Asmus Tietchens - Eisgang (Korm Plastics, 1995)

A Rasch Und Mäßig Bewegt 19:43
B Nahezu Unbewegt 17:35

review extract after the 2002 reissue of Eisgang & Dämmerattake :
While the press release describes "Eisgang / Dammerattacke" as "not your everyday ambient music," these two albums fall within the 'classic' definition of ambient as proposed by Brian Eno. Both of these albums use similar tonal palettes with vaguely chilly, but far from ominous electronic washes soaked in blurring reverb, and are slightly more dramatic than Eno's "On Land" or like those darkened Gas albums devoid of their skeletal rhythms.
Aquarius Records

sold out visit Asmus Tietchens & Korm Plastics & buy the reissue Eisgang / Dämmerattake with bonus tracks here

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Re-up

first, a re-up....
i know some people requested for some other re-up, but most of this releases are stored on my hd who'd crashed....so you'll have to be patient.....

Tim Coster - Star Mill (CLaudia, 2007) : here

Ashes To Ashes - Museum Of Dust (Incense, 1994)

A1 Imperturbable Stiches Of Time
A2 The Diverted Device
A3 The Great Theatre Of Decrepitude
A4 The Long Experience
A5 Damage Melody / The Last Elegy

sold out visit Cyril Herry (or here)

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Sean McCann - Flutter Oasis (Digitalis, 2008)

1 Untitled
2 Untitled

by request

Another crazy limited cassette release. This one from a name we'd never heard before, Sean McCann, but judging from this tape, we'll definitely want to be hearing more.
The sound is super distorted and in-the-red, lo-fi and warbly, like it was recorded on some old thrift store tape on a busted up tape recorder, the guitar being the focal point, but rendered in numerous un-guitar-like sounds and setting, simple strums are distorted to the point of complete collapse, strange effects make the tape sound like it's skipping, vocals howl and croon, everything super washed out.
Some tracks are warm and whirring and warbly, almost old timey sounding, everything shimmery and dreamlike, circus like melodies, kitchen sink percussion, and a soft focus patina of fuzz and buzz and whir, the tape continually slowing to a crawl, or skipping and hiccupping like the stop and record buttons getting pushed, others are dense and chaotic, but with the same sort of sun dappled summer dreaminess, the distortion and the tape drop outs as much, if not more of, a part of the sound than the actual instruments.
Noisy, but that sort of soft noise, dreamy, but not sleepy, instead a sort of druggy bleary eyed drift, think lo-fi folk or pop, via Merzbow, filtered through Philip Jeck and Tim Hecker, recorded by Faxed Head, and played back on a Dictaphone with dying batteries plugged into a massive P.A. with blown speakers. So cool.
Aquarius Records

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Ionosphere - The Stellar Winds (Avatar Records, 2007)

1 00:00:000 6:21
2 06:21:455 3:31
3 09:52:987 4:13
4 14:05:448 3:58
5 18:04:659 4:23
6 22:27:333 3:01
7 25:28:576 1:52
8 27:20:824 3:05
9 30:25:414 1:03
10 31:28:107 2:09
11 33:37:688 5:50

by request

sold out

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Endless Endless Endless - Things I Saw (Kimberly Dawn Recordings, 2010)

1 North 2:43
2 South 3:13
3 West 7:30
4 Things I Saw 9:58

The new Endless Endless Endless release is now available on Kimberly Dawn Recordings. This new recording captures the energy of the band's recording process of gameboy, guitar, and go, two musicians performing on a single take. All 4 of the tracks on this cdr were improvised and recorded at a single session. The first 3 songs ("North", "South" and "West") are all sections of a single jam while the last song, "Things I Saw", revisits the thematic ideas of the first three songs as a hypnotic rhythmic cycle.

What Kimberly Dawn Records had to say about the release: "Endless Endless Endless rip through your fragile psyche to reveal a multifaceted world of pure color and tone. This east coast duo wields guitars, gameboy, and vocals to create their own unique drifting dream world of pure discovery. I'm delighted to be able to present this unique statement which is the perfect complement to their recent self released album, Black Talisman (see the glowing Aquarius write up for more testimonial proof). Perfect journey music. Artwork and custom tiny laser etched talisman by the artists. Available in a numbered edition of 50 hand stamped 3" cdrs.
Kimberly Dawn Recordings

sold out visit Endless Endless Endless & Kimberly Dawn Recordings

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yep !

bon nouveau disque dur interne, nouvelle os, mais de retour....
les programmes reprennent mais on va recommencer doucement par un envoi de james d'endless endless endless et deux disques qui m'avaient été réclamés...
si parmi vous quelqu'un qui connait bien linux et qui parle un français châtié pouvait m'envoyer son mail pour que je pose quelques questions, j'apprécierai énormément....

well new internal hard drive, new system, but back...
to begin slowly the new record but already sold out of endless endless endless, sent by james, and two records by requests....
i know some of you are requesting re-up but you'll have to wait a little....
and thanks to all who have sent support messages in comments or by mail...

...

disque dur niqué, de retour aussitôt que possible... / hard drive crash, back as soon as possible...

Andrea Neumann & Toshimaru Nakamura - ATØN (Rossbin, 2001)

1 ATON_01 10:57
2 Aton_02 3:38
3 aTon_03 5:30
4 atOn_04 10:33
5 atoN_05 19:04
6 aton_06 3:08

All six sonic events happened around Andrea Neumann, Toshimaru Nakamura and their sound devices, captured by themselves with great assistance by Axel Dörner, in Berlin, June 2000.

sold out visit Toshimaru Nakamura & Rossbin

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Tomas Phillips - On Dit (Trente Oiseaux, 2003)

1 On Dit 41:04

"On Dit was created during the summer and autumn of 2002. These were my last months in the U.S. before relocating to Montreal. It was also a period of technological experimentation, as I had only recently acquired the programs with which On Dit was made. Conceptually, the piece had beenwith me for some time. The intention was to use a palette of both digital and organic sounds and to construct an extended track complete with individual though related "movements." I was aiming for a certain quietude, which I achieved in the first section, though as is often the case in art, the composition slowly developed of its own accord and became somewhat louder and more frenetic than anticipated. Perhaps the manifestation of an impending transition was escaping through the music."

This quote is the beginning of an essay that Tomas Phillips wrote about his work and that is included on the CD, as well as three of his paintings. For me On Dit constitutes a most interesting and personal choice of elements from the vocabulary of the electroacoustic music of the last decade, and combines them in a way that is both inventive and highly musical. The trajectory of the work is quite unpredictable, yet builds up to a coherent formal unity, and presents a perspective of progressing from the sometimes overly dominant paradigm of 'click and cut', 'glitch' and other purely abstract sound work towards a kind of work that embraces all the possibilities electronic tools offer today's composers.
Bernhard Günter

Tomas Phillips composed this piece in the last months before moving from his home town near the eastern seaboard of North Carolina to the city of Montreal, capturing something of the quiet life he led there, but also reflecting the inevitable tensions and excitement that must have defined the experience of leaving such a place behind. Using sounds from his environment and some newly acquired software, Phillips went to work at creating On Dit, an immersive, inventive piece where stillness and motion meet, a composition that works a strange magic on you as you listen, moving from one scene to the next through seamless transitions, building a slight tension and intensity, then falling into a quiet zone once again, mixing field recordings with electronic timbres, a minimalist's garden of sound. Found sounds are treated and manipulated, or they are left as they were recorded—the quiet sounds of chimes in the breeze. Minimal rhythms rise and fall; subtle gestures and combinations tickle the ears; a leitmotif of sound occurrences marks the progression of the piece at different intervals. On Dit is truly a journey of sound, a diary, a landscape, a self-portrait reflecting a particular moment in time, a location in space, a state of being. The CD also contains data files for viewing on your home computer — three paintings and an insightful essay on the composition of the piece, its themes and, more generally, on the experience of listening.
Incursion Music

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Feu Follet - Paradis Paysan (Gruenrekorder, 2008)

1 Paradis Vespéral
2 Christina Dans Le Foin
3 La Forêt Secrète
4 Une Lumière Brille Dans Les Ténèbre
5 La Consolation De Tes Collines

"I have always considered myself a fan of big cities: Frankfurt (where I lived for five years) and Berlin were centres of inspiration for me, because they would grow and proliferate according to a fascinating logic of their own. Lately, however, I increasingly found my views challenged by what I perceive as a a pronounced incapacity for renewal on the side of the metropoles and the incredibly aluring calm and comfort offered by visits to the countryside. Of course, these fresh perspectives are at least partially rather like fantasies, influenced by books such as "Knulp" by Herman Hesse or by my own imagination. And still, a process of rethinking my position and direction had begun. ‘Paradis Paysan’ is a way of answering these questions musically, a sort of poetic excursion into the blue on an unbeaten path – ready to go wherever it would take me.

Originally, I wanted the album to be composed of several short, but interrelated pieces to differentiate it from past works. When I sent out a promo to Gruenrekorder, however, I had lazily left the tracks glued together in one piece. As it turned out, it was this what especially attracted the label: A long composition made up of several scenes, which really forces you to listen from beginning to end. Listening to it now, I think they were absolutely right in persuading me to leave the music that way."
Tobias Fischer

Say the word “Gruenrekorder” and field recordings come to mind. In that regard, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s Landscape in Metamorphoses—in essence, field recordings of India—is perfectly in keeping with the label’s reputation. Paradis Paysan, on the other hand, a recording by Tobias Fischer under the Feu Follet guise, surprises by being less a pure field outing and instead more of an ambient work. [...]

Fischer’s Feu Follet recording lists five track titles on the sleeve but presents itself as a continuous thirty-nine-minute piece. The explanation? Fischer intended Paradis Paysan to be a collection of short, interrelated pieces but when he submitted the promo to Gruenrekorder he inadvertently presented the tracks as one piece—serendipitously it turns out, as the final product is best heard as a single, fluid composition comprised of several scenes, rather than separable and interchangeable units. Conceptually driving the work is Fischer’s disenchantment with city centres such as Frankfurt and Berlin and his concomitant attraction to the calm and comfort afforded by visits to the countryside. Not surprisingly, then, the recording migrates from the busy traffic sounds (cars racing past, honking) that initially dominate to a progressively more tranquil and “pure” sound design that’s cleansed of its machine-like qualities. As traffic noises slowly recede, the soft synth tones that have also been sounding placidly grow more audible until they’re supplanted by the flute-like exhalations of a church organ at the ten-minute mark and then crackling noises (a fireplace perhaps?). The piece subsequently oscillates between the two poles with both industrial rhythms and sparkling tones emerging during the minutes following but, in essence, Paradis Paysan grows ever more delicate as it advances towards its conclusion. Liquid pools of shimmer and spectral flourishes relaxedly intermingle but the most appealing part arrives during the last quarter when the gentle tones of the church organ, slathered in nocturnal forest chatter, return. Fischer’s sensitive handling of the piece’s contents and his careful execution of its transitions help make this episodic work a captivating travelogue.
Textura

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Logoplasm - Kane-I-Kokala (Field Muzick, 2008)

1 Kane-I-Kokala 19:02
2 Mesmerizzato In Trono Via Dispersione Aerotropa (Bonus) 6:09

Recorded in Ariccia, Nemi, Anzio, three steps away from our place in 2007 and using mostly water, so that you could feel as if you were sailing, maybe stranded and lost offshore. Recorded and assembled so that Kane-I-Kokala could come and rescue you, by Laura Lovreglio and Paolo Ippoliti. The mixer trembled and blushed as we went on.

At a point in the first section just before the birdcall soars a couple passed through, one of them asking what does it mean? and the other one replying it means, it means and we kept crouching into the fountain as if nothing happened.

And even this is a partial recollection, a pointless story indexed via mostly obscure details. No way to spot seeds from atop the ground before they sprout. Be gentle.

In hawaiian folklore Kane-I-Kokala was a shark helper spirit that led you back to shore whenever you got lost at sea. A plentiful metaphoric plethora, engineered in place because of a broken compass, the land looking as reckless and unknown as the ocean these days.

Even if it all points north, it doesn’t mean that’s the way to go.
Field Muzick

some copies are still available and can be puchase here, visit Logoplasm & Field Muzick

by courtesy of Field Muzick
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Pulse Emitter / Acre - Split (Cherried-Out Merch, 2006)

A Pulse Emitter - Untitled 12:05
B Acre - Untitled 13:51

sold out visit Pulse Emitter & Acre

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Acre - Painless (Students of Decay, 2008)

1 Untitled 21:59
2 Untitled 18:18
3 Untitled 7:01
4 Untitled 12:49
5 Untitled 19:44

Acre is the solo endeavor of Portland's Aaron Davis, with prior releases on Yarnlazer and Black Horizons, and a full length LP due out soon on Arbor. "Painless" is a carefully composed, intensly FOCUSED study of HEAVY tone. Clocking in at 79 minutes, it is perhaps the most daunting and awe-inspiring Acre missive to date, with Davis casting looong, cascading drone spells which are as impossibly heavy as they are narcotically hypnotic. Don't miss this one.
Students of Decay

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Re-up

Du fait de la nouvelle politique de rapidshare, certains des liens les plus anciens ont pu être supprimés. Si vous voulez un re-up, laissez un commentaire dans le post concerné, je remplacerai le lien aussi vite que possible.

Because of the new rapidshare policy, some of the older links have been deleted. If you want a re-up, leave a comment in the post, I will replace the link as soon as possible.

so... re-up :

Steve Roden - Winter Couplet (New Plastic Music, 2002) : here

Slow Listener - Enthusiastic Pursuit Of The Pointless (Students of Decay, 2007)

1 Appreciate All Around, Hits Me Deep 13:37
2 "Do You Know How I Know? It's Because I Think So" 15:57
3 Las Vegas Origami 8:00

Following up simply stellar releases on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and Ruralfaune, Slow Listener returns with"Enthusiastic Pursuit of the Pointless." Campbell Kneale's descriptor 'slumberpunk' for the SL C/PSI/P release proves germane on this album as well, with Slow Listener spewing forth deep, velvety pools of fractured, yet soothing, analog sound. Great stuff to play late into the night or early in the morning while rubbing the sleep out of your weary eyes.
Foxy Digitalis

sold out visit Slow Listener & Students of Decay

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Seconds In Formaldehyde - Suddenly Silence Burst My Ear (Tosom, 2007)

1 Untitled 1 5:28
2 Untitled 2 12:04
3 Untitled 3 11:52
4 Untitled 4 11:24
5 Untitled 5 4:08

The “live thing” is very important to Martin Fuhs of Seconds in Formaldehyde, as he pointed out in a recent post with regards to this album: “I'm really proud of this one because it shows the quality of my ability to do these drones in a non-studio environment.” In fact, his music has always had this raw touch to it. Of all the guitar-loop oriented performers out there, Fuhs may well be the one to allow his pieces the greatest amount of spontaneity and the largest contrast between tranquility and aggression – and his most recent output is a perfect demonstration of his technique.

Most of all, it clearly distinguishes him from the fold: By the time most reviewers will be comparing him to Aidan Baker, he will probably already be somewhere else; a theory further solidified by his experiments with rhythm on his Verato Project release “Inaudible”. Admittedly, there are, first of all, the similarities: Fuhs plays his guitar through a string of Pedal Stomp Boxes, gently tweaking the tones to soft, wooly threads and breathing drones, which are in turn looped and played against each other. He also enjoys counterpointing tracks, which essentially remain within the same key throughout, with discreet washes of disruptive chord clusters, causing a feeling of subtle estrangement. The play between satisfying expectations and confounding them is the motor of his music and keeps the three long meditations at the heart of this album going even in the long, silent stretches. And yet, these moments of quietude and beauty are, again and again, disrupted by sudden, harsh semblances: A single, penetrating note, a raving tremolo, a furious kick on the distortion pedal. In a mere seconds, the floating ambiances morph into halucinatory seas of feedback, noise and emphatically entangled melodic lines. It is almost as if a tsunami were brushing over the mildly rippled surface of a pond. It is a process already apparent on previous releases and which has now reached its climax in the third part of these five untitled movements, a musical version of the glass tunnel scene from blade runner, with the glass shardes cutting the flesh in real time in the end.

At the beginning of the year, Seconds in Formaldehyde contributed to the sampler “The Threshold of Silence”, now the project has openly broken that barrier – musically and conceptually. Somehow, “Silence burst my Ear” feels like the real beginning of Martin Fuhs’ discography, the quality of his previous albums notwithstanding. We will certainly follow him develop that “live thing” – especially with his first concerts coming up later this year.
Tokafi

sold out visit Seconds In Formaldehyde & Tosom

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Gerald Fiebig - Public Transport (Field Muzick, 2008)

1 Public Transport — Musique Anecdotique In Memoriam Luc Ferrari 17:03
2 6'39'' über Halberstadt (Bonus) 6:39

The French composer Luc Ferrari, a major explorer of the experimental borderland of musique concrète, instrumental music and hoerspiel and a true pioneer in the aesthetics of field recording, died in September 2005. In homage to Ferrari, this piece refers to his practice of “Musique anecdotique”: everyday sounds recorded within a given period of time are examined in order to realise their musical potential, while the chance encounter of fragments of dialogue might start narratives in the listener’s imagination without ever spelling them out.
Field Muzick

On Gerald Fiebig’s “Public Transport”, long sold out by the time you are reading this, field recordings with a high degree of speech have been left almost entirely untouched, with layering and repetition creating rhythmical repetitions, metaphorical abstractions and an increasing degree of estrangement. Fiebig’s perspective is fascinating, because it suggests that it is not so much timbre or knowledge about a sound’s origins which awards it a familiar feeling, but rather its intonation, the “way that things are expressed”.

This realisation goes a long way in explaining why these passages, filled to the brim with everyday sounds, appear so utterly alien. In the long run, however, “Public Transport” offers an appeasing appendix to its initial observation: Our sensory system can adapt to the most surreal environments and safely find its way through foreign spaces if only awarded sufficient time. Rest assured: You don’t arrive at this kind of confidence-building conclusion just by taking a hike or opening the window.
Tokafi

sold out visit Gerald Fiebig & Field Muzick

by courtesy of Field Muzick
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John Hudak - Natura (Apraxia, 1995)

A Drosophilia Melanogaster
B Ice On Snow

sold out visit John Hudak

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Jijimuge - 777 (Hymns, 2007)

1 7 7:00
2 77 7:00
3 777 7:00

Slow building ambient drones from dismantled electronics.
Hymns

No information whatsoever is to be found on the 3"CDR that says Jijmuge and '777' (I assume that's the title). Besides the non information, the music is also pretty vague. It's hard to tell what is going, but the three pieces are pretty low humming birds of drone origins. Perhaps feeding some delay pedal. Not really loud at all, but rather highly dark and atmospheric ambient music of industrial whereabouts. Nice one.
Vital Weekly

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Matt Shoemaker - Forking Path Navigator (Oblast, 2005)

1 Forking Path Navigator 39:09

It has been almost four years since Seattle's Matt Shoemaker released Warung Elusion for Trente Oiseaux, and during the intervening years, he has honed his already impressive electroacoustic compositional skills. Forking Path Navigator is structured around a swarming mass of sound that slowly builds out of a whisper and snaps abruptly at it's 40 minute conclusion. From afar, the album appears as a monochromatic avalanche; but on closer inspection, Shoemaker produces a dynamic Kaleidoscope within these tumbling snowdrifts of gray tonalities. He mingles the heavy filtered field recordings and glassine feedback systems, steadily moving from a vertiginous weightlessness to a boiling crucible of seething hiss. Throughout the album, he introduces a subtle rhythmic plod, which he disguises in various forms of a metallic klang, a bowed piece of metal, the crash of surf, and a distant promethean thud. Thanks to these variable structures and to his attention to detail to detail, Shoemaker has crafted a spectral album of bewildering psychogeography.
The Wire

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Mathias Grassow - The OM-Drones (Klauswiese.com, 2001)

1 The OM-Drones Part I 31:07
2 The OM-Drones Part II 31:00

Drones based on bass-bowls and lower frequencies of synthesizers beneath 100Hz.

sold out visit Mathias Grassow & Klauswiese.com

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Tetsu Inoue - Organic Cloud (Fax +49-69/450464, 1995)

1 The Night In Goa 16:27
2 Journey To Ixtlan 12:54
3 Chill In Chill Out 12:56
4 Ring Of Power 16:47
5 Bionic Commune 12:56

by request

This is the 2nd solo release for Tetsu Inoue on Fax, and continues roughly where the previous solo disc, Ambiant Otaku, left off. Generally speaking there is some overlap between the two. Sonically, this disc is every bit as much the "holy grail" that Otaku is. Fortunately, it isn't nearly as hard to find. I am inclined to say that Organic Cloud tends to be more rhythmically active in terms of actual percussion and maybe a shade less abstract then Otaku. And unlike Otaku or Slow & Low, the songs of this album are mixed together, one smoothly flowing into the next which, to me, suggests a multistage journey. This journey is a spiritual one, and thus not without its moments of challenge and self-confrontation, but be assured that a listener's patience is greatly rewarded here. The overall scope of the album proceeds from dark to light, or if you like, from cold to warm. Each song becomes progressively more blissful and optimistic.

The Night in Goa. We begin in ominous territory. Monk-like oscillations surround you while misty waves of bass radiate tactile vibrations. The atmosphere is so thick as to elicit a sense of opacity. Pieces as powerful as this are ideally listened to in locations that inspire awe, such as the top of a high mountain or cliff or perhaps vast deep caverns. A far off sensation of electronics materializes from within the instinctive sound collage. Low-end bleeps and deconstructed cyclical sequences reminiscent of the 604 approach bind the monastic to the psychedelic without compromising the qualities of either environment. Whirlpool tones and unearthly grinding textures propel us into the final sections of this piece, and soon after new voices usher us off on a Journey to Ixtlan.

Heavy machinery is heard, again starting far off on the horizon and approaching steadily as the seconds go by. The song title is in reference to a Casteneda passage, wherein the allegedly hypothetical Don Juan introduces the "web of light" and the technique of "not-doing" to Carlos in a striking landscape of lava rock. Vulcan surroundings are an appropriate setting for the powerful sounds heard. Some sounds are metallic or hollow and rusty, like a structure that has stood through many ages. Two synth chirps compete for the leading note, while voices rise and fall to the beats. Most percussion here is doubled up, like sound between two walls. The outro is by comparison more peaceful and is merged with the intro of Chill in Chill out.

This was also on the Ambient Cookbook/Fax Compilation and is the main turning point on the album. The first rays of promise after a time of peril leak forward like sundogs through cloudbreaks. A ambiguous synth solo leads the way, while other textures emerge. Soon, morphing bass thumps establish a basic rhythm which most of the other elements begin to follow. The overall textural qualities of the instruments also seem to respond and bleed into each other. To me, this mood foreshadows the hi-res, sophisticated realtime approaches that some of the more recent ambient projects demonstrate. Deep pulsations combine with enhancing melodies which shimmer alongside the evolving choir-like streams of sound. Another cycle is at work here, a recurring emotion circles around, forming a Ring of Power.

Spinning astral floods of light emit glistening waves of static. The photon tide rises while a distant beacon beeps at regular intervals. This stage of the album is my personal favorite. Its spontaneous, positive vibrations are always appealing. It is the Akashic recording, a hyperlinked aural tradition which seems to extend infinitely outward. This definitely belongs on the list of beatless wonders Tetsu Inoue has laid down over the years. A melodic rhythm eventually fades in, sounding somewhat flexible, as if rapidly oscillating between concave and convex configurations and hitting different notes each time. The melody is repeated but somehow sounds different every time it plays. Toward the end, the tide rises once again in a mighty crescendo. After the ritual, we retire to the Bionic Commune.

A beat-oriented piece that performs well as a finishing track. Over the course of this one, we return once again to more terrestrial territory and the feeling of returning to a place of rest and recovery from a highly intense spiritual adventure in sound is felt. In general, this is an album you either own or should put on your "want-list," particularly if you are a fan of futuresque, abstract sound mosaics. Definitely something for the proverbial desert island. It still takes me to "another place" each time I listen to it. And for people just discovering Tetsu Inoue's talent, Organic Cloud is the perfect introduction to what he is capable of.
Roy Seguine

sold out visit Tetsu Inoue & Fax +49-69/450464

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