ambient
Album review: Joel Vandroogenbroeck – ‘Far View’: a curated, cosmic library set from the Belgian psychedelic scion
A MUSICIAN who ventured far in both life and his chosen creative form, Joel Vandroogenbroeck is maybe not a name that trips with ease from your lips; unless of course, you’re a proper head of the deep psych persuasion. For Joel was both the driving force behind and ever-present in the hard-psych voyagers Brainticket, whose …
News: Roedelius and Tim Story will enter into a four-handed piano conversation for Erased Tapes in January; hear ‘Spirit Clock’
A GENUINE, gilt-edged musical legend, German electronic and ambient music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius, now into his eighth decade with us, is to enter into a two-way piano conversation with American composer and friend of 40 years Tim Story for Erased Tapes in January. The 11-track album, entitled 4 Hands, allows the pair to explore an …
Album review: John Thayer – ‘Supermundane’: a palimpsest of nuanced, intelligent ambience
NEW YORK percussionist, audio engineer and all-round musical polymath John Thayer, fresh from two collaborative, cassette-only albums last year – Untangling The Ghost, on which he sparred with reeds player Stank Zenkov, and Mountain Rumors, in tandem with Craig Schenker – is not about to depart this grinding year of our lord 2021 without dropping …
News: William Basinski to bring his magisterial ‘Disintegration Loops’ to The Barbican next June
INCREDIBLE news for lovers of the drone and the textural; New York sound artist and composer William Basinski is to bring his masterful degrading tape-loop work The Disintegration Loops and last year’s set for Temporary Residence, Lamentations, to the awesome brutalist architecture and superb acoustics of London’s Barbican next summer. The concert will celebrate the …
PREMIERE: Kramer shares video for adaptation of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘At Apollinaire’s Grave’ as he releases ‘WORDS & MUSIC, Book One’
He’s had a hand in producing albums by Low and Galaxie 500, runs a record label and is an esteemed artist in his own right, so having Joyful Noise name Shimmy-Disc owner Mark Kramer (or simply Kramer) as their Artist in Residence for 2020 acted as suitable testament to his capabilities. This year, he’s been …
Album Review: Cluster Lizard – Star Corsair
Overview: Freedom of the Star Corsair “Whoever wishes the eternal, must leave the temporal behind”. Cluster Lizard: While meditating on the concept of our next album, we listened to the soundtracks of our favorite movies and dreamed of composing our music for the films. What could the film be like, what would be the story, …
News: Hugar announce a new album, ‘Rift’, for January; come explore the delicate, glacial pulsing of ‘volt’
HUGAR, the Icelandic modern compositional duo of childhood friends Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson, who we last examined in these pages in regard to their arthouse film soundtrack The Vasulka Effect (read about that, here), are set to return in the first, budding days of 2022 with an album entitled Rift: an album written with …
Album review: Poppy Ackroyd – ‘Pause’: solo piano pastoralism excellently captures a life lived this past year
WITH four albums proper, so to speak, under her belt – Escapement and Feathers from further back last decade, and a brace for what’s now One Little Independent in 2017, an acoustic mini-album, Sketches and the full-length Resolve – we really haven’t heard nearly enough from Poppy Ackroyd in recent times; but then what with …
Album Review: Nigh/T\mare – Katharsis
Overview: From the depths of an ancient dark underworld, Nigh/T\mare has conjured a powerful offering of burning emotions that light the fires of one’s demons and invite thebeginning of an epic journey through the unknown. Via Thrènes Records from Switzerland, this offering is on point with their consistent releasing of top quality industrial/experimental techno. Entitled …
Album Review: Portico Quartet – ‘Monument’
I can still remember the kerfuffle Portico Quartet sparked off at Womad 2012…Where’s the hang drum? What’s this, loops? Is this dance music? For a crowd expecting the pastoral acoustic soundscapes of their first two records, the Mercury nominated ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ and follow up ‘Isla’, the sweeping electronica fused with upfront …