Yann Novak & Eno On - Long Distance (Dragon's Eye Recordings, 2006)

1 Long Distance 19:44

Long Distance marks the first release by long time collaborators Yann Novak and Eno On (Kne'ke L-R). Recorded 1/16/06 at Kne'ke's own Audio Mosaic Studio in Madison, WI. Novak plays bass and field recordings processed via laptop, while Kne'ke relies on her Akai. This improvised piece stands as a jumping off point for an ongoing long distance collaboration.
Dragon's Eye Recordings

The label is run out of Seattle by Yann Novak and has previously showcased two tiny, perfect pieces of collaborative experimental ambient on three-inch CDRs (a third volume has yet to be released since the right packaging has still to be decided upon) under the collective rubrik "Long Distance". The first is reputed to be a collaboration between Novak and Eno On (whom I presume is from the land of Erewhon). This is an eminently minimal, spacey investigation of, well, space, with pulsars of analogue-sounding synth resonating into deep emptiness, like signals being sent out there at random and sometimes, improbably, being answered.
Sonomu

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Dth - I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day (self release, 2010)

Reçu un mail de Devin qui vient d'auto produire son premier album sous le pseudonyme de Dth / Received a mail from Devin, who just self release his first album as Dth...

This album is held together mainly by the little noises of everything: found sounds, field recordings, samples of everyday speech and old VHS's. On top of this are some guitar lines and progressions, and some additional percussion and ambient vocals. The overall mood it strives for is empathetic and nostalgic, though frantic at some times.
Dth

Dth is a kid doing college down in New Orleans who asked a whole bunch of people how they were feeling and then cut it up into samples of their recorded voices, dividing it up into a 16-point scale (weird, right?) based on how they were feeling.

The results amount to a glitchy mashup of sampled talking, with some smooth guitar and synth instrumentals and a whole army of digital clicks and corresponding clacks. And some jazz drum, at one point. Many of these tracks sound a lot like the premeditated "aleatoric" music of The Books, but with a perfomative fourth wall cracked away at between the recorder and the field-recorded. Here's how he explains the project:

I set up two mics in an alcove outside my school's dorms (then had to move to inside the commons building because of rain) and stopped numerous people, hit record, and asked them, "How are you feeling today, on a scale 1-10?" After receiving a good amount of responses, some short and some long and elaborate, I quickly cropped out some abrasive noises and pops in the recordings around the responses they gave me (resulting in some gaps between answers). Then I had a series of conversational clips, each containing at least 1 number.

I devised a way to scale these numbers to notes - a simple version of a major scale, but intervals of every other note (for instance 7 = C, 8 = E, not D.) This way, I could also account for the times I got responses of a half number, like 8.5. I played the corresponding notes whenever a number was spoken in my clips, and sustained it somewhat until the next number was spoken. When the same number was spoken consecutively (as in two people in a row said 7), I would play the octave of that note.

People's moods making music together.
Imposemagazine.com

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Kaffe Matthews - Still A Slapper (Stichting Mixer, 2001)

A Still
B A
C Slapper
D B

These two 7"-es contain 4 tracks and are to be heard as a set. Matthews starts with an atmospheric track consisting of not much more than simple tones... but then again also not... There's a wide spectrum underneath, arranged in such a way that she actually doesn't need much more than tones to tell her story. The following 2 tracks ("a" and "slapper") show Matthews' talent for making the unsynchronised followable. Both these tracks live on an unstable heartbeat so to say, but nevertheless with a steady pace.
Although a short track, "a" has a complete build-up. Repetition of elements over a calm stream of lower tones give this track a subtle drive and atmosphere. "Slapper" crackles further in an energetic way, preferably at a louder volume. Again this hard to follow beat, but steady enough to give you some sense of a tempo and the accompanying tapping foot.
The last track returns to the world of overtones but in a more unsettling way, a good track to complete the circle and leave you behind slightly puzzled...
Stichting Mixer

Highly compelling is Kaffe Matthew's solo "Still a slapper", four pieces on 7" vinyl which transcend the jokey title to offer the best minimal electronica I've heard in ages. The opening and closing tracks just lie there and glow, like a jewel on velvet. A hovering, almost liquid sound, it gleams as if static, but in fact is steadily developing. The second track pulses gently, conjuring up a lighthouse at sea, and a distant boat chugging past. A rich bottom end adds warmth and depth to the picture. "Slapper" features a crackling rhtythm maybe derived from vinyl syrface noise. This is very confident handling of sparse materials, generating an austere but highly atractive music.
The Wire

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Slow Listener - Bruise Journal (First Person, 2007)

1 Bruise Journal

Bruise Journal by Slow Listener a.k.a. Robin Dickinson, one supplier of the Curor label. You may remember a while back, I fell head over heels for the Slow Listener JK tape, I think I called it “lovely zombie murk” or something to that effect. This one has bit different, rougher, less expansive sound to it, part of which I attribute to its digital format. There also appears to be less looping going on, but maybe I just can’t pick them all out. I might apply the term “roughnecking drone” here (which I totally stole from some place I can’t remember). Distorted drones are manipulated almost in a way like kneading dough (that pops into my mind for some reason) and gather intensity. Around a third of the way through everything coalesces into a sweet climactic thicket of overtones and with a blink of an eye it’s all gone, replaced by a single high pitched tone. Come on Robin, give me a minute to bask in the splendor before you move on to a new idea. Thanks :) The next part of the track moves pretty slowly (I guess that’s the operative word today) but has a much fuller aesthetic than the first part.
Auxiliary Out blog

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Slow Listener - Sundowner (Epicene Sound Replica, 2007)

1 I'm Unanimous In That 11:51
2 When Was Yesterday 6:55
3 In Case Of A Fire Or Amnesia 12:42
4 Shouldn't Take Very Long... Actually I Have No Concept Of Time" 11:34
5 Untitled 12:50

With releases on Peasant Magik, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Ruralfaune and Students of Decay all within a few months, Slow Listener from Brighton, UK, are one of the most prominent new names in the free-noise field. And this cdr on the Epicene imprint proves once more why so many good labels are into this dynamic blend of guitar feedback and electronic drones.

The stunning opener I'm unanimous in that starts on an Earthen note, with some of the very first chords taking their hat off to Harvey from the Phase 3 album. When, after just under 12 minutes, the opener comes to an abrupt halt as if someone had pulled the plug, it has become clear that the reference to the pioneers of metallic drone is somewhat programmatic. If compared to the Ruralfaune cdr, for example, Sundowner is heavier, less electronic. Even if the following track, When Was Yesterday, is dominated by forlorn synth jingling. That track, however, is only an interlude before In Case Of a Fire or Amnesia with its shredding feedback and braying distortion takes over. Yes, Slow Listener are slow. Yes, to describe their sound " as Campbell Kneale has " as "slumberpunk" is not totally inadequate. And yet what really intrigues me is how utterly dynamic, how polymorph and animate the better Slow Listener tracks are, proving that simplicity doesn?t have to be boring.

I have to admit, though, that I find it difficult to listen to the 56 minutes of Sundowner in one session. I guess that's because I don't like the hidden track that is based on shrill electronic noise and getting on my nerves. But it might also be because most of the tracks are so intense on a micro-level and at the same time so good at creating tension over a distance of more than ten minutes that you are practically floored after some 30 minutes. I do wonder, therefore, if two separate 3's or a cassette with its obligatory intermission wouldn't reflect Slow Listener's momentum more effectively. It should be mentioned that this cdr is limited to 30 copies. A ridiculous number, really. Let's hope there'll be reissues of some of the rarer Slow Listener releases, soon.
Foxy Digitalis

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Pulse Emitter - Outpost (Snip-Snip Records, 2006)

1 Outpost 38:13

Recorded live November 19th, 2005, Psychoacoustic Soundclash with Nozmo King, KFJC 89.7 FM, Los Altos Hills, California.

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Ionosphere - Sliced Matter (Avatar Records, 2003 (2006 reissue))

1 Cutting-Edge Radio Research 5:25
2 Sliced Matter 5:01
3 20 Arcsec 5:51
4 Meta II 5:30
5 Plasma Turbulence 4:47
6 Meta I 4:11
7 Frequency Radiation 3:56
8 Across A Limb Of A Probe 5:41

Dark soundscapes...

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Leonardo Martins – Quick McLuhanian Guide for Transmigration (Panda Fuzz, 2010)

1. Aion 5:28
2. Daniela Farwell 3:36
3. Day and Night 4:03
4. Transmigration 5:33
5. Changes 0:40
6. Tathagata Trouble Dance 3:14
7. Idiosyncratic Metempsicose 5:21
8. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was 4:35

“It’s a vast matter – if someone reads the title “Quick McLuhanian Guide for Transmigration”, he or she could think that it’s about the soul “jumping” from a body to other. I believe McLuhan had in mind that the message would become a fusion of perceptions caused by and brought by (mass) communication media. Is the media the message as well? Back to Pythagoras, he assured that he could remember all his transmigrations, but if he stopped to think of them he wouldn’t have time enough to life his (present) life. We know how we´re born, how our conception happens, but don´t know about what we were before it or after we have finally been…

A message nowadays is easily materialized as the physic body of a book to be spread (for example). So Pythagoras was not that wrong if he had his soul embodied to a book.

McLuhan also told that the evolution of technologies are bringing us back to a new tribal life, and the increasing segmentation of arts, culture and information. In times when we need quick information sharing, society development needs art to solve this paradox…”
Leonardo Martins

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Z'EV / John Duncan / Aidan Baker / Fear Falls Burning - Untitled (Die Stadt, 2005)

A Z'EV - Elementonal 5:01
B John Duncan - Offffffff 5:01
C Aidan Baker - Drone Four (Excerpt) 10:06
D Fear Falls Burning - The Beautiful Decline (Excerpt) 9:47
CD1-1 Z'EV - Untitled 20:34
CD1-2 John Duncan - Bkg 12:03
CD2-1 Fear Falls Burning - Drone Four 36:46
CD2-2 Aidan Baker - The Beautiful Decline (Declining Mix) 14:15
CD2-3 Aidan Baker - The Beautiful Decline (Declined Mix) 9:58

On October 2nd 2005, the four above mentioned names performed at Bremen's Lagerhaus in a concert curated by Die Stadt's Jochen Schwarz who, in customary fashion, released a commemorative double 7-inch of the proceedings, one track for each artist. No surprises as to what we get: Z'ev's "Elementonal" is a crashing pandemonium of metal and irregular rhythm, John Duncan's "Offffffff" sounds like treated white noise (but it could be heavily processed breath or something), Aidan Baker's "Drone Four (Excerpt)" explores different approaches to guitar looping in what is the deepest music on offer, while the flat repetition of Fear Falls Burning (aka Vidna Obmana)'s "The Beautiful Decline (Excerpt)" is the shallowest. What counts more is the double CD that comes with the limited mail order edition, which finds the four manipulating and reworking each other's sounds in settings that allow the mind better to adapt to the sonic circumstances. Z'ev transforms a short field recording by Duncan into a violent grey uncertainty of haunting voices and concrete rumbles saturating the listening space with oppressive power. Duncan's response in "BKG" is to attack tweeters with nails and teeth and send the listener into a maze of intoxicating distorted sibilance. Disc 2 finds Fear Falls Burning and Aidan Baker at work on each other's trance-fusion: Baker's "Drone Four" is re-looped and progressively degraded with effects and slow beats into something curiously reminiscent of sections of Genesis' "White Mountain", while Baker's remix of "The Beautiful Decline" adds some much-needed inner movement, transforming it into a Frippertronic forest fire with hopelessly screaming guitars heard from every treetop.
Paris Transatlantic

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The Gerogerigegege - Endless Humiliation (Japan Overseas, 1994)

1 Endless Humiliation 59:59

One of the most eerie and haunting pieces of music juntaro ever bothered recording. this is probably one of the gerogerigegege's most unique albums available to music consumers and its even easier to get into than a merzbow cd. as the given description from the liner notes has already mentioned, the entire cd is pretty much just a field recording of a drunk homeless japanese man rambling over the sounds of an incredibly distant piano. probably the quietest work done by the group, its often thought to have been either a long winded work of social commentary or a piece of music that juntaro created for or about his mother, who was supposedly a rather famous japanese classical pianist. the cd has wonderful cover art consisting of 2 paragraphs written in japanese next to a black and white photograph taken by juntaro of 2 little kids wearing rabbit masks in some village. the back has a picture of a horse. the cd is very relaxing and equally unnerving at the same time. fairly decent production, but nothing to write home about. closest thing to 'uneasy' listening you can get.

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The Gerogerigegege - None Friendly (Mink Records, 1999)

1 Untitled 58:36

Album number 132 (or something close to that) from Japanese noise musician / sound artist Juntaro Yamanouchi. Gerogerigegege (loosely translated as simultaneous vomit-diarhhea, then the supposed sound of such a catastrophic gastrointestinal event) has gone through all sorts of sonic incarnations, noisy splatter punk, bombastic japanoise, experimental musique concrete, with some of those incarnations featuring the added bonus of mic-ed masturbating, courtesy of a geriatric 'public' masturbator befriended by Juntaro. On 'None Friendly' (actually recorded in 1987), he tackles THE DRONE and it's quite a listen. Deep and sonorous, lush and mesmerising. I was convinced it was a synthesizer until I noticed on the sleeve, that it specifically points out that there was 'No synthesizer used.' So what the sound source actually is remains a mystery although a source close to the man thinks it just may be a guitar tuner (?). But maybe it -is- processed masturbating. I mean, I hope it is. But either way, this is a fantastic record. One extended buzzing and humming, slowly developing hypnotic drone. Really great.
Aquarius Records

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Re-up

Annelies Monseré - Somewhere Someone (Morc Records, 2008): here
Hrsta - L'Eclat du Ciel Etait Insoutenable (Fancy, 2006): here
Jessica Bailiff & Annelies Monseré - Untitled (Morc Records, 2008): here
Marsen Jules - Les Fleurs (City Centre Offices, 2006): here

Ellende - Heroin (Afe Records, 2004)

1 Heroin 20:26

During the recent years Ellende has fastly got a very strong reputation in the Dark Ambient / Experimental scene thanks to a bunch of CD-R and MP3 limited edition releases on many labels all over the world such as Tosom, Fukk God Lets Create, Zeromoon, Taâlem, Mystery Sea, Stridulum Recordings, Somnambulant Corpse and more.

Afe is proud to add another small piece to what seems to be an endless black'n'white jigsaw with "Heroin", a twenty minutes long MiniCD-R 3" released in our extremely limited LTD 50 serie.

"Heroin" starts as a sparse and pleasantly vibrating drone-based piece and slowly get crowded with pulsating and swirling elements.

As the swirlings continue and percussive sounds are introduced, the music evolves into some kind of hazy and hypnotic dream populated by creatures speaking with backward/high-pitched voices.

Approaching the end of the track, all these elements slowly fade away leaving room for otherworldly noises/effects and a sort of vocoderized voice.
Afe Records

A nice addition to this mysterious Dutch/Japanese project's extended discography, "Heroin" is a 20-minute piece as grim as the title and the graphics suggest - the concept obviously being taking one's life via drug overdose.
Ghost voices crawl in and out of the sullen drones, and Ellende surely know(s) how to mix all the different sounds in a cohesive composition.
Even the final litany, apparently filtered through a vocoder, sounds credible and effective. Limited to a mere 50 copies, so hurry while you can, as it's very good.
Eugenio Maggi in Chain D.L.K.

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Talvihorros - Let Us Be Thankful We Have Commerce (My Dance The Skull, 2010)

My Dance The Skull est un jeune collectif d'artistes londoniens qui entend travailler tant dans le domaine de l'édition que dans le domaine de la musique, avec une première sortie en cassette le 6 mars / My Dance The Skull is an young collective of London artists, which intend to release print works and musical releases, with a first release on cassette on March 6th

My Dance The Skull is an independent publishing house founded in 2009 and based in London with the aim to promote contemporary artists whose work is inspired by the dangerous and convulsive beauty of the everyday life. My Dance The Skull present its step into the music world with the strictly limited cassette-only release of 'Let Us Be Thankful We Have Commerce' by Talvihorros.

Talvihorros is the studio project of London based Ben Chatwin, exploring the electronic manipulation of acoustic instruments.
Acoustic, electric and prepared guitars are integrated with organ, piano, mandolin, analogue synthesizer and an array of percussion instruments to create paradoxical feelings of warmth and impending doom.

Talvihorros does venture a bit into post-rock turf (sometimes sounding like the most serene moments from Godspeed You Black Emperor or Rock Action-era Mogwai crossed with the soundtrack of a Takeshi Kitano movie), but seems to be more drawn to creating a suspended, unreal mood than reaching peaks of ear-splitting volume, something that makes him more akin to ambient musicians than space-rockers.

stream the side A (i will post the cassette later....)

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Dying For Bad Music label

bien, la nouvelle n'est plus vraiment neuve mais quand même... Ruben du blog Dying For Bad Music et Marcus Obst (Dronæment, Field Muzick, etc) ont lancé un nouveau label / well, the new is not really new, anyhow... Ruben from Dying For Bad Music blog and Marcus Obst (Dronæment, Field Muzick, etc) launched a new label....

maybe you know the blog http://dyingforbadmusic.blogspot.com .
We post, as you do, the music we love.
Last year we deceided to go a step forward and found a DIY label for the music we love.
We know it's a difficult step, because we did what you did. Post records for free as preview. And you know, it's a download'n'go business. There are just a few people who get the real releases.
Maybe because they are sold, or it's difficult to order or it's just not good enough to buy :)
Anyway, we start our label in good faith and with two great (at least for us ;-)) releases and we have a lot good projects to come.
We do free download releases and small editions of cdr releases.
It's a good way we think.

So it starts with

*Aalfang mit Pferdekopf* - Is It Possible To Be At War With You?
Experimental, ambient with surreal folk songs
8 Track pro-cdr with fullcolored 4 page folder
All infos, preview and order here:
http://dyingforbadmusic.com/dfbm01-aalfang-mit-pferdekopf-is-it-possible.phtml

*Least Carpet* - s/t ep
Eastern european influenced psych Folk in vein of Hala Strana and Thuja
8 track free high quality mp3 / flac download
All infos, a movie and download here:
http://dyingforbadmusic.com/dfbm-02-least-carpet.phtml

A summary of both releases you will find here:
http://dyingforbadmusic.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-dfbm-presents-aalfang-mit.html

We plan:
*Low - Fye* - catchy lofi pop tunes - sounds like Syd Barrett record songs in nowhere as pro-cdr release
*The Vévé Seashore* - psych folk songs and digital freak out
*Least Carpet* - full album release
and many more.

We like to ask you to help spreading the word.
So if you like what you hear, feel free to post it.

It would be nice to hear from you if you have any thoughs to share.
Thank you for your attention and I hope you enjoy the music!
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay tuned or visit the blog. We keep posting and reviewing good music to live for.
We drop greyzone postings of available independent releases, because we sit in the same boat :) but there is a lot of good free music to discover and we give our best.

All the best and maybe till later
DFBM staff
http://dyingforbadmusic.com

et ce qu'en dit Frans De Waard dans Vital Weekly / and what said Frans De Waard in Vital Weekly :

AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF - IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AT WAR WITH YOU? (CDR by Dying For Bad Music)
LEAST CARPET (CDR by Dying For Bad Music)
This weekend I brought some amazement to someone's face by telling I really (really!) like Abba. We all have our secrets, I guess. Marcus Obst is best known for running the Field Muzick Recordings label, but he started Dying For Bad Music to release folk music. He knows (?) I don't like folk music (think to know I don't like it), but asks me if I want to review it. The first one is rather surprising Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf, once the band name used by Mirko Uhlig, but I thought he left it behind when he started to work under his own name. 'Auf Wasserleichen Gehen' opens up with what seems like a guy on speed and a guitar. Helium folk? In the same piece we have several more, entirely different songs and sound collage. Definitely not standard folk music, which is always great, I'd say. The theme of a man with an acoustic guitar is repeated in the other songs indeed, but that's not what makes this an interesting album, in my opinion. Its the more or less psychedelic approach of adding
field recordings and electronic treatments (cross fading a song into a backwards rendition of the same song). All of that makes this a highly unusual folk album - even for someone like me, readily admitting, who doesn't know much about folk music. I think this is a particularly strong album, even with the guitar playing and singing (maybe a bit too much reverb on the voice sometimes). Some of that sounds like things I heard on Black Petal before and its not the kind of music I would play a lot indeed, but I can actually enjoy it quite a bit. Maybe for those who like Current 93? How would I know? You never know.
Least Carpet play 'Eastern European influenced psych folk' and use guitar, bouzouki, melodica, flute, drums, flutes, drums, cymbals and jew's harp. I am not sure if this one guy or a band. The tracks are rather short and indeed have some vaguely middle-european feel to it, or perhaps even a medieval feel - at least how we think it must have sounded back then. No vocals, this is purely instrumental music. The recording is nicely kept rough, with a sort of direct recording and no sound effects on any of the instruments. I see castles in the mist, gypsies at campfires, a wood at dawn and all such fairytale stereotypes, which I never particular cared for - disliking anything fantastic, but rather liking the real world. That may not say anything I feel about this music, but actually I thought this is quite nice too. Just like the Aalfang release, this may not be the sort of music I play a lot (although later date Dead Can Dance occasionally finds it way to the CD player - there: another
confession), but its music that is indeed, at times, appreciated. (FdW)

Slow Listener - Son Of The Man Of The Year (Housecraft Records, 2008)

1 Untitled
2 Untitled

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Rale - Golden, Sans Noun (Monorail Trespassing, 2008)

1 Untitled
2 Untitled

Bill Hutson's modular synth explorations are second to none in my book and his three tapes in 2008 ("Nightside/Shadeup" on Peasant Magik, "Golden, Sans Noun" on Monorail Trespassing, and most recently "Catoptromancy" on Jugular Forest) are all absolutely fantastic. His music is dense and contemplative... the type of stuff that burns a hole straight through your skull.
Foxy Digitalis

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Aidan Baker - Loop Studies One (Laub Records, 2003)

1 Loop Study One 14:47
2 Loop Study Two 10:40
3 Loop Study Three 16:28
4 Loop Study Four 17:48

Ever since Robert Fripp decided to run one reel of tape through two Revox reel-to-reel recorders, looping has become an essential technique in ambient music. On this album, Aidan Baker uses a more modern looping device (or so one would think) to create gentle, droning guitar pieces. Unlike most of his previous albums, Loop Studies is all instrumental and exclusively made of guitar sounds. No studio wizardry is involved, either: each of the four pieces was captured in real time. Sound quality is a bit disappointing to hi-fi ears, but it appears to be intentional: the hissy, treble-lacking sound reproduces the kind of quality you'd get from a tape during the heyday of the industrial cassette underground. Crank it up high enough and get lost into it; you'll forget the hiss. Baker patiently weaves his tunes, adding layer upon layer of short loops. Calling it a drone is somewhat limiting, since the music is actually more than just subtly changing, lush textures. There is also melodic material appearing in the form of repeating motifs. "Two" develops an insisting, yet delicate, theme. The guitar may be prepared in "Three," since it rings out with a distinctive gamelan quality. The highlight of the set is the 18-minute "Four." The textures are murkier, as if heard from underwater, with a few wails that evoke the songs of whales. And Baker adds a noisy solo in the last third that just lifts the piece toward another plane of existence. Simply beautiful.
All Music Guide

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Aidan Baker vs. Cymbl - Loop Studies Remixed (Arcolepsy Records, 2003)

1 One 72:16

In early 2003, ambient guitarist Aidan Baker released the album of Loop Studies on the German label Laub and had another one scheduled for release on Mira Records. Working under the pseudonym Cymbl, Richard Baker (no family relation, but he plays percussion in Aidan's group ARC) used the material from both discs to create a single 72-minute remix. Aidan's pieces showed subtle melodic and rhythmic components, along with a certain form of structure. Richard's remix flattens out these elements to come up with a drone that could go on endlessly. The original material is transformed enough to justify the existence of this piece, but it lacks a bit of meat to be worthwhile. The piece fails to capture the listener's attention for its whole duration; but that may not be its aim. The first Loop Studies sucked listeners in, keeping them mesmerized, but Loop Studies Remixed is an album that you leave playing in the background while periodically drifting away and coming back. The guitar soundscapes have also acquired a synthesized quality that brings the music closer to mainstream ambient music. The remixing job is seamless, very artistic, and even plastic, but it doesn't soar or dive; it just remains there, hovering in the room for more than an hour.
All Music Guide

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Quetzolcoatl - Up And Down Dream Valley Thruway (American Grizzly, 2007)

1 Birth Fumes 5:24
2 River Is A Killer Brother 6:22
3 Links Awakening 7:35
4 Golden Sun 6:24
5 Totem Mountain 8:58
6 Up And Down Dream Valley Thruway 8:49
7 Bloody Paw Prints 13:38

Up and Down Dream Valley Thruway is probably the most varied Quetzolcoatl album I’ve heard to date and also one of the best. “River is a Killer Brother” features the rare occurrence of a backbeat, minimal and slightly irregular, but a backbeat nonetheless. The track has a real nice contrast of ethereal vocals and a chaotic jumble of different rhythmic loops and sounds. When this idea of combining disparate elements is tried sometimes the result is disjointed or ill-fitted; not here though, the track feels cohesive even with it’s slightly fractured rhythm. “Links Awakening” kicks out the hypno-dreaminess with mounds of vocals heaped upon a gently flowing keyboard loop. It’s a very lush and full sounding track and an excellent addition to Quetzolcoatl’s burgeoning back catalog of hypnotizers. More dreaminess comes with “Golden Sun”. The track is pretty simple there is a shimmering background loop underneath a vocal refrain so pretty you can’t even zone out to it. “Totem Mountain” is less blissful but no less magnificent. A melancholy choir of vocal loops drifts through until a clanging percussive loop begins grinding away and a heavy drone begins swelling all around everything meeting with brief tribal drumming. It all blurs into the sound emanating from a faraway spirit ritual just out of sight. The title track is the most aggressive I’ve heard the Quetzolcoatl project get. It still has the signature heavily reverbed sound but there are faster, rougher loops circulating and a lot more distortion and feedback coursing through its veins. It’s not harsh but it is certainly blasted, or maybe blasting is a better descriptor. Either way, it’s a nine minute rocket ride up and down dream valley thruway. “Bloody Paw Prints” is the epic closer and is the murkiest cut on the album. It’s a pretty good mind zoner, if a little bit long. The vocals aren’t laid on as thickly and the grumbling field recordings come through a bit more, making it a little woozy almost. It’s nice, slight change-up to end the album on. I’m really impressed with the balance between sonic variation and consistency here; despite tweaking the approach each time out, the album still pretty much feels like one fantastic whole. The foldout artwork comes with a few hints as to how Tim makes his sounds. Vocals, keyboards, a floor tom and field recordings from Australia and Hong Kong are listed as instruments so there’s a piece of the puzzle. I still don’t how he is able to pull those elements into a thing of such beauty, but I'm better off not knowing and just listening I’m sure.
Auxiliary Out blog

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