VA - Hibernate Sampler Vol. 1

VA - Hibernate Sampler Vol. 1
Genre : Electronica, Ambient,

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1) Porzellan - Rosen (11:21)
2) Ian Hawgood - The Marbled World (5:28)
3) Lexithimie - Scale 1 (4:56)
4) Hakobune - Late Spring (14:33)
5) Storm Noir - Cicada Queen (4:56)
6) Simon James French - Misery (4:28)
7) Tom White - Moredon Cooling Towers (4:20)
8) Northerner - The End OF December (6:03)
9) Chihei Hatakeyama - Gray Hued Sky (4:44)

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Celer - In Escaping Lakes

Celer - In Escaping Lakes
Genre : Electronica, Ambient,

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1.A Less Distinguished Tributary
2.Seagrass
3.Mentioned Fumes
4.The Light Obtainable In Spaces We Share
5.Extending and Directly Below
6.Inoffensive Sets of Misdirection
7.Calculated Din
8.Wetness Is Close To Likeness
9.Horizontal Reflections
10.Australis
11.A Buoyant Object, That Rests and Moves In Such A Way
12.When Recounting Futures, Don’t Fail To Mention Me

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It's becoming increasingly difficult to write about Celer's music. The duo's output has been coming our way at a steady rate in recent months and their music seems to be converging on the extremes of ambient fragility. Far away from the more usual drone recordings that come our way, Celer's music is incredibly bold in its gentleness and the demands it makes on you as a listener. There's a lot going on over the course of this forty minutes, and to get the most out of it you'll have to tune in carefully, but even the most casual level of exposure to this music seems to slow down time. The dynamic range stretches between quietness and lulled imperceptibility, wafting in and out of earshot unless you really crank the volume and it's this coquettish, elusive quality that makes Celer so magical, and places them on a different plane to most other practitioners currently operating in a similar field. While comparisons to Stars Of The Lid and Stephan Mathieu have previously been thrown around these pages, the sheer enigmatic stillness and overwhelming ambiguity of this music makes them a whole other prospect. Highly recommended, as ever.

Celer - Close Proximity And The Unhindered Care-All

Celer - Close Proximity And The Unhindered Care-All
Genre : Electronica, Ambient,

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Part 1: Culling the Past from Unsentient Weeks

Part 2: Indentions on Summits of Hands

Part 3: Tended Pouring

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The duo of Celer is comprised of husband and wife Will Long and Danielle Baquet- Long. Using processed strings, pianos, regional field recordings, and electronics, Celer has composed a masterpiece of sentimental experiences and realism; the sound of raw emotion..

Tender and touching, yet poignant and stirring, Close Proximity and the Unhindered Care-all is composed of 3 parts that encapsulate over an hour of music, and on-location field recordings. Part 1 creeps quietly through your room until its presence is felt, fading, and field recordings are bringing back distant memories. Part 2 starts on a melancholy note and ends in a sea of stunning ambience, drifting, and fizzling out. Part 3 embraces and carries you off to a distant, but strangely comforting world where it shares its secrets with you, and yet disappears at the peak of discovery.

It is an honor for SRA to be able to share with you this masterpiece of sound art by Dani and Will, and we hope it brings comfort to a world where things are often taken for granted and then forgotten. When listening to such a heart-rending album, itʼs hard not to feel somehow connected with the glowing love Dani and Will undoubtedly have shared, and Celer will always be remembered, and cherished in this way.

Packaged in a 8 panel classic digipack with a matte UV finish, the artwork consists of poetry by Dani, and layout, design, and cover photography by Johnny Utterback.

Siberian Railway - Tokio blues

Siberian Railway - Tokio blues
Genre : Electronica, IDM, Indie,

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1-Naoko
2-Watanabe
3-Midori
4-Reiko
5-Hatsum

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Takahiro Kido – a short happy life

Takahiro Kido – a short happy life
Genre : Electronica, Ambient, Clásica,

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01.Home 00:32
02.Under a Cherry Tree 03:32
03.Summer Dogs 00:32
04.Franny 04:22
05.Small Caress 04:26
06.Jeaolusy 00:58
07.In Cold Blood 08:22
08.Atelire 02:20
09.A Carefree Patient 08:12
10.Paysage 00:30
11.K 06:16
12.xxx 02:10

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Takahiro Kido is a composer residing in Tokyo, Japan. He started the post-rock band Anoice as a leader & composer and have released the highly acclaimed album “Remmings” on the Important Label. His music is a blissful combination of various classical instruments – piano, violin, viola, organ and guitars etc. with a little electronics. In 2006, he starts to work as a recording/mixing engineer and web designer. And he has released five solo albums from PLOP and Ricco Label. He know also plays in bands mokyow (a three piece band with Takahiro Matsue and Tadashi Yoshikawa) and cru (a unit with Yuki Murata) since 2007.

Spheruleus - The Disguised Familiar

Spheruleus - The Disguised Familiar
Genre : Ambient, Electronica, Drone,
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1 - As The Warmth Fades (17:02)
2 - A Significant Circle (13:10)
3 - How White The Cerulean Sky (10:32)
4 - Blue Moon (9:35)

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Spheruleus, aka Harry Towell, is a British artist who records music under a variety of project names, probably the best known being Audio Gourmet. With this release, he brings us a lovely and peaceful collection of still life portraits captured on a singular winter's day when much of England was blanketed with snow by a particularly heavy winter storm. Spheruleus combines field recordings captured on that day with beautifully conceived ambient drone pieces, creating a sublime collection of some of the most restful pure ambient music we've heard in a while.

On this release, Stuart Towell contributes some delicious ambient guitar that really helps cement the floating and placid feel of the tracks. Interestingly, we are told that ordinarily Stuart doesn't do ambient music but decided to give it a go on this exceptional day. We would encourage him to consider doing ambient more often, because his contributions to the pieces are simply excellent.

Overall this is a refreshing album, a perfect set of tracks to enjoy on a winter's morning with a steaming cup of tea and a nice warm blanket. We are very happy to be bringing our audience the music of Spheruleus, and hope this is the first of many releases to come on Earth Mantra.

Eluvium - Life Through Bombardment

Eluvium - Life Through Bombardment
Genre : Ambient, Piano, Electronica, Acoustic
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SIDE A:
1. The Unfinished
2. Under The Water It Glowed
3. There Wasn't Anything

SIDE B:
1. Zerthis Was A Shivering Human Image
2. I Am So Much More Me That You Are Perfectly You

SIDE C:
1. An Accidental Memory
2. Genius And The Thieves
3. Perfect Neglect In A Field Of Statues
4. Nepenthe

SIDE D:
1. In A Sense
2. The Well-Meaning Professor
3. An Accidental Memory In The Case Of Death

SIDE E:
1. New Animals From The Air
2. Show Us Our Homes
3. Area 41

SIDE F:
1. Everything To Come
2. Calm Of The Cast-Light Cloud

SIDE G:
1. Taken
2. We Say Goodbye To Ourselves

SIDE H:
1. One
2. Swallows In The Bath

SIDE I:
1. I Will Not Forget That I Have Forgotten
2. As I Drift Off
3. All The Sails
4. When I Live By The Garden And The Sea

SIDE J:
1. Untitled (For Piano)
2. Untitled (For Orchestra)
3. Untitled (For Rhodes And Tape)
4. Carousel

SIDE K:
1. Amreik
2. Indoor Swimming At The Space Station
3. Seeing You Off The Edges

SIDE L:
1. Prelude For Time Feelers
2. Requiem On Frankfort Ave.
3. Radio Ballet
4. (Intermission)

SIDE M:
1. After Nature
2. Reciting The Airships
3. Ostinato

SIDE N:
1. Hymn #1
2. Repose In Blue

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Highly anticipated and long-overdue, Life Through Bombardment collects virtually every Eluvium song ever released (plus a bunch of rare and unreleased non-album tracks) into one stunning 7xLP set, all on vinyl for the first and only time. Each record is packaged in its own full-color jacket, featuring exquisite new artwork from Jeannie Lynn Paske, drawn exclusively for this set. The seven jackets are then bound into a beautiful dark green hardbound, linen-cover book, with metallic gold foil stamping and embossed text on the spine, and a beautiful full-color print embossed into the front cover. The inside front cover includes a removable old-fashioned library card, complete with personalized signatures from the artists and designers involved in the creation of this package. The final name on the library card will belong to the purchaser, hand-written and dated when purchased. The inside back cover includes a mind-blowing 12x36" foldout double-sided full-color poster insert, featuring more artwork from Ms. Paske. In addition, each copy of this set will include a unique digital code to download high-quality mp3s of the entire box set collection. This is limited to a one-time pressing of 1,000 copies, pressed onto 100% virgin black vinyl.

Operations – You And Atomic Warfare

Operations – You And Atomic Warfare
Genre : Ambient, Electronica
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01. Trinity
02. Argus
03. Teapot
04. Crossroads
05. Dominic II
06. Storax

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Operations is Chris Anderson. You may remember him from the second Dead Pilot release “Knights Move!”. Well, that was some time ago and this album has been in the works ever since, but it finally sees the light of day.

Inspired by the nuclear tests undertaken by western nations in the 1950s, this album is a deep, harrowing and affecting listen. Radio static drops in and out of dusty piano loops and delicate guitar passages over layers of feedback drenched drones. It’s highly textured yet very minimal and benefits from headphones immensely. The sound Chris has created here is very immersive and really captures your imagination; with it’s barely there instrumentation and distant noises, you will find your self discovering new sounds on each listen. The 22 minute epic “Dominic II” is one of the spookiest tracks I’ve heard in a long time. If you can imagine Godspeed and Machinefabriek soundtracking an obscure black & white horror film, I think it would sound somewhat like this. The tension created is fascinating.

Limited to 99 copies in hand stamped and hand numbered windowed digipaks, tied with string.

No one pulse - E

No one pulse - E
Genre : Electronica, Experimental, Noise

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01.01. P 20:00

02.02. L 05:00

03.03. C 26:19

04.04. A 02:24

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No one pulse is an audio project between two hong kong artists, wong chung-fai and chau kin-wai. wong chung-fai has been working both as a writer and sound artist under the persona “sin:ned” for quite some time. he first appeared in the legendary hong kong alternative music magazine mcb (music colony bi-weekly) as a controversial “music critic”, re-visioning others’ cd and music art work as the source code for his own literary imagineering. later, he turned to the world of software and strange electronics device and started making his own “source code”. some of his early sound works can be found in compilations such as “music for your beautiful boy”, “mondisk”, “mcb200” and various cd released by the tapegerm collective. his first two solo works, “uroborus: a study on no-input device” and “60 seconds: a schizophrenic manual for eternity” were both released by lona records. chau kin-wai is the mastermind behind sleepatwork, a multi-media design collective founded in may 2002 with interest ranging widely from graphic design to animation, web design to music. his artworks had appeared in quite a number of exhibitions and publications. he was also the curator of various art projects such as “media jam”, “60 seconds”, and “a2 exhibition”. his prolific portfolio can be found on www.sleepatwork.com. beside sleepatwork, he had also worked under the name ok_static, releasing homemade cd of static and noise not unlike those from raster-noton. the collaboration between wong chung-fai and chau kin-wai first started when the former was invited by the latter to contribute for the audio/visual internet project “60 seconds”. in 03 hk sound & vision festival, the two worked together again for the multi-media live event “media jam”, as two of the audio improvisers. in 2006, they started to explore the concept of pure internet collaboration through a new project named no one pulse.

Summons of shining ruins - ileun

Summons of shining ruins - ileun
Genre : Ambient, Electronica, Drone

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01 Oido - Winter
02 Jimbo & Euna
03 Absolute Crying
04 Ileun
05 Sits Alone
06 Do Not Know Where to Go...Late Night Panic
07 Eyes Closed, Feels Light, Quiet..Quiet...
08 Enoshima - Summer

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This album is different from a usual SUMMONS album a little. I tried to see through the unknown smell, sign and feeling and I made an effort in order to exclude a lie from there thoroughly. Did I bring it close to truth? Everything was always already shining. Should I make music? The feeling of the bit of hope was awesome than that of the imagination. That was found at everywhere. On the way where I begin and walk. In a limited time. Break a mirror! You should see on the other side.. Offered to your smile.

Drowning the virgin silence – Beneath the sulfur sky

Drowning the virgin silence – Beneath the sulfur sky
Genre : Electronica, Ambient, Acoustic

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1. We Twist the Sun and the Sea
2. Riverman
3. White Skin Sun
4. Birds Fly
5. To Reach the Clouds
6. The Gospel
7. Fiction
8. Beneath the Sulfur Sky

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The Green Kingdom – Twig And Twine

The Green Kingdom – Twig And Twine
Genre : Electronica, Ambient, Acoustic

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1-Into_the_Magic_Night
2-Autumn_Eyes
3-The_Promise_of_Spring
4-Crystal_Window
5-Maplecopter
6-What_Birds_See
7-Orange_Saturday_Morning
8-River_Bends_Park
9-The_Green_Bridge

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The Green Kingdom is Michael Cottone, a graphic designer and sound artist based in Michigan. His compositions blur the line between soundscape and structure, utilizing a variety of processed acoustic and electronic sources, sampled textures and field recordings. RIYL: Mountains, Shuttle358, Fenton, The Boats, Sawako, Harold Budd.

Nuearz – Saturation Point

Nuearz – Saturation Point
Genre : Electronica, IDM

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01 Saturation Point 4.58
02 Humble Diet 5.25
03 Spiral Ramp 4.31
04 Protocol C 5.33
05 Counterpoise 5.55
06 Innerspace 5.15
07 Turn and Twist 4.59
08 Non Linear Vibration 5.32
09 Watershed 7.40
10 Self Absorption 5.20
11 Escalator over the Super Flat 6.00
12 Hundred Views of JP 6.02

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The solo project of one Kazuhiro Okuda, Nuearz is the latest recruit to the Skam roster, and while a solid core of heavily edited electronica is at the heart of this record, there’s an awful lot more going on as well. The tricky cutting, in-depth percussive detail and cranked levels of compression all make Saturation Point an aptly titled sensory assault. ‘Protocol C’ works well, benefitting from playing down the more overloaded compositional traits of elsewhere – ‘Counterpoise’ for example is a beast of a thing, full of melodic, twinkling tones, lurid synth lines and strummed acoustic guitar. In fact, acoustic guitar is heavily used throughout the record, which isn’t really something you’d expect of a Skam release. Far more in keeping with the label’s traditional agenda is the obliteration of beat structures and a thorough working knowledge of advanced electro experiments, which is apparently something Okuda is eminently adept at, albeit in a slightly noisier, scrappier – even psychedelic fashion than is customary for anything that might come under the banner of IDM.

Grouper / Xela - Tsuki No Seika: Volume 1

Grouper / Xela - Tsuki No Seika: Volume 1
Genre : Ambient, Drone, IDM

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01 - Pale Through
02 - I Drowned Her In A Dreamless Sleep

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Strictly speaking, this split 7" from Grouper and Xela is a subscription-only release, and so shouldn't really be available to shops.
This record marks the very first installment of Root Strata's 'Tsuki No Seika' series, a sequence of four 7"s that will go on to include contributions from Christina Carter, Richard Youngs, Islaja, Zelienople, Hisato Higuchi and Valet. The common theme running throughout is a restriction to acappella compositions, and the overall air of autonomy and self-sufficiency is even carried over into the artwork: each artist illustrates their own side of the sleeve. Grouper's musical contribution has something faintly festive about it, sounding like the warm-up hum of undead Christmas carollers. The piece acquires the seamless, fog-caked, drone-like quality that characterised Liz Harris' earliest output, momentarily abandoning her more songwriterly instincts for a return to the brilliantly intangible and esoteric qualities of 'Way Their Crept'. The Xela side is more discernible as a vocals-only piece, and avoiding droned-out abstraction he layers darkly reverberant falsetto recordings that tap into the almost Arvo Part-like streak recurrent in his work of late. The tone encroaches on something that's at least similar to ecclesiastical music, taking on the improbable aesthetic of a one-man church choir from the fourteenth century. Only the song's title upsets that logic: it's called 'I Drowned Her In A Dreamless Sleep'. This all makes for an exceptional start to the series, and with the likes of Carter and Youngs - both seasoned purveyors of unaccompanied vocal recordings - waiting in the wings, this bears all the hallmarks of an absolutely classic collectors edition.

Yuki Murata - Films

Yuki Murata - Films
Genre : Piano, Ambient, Acustica

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1. prologue
2. the Hill named Air
3. Capricious
4. under the deep Sea
5. Call my name and Hear my Voice
6. Mr. Doughnut
7. Glitch
8. Broken Arrow [mp3]
9. me and G
10. Let's Go to Neverland
11. unstable Waltz
12. the Hill Nobody Knows but only me
13. Open your Hands it's here always
14. don't Worry, all Things will be OK !

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Milinal – Honey meridian

Milinal – Honey meridian
Genre : Ambient, Electronica

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1. Fluxes
2. Inside Sea Shells
3. Dirketoki
4. Drift
5. Bur In Sky Ya
6. Stereo Fall of the Leaves
7. Brinta
8. Swallows Fly Low
9. Hurricaine
10. Artificial & Yellow (featuring Natasha Burinskaya)
11. Honey Meridian

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Audiobulb continue to offer up interesting developments on the electronica scene with this unusual new long-player from Milinal. Honey Meridian asserts a sound that’s all its own, slicing through filtered, ambient recordings drawn from instruments and environmental noises. ‘Inside Sea Shells’ offers a pop song of sorts, glitching through obliterated vocals in an oddly haunting, romanticized way, but subsequent tracks take us towards a more experimental set of sounds. The clicky guitar string dissections of ‘Bur In Sky Ya’ are as ear-ticklingly tuneful as they are elaborate and ‘Stereo Fall Of The Leaves’ is a wonderfully immersive soundscape in the Tim Hecker mold, full of dense, foggy noise formations and pensive electroacoustic treatments.

This elegant album com

Fieldhead – They shook hands for hours

Fieldhead – They shook hands for hours
Genre : Ambient, Electronica

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This Train Is A Rainbow
Half Names
Document One
They Shook Hands For Hours
Of October
He’d Found The Sea
Songs Well Known
Broken
I’m Fond Of Maps
Introductions

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This elegant album communicates integrity and substance in the few seconds it takes to open the case and start listening to the first track, “this train is a rainbow”. The decisive minimalism of the graphics and the carefully dense texture of the music announce a wish to be known and listened to, with an assurance that there will be a lot to hear and nothing dropped carelessly in simply because it can be.

Sit up and listen. You might treat this album as background music later, but on the first few listens there are plenty of rewards for paying close attention. Reverence for the wide potential of music to connect with something like difficult truth, or at least to provoke the feeling that there are important things to experience are clearly involved. Meditative, absorbed listening is recommended (and, happily, easy to achieve). Paul Elam might or might not have thought these things as he made the album, but it’s ours now, and we can make of it whatever we like.

The percussive elements are subtle and varied. They move about, drop in and out, and use unexpected textures and resonances. Here and there, rapid flurries of tiny, ultra short beats could be the crackle of static, but they work perfectly well as pulses of forward energy.

Deeper, slower beats grow out of bass sounds and hold an entirely different time frame. In “Songs Well Known” there’s a real groove, as seductive as you like. That tune stops abruptly and a bass note introduces “Broken” very very far down the octaves. Listening to the piece from another room in my house, I can feel great chunks of air moving, catching the natural resonance of walls and floors. It’s a bit scary. A host of drones and shifts seem to be moving with it, and my internal visualisations (strong throughout the album) move through forests and across moorland. It disappears and they float away , diminishing like spirits into a grey sky.
And on it goes, with (always) ambiguous unearthly sounds, hints of orchestral scoring and suggestions of natural instruments playing as a band. My imagination draws and redraws the landscapes and ecosystems. The music suggests them, and then moves on before the images can become fixed. The open ambiguous spaces, simultaneously (of course) also imply the inner territories of the soul and the emotions. Without the distraction of strong tunes to hold the imagination down, the experience is genuinely psychotropic. It’s like being hypnotised but without being told what to do.

It is an album that is varied, perhaps to the point of restlessness. It’s complete redemption is in the carefully managed development and the delights of new sounds at every turn.
whisperinandhollerin

Akira Kosemura - Polaroid Piano

Akira Kosemura - Polaroid Piano
Genre : Ambient, Acustica, Clásica

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01.Hicari
02.Faire
03.April
04.Would
05.Sign
06.Tale
07.Look
08.Tyme
09.Guitar
10.Venice
11.Ein Lied

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As the Someone Good label blurb so evocatively states: "Polaroid cameras did more than simply recount past moments - the medium itself inserted a soft-focus, dream-like quality that appeared to suggest vague recollection over exacting reality." This idea is carried over into Akira Kosemura's delicate instrumentals: they're vague and suggestively wistful, imbued with a sense of time and place with a selection of background field recordings that play to the memory. These pieces are so understated and hushed you can hear the mechanism of the piano and the movement of the keys themselves more pronouncedly than you can the actual notes. Melodically, there are some beautiful passages of play here, with the likes of 'April' and the rickety, shambling 'Would' offering early highlights. There is the odd confrontation with cliche here too however: 'Tale' features the sound of children playing accompanied by toy xylophone, which is slightly irritating in its tweeness, but the simple, Satie-like ornamental quality of the subsequent piano solo 'Look' dismisses any such reservations with its sheer loveliness. Goldmund's Corduroy Road will inevitably spring to mind through a playback of Polaroid Piano, and Peter Broderick's Docile probably won't be too far behind. Anyone craving plaintive, characterful piano solos will find much to absorb here.

Black to comm – Alphabet 1968

Black to comm – Alphabet 1968
Genre : Ambient, Electronica, Experimental

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01. Jonathan
02. Forst
03. Trapez
04. Rauschen
05. Musik für Alle
06. Amateur
07. Traum GmbH
08. Houdini Rites
09. Void
10. Hotel Freund

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Marc Richter (aka Black to Comm) is no newcomer to the experimental music scene. As the figurehead of the Hamburg-based Dekorder label, the musician and designer has brought countless oddities to the attention of rabid music fans in the last few years, but it is with his own compositions that he has made the biggest splash. Releasing for a plethora of labels including Digitalis, Trensmat and of course his own imprint, he has pioneered a new, organic drone sub-genre using tape loops, vintage organs and an inexhaustible swamp of found sounds. With this latest album however, it was Richter’s intention to move away from the epic drones he had made his own and into something more ‘classic’.

The mission statement for ‘Alphabet 1968’ was to write an album of ‘songs’ for want of a better word. Short tracks which represented genre points, the milestones which stuck in Richter’s mind when he thought back to his favourite records. What we arrive at is an breathtaking ten track album which, over the course of forty-five minutes, explores world music, techno, noise, avant-garde, ambient music and even exotica. Each track is linked with a loose thread of radio static or environmental sound, dragging you through the album as if tuning in to a stray broadcast or a particularly adventurous mix.

Richter has pieced the album together from hours of recordings made at his studio with home made gamelan, small instruments and loops gathered from a collection of ancient vinyl and 78 records. The scope of the album is admirable but ignoring this it is simply a shockingly arresting collection of experimental oddities, with references ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of the Bernard Herrmann. It’s not hard to fall in love with ‘Alphabet 1968’, far harder would be to place exactly where the record should fit into your collection.

Llyn Y Cwn – Llyn Y Cwn

Llyn Y Cwn – Llyn Y Cwn
Genre : Ambient, Electronica

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01 – XII
02 – XI
03 – IX
04 – X

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Llyn Y Cwn (Welsh - lake of the dogs) is a small lake at 715m, nestled between Glyder Fach and Y Garn in the Glyder mountain range of Snowdoina, UK. Llyn Y Cwn is a dark ambient project by Ben Powell (mank). The two EP’s were released only in digital format in 2009 – part 1 in March and part 2 in November. The EP’s try to emulate the type of environment encountered at Llyn Y Cwn, harsh and desolate but at the same time beautiful. They feature environmental field recordings from the mountains of north wales and from an ice breaker ploughing through ice at the north pole. The music is intended to be played as the listener is going to sleep.

Mitsuyoshi Matsuda - Scene

Mitsuyoshi Matsuda - Scene
Genre : Ambient, Electronica

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01. Hirune 1:46
02. Curtain 3:50
03. Park 1:27
04. Evening Melody 3:28
05. Calm 2:45
06. Shizukana Umi 5:48
07. Secret Door 4:20

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The Declining Winter - Haunt The Upper Hallways

The Declining Winter - Haunt The Upper Hallways
Genre : Electronica, Acustica, Indie

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01. Haunt The Upper Hallways
02. My Name In Ruins
03. Hey EFD
04. Red Brick Houses
05. Where The Servern Rivers Tread
06. Come On Feel The Willingness
07. Drenched
08. Goodbye Light LS28
09. Carta Remix
10. Hey EFD (inst)

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When the brothers Adams allowed Hood an extended sabbatical it was always going to be interesting to see how far their musical paths would diverge from their unmistakable blueprint. Now temporarily freed from the pressures and expectations of the Hood environment, Richard Adams has breathed an audible sigh of relief into his new project, The Declining Winter.

The latest instalment from The Declining Winter is due for release on 27th July 2009. It has taken some time to work out the format for this release but after much deliberation we have decided it should come as a 7" record which includes a CD containing a full album of material. We hope this will satisfy those who require a 'vinyl fix' and everyone else also receives what is effectively The Declining Winter's second full length album on CD, in its own packaging. A slightly unusual format but perfectly in keeping with Adams' idiosyncratic approach to music making. In addition to all this, the first 100 website orders will also receive a further CD of remixes of 'Haunt The Upper Hallways' from the likes of Part Timer, Winter North Atlantic, Northerner, Fieldhead and Richard Adams himself.

Throughout the course of 'Haunt The Upper Hallways' you will encounter passages of breathtaking beauty akin to those found on Rachel's mesmerising 'Music For Egon Schiele', followed by wistful, reflective pieces that conjure up comparisons with Robert Wyatt, Deerhunter, Grizzly Bear and latter day Talk Talk. There is a freshness to Adams' approach to songwriting which is beautifully exhibited in the addition of dulcimer and violins throughout these ten mini epics.

‘Haunt The Upper Hallways’, true to Adams’ pedigree, is the work of an artist for whom contradiction, severity, experimentation and dissonance are as much grist to the mill as harmony, melody and concord. Close attention to the multi-layered vocals sometimes reveals that Adams might also be grinding axes or even settling old scores throughout the course of these songs. Or, perhaps it’s just the ramblings of a man lost and confused on the number ninety-one (Pudsey to Chapeltown) bus.

Yui Onodera-Entropy

Yui Onodera-Entropy
Genre : Ambient, Electronica

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01. untitled 6' 39"
02. untitled 3' 14"
03. untitled 5' 41"
04. untitled 4' 20"
05. untitled 4' 40"
06. untitled 3' 50"
07. untitled 5' 00"
08. untitled 4' 18"
09. untitled 3' 50"
10. untitled 5' 40"

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Over the last months, a plethora of drone-related albums have piled up on our desk. Several of them have been of exceptional quality: Imaginative, personal, pristinely realised, daring even. And yet few artists have been able to sustain their ambitions over a prolonged series of releases like Yui Onodera. The three albums he churned out in 2007 alone would have fueled the career of other artists for at least a decade: „Substrateﾒ on Mystery Sea revealed a pure and hypnotic world of overtones, „Suisei“ (AND/OAR) constituted an epic journey into the heart of Tokyo, while „Rhizome“ (Gears of Sand) was a colourful, multistylistic effort with a strong melodic underpinning. Onodera, it seemed, had discovered a foolproof creative formula and the way he was lavishly applying its ardent arithmetics to a string of continuously immaculate albums implied there were more and possibly even greater things to come.

This, of course, is the main trait of all leading artists: Never holding anything back from their audiences in fear of having nothing left to say one day. And yet, for a second there, it seemed as though the well had indeed dried up. After being administered the accolade of the genre by releasing a 7inch on seminal label Drone Records, Onodera lapsed into silence. „Radiance“, a collaboration with The Beautiful Schizophonic and officially published only a couple of days ago, is his first new full-length in almost one and a half years and its shimmering harmonies and glowing production are sure to again raise attention. „Entropy“, meanwhile, is an older work, Onodera's first in fact, and it takes listeners back all the way to 2005, when he was just setting up his Critical Path imprint and assembling a circle of like-minded young Japanese Sound Artists. His relative fame was restricted to his homeland back then, withholding the music from most of the world's ears. Re-released on nascent record company Trumn, it however sounds as fresh as ever today and demonstrates just how mature he had already been when debuting on the scene.

It also underlines that a combination of solid craftsmanship and good-old inspiration can still yield impressive results which are „characterized by values and concepts that are different from everything so far“ (as he himself put it): Onodera uses a typical setup of Guitar, field recordings and electronics here and most pieces on „Entropy“ consist of a recognisable amalgamation of various layers of harmonics, noises and micro-sounds. Still, the record is capable of evoking insistent images of burning intensity. Each track is like a psychedelic still-life, like gazing through a cosmic caleidoscope with shardes of stardust gracefully creating shifting patterns at the pace of planetational rotation. The music reveals its constituents early on – simple two-chord loops, melodic movements, frequential pulsation and timbral friction – and then allows the audience to observe them from various angles and in slightly different constellations over the course of their brief four- to five-minute duration. Effectively, listening to this album feels a little bit like walking through an exposition of holographic sculptures electrically flickering in serene darkness to the beat of random fluctuations in power supply.

On the one hand, the accuracy of his vision is astounding: Each scene is carved out with utmost precision and a great sensitivity for mood: In the best of Japanese traditions, his compositions are the most immediate realisation of a single idea imaginable. They should not be seen as symbols but as strikingly vivid expressions of life. On the other, Onodera is constructing a greater picture from these small-scale miracles as well. Juxtaposition is the main creative tool on „Entropy“, with dense ambiances taking turns with minimalistic microtonal sketches and light-filled amniotic soundscapes seaguing into the foreboding waters of a dark sonic river. With each new piece, the immersive character of the album grows, culminating in a sensation of immense tranquility when tension finally dissolves into the calm final movement.

Despite constant claims that it no longer had anything new to say, the Drone genre has only grown more prolific and seminal labels like Drone Records and Mystery Sea are planning their release schedules years rather than months ahead. As similar as some of its techniques and approaches have necessarily been by default, the allure of this kind of music has always been its unique ability of voicing a vast and indiscribable mystery in an immediate and emotionally direct vocabulary. As the market becomes saturated, artists like Yui Onodera are thus becoming ever-more important: Even the sound of small stones and subtle tones rubbed against each other sounds spooky and enigmatic with him and there seem to be lightyears of whispering dark matter separating tonal layers in his tracks. His work always goes that one decisive step deeper, his sounds touching the very chakral points of your synapses. As imaginative and daring as many of his colleagues may be, only few can match that.

Tobias Fischer

Asobi Seksu – Rewolf

Asobi Seksu – Rewolf
Genre : Shoegaze, Dream Pop, Indie

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1. Breathe Into Glass (at Olympic Studios)
2.Walk on the Moon (at Olympic Studios)
3.Meh No Mae (at Olympic Studios)
4.New Years (at Olympic Studios)
5.Blind Little Rain (at Olympic Studios)
6.Bossa (at Olympic Studios)
7.Suzanne (at Olympic Studios)
8.Gliss (at Olympic Studios)
9.Familiar Light (at Olympic Studios)
10.Thursday (at Olympic Studios)

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One of the last albums ever recorded at London’s renowned Olympic Studios (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who), Rewolf finds Asobi Seksu’s core duo—vocalist Yuki Chikudate and guitarist James Hanna—affording listeners a fresh take on songs spanning the band’s career. Here, Asobi Seksu replaces its sonic layer of guitars with beautiful new arrangements achieved through the use of mostly acoustic instruments.

Mika Vainio - Vandal EP

Mika Vainio - Vandal EP
Genre : Electronica, Experimental

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01. Teutons
02. Vandals
03. Goths
04. Barbarians

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We're struggling to contain our excitement over the latest in Raster Noton's Unun series, following essential excursions from Aoki Takamasa, NHK and Grischa Lichtenberger with four tracks of absolutely immense nasty beats and techno reductions from Mika Vainio! It's fully acknowledged that we have a man-crush on this producer, but it's totally justified when he gives out analog brutalism of this variety. There's a definite theme of northern-European destruction going on with this 12" with titles like 'Vandals' and 'Goths' connecting the downright rotten noise aesthetic to the notoriously fierce tribes of northern and central Europe. Three of the tracks opt for hiphop breakbeats and slower tempos similar to the NHK release, before bludgeoning the rhythms with extreme noise-force, but the standout for many will be 'Barbarians'. To our knowledge it's the first 4/4 techno track he's made for nearly 10 years, taking cues from the arrangements of tuff Chicago patterns before eroding them with a caustic noise substance to sound like a nightmarish Marcel Dettmann

Noveller/Aidan Baker - Colorful Disturbances

Noveller/Aidan Baker - Colorful Disturbances
Genre : Ambient, Electronica, Experimental

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A1 - Noveller - Under the Color Cave
A2 - Noveller - White Rabbit
B - Aidan Baker - Disturbances Part 1 & 2

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Guitars warped so hard they dissolve into pure consciousness! Seriously, this record had to happen because these two are the NOW of transcendental guitar weirdness. In families like ours where deformed music of one kind or another pours out of the speakers all day long, Toronto's Aidan Baker is a household name. He is no doubt one of the most imaginative experimental musicians of the new generation, quickly creating a universe of limitless sound with his bursting discography. He offers this record an extensive piece which mixes drone, texture, and an ever-bowing foundation -- imagine the sound of falling backwards... forever. The new blood on this split is guitarist Sarah Lipstate from Brooklyn, New York (aka Noveller). Sarah's prepared twin guitar works up a slow hypnotic force, gently pulling way out to the furthest deep end of pulses and patterns. Beautiful repetitions effortlessly skirt over a dark undercurrent. A+++ listen. Edition of 600 copies.

Ryuichi Sakamoto – Playing the Piano

Ryuichi Sakamoto – Playing the Piano
Genre : Piano, Clásica

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Disc 1

01. Hibari
02. Composition 0919
03. Put Your Hands Up
04. Mizu No Naka No Bagatelle
05. Tango
06. Amore
07. Ambiguous Lucidity
08. A Flower Is Not A Flower
09. Before Long
10. Energy Flow
11. Mc_08 (Tong Poo)
12. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
13. The Last Emperor
14. Rain

Disc 2
01. The Sheltering Sky
02. Sweet Revenge
03. High Heels
04. Bolerish
05. Silk
06. Self Portrait
07. Bibo No Aozora
08. Perspective
09. Behind The Mask
10. Tibetan Dance
11. 1919
12. Thousand Knives
13. Parolibre

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