Jeff Pearce - The Hidden Rift
Jeff Pearce - VestigesTwo OOP albums available through Bandcamp, both great guitar-based instrumental music. Some more structured melodic tracks as well as some more abstract, ambient/drone type tracks. There are still some OOP albums that are not available yet, i.e. Tenderness & Fatality, Daylight Slowly, and the collaboration with Vidna Obmana. I am hoping these will eventually show up on his Bandcamp page.
https://jeffpearcemusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-hidden-rifthttps://jeffpearcemusic.bandcamp.com/album/vestigesA Produce - Inscape and Landscape CD
Fantastic ambient album, quite dark but accessible. Beautiful packaging too. Never explored this artist until recently, which is sort of shame since he's sadly no longer around. Looking forward to checking out more from his catalog in the future.
Herion - Out and About CD
Picked this up during the recent sale, very nice fusion of classical instrument textures and experimental ambient. Too bad this group never made a follow up album. I know some of the members have recorded individually, but I'm not familiar with their work at all.
Nebulae - Path of White Clouds CD
"Supergroup" collaborative drone project featuring two big name artists that are no longer around. Admittedly I was attracted to this due to Oophoi's name on it, but this is a bit different than the handful of Oophoi albums I have. Not much to say other than I really like it.
Miktek - Elsewhere FLAC
Very nice ambient techno with some very slight dub-techno-ish textures here and there. At times it's a bit too slick but overall very well composed and put together and a very good album. Looking forward to the next album from this artist.
https://ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/elsewhereMartin Nonstatic - Granite FLAC
Much more advanced than anything else I've heard from this artist, which didn't really wow me. However, this album is very, very good and goes way beyond the usual GAS/Basic Channel/Maurizio tribute stuff in dub techno. I would say this is probably about 20% or less dub techno, which is good. Lots going on - experimental/non-musical elements, ambient, glitches, even some Warp-style IDM-ish textures. Overall a very nice album.
https://ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/graniteCell - Hanging Masses FLAC
This reminds me of an early/mid 90s ambient techno album, but much more refined and slickly produced. Very well done though and there is enough individuality and personality to make it stand out. Anyone know why the artist hasn't followed this up with a new album?
https://ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/hanging-massesASC - Fervent Dream FLAC
This guy gets a lot of praise for his ambient albums as well as his beat-driven d 'n b influenced work, but I've never really listened to him until now. I have to say I was very, very impressed with this album. It breaks no new ground really, but it is so well done I can't complain. Hardly any rhythm at all on this until you get very near the end of the album.
http://shop.silentseason.com/album/fervent-dreamShaded Explorer - Empatia FLAC
Not super familiar with other work by this artist, but the little I checked out didn't grab me. This albums seems like a big step forward though, and I was very impressed with it. Definitely on the melodic side of ambient techno, very accessible, probably 15-20% dub techno thrown in for good measure but generally avoiding rip-off cliches. Not necessarily earth shattering, but again, very well done.
http://shop.silentseason.com/album/empatiaDronny Darko - Neuroplasticity FLAC
Industrial influenced dark ambient stuff, lots of digital/electrical sounding noises, fairly abstract, a lot different than the more standard sounding dark ambient type stuff this artist has done previously. If you're familiar with the Italian project Bad Sector, this actually reminds me a bit of that, though not quite as refined. FYI this is 50% on Cryo Chamber's Bandcamp site right now, along with the other albums by this artist that have been released through the label.
https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/album/neuroplasticity