P047: Cabeza de Vaca – Ambient and experiemntal music special

Plenty of reviews to cover the content of this week’s Cabeza de Vaca show over at Scanner FM. Thanks as always to all those artists and labels who sent promos in and apologies if I didn’t have time and/or space for all. There will be another, special ambient show in only two weeks time.

Aquarelle – August Undone [Students of Decay, 2013]

Fans of Mountains should definitely pay close attention to this release. That is not to imply anything derivative on offer, but that Ryan Potts’ Aquarelle project has delivered an essential album for fans of cinematic pos-rock-ambient to rival Mountains themselves. “August undone” achieves the perfect balance between stasis and movement, between loud and quiet, between dense and sparse without ever feeling like an imitation or resorting to emotional blackmail. Opening track “Within / without” is a perfect encapsulation of the album both in title and sound. The opening minutes blend waves of drones and noisy guitar with a distant tinkling piano before it all suddenly seems to go still, with what seem like real life summer beach waves lapping somewhere in the background. The sound clears and becomes fragile and spritely, the moody heaviness suddenly bristles with optimism as it slowly reverts to the opening sequence again. The rest of the album follows suit, using density and volume and emotional sleight of hand to create a diverse, intelligent and sentient panorama. This is played music, not thought music. The short and beautifully titled “Sandpaper winds” resembles the religious side of Popol Vuh and their similar untethered and instinctive modus operandi as a guitar gently strums away and lifts upward in naked and fragile joy. The epic “This is no monument” is almost Bardo Pond at times before it too clears into a more melancholy piano-led sequence. The finale “Clockless hours” returns the favour with a burning core of noise bookended by quieter sequences. A stand out release for the year beyond doubt.

Xiphiidae – Pass hidingly seek [Housecraft Recordings, 2013]

Xiphiidae – Quaking myth [Aguirre 2013]

Across the two Xiphiidae releases covered here, I kept getting the impression of hearing somehow the overlap of the actions of man and of nature. In particular, there was a very rural sense, albeit abstracted, reminding me of the uneasy harmony of the farm where everything is allowed to grow and roam free, where nature is close, but where everything is ultimately sown, including the “harvesting” of animals for food.

Xiphiidae is the long term project of Jeffry Astin who has been running and releasing on the Housecraft Records label from Gainesville, Florida for many years. Although his artist name is derived from the Sword Fish, a large predatory beats of the sea, Astin’s music is anything but predatory, albeit neither is it hippie New Age drone either. “Pass hidingly seek” was originally released on cassette in 2009, but only now on vinyl, and feels like farm yard pop refracted through a watery prism. Wah wah sounds control the texture of the album, marking it with drifts of current and the wash of waves as seen from below. But deep in the core of this is the source material, or what sound like a blend of field recordings and guitars that keep the emotion glued to pangs of old-time nostalgia. As well as the guitar-ish feel, many tracks also seem to contain animal noises, like birds, chickens milling in the background. The music has a pleasant innocence about it, perhaps linking the mood to the title, but by the end of the album there is a lack of tension or thematic development across the many tracks that is ultimately its overall weakness.

“Quaking myth” which originally dates from 2010 is a completely different beast, however. The first ten minutes sound like gamelan music played in a rain storm with a Word War II transistor radio playing softly in the background, a kind of tropical Java heat slowed to a crawl and trapped in a beautiful loop. The second track on the first side sounds at first like a harmonium drone fest or some of Charlamagne Palestine’s strumming music. The sound could be a crystal storm cloud gathering in to itself purple dusk hues as it condenses and sets down over a small town. But there is no disaster on touch down, only a soft blurring as the cloudiness becomes night and the threat merges into the quotidian activities of man, as captured in the field recordings. The second side opens with a phasing set of chords not unlike some of the moments from Popol Vuh’s soundtrack to Aguirre (which seems appropriate given the label!), particularly the metaphorical scenes of raging rapids, before it eventually slipping into a more languid drift work for just over 13 minutes. The album ends in a short vignette of a rusty gate come loose and grinding in the hot summer breeze before it too fades into silence, as if time has swept clean the farm and the jungle of all life and only the structures remain to crumble slowly.

Black Swan – Redemption [Ethereal Symphony, 2013]

“More drones for bleeding hearts.” The Black Swan returns with a limited edition CDr on Ethereal Symphony. Don’t let the near-white cover fool you though, this isn’t a feel-good album and the hooded figure on the cover isn’t any druid or guardian angel. The gloomy track titles will probably give it away before you even get to the music, but just in case, the disc inside is a Black-on-Black, with the first 17 copies including a one-of-a-kind, antique funeral invitation! As with previous efforts by the mysterious artist, the beginning and end of the album are particularly poignant. Here, the opening is a quiet and grainy build before suddenly exploding into an old cinema soundtrack. But the dramatic and nostalgic atmosphere gives way to moody and suspenseful drones, always with the feeling that something worse is about to happen. If there was any theme to the album it might be the dying light of a Hollywood star given the distinct opening and the central track “Fading glory” which returns once more to a film music feel. The rest of the album is a bleak and blurry drone soundtrack to an inescapable downfall that has to be resisted with a maximum of dignity and grace albeit with a relentless sense of futility. “Desperation” lives up to its name, turning a fuzzy, but hopeful symphonic swirl into a cathartic and hopeless mess of noise by the end. The long track “Atonement” surges like an inner spirit trying to purge itself and having a metallic production it feels like a kind of heavy, aural burden, before fading into the subtle symphonic sounds of “Inferno”, a kind or ironic logic as if to say that the actual world is hell, despite all the intense transformation and dramatic emotion in the music surrounding it. Black Swan saves the best for last, however. “Of Land and Water” starts by blending a big timpani sound, the first rhythm on the album, with waves of strings and another Black Swan trademark which is to provide a sense of longing and regret, and a desire to return to the music, no matter how dark and bleak it was. The end of every Black Swan album has the sense of death to it and it is always sad to leave, no matter what.

There is also a “name your price” Black Swan track available on his Bandcamp page  as well if you don’t manage to snag one of the album copies.

Tuluum Shimmering - Ulau Tau / Spirit Of The Sun [Aguirre, 2013]

This is Tuluum Shimmering’s third album this year after  a 46 minute untitled digital release on Blowing Up The Workshop ‎and the double cassette “Raag Wichikapache / Lake Of Mapang” on Space Slave Editions. The first side here, presumably “Ulau Tau”, feels like a long lost Pacific Tribe meeting Dolphins Into The Future. It is landlocked music, but one that pays homage to the nearby waves. It could be Hawaii with a tinkling piano imitating a ukelele. There’s also enough shells, congs and bells to feel closer to Tahiti or the South Pacific. Press notes say that it is a “homemade bamboo xylophone, homemade flute, acoustic guitar customised with buzz bridge, Roland digital piano, vietnamese gong, cymbal, rattle.” The fact that it may have been made in rainy England beggars belief. It is nonetheless a brilliant beach holiday mantra, a soundtrack for endless cocktails, for wind and sand sunset lounges, breeze in the hair and the palms swaying above. Over on the second side, the balance is quite different. The flutes are still there and the piano still twinkles in the background, but with a bluesier feel. The most notable addition is the drums, big toms toms buried deep in the mix and a twanging drone that moves in and out of focus. Its hard to know if the second side feels more religious or more like a soundtrack to a desert road movie. Tahiti feels closer to India here, though its hard to tell as the drugs had already kicked in sometime on the first side, or maybe it was just all those tequila sunrises sipped on the long white beach? In any case, this a mantric and very pleasing album for losing time and transporting yourself to another place.

Kevin Drumm – Imperial Distortion [Hospital Productions, 2008/2013]

There is not much more that needs to be said about this album it seems. Anyone curious for a background could do worse than head over to FACT Mag  where there is a primer as well as a historical context of the album that has just been re-released on vinyl. I must confess to being a bit uneasy about buying it based on a few Boomkat samples, especially after ending up with the re-issue of Drumm’s eponymous first album on Thin Wrist Recordings from 2010 which remains lovingly packaged, but hardly played on my shelf somewhere. “Imperial Distortion” is something else altogether though. It truly is a masterpiece, but one that is most definitely not for the iPod generation. To have any kind of experience with this album requires proper speakers and preferably a decent sized room for moving through. My first listen to this in such conditions nearly made me sick, but in a good way. The depth in the sound was simply staggering. The bass at times was cavernous, a cliché word for ambient, but in this case there is nothing else apt. The six sprawling tacks here are like flying at a steady height over black canyons whose bottom plummets away and then rises again to sea level, all in the darkness. There is a brooding and frightening presence in this lightless space, a presence which only makes itself felt at the end when the album closes in a crunching deluge of noise lasting only a few paltry minutes compared to the endless and timeless void that is the album proper. Ever since getting hold of this I have been trying to create for myself time and space to listen to it as it defies to be wallpaper music and requires activity and response. But its epic length, much like the Swans “Seer” album from last year, is a difficult barrier for an all-in-one session, yet it with six sides to choose from it can be assembled and reassembled at will. Any comparison with Aphex Twin you may have read is garbage, at least sonically, although it will be easy to hold this work up in the same high regard in half a century’s time. This is an album with profound impact and an extensive range. Finally, it is worth pointing out as well the poignancy of the cover image too. The front features a few plastic bottles in a dirty river in colour, like a modern version of Monet’s “Waterlillies”, while the inside features a World War II battle scene underway in black and white. There is hardly a word anywhere to be seen. Somehow this reflects the floating world within: society, mankind has become a dirty river burdened with pollution and consumerist flotsam and jetsam, while inside we harbour war. I remember a trip to Egypt several years ago and walking in a village suburb in Luxor and seeing such scenes. The once beautiful Nile, cradle of civilisation, choked with plastic Coke bottles.

Sleeper – From beyond [Room 40/A Guide to Saints, 2013]

With Moths – For silence [Room 40/A Guide to Saints, 2013]

Lawrence English’s Room 40 cassette sublabel A Guide to Saints has unleashed a second batch of relases for July 2013. Amongst them are a couple of New Zealand artists, including Sleeper (C.J Parahi) and With Moths. The former’s album “From beyond” features anywhere from two to four long tracks with different atmospheres. At least the press notes tell me there is four and each side has two names, but there is no discernible join between the two on each side. On side 2 “Edge of darkness”/“Creeper” is dark enough to bring it into the same sort of terrain as Kevin Drumm’s “Imperial Distortion” (see elsewhere) and is like an Industrial dreamscape, with grating fluorescent lights panning across landscapes etched from blackness and coloured in clotted smoke. There is a comfort in feeling at least the music might come from another room and is not really inside your head. The A side couldn’t begin any differently, however, and appears to be an ironic joke. The opening minute is like the soundtrack to some kitsch Celtic movie although it is quickly drowned in a deep pool along with the whole film. Time then becomes stretched and the scenes drag as they play it, struggling against the weight of water. It is beautiful without being blissful, like watching your life play out before your eyes while drowning.

With Moths album “For silence” may or may not have a reference to the Flying Saucer Attack track of the same name from the “Further” album [1994] who were certainly something of a hit in New Zealand, as they were in Australia. After all, they also released their impressive live album “In search of spaces” on Bruce Russel's Corpus Hermeticum and appeared on the “Harmony of the Sheres” boxset alongside one of the space rock idols of the time Roy Montgomery. Certainly there are some similarities with the FSA sound, to a point. The vocals that first appear on “Living the wait” bear more than a resemblance to Dave Pearce on FSA, being slightly tuneless and drowned in reverb and effects. There are also echoey low fi guitars too, but much less cathartic than the FSA sound. If anything, there is more of a touch of the Cure than FSA, with guitar feedback replaced by hazy synth drones and a certain psychedelic eastern feel from “Killing an Arab”.

Seaworthy and Taylor Deupree – Wood, Wnter, Hollow [12K, 2013]

More from the antipodes with Seaworthy, the electro-acoustic post-rock group of Cameron Webb (on this recording without Greg Bird and Sam Shinazzi) who is normally based in Sydney, Australia and his team-up with 12K head honcho Taylor Deupree. Here the emphasis is on the landscape as muse rather than as audio form. That is, this isn’t a soundscape, but a reaction to one played out on guitars, chimes and layers of synth and over field recordings. For inspiration, Webb and Deupree spent several days wondering through the snowy Ward Pound Ridge reserve a little to the north of New York recording the frozen rivers, wind, footsteps in snow and absorbing the site of white hills and wounded trees, damaged in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Two of the tracks bear dates, February 21 and 22 from this year as a kind of audio diary and are the closest to an actual soundscape. But the emphasis of the album is on the three longer tracks “Wood”, “Winter” and “Hollow” which give the album its name. These tracks are essentially jams without riffs and hooks, just picked guitar, flutters of echo, the fading of notes and the forgotten promise of melodic progression. At times there is a strange lack of space as all the sounds compete for an audible middle ground, but in other moments there is a much greater sense of profundity, with the field recordings interacting more with the notes, or where the second guitar or the electronics comes more to the fore. There is a melancholy emotion running through the work, but sometimes it feels slightly muted, given its bleak source of inspiration and its sparse arrangements. “Hollow” is perhaps the richest track emotionally, with the long amble of “Winter” lacking another instrument to accompany the long haul to really emphasise its purpose. But this is an album for focusing and defocusing in slow motion, where the impression given by the purity of the recording and the tonality of the playing is as important as any invented emotion embellished on its surface. Here, the winter landscape is more like a mask or a mirror than its own voice.

Frozen thoughts – Calm before the storm [Glacial Movements, 2013]

More winter music in the heart of summer (at least in the northern hemisphere)! There has been a lot of movement at Glacial movements (sic) in the last few months. Not only has there been a digital album by Japanese artists Yuya Ota (more from him in our special Japanese ambient show coming up soon), but a new collaboration between Bvdub and Locsil as well as CD albums by Aida Baker and label boss Alessandro Tedeschi aka Netherworld. Somewhere in between all this was also Frozen Thoughts aka Petar Šakić and another digital album “Calm before the storm”. Geographically at least, there seems a long way between the Croatian capital Zagreb from where Šakić originates and the frozen tundra he evokes, although there are plenty of mountains nearby and one assumes this at least provided some of the inspiration. Here the album is divided in five long tracks for immersive listening with intermissions between the tracks of someone walking through the snow and environmental noises like wind and birds. The album is thus a kind of fantasy travelogue, with each track feeling like a chapter in the story. It is quite a dark tale, however, with all tracks playing off a brooding, isolationist feel with the exception of “Godlight” which feels almost a bit too bright and up-beat at times. But there are plenty of good ideas on the rest of the album, from the bleepy chimes opening “We are not alone” as if an ancient alien beacon had been discovered beneath the ice, whereas “Reflections of dead maidens” and “Eternity without time” are both exceptional portals to beautifully resonant inner space. Finally, the title track which closes the album does not betray and concludes the tranquility in a blizzard of granular noise and distant shrieks.

Mousecop – Greatest hits volume 2 [Rubber City Noise, 2013]

The first couple of minutes of Mousecop’s Greatest hits might not suggest an album that lives up to its titles. It’s all pretty goofy and standard low fi stuff, with growly vocals and dirty electronics, the kind of music your parents are always telling you “I could do that,” only this time they might be right. However, somewhere near the end of the first track, things start to get weirder and out of control. It sounds for awhile like C3PO and R2D2 are coming up on acid just as the Millennium Falcon starts lurching into hyperspace before touching down in a granular mess on Tatooine. From there onwards “Greatest hits volume 2” is a less predictable and more involving, combining gritty noise with a vast array of more palatable sounds and a collage approach to arrangements and some nice sequencing that joins it all together. The second track “Moldar encounters a dark spirit in the woods, Skully is skeptical though” briefly alludes to the X-files theme before diverting to a whacked out preacher intoning over a wash of noise. The third track is a country-like guitar jam reminiscent of Sunburned Hand of the Man or other New Weird American sounds that becomes a hazy backwards drawl as it closes. Things get weirder still with the fourth track with a constant rhythm of heavy breathing overlaid with a sprinkling of abrasive sounds and heavy noises as if the respiration were under attack. Somewhere towards the end you can hear a “real” band playing in the next room. The closing track “Where the shook window offers no respite” begins like a quiet, narrative story full of disembodied voices in detached locations. Not entirely satisfying, but full of humour and chaotic invention.

Billy Gomberg – False heat [False, 2013]

This is a minimal release if ever there was one from rooklyn.based sound artist Billy Gomberg. The whole recording sounds somehow frail, withered and almost half in and out of existence. I mean that in a good way. It takes about 12 minutes for the first side/track to almost register on the consciousness and then it sort of sits as a wavering, sickly line. The second side begins with a more corporal presence, contrasting the trajectory of different drones to form hypnotic overlays, like much of Éliane Radigue’s work. By the end it thickens into a heavier, eastern-sounding hum, but like the first side, the changes are almost invisible and the sense of time is marvelously distorted.

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	Frozen Thoughts	Eternity without time	Glacial Movements	2013
2	Sleeper	Edge of darkness	A Guide to Saints	2013
3	Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree	Cloister	12K	2013
4	Aquarelle	Sand paper winds	Students of Decay	2013
5	Tuluum Shimmering	Ulau Tau	Aguirre Records	2013
6	Xiphiidae	Quaking myth side B	Aguirre Records	2013
7	Bvdub	Waiting for a friend	AY	2013
8	Black Swan	Of Land and water	Ethereal Symphony	2013

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Ambient not ambient

Here is a post long overdue rounding up some recent ambient and electro-acoustic releases. Despite the fact that some of them come from the same label, they nonetheless represent an amazingly diverse pool of sounds, ranging from guitar driven Americana, neo-Classical and even pure electronica at the fringes of techno which is one way of highlighting the fertility of ambient music. Apologies and thanks to the many people who sent me stuff for review, particularly Experimedia and also Lawrence English at Room 40 and sorry I couldnt put it all in.

Santiago Latorre – Eclíptica [Foehn, 2011]

Barcelona-based Santiago Latorre’s album “Eclíptica” has been quite hard to get in physical format despite being one of the national albums of the year in 2011. Originally coming out on local label Foehn Records, it has now also seen the light of day in the US via Accretions, but still proves a little hard to get hold of outside of iTunes. The success of “Eclíptica” also means that Latorre has had some high profile shows, playing at this year’s Micro Mutek festival and later in June he will play at Primavera Sound and Sonar. Latorre’s take on ambient music is not so immersive as elaborate, fitting in nicely with labels like Type who mix ambient electronics with home listening classical tools. The results then are not surprisingly unlike film soundtrack material or even the more abstract fringes of indie rock where groups like Sigur Ros, for example, employ similar methods to great emotional effect. One of the strengths of “Eclíptica” is also its diversity, both in palette and choice of instrumentation, but also in composition. Latorre uses both short songs like emotional glyphs or longer, winding compositions to create the feeling of narrative. The whole is a concise and detailed journey through a beautiful sound world.

Celer – Evaporate and wonder [Experimedia, March 2012]

There is a great deal of sadness behind the beauty of Celer’s latest releases including “Evaporate and Wonder” on Experimedia and the handful of other albums and 7”s to sneak out this year, including several with Machinefabriek. The source material was recorded in May 2009 only two months before the untimely death Danielle Marie Baquet who was the wife of William Thomas Long and one half of Celer with him. Long has since then slowly worked through the wealth of material recorded before her death and will apparently close the prolific and tragic Celer saga when finished processing the material. The cover image of two still boats on a quiet shore somehow seems more poignant given the story. Musically the texture and mood will be familiar to fans of the duo, consisting of two side-long tracks of delicate synthesizer drones gentle enough to sleep too, but with still a lot of detail in the production and a plenty of emotive swells that stand up to closer scrutiny. In particular, the use of field recordings way, way down in the mix gives the shimmering surface a more tangible edge, like slowly waking from a deep sleep while having the room enter your dreams. The two sides do not differ greatly from each other, but are nonetheless a beautiful and elegant pair of tracks that bring with them a lot of peace and serenity.

Bvdub – Serenity / Don’t say you know [Darla, 2012]

Fans of Bvdub can be excused for feeling a bit overwhelmed with his recent output. According to Discogs Brock Van Wey has released nine solo albums since 2011 and one more with Ian Hawgood, not to mention his now annual track on Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series and even a 12” under the East of Oceans moniker. Such prolificacy has attracted plenty of doubters, but the truth is that it doesn’t take much of a scratch to see that below the surface Bvdub has changed quite a bit from the early days. “Serenity” and its companion album “Don’t say you know”, which were generously bundled together by label Darla for the first 500 copies, are a case in point. “Serenity” breaks with the poetic song and album names of the past, while both discs are remarkably more upbeat than some of the earlier albums. One way Bvdub achieves the lightness is by the addition of beats in nearly every track, giving a more up-tempo feel. The beats are not as heavy as his first techno outings, and are mostly slow techno rhythms, like on “Beauty”, but there is even one foray into the world of rollicking break beats on “My sun shines through your rain” off “Don’t say you know”, as classic rave as Zomby’s “Where were you in 92?” album. The length of tracks is also more variable from the relatively shorter 7 minute songs to longer opuses that push the 30 minute mark. There are also a lot more discernible vocals higher up in the mix diminishing the sense of isolation and loneliness that are so critical to Bvdub’s intimate sound. That is not to say that it is all feel good schmaltz, rather the opposite: the foundation of Bvdub’s sound is still a complicated well of slowly changing emotions, but now one in which there is someone else in there along with you.

ASC and Sam KDC – Decayed society [Auxiliary, 2012]

This collaboration between Sam Wood (aka Sam KDC) and James Clements (aka the prolific ASC) on Clements’ own Auxiliary label is slowly becoming one of my favourite ambient releases of the year. In many ways it is quite classical and conventionally arranged, yet it nonetheless retains the power to engross by adhering to some sense of vague narrative and by deluding and lulling the sense through this unfolding story. Opener “Lost negatives” sets the scene with its dark atmospheres and suspense, the title perhaps suggesting a take off point for some imagined story. As the track draws to a close, lost voices and fearful calls raise the spectre of some lurking menace which then carries through the album. The central track “Block 4” is the highlight. Burial-esque urban moods cross paths with a gentle downpour of metallic drones and prickly glitch all hovering over a whirlpool of bleak voices and dystopian sounds. The remaining tracks also have a lot of character embedded in their metallic surfaces. Timbral changes are wrought frequently, but steadily with magnificent skill so that each track seems to pass through several layers of sensation. It is a rather down beat tale they tell, but an absorbing and immersive one nonetheless.

From the mouth of the sun – Woven Tide [Experimedia, 2012]

“Woven tide” is the debut album by From the Mouth of the Sun, a duo consisting of Swedish musician Daq Rosenqvist and Experimedia stalwart Aaron Martin, known for his remix work for the collective Lüüp, who covered one of his tracks “Spiralling”, and for his solo album “Worried about the fire” which was one of the label’s highlights back in 2010. Extracts from “Woven tides” and some of Martin’s solo work will accompany a documentary and a short film by Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn entitled “Remember me, my ghost” about the ill-fated Ballymun Towers housing project in Dublin.

The music is a pastiche of acoustic instruments, with different strings and guitars blending with piano, xylophones and chimes and at times processed through reverb and allowed to feedback to accumulate into crescendos of noise. Given the context of the film for which the material was intended, it is not surprising to find a certain emotional darkness and a sense of tragedy and ruin in the music and their accompanying titles, such as “Sitting in a roofless room” and “Pools of rust”. Collectively the album paints a picture of bare emotional survival, rather than hope. A good point of reference might be Deaf Centre, but there are a lot more folk elements to “Woven tide” that keep it somewhat grounded and away from the all-consuming abyss of “Pale ravine”, for example. A touching and beautifully realised album.

Andrew Weathers / Ancient Ocean – Split cassette [Rubber City Noise, 2012]

Maybe it is just what has come my way, but there seems to have been a fair bit of acoustic-guitar driven “ambient” music these days. One other example that immediately comes to mind is Mike Cooper’s “Distant songs of madmen” which was recorded live in Palermo, Italy in June 2011 and released as a free download  by Australia’s Room 40 imprint. The press release from Rubber City Noise for this split release between Andrew Weathers, originally of Chapel Hill, but now resident and studying in Oakland, and relative new comer Ancient Ocean from Brooklyn on the flipside describes it aptly as “ambient Americana”. Weathers’ work in particular is like a 21^st Century version of “Paris, Texas”, where drones vie for attention from improvised finger picked folk-blues guitar. Ancient Ocean uses the guitar much less than Weathers where it appears more as an accompaniment to the drones, rather than the other way around, but he also has space to vary his style a bit more away from the limelight. Weathers music works by creating a sense of time across the duration of each track and the side as a whole, bringing the mood in and out of focus, whereas Ancient Ocean’s three shorter pieces are more like classic ambient vignettes. Each one works independently with an emphasis more on texture than outright mood. The addition of guitar gives each track a shoegazer feel, especially on “Seneca”, even where the guitar verges on flamenco style in “Castelwood”. Despite coming from two distinct artists, apparently on opposite sides of the US there is a strange fraternity between the two sides, both of which somehow purvey a greater sense of peace and exposed tranquillity.

Emptyset – Medium [Subtext, 2012]

It riles me a bit that Bristol's Emptyset get labelled as techno when there is scarcely a beat on any of the material of theirs that I have heard. Sure, they produced a nice piece that eventually wound its way into the hands of Chris Liebing and others, featuring none other than Cornelius Harris from Underground Resistance reciting a poem by Aleister Crowley.

But Emptyset have more in common with musique concrete than techno, working laboriously with samples to produce sounds that are deceptively simple and then arrange them in an uncharacteristic framework that has more in common with industrial music. “Medium” sees the American-English duo of James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas taking their obsession with method to new extremes. The primary material for the short album was recorded in Woodchester Mansion, a 19^th Century gothic mansion in Gloucestershire that was abandoned during construction upon the death of the owner. The duos quest to generate new forms from sine waves, white noise and field recordings generated becomes extended to be a search for new spaces for these sounds to exist and interact outside the machine they are created in, as if the sounds were encouraged to haunt the house and the house invited to haunt the music in a feedback loop. The results are typically dry as most Emptyset releases, not to mean unapproachable or academic, but their music rarely give you much feeling or any sense of motion. It is music that seems to press directly for the unconsciousness, or the part of awareness that is never inscribed in memory. The enjoyment is in the atmosphere and the detail and is best listened to in the dark and even with head phones. This release in particular seems to implore you to head straight for the background to listen for voices and hear hidden currents of air and banshee yells in the distance. One added importance of this album is how it and the Crowley-influenced single neatly complement the trend over the last two years for occult-based electronic artists, from Demdike Stare, through Witch House, the Tri Angle label and so on. There is a thesis in there somewhere.

Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason – Sólaris [Bedroom Community, 2012]

One of the most enduring features of Ben Frost’s outstanding “By the throat” is its ability to convey a sense of story through abstraction and association, almost never resorting to simplicity, condescending sounds or obvious transformations. These skills make Frost the ideal choice to recreate the celebrated story of “Solaris” which is full of nuanced states of isolation and anguish and the need to convey an overwhelming sense of time and an ambiguous idea of life itself. The original story is based on the novel by Polish writer Stanislav Lem and immortalized on the big screen by Russian director Andrei Tarovsky who has proved a deep mine of musical inspiration over the years. For the soundtrack, which was commissioned for the 2011 Polish Unsound festival, Frost is joined by fabled Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason who has worked with Sigur Ros and Múm amongst others. The duos method was to improvise an initial score while watching the film and then recreate it in detail using samples of classical instruments plus, presumably, their own playing. In keeping with the story, the results are quite sparse at times, with a lot of detail occurring at the edge of perception or in the loneliness of silence. But while intricate and well-structured as an album, “Sólaris” does sometimes feel like there is something missing, which may be the dialogue or perhaps the onscreen scenery and immensity. In addition the detail is sometimes so microscopic that one wonders how it would work in the cinema and if it would be possible to listen so closely while also visually engaged? One final gripe might be the timing of the album which surely does not match the film, begging the question of what else is missing from the duos original commission? “Sólaris” is a fine example of neo classical and a rich work for home listening, but whether its significance is enhanced or diminished away from the film is perhaps a question of taste and interpretation.

Various Artists – Stellate 1 [Stroboscopic Artefacts, 2012]

When Stroboscopic Artefacts first announced a limited edition 10” series of experimental and ambient music to be housed in a unique metal tin box I couldn’t have been more delighted. Such augmentation of direction of labels is generally a good thing, especially one the calibre of SA which has already shown willingness to drift away from the campfire light. Couple this with the chance to own an objet d’art and I was easily sold. However, the final satisfaction of the whole “Stellate 1” has been slightly tempered, not by issues of quality per sé, but by quantity, which is a somewhat superficial reason in the end. But if I am already going to make myself feel guilty for spending a lot of money I don’t have and increasing my carbon footprint substantially to own this music, then perhaps there should be a little bit more music to make me feel a little more equilibrated. But in the end of the four artists, Lucy puts in a whole six minutes over two tracks, Borful Tang and Perc seven each, while Kevin Gorman’s 12 minutes feel almost epic. In all cases the music is great, but just not enough of it. Lucy’s short tonal works sound brilliantly realized and more so for the contrast with his steely techno. Borful Tang is the most subtle of the four, mixing radio voices with hazy classical veils and reverb, whereas Perc’s opening track “Paris” sounds remarkably like parts of Popol Vuh’s track “In den garten pharaos”. Kevin Gorman’s “Frequency phase” studies use processed sample loops that are set out of phase to create uneasy rhythms and timbral collisions. Gorman’s pieces also lead up nicely to the recent announcement of the second edition which will focus on loop based works.

Andrea Belfi – Wege [Room, 40]

If I told you that Andrea Belfi’s new album was based around drum improvisation on a modified rotating system to create feedback you might be expecting some kind of abstract noise piece or 40 minutes of absolute racket. But the truth is “Wege”, meaning path or way in German, is a highly restrained effort, where placement and accuracy are more important than power. The result is almost a pointillist ambient, where sounds are pushed outwards into space, which is then allowed to fold back inward and isolate the original sound. The bigger picture only emerges from a great distance, when all the tiny sonic zones blur together. But “Wege’s” four tracks are not just the Italian electro-acoustic musician and his Steve Reich-inspired machine alone. Belfi is joined by a host of collaborators who form the canvas as it were over which Belfi paints his sound. The numerous collaborators contribute voice, guitars, strings and electronics among other less recognizable sounds which stay carefully in the distance and by doing so add a persistent tension to the space and the unpredictable rhythms. The result is far more eclectic and engaging than words can convey especially for an album that almost intentionally shuns expression of recognizable emotion. In its place is a sense of ritual and of natural neutrality, a kind of harmony of being with a non-existent place, neither of which is ever fully described and are only suggested: echoing drone passages consume the silence and disappear suddenly, instruments scrap and scrape to efface themselves, or bells and gongs convey a sense of religious awe.