HELP: name this artist

[APK]

Alan L. and I are stumped on who these tracks are by.
We need YOUR help. They have titles, but searches have
turned nothing up. They are also fine bits of guitarish (so
it would appear) ambient. Here are 2 mp3 tracks to listen to:

lost in the details.mp3
reverie.mp3

Any ideas ?

APK

[michael sandler]

Still looking, but along the way I found a great artist I hadn't heard of before:
www.myspace.com/causticreverie

MikeS

[jim brenholts]

there is a listing at all music for an artist called black bol with a track titled lost in the detail.
nothing for reverie that would seem to fit. (439 references, most by claude debussy.)

[APK]

Jim: I could only find Blak Bol, but that's not this type of music.
Thanks for looking.

These might be unreleased tracks ... would explain searches not working.
Hopefully someone will listen and know the music or know the artist from
the style.

[APK]

Come on !  no one recognize this stuff ?
We need answers... and we need them now. 

ok, free DataObscura/Blue Oasis release of your choice if you can
identify the artist for us.

[Ferngerms]

Ok....first how did you come across these tracks?
Who found them APK or Undershadow?
(I doubt the both of you stumbled across them together at the same time)
Did someone send them to you or Alan?
What website or blog did you scope this out on?

At times this sounds like old Jeff Pearce circa "Hidden Rift" and "Tenderness And Fatality" with Steve Roach touches (on the reverie track)?  Although I have a good feeling its neither of these artists why are you so curious about the artist?  That is unless you are looking forward to releasing this music....or could this be some APK collab with a hypnos forumite?  Many questions and I want some clues...

Fern

[APK]

Nothing tricky going on, Fern.

Here are more details.

I have this set of tracks/album on my hard disk. I really like them.
I have them in a folder under the Eluvium name. But when listening to them
recently I thought they were not actually Eluvium, and checking the
Eluvium catalog it was indeed not a released Eluvium, and was not actually
sounding like Eluvium that much. But it did sound like a guitar-based project
so I thought to ask Alan if he knew the pieces (he being something of a
guitar ambient aficionado). Alas, Alan did not know who it was ... but
he also became hooked on the music. And neither of us could find the
artist on the web (by titles ... there are 8 tracks). So we thought putting
up a couple to listen to might yield an answer.

The tracks I have are mp3 and dated july 2008.
I now have no idea where I got them. I doubt it was a demo I was sent ...
or I'd probably have released it (I like 'em). So I assume I downloaded them
somewhere or was sent them. Odd, though, that they are not listed on the
database sites. Its very good material, and oddly familiar.

Hence the interest in identification.

Oh ... and its driving Alan mad not knowing who this is.  He also thinks
some tracks sound familiar, but just can't put a name to them.

[Undershadow]

Yeah, Fern, I'm suing Anthony for loss of sleep on this one. Haven't been able to get any since he entangled me in this search for the lost chord-monger. The one called Lost in the Details is particularly tantalising, 'cos I'm sure I've heard it before. I had thought it might be an old Exuviae thing (very similar to a track off Response), but apparently not... It reminds me a bit of an Aglaia piece, but of course the guitar doesn't belong there. And, yeah, the Reverie one is more like decade-old Jeff Pearce or some Steve Roach-styled guitarings circa Midnight Moon/Streams and Currents...

Only thing I could do to take my mind off this was to lose myself in the detail of something else, which happened to be Belgian stringsmith Wixel and the latest in his free monthly download project, Clouds, which he (accurately) describes thus:

"Dense yet soft sounds, slowly moving and progressing, a bit like ... clouds. Most of the songs rely heavily on a sort of tape delay plugin I have, which I fed any sound I felt was appropriate for coloring the cloud. Some compositions are more electronic, others more acoustic, but always cloudy. As you guessed by know, the record is titled “Clouds”. Comparing it to other artists is not so easy, but I would guess a mellow Tim Hecker drone might come close, or maybe you can sense a little bit of similarity to a Stars of the Lid or Mountains composition. I tried to make it drone out, lots of fuzzy/blurry sounds with an undercurrent of melancholic melodies."
                                                           http://2009.bandcamp.com/album/wixel-clouds

[hdibrell]

I just downloaded Clouds earlier today and have been enjoying it. This ought to be an interesting experiment , recording an album a month.    Harry

[Ferngerms]

The "Clouds" is absolutley awesome!  Thanks Alan for the tip!  I remember listening to his "Autumn" release via Smallfish and was'nt moved but wow what a turn of the tables.  Gorgeous stuff....on another note I believe that both of these tracks must of been unreleased.  I looked through the entirety of my music collection and 75% of my collection is stored on my hardrive and only a few songs showed up with the title reverie....the most current release in late 2007 was by Wes Willenbring which was a rather awesome release (and every album I purchased from 2003 forward is in my hardrive and that consists of almost 3,000 ambient albums considering the complete Dataobscura (except two which I will be ordering soon) and Databloem catalog with about every free net release "I have come  likacross ....However the only reason I believe this to be the case is that I doubt this album would of gone unoticed via the hypnos forum.  Members like Alan, David Michuda, avec, asphalteden, APK, drone on, Joe R, 9dragons, and Forest are always reccomending something unique that I have yet to cross....I spend a lot of time searching the net for new artists and labels.....but these songs are too good for them to have gone unoticed by everyone here....a real mystery and one that needs to be solved!

[APK]

The other titles on the unknown album are:
Transparent Design : Luminosity : Almost : Multitudes of Solitude : Once Again : Wane and Flicker

Multitudes is a particularly fine gentle guitar piece.

I'm betting I accidentally dropped them into the Eluvium folder when putting them on my music hard drive.
Hmmm, next to Eluvium is Elve ... I only have "Infinite Garden" ... but do they do work like this unknown album, I wonder?

I will put the question to the Hyperreal email group when things die down a bit over there.

[Undershadow]

Hmmm, next to Eluvium is Elve ... I only have "Infinite Garden" ... but do they do work like this unknown album, I wonder?

Anthony,

Nah, Elve's an entirely different animal. A rough situating I attempted from a couple of years ago went:

“[...] Elve is the latest of Hillier’s protean incarnations, sitting at the end of a continuum which starts with Ishq at the other end, passing through his other project Ishvara halfway. If one were forced into a genre appellation statement, it would roughly locate Elve at a point of intersection between “ethno”-ambient stylings and a more experimental cousin of the psychedelic chill-out fraternity.[...]” (http://www.ei-mag.com/verite0001.php#12)

The quest continues/The torture never stops...

[Joe R]

I'm getting more and more curious. It's very fine music...

And I must check out that "Clouds" thing.

[Joe R]

Wow, that Clouds album is great! I just bought the 320kb download.

[9dragons]

Wow, this is some wickedly good stuff! Amazing to think it has floated down into obscurity like that. I'd love to find more of this artist's work...

[abasio]

This sounds to me like Robert Davies.
I recently listened to Shadow Dreams & that was exactly what I thought of when I heard the track Reverie.
No idea if it is him though. Just guessing.

[APK]

Thanks for reviving the topic, abasio.   We still don't know who this artist is.

I can see why you might think of Robert Davies with that Reverie track,
similar mood and delicacy to it, but I know for sure it's not him. The other
posted track is not in Robert's style. And that's pretty much the same for
the other tracks on the album.

I feel a bit bad posting full tracks from this, but I figure its in a (sort of)
good cause: knowledge !

Here is a fairly short one called "Almost". Maybe it will ring a bell
with someone.

www.dataobscura.com/odd_things/05_almost.mp3


APK

[Stellar Auditorium]

Seems like a difficult job, but it shouldn't be. Searched "lost in the details" in discogs, myspace, and last.fm and the only song that came up was of a pop band called Minibar, but it's not that. Since google also doesn't come up with anything when combining song titles (that is, except your own posts, heh) means that this album is unreleased. The only sure way to find out where you got it, is to go to the places you usually download music and search for the song titles. Could it be websites that host artists and allow legal downloads? Could it be file sharing programs? Well, you should know, except in the worst situation that some guy single handedly gave you these songs, in which case, better luck next time : D

Good music however, keep us posted if something comes up!

[APK]

Thanks for the post, Stellar.
Yep, it certainly seems not to be released, at least with these track names.
It is quite possibly something downloaded from a small web label or personal site that has since folded.
It remains a mystery.

[Undershadow]

EUREKA!!!

Mystery solved: http://endlessascent.com/ea007.html

I had a feeling it was Exuviae - just couldn't find the tracklisting anywhere for his existing albums. No wonder. It's just appeared as a net release.