Karlheinz Essl - SNDT®X
Karlheinz
Essl’s free online album SNDT®X is one of the more exciting releases in
the electronic/electro-acoustic field that I’ve heard in a long time.
Surprisingly easy to listen to yet avant-garde, it is a primer on
experimental electronic music complete with drones, found sounds,
sampling and much more. The title alludes to the cinematic texture of
this sound art. Most of these tracks were created to accompany a film,
performance, or art piece.
The opening track, “Father Earth” is
a pulsing mix of guitar and electronics reminding me of a subway or
train station. I am also reminded of Glenn Branca’s minimalist walls of
guitars at some points. The 13 minute “Action Rituale” combines
computers and religious chants into an intensely spiritual experience.
As mentioned before, some works such as “Carl Mayer Scenar(t)ist” and
“Balkonszene” are soundtracks meant for films or art performances.
While most of these pieces are droning or minimalist, “PENDENTE” stands
out for its melodic beauty. “Sonnez la Clochil” is based on the sound
of a bell while “Decontructing Mozart” does exactly that, pulling apart
the composer’s music into a post-modern nightmare. The tracks go on,
each one giving new insighst to the state of organized sound. This is
an excellent example of the experimental and avant-garde and much more
accessible than the novice might think at first listen. Give it a few
tries. It will grow on you.
- Marvin
Free Albums Galore
Leo Alves Vieira & Pangea - Post -Sleep Paths
Fine places to send my ears and mind
This
work takes control in a subtle manner. Things emerge and take hold,
usually in a musical manner and just as comfort sets in there's been an
unexpected shift of focus, style or mode. What's interesting is how
subtle the changes of mood and manner settle in. The range of musical
expression and the gentle experimental touches are neither too
conventional nor excessively unapproachable.
I'm glad I spent time letting this work take over my world.
-ZH27
Internet archive
Demolyne) - Natural
I’ve
been looking for some new non-dark ambient for a while and this one
kind of fell right into my lap so I figured ‘what the hell, I might as
well check it out’. It’s a brief offering at only four tracks, and so I
will go over each of them:
Rural Lullaby:
It begins like
generic non-dark ambient: a decent, albeit generic, fuzzy atmosphere
(like looking at an old fading picture) coupled some field samples of a
flute. It doesn’t blow my mind, but it’s not that bad. It purveys a
pretty solid representation of what I would imagine sitting in a lonely
field in the middle of Europe feels like. The track stays pretty much
the same for the first two minutes and then it introduces some kind of
random glitchy sounds that follows no discernable pattern. At first it
almost sounds like something out of a Squarepusher or Aphex Twin track,
except that instead of continuing, Demolyne) just repeats the same 3
second glitch part over and over for most of the rest of the track. It
is totally without beat or time and it gets very annoying. It’s much
louder than the ambience, so when it first kicks in it feels extremely
abrasive. I feel like this could’ve been a good idea if it had been
executed in an IDM-style manner and merged more with the rest of the
track. Had he taken the glitches somewhere instead of just throwing
them on top of his atmosphere haphazardly and hoping they will blend
together on their own it could’ve worked…maybe. Towards the end of the
track some nice samples of talking come in and add to the atmosphere,
but that glitchy shit continues to grind on and get in the way of what
could’ve been half pleasant ambient.
When The Ice Breaks:
11 seconds of a beep and some decaying static….pointless any way you skew it.
Tundra Ambient:
This
track is completely different from the first part of the album and
ventures into drone territory. No more flute and no more glitch, thank
god. This is actually a solid drone track. It builds up to just the
right spot and then plateaus to provide a nice meditative ambiance. It
reminds me a good deal of the Biosphere album Substrata; very empty and
subtly arctic. While Tundra Ambient (a fitting name) isn’t going to
blow your mind, it does provide a good background for other means of
mental expansion. The only major downside is that towards the end he
throws in a sample of a guitar which neither fits the atmosphere nor
furthers the flow of the song. The quality of the guitar sample is poor
and more than anything else it just inhibits the momentum of the track.
Turbid Waves of Blizzard’s Breath:
This
one is probably my favorite on the album. Once again I am reminded very
much of Biosphere. Demolyne) succeeds in creating solid minimalist yet
atmospheric droning arctic ambient. It’s a bit boring, yes, but the
pads have a very pleasant rolling static-y texture to them which I
cannot deny enjoying. This track brings to life an ice-encased void.
The song doesn’t change much one it gets into its full swing (about two
minutes in), but nonetheless this is a very good meditative piece and
since the album is free for download I would definitely suggest
checking this one out if you’re a fan of this style. Oh but some words
of caution: try to remember to skip the track once it gets to about
nine and a half minutes. At this point some very badly sampled bells
marinated in muddy reverb come in and it’s really just fucking
annoying. But it’s great pre-9:30.
Overall, the Natural EP
was hardly mind-blowing or earth-shattering. Apparently this is
Demolyne)’s debut, which isn’t surprising. He shows a proclivity when
it comes to droning atmospheres, although his work doesn’t exactly
stand apart from the other drone artists out there. If he continues, I
hope that he focuses more on the drone side of ambient, but works on
incorporating some kind of progression(s) into the songs. I sincerely
enjoyed most of the later two tracks and if you’re into drone ambient
then I would highly recommend checking out the last two tracks and then
waiting for something more mature from Demolyne).
-[.d4n b4rr3tt.]
Wounds of the earth
Two
left hands on two right arms ist einfach ein symphatischer Name für ein
Label. Die neue EP von Demolyne) (sic.) ist definitiv das beste Ambient
Release dieses Wochenende (und ihr wisst ja, Wochenends gibts davon
immer bergeweise).
DE:BUG
Adrián Juárez - Amílcar
I'm writing this as I listen to it. The accompanying blurred visuals
which show up automatically when you watch this in Windows Media Player
are quite the icing on the cake. The music so far is drone music... and
so it continues many songs later. A bit of melody in the ambience on
"Cerdo del oleaje" but for the most part very non- directional music.
Recommended.
-Terrence
Brannon
Ambient
Usenet group on Google
Mrcien & Zerofication -
Mind Matter Norm
The Norm Widened
Beautiful,
dark and brooding, but also hopeful and uplifting, just like the ups
and downs of the album's subject: your own mind compared to everyone
else's. This is exactly how you want music to sound towards the end of
the first decade of the millenium.
-adamnash
Internet
archive
Patel
pretal - Patel pretal
Patel
pretal is an English from London making experimental music (and working
with interactive according to the tlhotra webpage). And I can imagine
this form of music working really well live, so I’d advise
anyone in
vicinity of one of their tours to go see them.
As for this
release, the two songs are generally a blend of ethereal ambient and
noise. The main piece is the almost 22 minutes long
“Mathematics“,
which is a quite fine piece of music. It’s noisy (not harsch,
but lots
of white noise and disturbances) and it’s quite beautiful in
it’s
well-balanced progression. Starting off with just a lone female voice
droning, it slowly builds up with more and more sounds and effects,
feedback loops and white noise, until it finally dismembers into a lone
filtered noise loop winding down. The track has an eerie feel to it,
the droning voice almost creating a meditative mood. Soothing yet
slightly disturbing would be the best description I can find.
Unfortunatel,
the second track, Ippolit, doesn’t quite do it for me in the
same way.
It sounds a lot like it’s a bad recording from the past
Soviet Union. I
can see what Patel pretal were trying to do here, but it falls short of
being interesting for me as there’s not really anything going
on in the
track. It feels more like an interlude or an intro for a concert or a
full length album than an interesting track in itself.
If you’re
interested in experimental/artistic music, I would recommend the first
track “Mathematics” straight on. It’s the
main part of the release and
is well worht a listen.
-Arete
Swedish
netlabel news
clemens hauch - broken
and before you now..............infinite plateaus
Sometimes I feel this aggregate of musics are describing the end game,
and in my opinion...with absolute beauty. I
love the stumbling March in Movement 2,also the wild micro tonality
before the crescendo yielding a key tied to an iron gate,in a breeze.
This artist has crafted extremely rewarding scape's for involved
listeners.
-cage13
Internet
archive
This
is a beautiful live set. The textures and drones that constitute these
three tracks fall in line as nothing short of an elegant listening
experience. Wish I could have been there..
-Christopher
McFall
earlabs
Herr Ĺberg och
Fröken Ankarborg - Jag rör mig obehindrat nu
Schwedische Poesie Grundkurs
Schon
der Titel dieses Schwedischen Releases auf dem Label Two Left Hands On
Two Right Arms war einfach zu verlockend. Und dann die Vocals.
Verdammt. Little Fluffy Cloud is nichts dagegen.
-phlow
Hjorten - Omringad av
mörker.
It's
in the noise music's nature to be associated with the extreme: that
which starts when musics own language breaks down, implodes, and a
wordless state, which many would call noise, starts.
In the
e-mail with the review description of the local Uppsala noise musician
Hjorten's new album, the editor Hannes calls the music "completely,
hopelessly non-commercial noise scrap", and that's exactly what this is
about.
Experimental sound terrorism, to use Hjorten's own words.
The
opening track, "Skit under naglarna", is a rather boring and monotone
pulsating with low frequencies that is randomly beset by an electronic
crackling that evolves into a ear numbing beep after three and a half
minutes, until thirty seconds remain and the music dies out followed by
fifteen seconds of rest.
The first real exciting things happen
at 5.44 into the second track, "Synskadad framtidsvision", when the
alarm goes off, followed by short analog howlings as different types of
rusty engines trash the sound image into a meaty factory swarm
accompanied by something that sounds like a giant gong.
Then and there it's really powerful.
The
problem is that I don't really know why it's so powerful. I have a hard
time judging Hjorten by any strict assumptions of quality, even if it
feels poor that a number of tracks follow the same pattern of a
monotone background that is then are decorated with atonal sound scrap
from other frequency ranges with random intervals.
For that
reason, I like the track "Intelligent nonsens" the best. Instead of
beginning with a massive sound layer, it bangs a couple of metallic
beats and then turns on a muffled transistor radio on something that
sounds like a Russian pirated radio channel.
All too often, I
wish that the music be provided with proper body music drums and become
a dancefloor hit in the passages. But it's of course doomed from start.
"Omringad av mörker" is a title that says exactly everything
about the
music.
-Björn
Berglund
Ergo
Olle Svensk - Pitroghucy
real dark, real long!
a very spooky piece!
-tim_dark
Internet
archive
Exploración
entre atmósferas oscuras y lineales, con una calma apenas
alterada (y
en todo caso de manera sutil) a lo largo de la hora que dura el tema.
-minifu.com
En
cette période assez calme, voici une une nouvelle prod sur
le netlabel
Two left hands on two right arms : Olle Svensk - Pitroghucy. Entre
dark-ambient et soundscape, cette sympathique petite release se laisse
volontier écouter.
-Brokendols.org
Некий
Markus Aberg, решившийся анонсировать данный релиз на сайте TLHOTRA,
начинает свое ревю следующими словами: «Early in the mornings
when I'm
walking to work I use to listen to music in my mp3 player. One morning
when I listened to Pitroghucy by Olle Svensk, something unusual
happened. I walked the wrong way!» И немудрено. Прослушивать
музыку
Olle Svensk (он же Funkis/Anulaibar) следует с некоторыми
предосторожностями – существуют большие шансы впасть в
глубокий транс,
заехать по бессознанке в глухую промзону и надолго потеряться там среди
гулких дебаркадеров и заброшенных цехов. Шестидесятиминутная запись,
сделанная Olle Svensk в недрах какого-то промышленного гетто, похожа на
монотонную индустриальную кому. И если бы не уникальная в своем роде
трехмерная тоннельная акустика, позволяющая мысленно организовать
звуковое пространство альбома, слушать оный было бы совсем тяжко.
Звучание
Pitroghucy наполовину состоит из равномерного гула, производимого
естественно возникающими воздушными потоками, насквозь пронизывающими
всё и вся. Вторая же половина приходится на позвякиванья металлических
предметов - судя по всему труб различного диаметра, глухих стонов
электропоездов (вроде бы) и прочих плохо поддающихся идентификации и
спорадически возникающих механических звуков. По атмосфере альбом Olle
Svensk напомнил мне последнюю работу Where – Wererat, но еще
более
пугающую, в особености своей онтологической механоморфной бездушностью.
-
Radiodrone
V.A. -
We who with music beguile your pilgrimage to the unknown
We
who with music beguile your pilgrimage to the unknown is not only a
whole mouthful, it's also a very nice, not to mention free, dark
ambient sampler from the Nordic countries. It's released in high
quality MP3 by netlabel Two Left Hands On Two Right Arms from Sweden.
Finnish
project Somnivore opens up with an interesting track based on
dominating bell melodies, percussion and background synth waves, which
is representative of a lighter, more concrete style of ambient. The
Funkis/Anulaibar (Sweden) track "Pencumbeliig" is a long one that
consists of extremely obscure and submerged sounding dark ambiences.
Many gritty sounds and deep voids to sink into, slightly reminiscent of
Norway's Svartsinn, especially from the Of Darkness and Re-creation
era. "K" by CTACIK, also from Sweden, starts out softly, but after a
few minutes an ominous, deep horn begins to sound through the aural
mists, which is later swapped for a didgeridoo-like drone. Further on,
the song evolves even more, with manipulated voices and effects,
keeping the track interesting for the full fifteen minutes. Krishve
hails from Denmark, and "Ol' Nick" is a pretty disturbing burst of
distored vocals and effects. Short but scary. Midikill is a
Danish/Norwegian cooperation, and "Firefly" is a live track, with many
different sounds fading in and out of the musical tapestry. Somehow, it
isn't very catchy or interesting, however. Dense Vision Shrine is a
project of Norwegian Karsten Hamre, and his "Ego universe" is a
conventional, but good dark ambient track with waves of synth drone and
vague rhythmic samples. Aural whiteout is a Norwegian black ambient
project, based on heavily modified electric guitar, and thus
unrecognisable as such. "Visual blackout" is a short but interesting,
very bleak track. The compilation is ended by Finnish project Arash
Moori and its slightly freaky "Magpie On The Gallows", which is based
upon many delicate samples of tones, hisses, field recordings and other
things. Halfway, the song changes into a more conventional combination
of synth melody and rhythm, which brings us back to the style of the
very first track on this album.
Though lacking a bit of
coherence in the thematics or general atmosphere, this compilation
contains enough interesting material for ambient music fans of any
kind. Especially considering this is a freely shared release, I'd
advise all adepts of electronic music to go out and download this. You
can reach the download page via the label website.
O.S.
Evening
of light - platform for dark experimental music and alternetice cukture |
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