resonant strata

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The Dead Western – Everything, Eternally

On a first impression, Dead Western's songs appeared to be rather simple. But repeated listens subtlely revaled a big world underneath the surface unfodling its musical complexety with instruments and harmonies sneaking in and out. Driven by a low pitch voice (often with multiple layers of vocals harmonies stacked on top), I had expected a lute or a harp, but it's orchestrated more classically with guitar and glockenspiel and some tamboruine and percussions here and there flowing along peacefully.

The style of the singing is a little too much from time to time. If I hadn't listened to this as an mp3, I would have at least checked twice, if the record runs at the correct speed. Deep and guttural vocals paired with an odd falsetto every now and then that sounds a little too forced at times. Strangely enough I happen to realize that I'm humming these melodies unconciously. It seems, my experience with Dead Western is similar to my past ones with Joanna Newsom or Kate Bush (although both don't have that much in common) – at first I was really put off by their voices but grew really fond of them. It's the same with this Dead Western material – their melodies soemtimes take strange routes, little odditities that stay stuck.

It's a really strange experience. I seem to listen to this album quite often and although I can't really make any (emotional or intellectual) connection to the material, I'm more and more fascinated by it. It's like being just a visitor to this odd musical world that consist of strange little things. But on the other hand it is not strange enough to being an totally alienating experience – lots of rather poppy melodies drift in and out. In a good way, I'm left completely unsure with this album.

Dead Western Discorporate Records 

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New Address

Hey guys – by the end of this week the new address will be:

http://resonantstrata.tumblr.com

please update your bookmarks accordingly

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Ian Hawgood – The Shattered Light

The first release on the new Koen Music label is Ian Hawgood's "The Shattered Light" – a truly dark and desolate record. The slow chord progression of the opener that spirals upwards into a glistening mist of distortion has an amazing cleansing effect. After being run over by this massive amount of mourning noise I am ready for the calming gong-like drones of the three following tracks drowning under washes of static, noise and subtle harmonic distortion that ascend again into incredible heights of a fuzzed out abyss. The center piece of the album – also called The Shattered Light – picks up the hints of distortion and transforms them into introspective, string like drones that grow darker and darker, but not without a bitter sweet melancholic touch like a long lost nostalgic memory; a gaping longing.

The last piece with its very band-limited and disintegrated sounds works more like an epilogue to the album – recapturing emotions, putting the passed 50 minutes into (a rather sorrowful) perspective. 

The Shattered Light is an absolutely dense album, without being packed with tons and tons of different notes and textures. Unlike a lot of recent "ambient" releases the emotional expressions don't feel stale and cliché. There is a certain urgency to Hawgood's work that crushes you and leaves you emotionally exhausted and empty (this is a good thing by the way). By any means, if you are serious about ambient music aside the already well know aesthetics, The Shattered Light is highly recommended.

Koen Music

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Zvuku – Other Room Listening

Compared to the former Futuresquence releases, Zvuku's "Other Room Listening" is a little different in its direction, since a lot of material here is derived or based on piano phrases in one or the other way – sometimes buried under distortion and reverb, sometimes naked and stripped down to its essentials. While most of the tracks venture around the five to six minute mark, the centerpiece of the album is the second track "Cold Yellow Red Blue" clocking in at roughly 18 minutes. Honestly, I lost count of the vast number of different parts constituting this track. Starting with a fuzzy, warm and reverb drenched drone over to glistening high power noise and introspective piano patterns to finally end with a cello/violin drone (and around six other parts that escape me at the moment), this track is a joyride of different directions and emotions. Plus, some of the motives are recaptured as a haunting echo two tracks later with "Cold Yellow Reprise" – marvelous.

The closing track sounds a little too much like a soundtrack/softsynth-demo to me. Directionless intertwining piano and string patterns (not that this is neccesarily a bad thing – it just didn't click with me this time) forming a melancholic miniature. Anyways, similar to the former releases, Futuresequence continues to publish high quality ambient albums – Zvuku's "Other Room Listening" is no exception here.

Futuresequence Zvuku 

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En – Already Gone

With an album title like "Already Gone" I was expecting dark, bleak drones and mournful textures, but the cover art already hinted towards a different direction: patterns of light that reminding of rays of sunshine through half opened blinds. 

The opening tracks recaptures this feeling; asynchronous delays flicker in glistening and pointilistique patterns over soothing Rhodes chords and bass notes. The following tracks continue in this manner. The second track circulates around a vocal motive and shimmering, Eno-esque reverbs, while the third piece breathes bowed instruments and little mallets in tranquil movements resembling lucid, sunlit afternoon dozes in lively cities with the windows open.

The title track is a floating airy drone that evaporates into minimalistic metallic string clusters establishing a calming yet dissonant texture that blends blends perfectly into the opening field recording and Rhodes arpeggio of the last track „Elysia“. With nearly 20 minutes running time and its harp-like arpeggios crashing against the Rhodes notes it establishes an atmosphere like peacefully tinkling wind-chimes before they disappear into a reverb soaked, feedback-y drone just to be drowned in buzzing distortion – a too obvious development that the track could have easily lived without though. 

En's album might not be incredibly new in its approach, but compared to a lot of recent ambient/drone releases it is good to hear that there are also albums like this, which venture on the more light and openly beautiful side noise and sound (that is a good thing by the way). For anyone looking for drone music that perfectly fits the last days of spring and the dawning summer, En's "Already Gone" is, despite it's title, a perfect match.

Students of Decay En 

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Asher – Untitled Landscapes 1 & 2

Asher's covers to "Untitled Landscapes 1 & 2" are programmatic. The bleak pictures that are drowning in dark metallic grey are a direct representation of the music that is mostly of monochromatic nature.Thick and beating oscillations slowly ebb and swell in lower registers, while the upper frequency is covered with a patina of soft noise.

A lot of times the tracks sound more like field-recordings from slowly breathing machines covered under layers of tape hiss and washes of reverb and room noise. Asher manages to create rooms, domes of sound – not as a texture, but as a reflection. As if the source is not present anymore; sound without subject, without purpose. This might be the reason his soundscapes are neither warm nor cold, since there's no clear signifier left under these faint waves of noise. This also leads to the fact, that is is quite hard to make out a beginning or ending of a specific track. Although they are different in texture and timbre, there is no need for a distinction and the blend together just so easily.

If you compare Untitled Landscapes 1 to Untitled Landscapes 2, the main difference is not only to be found int the running length of the individual tracks (with the tracks of "Untitled Landscapes 2" being 20 minutes each), but also the timbre. The longer tracks are a little noisier, although there seems to be a lot more harmonic content buried under the noise and hiss than on Untitled Landscapes 1 with its shorter yet more monochromatic tracks. Both approaches supplement each other perfectly

Asher's Untitled Landscapes keep, what they are promising: Opaque sonic landscapes stretching out like a moor – open, endless, sucking you in deeper and deeper.

Room40

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My album Aether is available as a digital download via bandcamp. For anyone into drones, modular synth and stuff, this is your way to a happy start into the week

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Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland – Ebony

To be honest, I wasn't that much of a fan of Hype Williams – they always seemed a little too ironic, a little too eclectic. But there were always some details that appealed to me: the quirkiness of their synths, their displayed amateur approach to producing music for example-

Their recent album "Ebony", released under their "real" names Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, ventures into similar territory. The production doesn't differ that much from their old approach with their overdriven, lo-fi, home-recording aesthetic, that makes them appear strangely self-centered in their own sound universe full of detuned synths, cheap drum machines .

A lot of the tracks are just short bits and pieces; more like snippets and interludes on a mix-tapes interconnecting the longer tracks. They are in large parts responsible that the albums flows past in a synthesized haze; sounds drifting in and out, loops tumble into focus and disappear again shortly after.

The track titles feel like a play with the file-sharing discourse with only the first track featuring a title – although in brackets – and the rest just being name track XX. One of the highlights is Track 09 with its looped vocal sample saying "never look back" that turns into melancholic nostalgic drifting track that works in the opposite direction as the words repeated over and over again. When the piece suddenly drops into a Buffalo Girls kind of beat, the friction and play of nostalgia gets an interesting twist of sugar-coated pop and self-aware eclecticism.

Ebony leaves me strangely undecided. The self reference and lo-fi approach to pop and 80s beats and synths is really appealing, but the tongue in cheek attitude is a little too much for my taste at some points. Nevertheless i realized I came back to this record a lot more often than I expected. It seems something in this record must be rubbing me the right way then – although I can't really put my finger to it. 

Hyperdub

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Radere – Good Evening, Ghosts

Good evening, Ghosts is a remix  release. The EP starts off with what served as the foundation for the following remixes. A beautiful lo-fi recording that reminds of distant wind chimes or a guitar – it's not really easy to tell, what it actually is, as i could also be something completely composed. Anyways, the piece is absolutely gorgeous. What follows are five remixes from Benoît Pioulard, Jannick Schou, Sun Hammer, Anduin and Radere himself. Each of them offering a slightly different approach to the ambient genre that is so popular these days.

While Jannick Schou is responsible for the more distortion driven and muffled bits of the original, Benoît Pioulard heavily relies on repetition. The looped field-recording feels like a skipping record adding a very melancholic direction to the original version. His tracks feels like having no real release for the built up tension, but constantly revolves around the same topic over and over again. 

The Sun Hammer track feels very distant, very disconnected from the listener and the original recording, but in a good sense. By taking a step back, the piece becomes a lot more reflective of the source material zooming into details, setting sounds against each other and leaving a lot of room for the single events to breathe and resonate.

Anduin's version is probably the most laid back work on this release. Deep synth pads fade in and out just so slightly that there are barely perceivable. With the field recording oscillating around the listener in the stereo the track has a moebius loop character that is just a little different each run. It's interesting to hear that nearly all artists choose to work from the beginning sounds of the original loop, where one can hear the surface noise of a hand holding the field recording devices as if they wanted to especially highlight the tool itself and not the recording. 

The final reworked version from Radere is a dense, distorted chunk drenched in distant reverbs stretching out to nearly 15 minutes. The high end frequencies are a little too overbearing for me to fully submerge into this, but the pace and progression is executed with the same sense for detail and care that is usually the case with Radere tracks. Just like all other releases on Futuresequence, Good Evening Ghosts is just beautiful – if only they were also available as a vinyl version …

Radere  Futuresequence

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John Foxx & The Maths – The Shape of Things

If you are looking for futuristic elctronic music, rooted in the experimental pop approach of the early 80s, you don't need to look any further than John Foxx of Ultravox fame. His latest album "The Shape of Things" together with Benge, as the John Foxx & the Maths is no exception to this. At first glance, this is glossy 80s synth pop all over. Lush pads, pulsating arpeggios and cold, minimal beats. But The Shape of Things is more than just a retro laden nostalgia trip. It is hard to put your finger on it, there are tiny cracks and fissure in the surface. The beats are a little too monotonous, the sounds a little too raw for yur average pop tracks. The way for example "Talk" stoically pulsates forward with a booming bassline and ultra minmal percussions make you crawl up the wall in a good way, since the tension is rising to nearly unbearable levels and finds no release. Tracks like "September Town" function the complete opposite way. A catchy melody with some some walking synth bass carries you into classic synth territories of early Human League and Ultravox accompanied with melancholic harmonized vocals. Small interlude-esque sound pieces break the flow with late 70s anaolg synth sound miniatures. It these opposites that are the strong point about "Shape of Things". The way they undermine categorization of the album. 

The album features two collaborations as last tracks. Neither the track with Matthew Dear with its reduced 4/4 bassdrum patterns nor the song with Tara Busch really anything new to the absoluztely amazing album and feel a little displaced in comparison to the other tracks. Anyways, this doesn't change anything – Shape of Things is an absolute joy to listen to.

John Foox & The Maths Metamatic

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Anduin – Stolen Years

Transatlantic postal services suck. Especially when you eagerly wait for a package that is supposed to come. It is definitively not the first time that a package got lost in the mail for me, but, when it is something such as the Anduin release on SMTG, it does hurt more than if was just some random items ordered from amazon.

Anyways, luckily enough,there was at least the digital version of the release to keep me company. And a good company it is. At first I was expecting some synthesizer drone album of the variety that is quite popular these days. But a couple of minutes in, "Stolen Years" revealed that there was so much more to be discovered. Sure, there are your monochromatic layers of sound, actually pretty good ones too, but the record has its strong points beyond that. The way Anduin plays with rhythm is absolutely great. From tiny blips and clicks that flutter around to actual beats, the whole piece seems to be a quietly pulsating machine contracting and expanding to the ebb and flow of the music.   Especially since the beats and percussions sometimes seemed to be made out of field recordings such as in "Dyadic Twenty Seven" they emphasize the organic feel of the tracks even further.

Above all that wanders a freely moving saxophone, sometimes just as a glimpse of sound in the background, sometimes as a solo instrument giving the track more direction and moving it more into the psych improv field, but without the murkiness and the fuzz of that genre. Sometimes those saxophone lines seem to venture off into cheesy mid 80s pop, where Rafferty meets Toto meets late Jean Michel Jarre. Nevertheless, the saxophone never takes up too much attention leaving enough room for the track to breath, so that in the end Stolen Years maintains to be a slowly gliding, ethereal piece of ambient music. A record that shouldn't be missed.

Anduin SMTG Limited

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Keith Fullerton Whitman – Generators

Music by machines is a topic that is written onto the body of electronic music since its early beginnings (maybe the Theremin and Trautonium era left aside). Handing over some or all of the  control to the machines is something that regularly resurfaces in the electronic music discourse. This of course is not only a question about machines, artificial intelligence or algorithmic approaches, but also a discussion about the role of the artist; or even more precisely a discussion about the subject as an author (or the author as a subject – depending on the point of view) – who is writing the piece? who is responsible? Where does creativity begin? What means purpose, what expression in an artistic discourse?

There is a long history of this discussion in modular synthesis with its large cabinets full of electronic synthesizer gizmos having only limited functionality by themselves, but when connected together forming an organic body of sound, where every bit is able to react to the other connected modules, to change each individual state and to also change the state of the machine as a total entity. 

One of the people being very active in this research over the last couple of years, is Keith Fullerton Whitman. Especially his Generators series is a mind-bending document of this approach. Patching up his modular synthesizer in order to let it run autonomously is the core to this series. There are already a number of released recordings – all quite different in their results. With his Generators release on Editions Mego, he again patches up his Eurorack synth modules and let them just evolve into morphing synth textures.

The first piece is an homage to Eliane Radigue and starts off just as if she would sit at her Arp synthesizer. Long, metallic drones of beating waves build the foundation. Over the time repetitive arpeggios slowly move more and more into focus. What starts as muffled synth bleeps changes into high a energy high pitched note series that could easily be a Klaus Schulze pattern just to dissolve into fragmented synth events in the end.

The second track begins with subwoofer shattering triggers that intertwine with stuttering ultra high synths click and distant crackles. The track takes quite some time to evolve, circling again and again around the same clusters and bursts, but each time with different angles to finally blend into a introspective, glassy pattern that breaks up into random noise fragments.

What adds a nice layer to the pieces is that they are not recorded directly to disk or tape via line out, but mic'ed in the room. This does not only blend the sounds together a lot more organically, but also highlights the dynamics, transients and modal waves a lot more detailed making it it a unique single event that can't be repeated at any other place.

The Generators series shows that the idea of machine music and music made by machines is far from over. The way the sounds interact with each other has an inner logic that does not particularly feel natural in a compositional kind of sense, but has a formal beauty and organic quality that is just astonishing.

Editions Mego Keith Fullerton Whitman 

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Silencio – When I'm Gone

It is not clear if the project name silencio is meant as a demand or a description of a state that can never be achieved. Anyways, the French ambient project Silencio that mainly consists of Julien Demoulin and other accompanying musician ventures in a beautiful state between music and sound as a way to shape the perception of time and space. 

"When I'm Gone" is an incredibly hushed and mellow album. The tracks are woven with field-recordings that just hoover above the threshold of perception making it hard to discern if sounds were outside the window or part of the record. It is remarkable that it is not even important, what the field-recordings are about – they are just there. And work differently from a lot of other tracks out there, which use field-recordings as an easy and cliche-laden way to add some sense of emotion to a track.

The swelling drones of strings and synth sounds never reach dark regions. They always float gently along leaving enough room for bass melodies that originate from synth and bass/guitars. This bass layers add a lot space and depth to the tracks creating a springtime sunday afternoon atmosphere. Although Silencio refers to its sound to be about absence, distance or memory, "When I'm Gone" doesn't sound as dark as one might expect. Although being quite introspective, it has more of a calming dream-sequence with its repetitive guitar patterns, carefully placed synth chords and gentle, minimal percussions from pulsating drum machines that remind of Pan American at times – although less song orientated. Nevertheless at some points Silencio venture off just slightly into a similar post rockish area as Pan American, for example when "Taking Time" reaches its climax and opens up for an unexpected drum beat. The only time, when the feeling of the record seems to shift towards a more longing theme just to close with a warm and lulling piece that is carried by airport-esque e-piano motive – gorgeous.

three:four Records Silencio

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Black to Comm – Earth

Black to Comm always had this sort of shamanic tendency, where Marc Richter seemed to execute strange sonic rituals, only he was able to make sense of, but the latest record on DeStijl, takes this approach a little further. While Alphabet 1968 had an airy quality to it with its light textures and floating sound fragments, Earth feels a lot heavier and darker. Mourning vocals emanate from the mist of sounds that reminds of  lost rites, while backwards field-recordings intensify the eeriness of the first track. It is a surprise that vocals seem to play a lot larger role than they used to be on earlier Black to Comm recordings. All five tracks have vocals to some extent. Most of the time they appear serve like an additional layer of texture mumbling along in the background, sometimes the are a little bit more in the foreground and comprehensible, but in both ways they add a sense of urge and yearning to the tracks that was not present in this intensity in Richter's project.

Originally recorded as a score to the silent film "Earth" from Ho Tzu Nyen, the album has a morbid, hallucinogenic, feverish feeling that will haunt you and resonate long after the last song has been played.

De Stijl Black to Comm

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Franco Falsini – Cold Nose

Krautrock and New Age kind music is having a little renaissance in the last one or two years. Spectrum Spools, curated by Emeralds John Elliot, is one of those labels, which dives into these genres quite a bit and Franco Falsini's "Cold Nose" perfectly falls into this 70s krautrock category. 

Cold Nose consists of three tracks of introspective, psychedelic guitar work with lots of delays and arpeggiated pickings. The sound and texture remind loosely of Popol Vuh around the Aguirre era, though a little less stretched out and less glacial. Falsini adds a heavy psych note to the tracks with fuzzy guitar lines layered on top of his repetitive bed of notes. Although the track listing shows only three songs, each title seems to consist of a bunch of tracks fading into each other. This gives Cold Nose a sense of being loose sketches or improvisations, which seems to be a little off the Krautrock rules with its lengthy tracks, but works perfectly, since the mood and direction don't really change that much. With just close to 30 minutes, the record could have been a bit longer for this kind of music to be fully immersive, but it is nevertheless a really enjoyable album. 

Spectrum Spools

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Peter Prautzsch – Schwere See

Peter Prautzsch's "Schwere See" is heavy stuff. To call this ambient, would neither do the album nor the genre any justice. With early expeditions into the Arctic Sea as a thematic backdrop, the eleven tracks explore dark and desolate territories. Thick brooding drones hover dangerously in the background with muffled field recordings making their appearance here and there. 

The spectrum of sounds used in Schwere See is immense. Besides the aforementioned drones and field-recordings, Schwere See has a couple of tracks that are accompanied with drums and percussions, which works absolutely amazing, because they add a lot of theatrical impact on the already heavy and haunted sounds. At some points the heaviness gets lifted a bit making way for airy, foggy synth or e-piano patterns as in "Auf Grund", which has a hazy dream-state ambience. The great thing about "Schwere See" is, that it doesn't dwell on one established style, but changes it appearance quite a lot during the album. From really dark and bass laden drones, to cello-esque patterns and gong pulsations, the album has a lot to offer and digest. 

The list of renowned artist with Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay), Marc Weiser (Rechenzentrum) and Masayoshi Fujita (El Fog), who contributed to this album, is impressive and adds nice touches to the sound. Especially the Drums from Marc Weiser on "Skagerrak" with their massive side-chaining of the droning textures add an interesting dimension to the track, transporting it more into late 90s post rock regions, though with lesser complex drum patterns. 

Too bad Neo Ouija has switched to digital only releases, because this would be amazing as a vinyl version. Anyways – there is a limited CD-R version available at Peter Prautzsch's bandcamp page. You shouldn't hesitate to get this one.

Neo Ouija Peter Prautzsch

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Pascal Savy – Receding

It seems that Pascal Savy has found his melodic voice. While former releases were delicate and beautiful studies in ambient, fieldrecordings and drones, explicit tonal material was harder to find. This changes with his new release "Receding" that is available on Twisted Tree Line. "If Time Allows" opens up with minor piano chords, hidden behind thick clouds of reverb and static, while sonar-esque blips stumble lost through the mist. The second tracks picks up, where the last one ended. Some hazy static builds the foundation for small tonal spikes, e-piano sounds and fieldrecordings buried under layers of reverb and delay. 

Receding, the third track of the album, has some sounds that resemble desert-rock guitar twangs, which work perfectly for the glitchy skitters that seem to move like fluid through the stereo field. Together with glassy bell sounds and distant sine bleeps this track offers an enormous amount of depth and detail.

The FM piano splashes of the last track are delay drenched left-overs of heavy monome MLR abuse. Stuttering away like some old Shuttle 358 track, it has an introspect quality that it absolutely soozing.

Compared to the other, already amazing pieces of Pascal Savy's music, "Receding" – as an album – is a great leap foreward for Savy in finding his voices and articulating it more precisely. 

Twisted Tree Line Pascal Savy