great and marvelously surreal work of art.

For all enthusiasts of a more contemplative and serene work of art, to listen to Fireside Tales is almost a religious obligation. With restless hypnotic moments, and a very cohesive straightforward style that unravels a monumental diagram of sound, this album consecrates the path to a wonderful sonorous experience, that will lead you to a very different universe, where everything is possible, and related to a personal sense of artistry. Revealing in a wider scope the tangible possibilities not yet fully comprehended by the genre itself, Fireside Tales is an album that rearranges its own symmetry of sound in a calmer, but very dense atmosphere, fully assimilating the imponderable veracity of all the universes hidden in the infinite cosmogony of sound, with a desire to capture the unknown, and hold it altogether in a vast labyrinth of harmony, sensibility and life.   


Wagner

dream pop

jazz / krautrock / post rock

electronic / idm

techno

rock / experimental

stoner / doom

psychedelic doom

black metal / doom / thrash

thrash metal

metalcore

drone / ambient / psychedelic

folk / rock

thrash metal

punk / hardcore

post rock / psychedelic / progressive

black metal

Vault Of Dried Bones

Aah, a new edition of Brieviews, and why not simply kick of with what will probably prove to be the most raunchy and ghastly piece of musical extremism in this article. Sorguinazia is a duo, dwelling in the deepest, darkest caves and tombs of the black metal scene. Don't expect musical ingenuity on this one, but prepare to get molested by fierce guitars, haunting vocals and a relentless tempo. One these three songs, the duo constantly balances on the edge between primitive black metal and harsh noise. This is not music, this is either an exorcism or an occult ritual and it's definitely suited only for the chosen few who can handle the extremest of the extreme.

stoner doom

On the slower part of the metal spectrum, we meet up with Brazilian psychedelic doom band Ruínas de Sade and their self titled three-track debut. I'm not sure when this band formed, but my guess is "not that long ago". However, despite the fact that the whole thing sounds like a first effort by some enthusiastic youngsters, there is some bloody awesome potential to be found here. The tracks are long and loaded with monolithic riffs, rough vocals and psychedelic solos which even bring Pink Floyd to mind. Of course, I would recommend this to all doom fans but another shoutout goes to labels: sign these guys, lock them up in a studio for a year, add a solid producer and they might come out with a classic. This is talent!!!

post rock / electronic / doom

Onto one of the most unique releases in this edition of Brieviews, an astonishing cooperation between Bulgarian doom metal band Smallman and drum & bass producer Ivan Shopov (Cooh/Balansky). The result of this cooperation is an often perplexing blend of styles, contrasting rhythms, dark ambient, folk and post rock passages and intense outbursts of metal. Bands that come to mind include Massive Attack, Coldplay, Primordial and Anathema. There is plenty of atmosphere and more variation than you can imagine but most of all, these are simply excellent songs, dressed in a modern and epic sound.

progressive metal

Since we're dwelling in the experimental and somewhat unusual corners of the music industry, allow me to introduce Jupiter Hollow. In the past few years, this duo has been absorbing all things progressive and now come up with a stunning blend of everything between Rush, Opeth, Pink Floyd, Dream Theater and Tool. The five songs on this album are complex, often downright confusing pieces of progressive rock, interlaced with ambient passages. They not only show tremendous technical abilities but also a decent flair for songwriting. Fans of progressive rock should definitely get their hands on a copy of this. This is pretty much everything you like, pressed into one ep.

progressive rock

On the somewhat more gentle side of the progressive rock spectrum, we reconnect with Finnish masterminds Grus Paridae and their new single. I remember writing a review for this act in the early days of Merchants Of Air and I remember being quite charmed by their music. On this single, that is no different. 'Forthcoming Nonintellectual Decadence' is a classic progressive rock anthem, one where I can clearly hear influences from Pink Floyd but also elements from classical music. The piano and violins have a central role in this atmospheric and beautiful piece of music and the whole thing sounds well balanced, varied and as anthem-like as this kind of music should be. Nice work.

death metal / thrash metal

thrash metal / black metal

dark ambient

facebook

noise / experimental

dark ambient / experimental

black metal

post punk

progressive / power metal

Modern melodic metal from Canada, suited for fans of Kamelot, Symphony X, Alter Bridge and Tesseract, that's what the biography mentioned. Yet, I'd like to add bands like Moonspell to that list, certainly after listening to the brilliant opener 'Guillotine', which is an epic dark metal anthem. The rest of this ep is pretty much equally interesting with some very strong metal songs. Red Cain somehow managed to blend progressive, technical and dark metal into a mesmerizing journey. Personally, I really dig the clean but forceful vocals with this kind of music so in that Red Cain certainly delivered the goods. Closer 'Unborn' is my second favorite, especially with that epic intro. 

black metal

progressive / alternative rock

progressive metal / djent / post metal

Some more relentlessness from our neighbours in France, this time with a genre called "djent". I'm not very familiar with it and many of the bandnames don't really ring a bell but I know what I like, and I like what I'm hearing right now. Short, nervous riffs, energetic drums, loads of atmospheric sounds and a harsh, screaming voice create a captivating blend of post metal and hardcore. No doubt that songs like 'The Wall' and 'Broken Streets' will be absolute blasts when played live, certainly with that amount of energy and intensity. This definitely is one for the newer generation of metalheads, but I think Meshuggah fans can easily appreciate this slab of aggression too.

indie rock / psychedelic

electronic / trance / techno / psytrance

Biijah Records

The Myth Of The Cave is the most recent album by Hallupsynagogic, released by Biijah Records, on November 20. With five tracks – being them From Caveman to Alchemist Part I, From Caveman to Alchemist Part II, Ghost Valley, Goblin's Cavern and Hipnagogic Purple (Vs Polybius), The Myth Of The Cave is a trance electronic music album, with an effervescent psychedelic vibe and twist. 

Playing all around with the most entertaining elements of trance music, The Myth Of The Cave has vibrantly skilled and spiraled upbeat harmonies, all perfectly inserted in a very eccentric layer of intelligent rhythms, that remains somewhat constant throughout the whole album. With a distinct playfulness that characterizes ostensibly the spirit of a very basic trance, these five tracks on The Myth Of The Cave really pushes to the limit the basic elements of the genre, relying on a more fully formed traditional design to uplift the development of the rhythms.

Although this feature can be appreciated as a restrict quality, on the other hand, it represents a very compounding weakness, since no innovation is presented here, and the album eventually turns out to the just another trance record, that relies on a “same old” model of work. Although the five tracks presented here are not bad at all, they’re also far away of having some significance. Generated by the central axis of the propelling musical device which comes to subsidize the basic outline of the genre, what we really have in The Myth Of The Cave is a very good, decent trance music album, that is incapable of going beyond that. This means that, completely destitute of an impulsive energy and a groundbreaking originality, this album will never achieve a great result. While I reiterate the fact that this album is, indeed, a very good work, its normality and uniformity can’t accomplish too much. Even the more ardent enthusiasts of the genre will feel bored after listening to this album only a handful of times. 

A good trance music album, that doesn’t explore the vitality of its potential, or the amplitude of the genre per se, The Myth Of The Cave is a very good work, but, unfortunately it stops there. Completely incapable of going further on the path of limitless musical possibilities, exploration and exhilaration, this album is destined to lose itself in the road to sameness. In the meanwhile, you can certainly listen to it, and enjoy, at least to a certain degree. Sooner or later, you will inevitably forget about it. You can be positive about that.       



​Wagner

electronic / darkwave /synthpop

Scandroid is the eponymous self-titled debut album of an electronic cyberpunk darkwave/ retro wave/ synth wave one-man musical project, led by an artist known only as Klayton, based on the United States, responsible also for the projects Celldweller and Circle of Dust. With fifteen tracks – being them 2517, Salvation Code, Aphelion, Shout, Destination Unknown, Connection, Datastream, Empty Streets, Awakening With You, Atom & E.E.V, Neo-Tokyo, Pro-bots & Robophobes, Eden, Singularity and Eden (Waveshaper Remix), the album was released on November 11, together with another one, that is only an instrumental version. 

With a brilliant futuristic techno style of electronica, Scandroid can be best described as the perfect marriage between Daft Punk and mind.in.a.box. Its debut album, without a doubt, is one of the best things that I have ever heard in my entire life within the genre. With a powerful force of its own, filled grace, amazing rhythms, and catchy melodic twists, Scandroid certainly is the future of electronica. With a gracious, but lucid influence of 80’s pop, the artist in question really absorbed all the right things, in what concerns the musical influences from the past. With the fourth track – Shout – being an electronic version for the notorious Tears for Fears classical hit, this album is literally a masterpiece: no flaws, no boring moments, no nostalgia freaking styled tracks. Scandroid is the most beautiful electronica masterpiece that you will ever hear in your life. It’s such a powerful album that it’s impossible to become tired of it. Beautiful, poetic, filled with escalating rhythms and hallucinating melodies that travel through the magical rainbows of a hopeful philosophy of sensibility and love, Scandroid is one of the best albums of 2016, one of the best albums of the decade, and certainly one of the best albums ever made in the history of electronica, as a genre, and as a sonorous expression of art.            

A marvelous and perfect album, like I had never heard before, with equally disturbing ascendant moments filled with rapture, and an indescribable energy that encompasses the songs from the beginning until the end, such amazing masterpiece deserves all the recognition it could get, from the moment it was released. 

Fantastic, imperially suggestive, permeated with a happiness that engulfs the rhythms in a melodic dissonance that dwells from a distance, this album literally made me speechless. Beautiful beyond any description, Scandroid is a marvelous masterpiece, that will define something new in your heart, as well as shape and rearrange through another perspective your musical taste. A wonderful work of art, bound by a universe of glowing light, this is a musical experience like you have never heard. Superb, powerful, unique, with a high level of delusional excellence and majestic artistry, this is definitely the album of a lifetime. A wonderful paradise for the ears, to say the least!       


​Wagner

ambient / electronic / experimental

A six tracks compilation (with a hidden bonus video) that has musicians Clinker, Giacomelli, Sonologyst, Bedtime for Robots, Kshatriy and Downscope, here we have another exponential crescent level of fearless experimental insinuation. With no rules or boundaries, this diversified, spiritual and futuristic ambient album is marked by a transcendental calmness, and an unbreakable disposition to take its listeners far beyond the ordinary levels of existence, and throughout the entire cosmos. 

With remarkable peculiarities, this cosmically balanced ambient album builds entire universes in apparently simple rhythms, and everything you have to do is to let yourself go, anywhere these tracks will lead you. Of course, these six songs are from different artists, so obviously you will feel that each one of them has its own astounding identity. With the prospect of being categorized as a promising light, with the sensorial landscapes that the tracks bought into the darkness of its shapes, here we have a great set of melodic prisms, conglomerated in the vicinity of a marvelous layout of infinite serenity and fragile cataclysm. Nonetheless, being exceedingly concentrated in an intense panel of ambient cosmogony, this compilation is made to please a very specific audience, remarkable and avid enthusiasts of ambient space music. Otherwise, it will sound very boring to anyone who is not pleased with the genre. 

An adventurous and miraculous journey, Meditation Room is a very intelligent compilation. Like the title itself explains, it can be a great guideline for sessions of meditation too, since its deeply calm and peaceful tracks are experienced journeys that can teach you how to travel to the interior of your own soul. But you have really to detach yourself from everything, and submerge your spirit into the dimensional vastness of the music, to enjoy this experience meaningfully, gracefully and efficiently. 

Since every track is usually very long, each one of them is a journey in its own right, and you don’t have to necessarily listen to all of these tracks in a mandatory sequence, if you don’t want to. You are totally free to do “separate” travels if you want, and I think this will amplify your experience while traveling through the vast surreal dialogues of each one of these marvelous songs.  

Meditation Room really is that kind of album perfect to listen in the dark, with your eyes closed. If you let yourself go, the music will lead you throughout an imperial journey of transcendence, peacefulness and calmness, and your soul will eventually heal to the point of fusion, as you stay bound to wake up in a completely different world.  


​Wagner

electronic / ambient

bandcamp

Released recently, on November 16, Wasteland is the second full length of a talented Russian musician, known only as Tremulaant. With thirteen tracks, being them Desolated, Cargo Cult, Retrovirus, Syndicate, Utopia, Echoes, Mood Swings, Disturbia, Manipulated Living, Afterglow, Uniform Dreams, Damaged Goods and Hyperpower, Wasteland is a more sinister and shadowy album, with melodies settled in a more distant, majorly permissive and bizarre configuration.

Nonetheless, it has some beautiful melodies. With the predominance of serene and calm rhythms, on Wasteland, the listener can experience a quieter and gentle soul transfiguration, on harmonies where discreet electronic beats are disguised in the silent blasts of a more uniform cohesive dynamic. Characteristically more ambient than its predecessor, Wasteland is a more ecstatic album, that brings on the tenure of its interesting musical subject a more mysterious and exotic approach. With songs shorter than usual, this album is way more influenced on minimalist electronics than its predecessor, showing an audacious degree of change in style. With some beautiful melodies all the way through, Wasteland certainly can be considered a very good album, and a decent surprise, that greatly summarizes the astonishing musical abilities of this unknown musician, that presents himself only by the nom de plume of Tremulaant. Exploring an intelligent level of experimentation, here we can testify the surprising evolution the artist has consciously dedicated upon his music, since he works towards very different spheres of sound.     
A little ecstatic sometimes, nonetheless, Wasteland is a great artistic achievement, that rationalizes a severe punctuation in what concerns a vibrant and lucid artistry. With tracks brilliantly conceived, and walking towards a moonlight of sonorous magnificence, what we have here is a groundbreaking confluence of musical intuition, working towards a self-sufficient goal of experience, composition and inspiration.

With tracks reminiscent of smooth electronica brightly executed at the zone of a highly diminished and ethereal horizon, concentrated in a volatile dose of simple connective originality, as an ordinary sadness that comes and goes, Wasteland is a fruitful sonorous minimalist electronic ambition, made to sound as a purely evocative state of the art realm. Bound to break rules, and sound freshly provoking, rebuilding and reconstructing in the innermost intricate details the vivid colors of opaque harmonies never to be found outside this particular work,  Wasteland is a very good album, inevitably bound to conquer all the hearts of experimental electronica lovers all over the world. 


Wagner

black metal / crust punk

symphonic metal

facebook

funk / alternative

synthpop / electronic

post punk / alternative / indie

hard rock

black metal / shoegaze

grunge / alternative rock / punk

rock 

bandcamp

post punk / alternative rock

alternative rock / noise rock

hard rock / heavy metal

facebook

grindcore

bandcamp

With Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation on vocals, San Diego grindcore outfit Anal Trump comes up with a short and vicious assault. The longest song on this album is eighteen seconds long and I had to listen four times while writing this thing. So yes, this is sick, gore grindcore in perfect Anal Cunt / Napalm Death tradition. It comes with a lot of shit that someone named Donald Trump has been spewing out, like 'I'd Date My Daughter', 'Build That Wall' and 'Breastfeeding Is Gay'. So if you miss Seth Putnam, hate Donald Trump, think music should be torturous and have no problem with the fact that downloading this release will last longer than actually playing it, you need this.

black metal / thrash metal

black metal

punk / alternative rock

doom / sludge

​Serge

electronic / ambient

bandcamp

A terrific and very smooth album by Tremulaant, an unknown Russian musician that makes a wonderful mixture of different genres, like electronica, ambient music and indietronica, all perfectly inserted in a very dynamic and consistent layer of experimental beauty and objectivism, Shivers has sixteen tracks: Love Is Not Enough, Zephyr, Era Vulgaris, Enemy, Pale Memories, December, Horizon, Love Is Not Enough (Again), Sehnsucht, Doppelganger, Low Profile, Aurora, Warm Whale, Hopes, Insignia and Venom Of Tradition. A little more than one hour long, Shivers manages to be a categorical album, filled with an exotic and philosophic proficiency, that organizes in the hidden harmonies of its opacity a fragile beauty, underlined over a poetic attempt to capture an epic moment of existence.

With beauty, melancholy and serenity, all of these sixteen tracks are compact configurations of ephemeral moments, perfectly understood over a craft of genius rhythmical consonance. A marvelous journey into the inner depths of an emotional rapture, Shivers captures each and every soul of colorful monastic harmonies, compromised over a feeling of sonorous expansive vastness. Otherwise, you could just feel yourself to be lying down in an ethereal universe, where everything you see is made of a deranged breakdown, of all the things you never felt. Surprising the listener with a meltdown of different styles, albeit arranged in a coherent harmonic layout, this album is an unbelievable masterpiece, that will take your soul into an everlasting journey of exhilarating paradox and divine exultation. 

Impossible to be completely understood, this album has so much mesmerizing tonalities and relentless boundaries, that you cannot fully comprehend it consciously. With a remarkable audacity that has everything imposed over a sonorous stratosphere of remarkable wonder, Shivers is not just a state of the art work, impregnated with a highly stunning degree of philosophical sensibility, but explodes within your soul while creates an inextricable universe of innovative  colors under your head. And this is just the first impression. If you listen to this album more than one time, you will just feel yourself ashamed of having not listened to this before.

An immensurable work of art, never to be duplicated or imitated, Shivers is a golden pearl of the underground. An unparalleled album that no other work in the history of music can match, here we have the perfect matrimony of a highly ingenious technical ability with the uttermost emotional sonorous intuition that anybody in this world could ever think of. With prominent allegorical melodies, that reproduces several states of the soul, Shivers is a colossal and dimensional masterpiece, with no rules to be held above its own principles of beauty, grace, timelessness and sensibility.       



Wagner

electronic / ambient

Downtempo Cherries is a bright, astounding and recently released Chill out/ Ambient compilation album by Greek label Cosmicleaf Records. With ten tracks – being them E 75, by Fourth Dimension, Freedom, by Stimulus Timbre, Feel the groove, by Zero Cult, Go Back, by Dense, Trace, by Kick Bong, Pelagio, by Stefan Torto, Mentor, by Maluns, No Borders, by Side Liner & Aviron, Synthonauts, by Cydelix and Suduaya, and Masala Putri, by Chronos – what we have here is certainly a great compilation, able to satisfy you in each and every possible aspect. With a smooth and very soft sound, bounded in a futuristic style, with cosmic and transcendental grooves, this compilation reunites the greatest exponents of the genre.

With a versatile charismatic sound, bound to a tranquility never seen or heard before, this album is beyond incredible: despite its calm and superbly lucid atmospheres, the record is never boring. Enthusiastically sincere, and transcending melodic lapses of time, each and every track are a sensitive journey towards the unknown. A profound and vivid travel throughout the soul of the genre, in its purest form. 

Viciously epic, and amazingly demanding, on the other hand, this tracks are as soft and deep as the best masterpieces of the genre could possibly be. With extricate and detailed nuances, colorful rainbows and detached semicircles emerge from the desirable holes that emanates from the dreamlike notes that compose the magic atmospheres and powerful harmonies, that denotes the universe on which these melodies came from. A parallel universe where colors, dreams, sounds and sensibilities are bound to be just one inextricable thing. 

Inevitably, you are doomed to be bored, if this is not you’re genre of music. With an understandable uniformity that captures a hallucinatory and organically organized shape of harmonies and balances, these tracks will sound the same, if you’re not really into the chill out modern sphere of sound. With an intensely conceptualized stream of protuberant styles, that, at a certain level, restrain boundaries and limits to a very distinct sound frame, these chill out ghosts and dreams may leave you intoxicated while listening to it. Unfortunately, what we have here is a higher dose of the genre, in an exceedingly concentrated form, which makes this compilation implausible to be appreciated by newcomers or amateurs alike. Nonetheless, it will sound perfect for the ones already introduced, familiarized or enthusiastically crazy about the genre! A perfect compilation, no doubt about it!              


Wagner

electronic / industrial / noise / avant garde

An album that opens with a song titled 'Life Is Noise Around Me', you might start to expect a challenging listening experience. You could be right about that too. In fact, at first listen, this album really might sound somewhat unconventional. Yet, sometimes "challenging" and "unconventional" result in something interesting and that's exactly what's happening here. Let's see if I can guide you through this one.

Csigo is a singer-songwriter and guitar player from Hungary who played and plays in bands like Dubcity Fanatikz, Anima Sound System and Beat Dis. However, don't let those references fool you, because on this solo album, Csigo does things quite different. This has nothing to do with dub, rock or even techno music, although at times it's quite danceable. So what is it? Well, basically, it's the lovechild between eighties avant garde electronics and rhythmic noise.

Opener 'Life Is Noise Around Me' and follower 'Interplanetary' remind me of acts like Suicide and Throbbing Gristle, while on other occasions Crash Course In Science, The Normal or even Prurient come to mind. That being said, yes, this is a heap of minimal but dark electronics, perfectly suited for those industrial dancefloors. 'Vexation' even takes the "industrial" tag quite seriously, being a droning and repetitive piece of music.

In all, this is a strange and harsh album, one which I would recommend to all you dark electronics freaks out there. Perhaps not to the people who are into easy-digestible dance music, but for those who dare to experiment and seek deep, dark music to accompany the noises in their heads. The last track, 'Blank Look', might terrify you a bit, but don't worry, it's just music... I hope...


​Serge

electronic / experimental

An interesting electronic album, with dense and heavy dark ambient characteristics, Electrons – A scientific essay, by Sonologyst, is a tense, vague and dubious ambient album, relying on abysmal, anxious and afflictive insinuations. Cosmic, disturbing and decisively intense, this is an axiomatic album, that creates a universe of disturbing and fulfilling sonorous premises.    

With a nervous and corrosive sonorous surface, the album correlates its intense uneasiness with thin and distrustful ambiguous sensibilities, combining the darkness of its truth to the veracity of its causal reality of desperation and demise. Eventually falling into the magma of more usual dark ambient tonalities, Electrons – A scientific essay, creates into the layout of its magnificent sphere of dreadful harmonies an interesting journey of lethargy and sleepiness, heading for a somber and dark world, devoid of a perpetual omniscience.  

With turbulent elements that apparently departs from what appears to be, initially, a lucid dream, all sonorous devices here are eager to incorporate an hyperbole of different transient vigorous personalities into the music, using as a layout for the soul of the music a sincere darkness that never fades away. And using this premise as a starting point, we have the imagination of a devoured anxiety falling into an endless void of wrongful exhilaration, lust and protectionism, forever lost into the never ending demise of a darkness that will always remain. 

All in all, this is what Electrons – A scientific essay, by Sonologyst, sounds like. With its nine tracks that apparently came from outer space, this album provides to the listener the overview of a distant cosmic sound, with origins certainly out of this world, having been perfectly configured with all the correct elements of the most ambitious, fearless, voracious and agonizing components that dark ambient, as a genre, could have ever assimilated or discovered, in a distorted layer that even the universe itself, in all of its vastness, is yet to absorb.  

A very good and decent work, certainly this album will please all the enthusiasts of the genre. Finely arranged, composed and decently produced, Electrons – A scientific essay, by Sonologyst, contains the greatest elements of the genre, without limiting itself to be just another release. With all of its transient devices converging correctly, the stylistic veracity and the sharp truth that compels this album to the path of the fundamental albums of the genre certainly will find its way to the audience, with the potential to be hailed as a state of the art work.           


​Wagner

psychedelic trance / goa / electronic

A Trance compilation released by Californian label Goa Records, and compiled by electronic music legends Moonstar, also known by his more popular nom de plume Ovnimoon, from Chile, and DJ Rhino, from Greece, the double album contains eighteen of the most energized and furious tracks ever created in Trance music, on virtually all subgenres, from Goa to Neo and Progressive, amongst many others.

Divided in two cd’s, the first one has the following tracks: Rules of Levitation, by PsyBuddy, Physical Effort, by Dee, Vaisnava, by Analog Minds, Supernova, by GalactrixX, D.N.A, by Solar Waves, Ancient Tales, by Yar Zaa, Bounty Hunter, by Barby, Luminous Void, by Recursion Loop and Sweet Bitches, by Electit. The second CD has the following track list: Lost In Time, by Trickster, Attraction, by Spectro Senses, Polos, by Sinergia, Living The Dream, by Xamek, Misdirection, by tinY, Revelation, by The Unknown, Ghost of Nebula, by Goa Luni, Outer Space In My Mind, by Lectro Spektral Daze and Silent Sweeper (Cactus Arising Remix), by Omnivox.

A great compilation that reunites the most refined and distilled tracks ever produced on the genre, this exhilarating selection of songs certainly supplies an enormous niche within the Trance music scene. While this genre is primarily characterized by an harmonic noisy repetition, it appeals mostly to a very specific audience, working splendidly in live concerts and electronic music festivals. But, of course, if you are an enthusiast of the genre, obviously you can appreciate a great compilation like this one also at the comfort of your own house.

Characterized primarily by a uniformity that satisfies the listener by inserting him in a very familiar confluence of pronounced shattering sounds, these Trance tracks, that amazingly explores all of its different subgenres, reveals in detail the stylistic zone of harmonies upon which the path of its cohesive dynamics is centered. With the tonalities of the rhythms being constant, most of them converge to a very coherent stance, that summarizes altogether the sonorous principles upon which the genre relies on. However, with each track being approximately seven minutes long, you have to be a very enthusiastic fan of the genre, to be proud of such a collection of sounds. 

With a firm and visible pattern of evaluation that circles the harmony, making the sound intrinsic to its own melody resurface below the lurid challenges of a sphere that breaks the boundaries between antagonistic cadences, most tracks in this compilation are really centered upon a perfect match that counterbalances melody and resonance, revering time loops that shifts the breaks between continuity and bilateral noise. 


While I cannot say I’m particularly attracted to Trance music, this compilation really sounded astonishing to me. Beautiful, transcendental, expansive and true to the genre, enthusiasts of Trance music certainly have a lot of motives to celebrate. While I haven’t found any bad track that in my opinion should be tackled out, this compilation really outstood itself for its cohesion, coherence and beauty, celebrating the genre as a whole, without forgetting its most elusive elements, nor neglecting its diverse subgenres. While maybe I could possibly point it out as a prospective fault the excessively long duration of each track, I know that this is peculiar to this type of music, given the fact that Trance is a genre especially fit for live performances, as its popularity can be properly seen and evaluated at the prominence of the genre in the dance music scene worldwide, and electronic music festivals.                     

Undoubtedly a very good compilation, Fresh Horizons of Goa v2, with tracks appropriately selected by two authorities on the scene – artists Moonstar and Rhino – definitely can be considered among the best ever created on the genre. Even people who are not familiar with Trance music will feel amused listening to it, working also as a great introduction to the genre. Certainly, imposes respect, and deserves to make history, having enough strength on its axis to reach its audience with power and impact.  


​Wagner

ambient / electronic

A renowned name in the contemporaneous electronic music scene, Kick Bong – artistic nom de plume of French artist Franck Jousselin – released his most recent full length recently, on Greek label Cosmicleaf Records. Titled Destiny, this is an album filled with different colors and textures, impregnated with transcendental vibrations and consonantal dynamics, that mesmerizes the senses with all of its transient devices that celebrates a groundbreaking mixture of several different genres of electronic music, like chillout, downtempo and lounge music. With nine tracks, being them Time in Suspense,
Voices from Heaven, Ange Gardien, Traveling in his Head, I was asleep, Such Love, I Love this World, Destiny and Whirlwind, this album presents us Kick Bong at his best form. Experimenting, creating and regenerating the most effective and orderly sidelines of his music, being immersive, harmonious and methodic, while highly delusional, abstemious and cautious, the artist manages to be amazingly experimental and profoundly lucid at the same time. 

With a great set of songs able to inspire impressively high connotations of beauty, resurfacing and resounding with his very unique sonorous identity, in Destiny the songs are mostly meditative, transcendental, serene, calm, melodic and deeply poetic, with the preponderance of melodic resonances that infuses into his music a consistent layer of opacity and light, at the same time. Like an eternal rise of a poetic spring that acknowledges the importance of solitude, Destiny certainly brings to the listener a more reflexive, philosophic and deep side of Kick Bong’s music, being hugely transcendental in all spheres dispersed by the rhythms of the music. Certainly, all of his fans will be put into a state of grace, while listening to this. Destiny is definitely art, in the shape of electronic music.  

An amazing album, soon to be considered a great part in the history of electronic music scene, Destiny is filled, from the very first track to the last one, with beauty, elegant traces of self-discovery, poetic daydreams of lucid harmonies and exceedingly monumental eloquent charm. A marvelous form of majestic sonorous utopia, while extremely recognizable at the same time, Destiny, by Kick Bong, is a fundamental album. The future of electronic music, and the shape of things to come. 

A daydream in sonorous form, impregnated with a sense of devotional paroxysm, this is an album with potential to challenge the basis of the underground music. A milestone that obviously cannot go unnoticed, this is a major work that deserves to be hailed by its audience.         


Wagner

ambient / electronic

Recently released by Greek label Cosmicleaf Records, Long Journey, by Aviron, is an ambient three tracks album, marked by deep and thoughtful harmonies, that comprehends the spirited meaning of expansion and rhythm. With serene, but constant melodies, that revolves around a sensational sonorous inspiration that immerses the listener into a long journey of peaceful delusion, this work, albei being brief, is deeply atmospheric and intense. Like small sparks of impressionistic notes, the colorful and poetic rhythms, almost detached from the reality that mesmerizes the factual perceptions of the senses, drives you into a whole new world of interceptive vibrations, that captivates and disseminates grains of poetic beauty to a new level of delusional transcendence.       

Sometimes flerting with Psytrance, the three tracks herein – Long Journey, Solving The Mystery and Hateship – throws ambient music into a different level of existence, matching the perfect coexistence of an audacious thrill of artistic experimentation with the traditional approach that characterizes the genre. With powerful rhythms and an astounding dissonance that immediately captivates the listener’s audition, groundbreaking dance elements surprisingly collide perfectly with the surface of the music, revealing a refreshing element of astonishing musical magnificence that makes this fantastic masterpiece not just brilliant, but incredibly fundamental for all enthusiasts of the genre. 

A powerful EP that really captivates the listener at the very first seconds, until the very end of it, Long Journey – although being a little bit short, in fact – is a profound and methodical exercise into electronic music, masterly mixing ambient, trance, psytrance and dance music elements, that reorganizes into the deep spherical layer of a protuberating art the immense and diverse abilities of an artist that really knows what he is doing. A great gift for the electronic music scene as a whole, Long Journey is powerful as an EP, and each one of its three songs individually can be categorized as state of the art symbols, bounded to make history in the annals of the genre.  

A powerful EP that everybody should listen, Long Journey is an incredible and lucid musical work, that no description in words can match. A groundbreaking masterpiece, whose only failure is being too brief. Otherwise, it would have been an epic contribution to the history of electronic music.            


Wagner

electronic / ambient

A beautiful collaboration of electronic music artists Stimulus Timbre and Fourth Dimension, in a three tracks album – being them Ode to Terra, Strange Beauty and
Dancing Fields – despite its brevity, the record manages to be a beautifully serene, poetically cadenced and amazingly relaxed chill out masterpiece, that will enticingly surprise your ears, and flow through your senses as a mesmerizing journey of colorful reactions, eager to bring the paradise to your senses, and intensify the interior capacities of your hidden sensibilities.

A great journey of amazingly transient and ethereal soundscapes, these three tracks travel throughout your mind, unraveling a curious sense of serenity and freedom. As a great part of you deals with the fact that this beautiful music floats through the air in a transcendental journey of harmony and strength, the explicit poetry that flows through the beautiful melodies dance in the air, modifying colors and empty spaces,   all around the hidden layers of its happily effective inner universe. As the songs revolves in your senses, a wonderful ocean of stars dance above your eyes, setting a deep pattern of everlasting grace, that perpetuates within your thoughts the majestic, lucid and vivid harmonies of this album. Despite excessively brief, these tracks are not just impressive, but heavenly great and full of life. 

A marvelous and impressive example of chill out, the amazing joint effort of the two artists herein – Stimulus Timbre and Fourth Dimension – really requests a follow up. The astounding result produced three of the finest tracks ever written on the genre. With such poetic harmonies, and wonderful melodies perfectly synchronized with the sensational amazement of an infinite universe hidden inside the spectrum of a magnificent sonorous journey, Dancing Fields will certainly be a worldwide success among the enthusiasts of the genre. 

A perfect example that summarizes the possibilities hidden within the genre, Stimulus Timbre and Fourth Dimension captures in their collaboration an effective expansion of permanent harmonies, that dilates dimensional rhythms into one vigorous sonorous order. A glorious state of the art work, Dancing Fields is an album to be listened one thousand times, if not many, many more!    
     

​Wagner

ambient / electronic

Another project of Spanish sound designer Sycantrhope, Deadly Oak is an ambient musical creation crafted in a multicolored layer, that drafts its peculiar incisions from a panel of several different musical variations. In his social media page, he describes the genre he works with as dark, deep, electro wave, dark wave, witch house, avant-garde and dub, and it certainly sounds as a mixture of all those influences.  

Distinguished by a very colorful and protuberant sonorous rapture, Inner, by Deadly Oak, is a unique album, that arranges and organizes electronic melodic elements in more ascendant patterns, with an unusual combination of harmonies. Specially beautiful, poetic, brilliant and decisively eclectic, it is an incisively definitive electronic music masterpiece, exceedingly uncommon and different for Sycantrhope, as Inner, produced under the alias of Deadly Oak, relies less on atmosphere, and more on melodies and rhythm. Another thing that should be pointed out as well is the fact that, being a lot more colorful than his other musical projects, this album is not grounded on sinister, subtle and tense evolving rhythms, nor intuitive agonizing sonorous prospects. So here, as Deadly Oak, Sycantrhope really explores another side of his creative ambitions, giving to its listeners a very different set of characteristics, perfectly lined up with the vision of his unprecedented musical talent.

But, boy… what a magnificent album! Not just one of the best I’ve heard from him, but one of the best albums of electronic music that I certainly have heard in a while! Greatly exploring colored harmonies, sentimental nuances and vibrating expansive rhythms, avant-garde elements are brilliantly highlighted on this album, which greatly exposes, in a very veiled form, some influences from vintage electronic of the 80’s. Rewinding a set of different emotions, happy, serene, resigned, despondent and elusive reactions permeates the musical lines throughout the tracks, all gifted with a serious sense of poetic and majestic correlations.

A sensational piece of work, that deserves to be seen as such, Inner, by Deadly Oak, is a great balance between sonorous shape and artistic sensibility, with a rewarding domain of the senses and a great sonorous configuration of bright energy and vital force. Eleven tracks that build a different kind of beauty inside your head, entering through your ears, and setting up a universe of elemental and soft uneasiness within your mind, Inner is an album that certainly can be classified as a great gift for all electronic music enthusiasts out there. A groundbreaking record, and a victory for the genre, you certainly can’t lose the chance on listening to this beautiful work.    


Wagner