Currently listening, part 1

[APK]

I discovered this, though: http://playmytape.net/page.php?id=73

Very enjoyable for a lazy laidback Friday afternoon.

[Joe R]

I discovered this, though: http://playmytape.net/page.php?id=73

Great! Alan comes through again!

[richardgurtler]

Hi friends,

greetings from Slovakia!!! To all those interested in Strom Noir "luvyoo" CD, get in touch with Slovak label Ambsine Records (www.ambsine.sk). The page is written in Slovak, but go directly to their CD Shop and you will see note in English with e-mail contact: orders@ambsine.sk. Payments available via paypal. I will ask Vlado of Ambsine Records to post more news on his label, projects and releases in the coming days. Enjoy it!!!

All the best.

Richard

[richardgurtler]

Vidia Wesenlund "Night Light" CD

I think this title was mentioned on this forum one year ago while still in preparation. Vidia Wesenlund is a Norwegian singer, now based in the desert of New Mexico. Vidia's beautiful and angelic voice sings in Norwegian and Swedish lullabies from Scandinavia. Masterfully backed up by Michael Stearns on samplers & synths with other guests on harp, nyckelharpa, violins, bansuri flute... Very deep, mysterious, intimate and evocative music. More infos on: www.vidiawesenlund.com

Richard

[Joe R]

I played the Strom Noir download that Alan had posted yesterday, and it's excellent, of course.  There's something strangely voyeuristic about this music, as though you're passing through someone else's hazy and half-remembered dream world. It's like every track is an impression of a specific place and time and event.

So now I'm off to the Ambsine label to order Luvyoo.

Hi Richard! Thanks for the info. :)

[ffcal]

That Strom Noir sounds nice.  Just picked up their Ylomejja release through Soleilmoon.  Thanks Alan!

Forrest

[Undershadow]

Glad to have been of service, sirs. In re: Ylomejja the following appeared in a profile of a bunch of u-cover cd-r releases:

"[...] Finally, we have Ylomejja, by the Strom Noir project, under the curation of Slovakian Emil Mat'ko, who constructs flowing pieces of haunting, sometimes haunted, ambience from guitar loops and synths, adding detail with field recordings and sundry liminal sounds of otherness. Haunting, as in title track "Ylomejja", a beauteous Enossified driftzone of resonating neon guitar plucks that outfold across the listening space. Haunted, as in "The Orbs", which has the arcing lilt of a reverb-dripping motif slowly effaced by the cavernous resonance of overdriven echo. The same shadowy figures populate the psyched-out drone-blur that is "Nice to be here". Ylomejja is strong on tenebrous atmospherics and a certain desolate drama effected by Mat'ko's sombre poetry of movement and texture. Overall, however, a certain sameness of sound design means the album as a whole falls just short of attaining the heights initially promised, though it's helped in this case by an addendum in the form of a 15-minute Ontayso remix, a slow and low trance-mission which sees "Planet Catcher" spirited away to a different darkside domain of shifting and tilting pitch-shifted soundplates."
                                            (http://eiaudioverite.blogspot.com/2008/09/u-cover-2008-update-by-alan-lockett_8183.html)

[Undershadow]

At the moment I just finished listening to

Aun - Motorsleep - Alien 8
(Like Joe R I have been digging the darwinsbitch release from three weeks past...this release is along "similair" lines but perhaps a bit closer to the work of Lawrence English and Jasper TX.  An absolute A+ from me and a must have for those who like fuzzed out guitars and doomy drones....i'm looking at you Alan, Joe, Forrest, and SiF.  Perhaps you already have it but if you don't then you must)

Thanks, Fern. A very good recommendation - just listening to it now. It's referred to as 'an ambient doom project', which is slightly off-putting (to me, anyway, as I'm not much for Nadja and FFB, and all that sludge...), but this is going down really well here. The refs to Hecker and Fennesz and Basinski (see webpage ref below) are perhaps indicative of the fact that this is coming more from the shoegaze-inflected ambient drone hemisphere than the black-metal-doom underground. Webpage here with streamable tracks:

http://www.alien8recordings.com/releases/motorsleep



(late addendum: hmm... some gruzzy bits along the way make this a rather bumpier ride than I initially thought: approach with caution. Still wouldn't tag it 'doom', but almost certainly too noisy in places for the out-and-out ambienteer)

[Joe R]

I listened to the Aun-Motorsleep samples yesterday, and thought they sounded a bit too harsh for what I'm accustomed to (which is not necessararily a bad thing).

[APK]

- Saul Stokes: Abstractions

[DeepR]

Hallucinogen - In Dub

check out this track, for the second half especially
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZjcdLvwrvo

[Joe R]

Circle-Tower; Free-form ambient jazz. Very, very nice;  -and a distant cry from the kind of music they usually do, which is heavy-metalish, I'm told.

[Infraction]

The Caretaker - Persistant Repitition of Phrases (Install) CD.  Just getting started on The Wire's year-end best-ov list from '08.  This one was listed at #10.  So far, very much what I expected, yet it seems less like sampled, filtered and recorded like previous Caretaker material.  This one has some added gauze and soft echo.  Haunting in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of someone else's yesteryears. 

Taiga Remains - Ribbons of Dust (Students of Decay) CDR.  Great guitar drone, makes a nice complimentary piece to the above.   Limited to 100 though...argh.

Kodama - Turning Leaf Migrations (Olde English Spelling Bee) LP.  M Northam and Hitoshi Kojo.  Have listened to just one side thus far, a bit more experimental than other Northam I've heard.

Jason
infractionrecords.com

[9dragons]

Am checking out the Aun Motorsleep samples. Quite nice, but not sure. I'm not hearing the harshness you guys mention, yet. I am tempted (and look, they give away free dowload when you order the hard copy!) but I am also wary of vaguely doomy dudes who take a stab at dark ambient. Never quite seems to work out from my view.

Yesterday's listen: Secede's Vega Libre. This album is gorgeous and entertaining in so many ways.

(wait, Motorsleep track three is kicking up the dust...this is actually sounding quite good)

[9dragons]

Sounds very much like Troum...

[Undershadow]

The Caretaker - Persistant Repitition of Phrases (Install) CD.  Just getting started on The Wire's year-end best-ov list from '08.  This one was listed at #10.  So far, very much what I expected, yet it seems less like sampled, filtered and recorded like previous Caretaker material.  This one has some added gauze and soft echo.  Haunting in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of someone else's yesteryears. 

Oi, Jason. I have a soft spot for The Caretaker's world of warped and woozy memories too. I have the inordinately sprawling 6-cd set, Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia (also available as a free d/l).



Just noticed a live set, Memories from the museum of garden history, available for d/l.



Did you hear the album Bleaklow he did as The Stranger? Very eerie isolationist-inclined stuff.

[Joe R]

In a fit of instant gratification today, I decided I needed a music download. Hmmm, but which one?...  I was intrigued by the raw guitar sound of Aun- Motorsleep, but also intrigued by another dose of guitar ambience over at Boomkat called Steel Wound, by Ben Frost. I ultimately picked Steel Wound, and I couldn't be happier. This is a SERIOUSLY deep, thick slab of echoey and shimmery guitar sound, always intense and powerful, sometimes black and eerie as well. Added to the mix are occasional distant voices muttering unintelligible phrases, quite a disconcerting effect. For a download, the sound is incredibly deep and expansive, seemingly reaching to the very edge of the universe, and echoing back again.

Suffice to say, I am just knocked out by this music, and I would say it's a must for anyone who loves dark ambient. Has anyone else heard this? It's not new music, having been around since I think 2003, but I've never seen anyone else mention it.

Aslo today:

The Fun Years- The Crippling Paranoia Of Flourescent Quinine

[Joe R]

Alan, thanks for the tip on The Stranger. I downloaded the free Stranger album from 1997, and will be giving that a listen very soon.

About a year ago(?) I had The Caretaker's A Persistent Repetition Of Phrases and soon got tired of it. I thought it was effective for a track or two, but ultimately it was too much of the same thing for me.

...although those Bleaklow samples sound eerily intriguing. 8)

[APK]

Gone backwards to

- Jethro Tull: Stand Up

by far my favourite Tull.

[hdibrell]

Gone backwards to

- Jethro Tull: Stand Up

by far my favourite Tull.

That is a really good album. I was fortunate enough to see them as they promoted this album. Great show! With Joe Cocker and Fleetwood Mac(the original version).       Harry