Wire Thicket - Dust, Static (Students of Decay, 2006)

1 Dust, Static (16:03)
2 Brilliant Dead Highways: Revisited (5:37)

Drone méditatif pour le premier morceau, revisite d'un morceau de Taiga Remains pour le second...

In describing the debut Wire Thicket album, released on Pseudoarcana in 2006, Antony Milton applied to the duo the term "power-drone." On their second outing, the pair have fully embraced this label and taken it to new, delirious peaks. The title track is a fifteen minute blast of singing, celestial metal; an impassioned, deeply meditative flight into the starry night conjured from guitar, electronics and field recordings. Characteristic of the duo's prior work together, the piece is an excercise in accretion -- with layers and layers of meticulously detailed sound arranged into a furious, beautiful blanket of howling drone. Emerging from the tonal rubble is a second, shorter piece: a reworking of Taiga Remains' "Brilliant Dead Highways" (a piece featured previously on a split 7'' with CJA) - akin to a delicate, drifting calm at the end of an immense storn.
Students of Decay

sold out visit Students of Decay

try

Taiga Remains - Paper Lanterns (Students of Decay, 2006)

1 Neone (9:58)
2 Vistas (8:24)

Drones à base de guitare acoustique traitée, de vocaux distants et d'électronique stylée...

One time I was in a fist-fight – long story, don’t ask – and I’d landed a couple, and taken a couple too, and then Time. Slowed. Down. Riiiiiiiiiiiight down, to the point where I was mentally focusing tight in on the swinging punches of my assailant at about 1.5 frames a second. And each breath I took was taking hours to draw and release, and the blood was deafening, banshee-howling as it sped around my body, hopped-up on adrenaline, spinning out on the corners and burning its tires in the cul-de-sac of my lungs. But then I started to hear little tiny melodies too drifting in and out of my mix; ghosting, skirting around on the fringes of my attention, as I was ducking and weaving and.. well.. this is the sound of "Paper Lanterns". Punching well above its weight, Alex Cobb's Taiga Remains project returns with more deep-listening psych-drone -
eighteen-and-something minutes of the exploded microverse of the sound of one breath. In. And out. But it's not some kind of yogic transcendental meditation, concentrating on one's inner being with one's legs wrapped around the back of one's ass; it's more along the lines of Popol Vuh being tortured in slow motion on some medieval device which has been contact-mic'd and run through a 20,000 watt PA. This is mainly due to the astonishingly loud mastering; astonishing chiefly in that it's Really. Fucking. Loud.Frankly, I've had jet aircraft land on my head, and hurt less than I hurt the first time through with this thing on the cans. But really I guess it's bigger than the both of us; it's not so much about the single slow, calm inhalation and exhalation of you, or I, or that guy over there - nor is it the rattling echo of life-blood coursing through our arteries and veins and capillaries and pounding in our cauliflower ears and battered noses. It's the thundering, roaring of the stream of the protons emanating from the origin of the universe in
its slow, deep, melancholic shuffle; expanding to fill all available space, and then collapsing in on itself again as it rounds final turn and into the home-stretch back towards the beginning of time. It's scored for acoustic guitar, voice and computer. It's the perfect intersection of drone and "harsh-noise." And it's really, really beautiful.
Foxy Digitalis

sold out visit Students of Decay

try

Big City Orchestre - A Child's Garden Of Noise (Drone Records, 1994)

A Quiet Kids Noize Please (7:44)
B1 Noize All Day (1:40)
B2 Popub's Party (2:39)
B3 Go (2:08)
B4 The Pirate Song (1:47)

sold out visit Big City Orchestra & Drone Records

try

Beequeen - Summer Rain (Drone Records, 1993)

A Singularity (6:41)
B1 Thunder Rain (4:09)
B2 Thunder Storm (5:04)

sold out visit Beequeen & Drone Records

try

Kill & Eat - Green Bushes (Alright Now Records, 2008)

Reçu un mail de Caleb / Received a mail from Caleb:

an 18-minute slab of indifferent droning sprawl, plus two b-sides. CD comes wrapped in printed economy paper, released without album artwork. featuring percussion by Clarke Joyner (Dylan Ettinger), and trumpet solo by Caleb Vogel. very small run released summer 2008, larger run re-released March 2009.

"A rolling ballad that brings together soul, jazz, blues and melancholy troubadouring, in a rich blend rarely achieved so honestly and with such refrained grace. Reminiscent of the difficult, crossed-genre work of Jim O'Rourke or Current 93, Green Bushes is truly remarkable and one of the best records of the year. 9/10" - Foxy Digitalis

"Kill and Eat make a degraded kind of cocktail jazz, heard from far away (in space and in time). The vocals seem lost, a fuse seems blown, even the horn sounds like it's pulled a muscle . . . . If some of the New Weird Americans got less frothy, spilled less beans, got themselves de-frazzled and came in out of the woods and into a large ballroom and started playing then it might be like Kill and Eat's Green Bushes." - An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

"At times Green Bushes sounds like a half drunk jazz outfit fucking about after closing time, at others like a distracted Burt Bacharach working on a new song. A bit of Pharoah Sanders, a bit of Burt, a missed bus, a cold cup of tea when what you wanted was a black Earl to go." - Idwal Fisher

We refuse to release album artwork, because we recognize that formats were made for music, not music for formats. We want our music to be judged on its own merit, not by whether it comes with visual art or fancy/handmade packaging.

free download but you can buy the CD

Andrea Belfi & Ciro Fioratti - Fata Morgana (S'Agita Recordings, 2003)

1 La Creazione (13:39)
2 Il Paradiso (9:03)
3 L'Età Dell'Oro (9:46)

Trois pièces basées sur le film de Werner Herzog, brillants collages de field recordings et d'électronique improvisée...

I haven't seen 'Fata Morgana' by Werner Herzog, so I am not sure how the music by Belfi and Fioratti relates to the film. Andrea Belfi runs the Chocolate Guns CDR label and Ciro Fioratti runs the Soleilnoir label. On this release we have solo pieces by each and in the middle a collaborative track by the two. All three tracks are excellent excursions into the world of microsound. Shortwave sounds, field recordings and some very strong sound processing. Building up in tension all the time, with great counterpoints. Surely one of the best releases on S'Agita so far.
Vital Weekly

sold out

try

Éric La Casa - Les Oscillations (Fringes Recordings, 2005)

1 Les Oscillations Part 1 (21:11)
2 (Silence) (1:30)
3 Les Oscillations Part 2 (22:36)

Sur ces deux morceaux Eric La Casa utilise les mêmes matériaux, les prenant à rebours et sans respecter la structure...

The man with the microphone: that might be the apt description of Eric La Casa. You find him near the sea, alongside the river or in the shed behind his house: always listening with a microphone, a pair of headphones and means to record the sounds. Over the years he must have collected a great deal of these recordings, and for 'Les Oscillations part 1 - 2', he uses in both pieces the same sound material. In part 1 this goes from A to Z, and in part 2 from Z to A: the pieces are mirrored to each-other. If one wouldn't know this, it would be hard to notice. In a collage form we come across airplanes, water sounds and rain drops, some of which might be processed on the computer, but some may not be. Perhaps none of the sounds are: you never know with La Casa. This is a soundscape in it's almost purest form, one should just sit back and listen. Let it come like a wave coming to you, near the seaside. Another fine addition to the man's already extensive discography.
Vital Weekly

sold out visit Eric La Casa

link removed reissued by Herbal International buy here

Asher - Directions (Leerraum [ ], 2006)

1 Untitled (15:45)
2 Untitled (16:30)
3 Untitled (18:30)

Compositions ultra minimalistes discrètes mais denses....

«Leerraum» (the name of the Swiss label behind this release) translates to «ullage», «voidage» or «head space» respectively, so one can place a safe bet on expecting a certain amount of minimalism when it comes to aestethics (the label logo merely consist of an open and a closed rectangular bracket, and the album comes in an elegant white picture-frame-like cardboard sleeve with the record company’s letters engraved in its back, a smooth and shining white inlay with nothing but a few formal production credits and some silvery ants crawling around the place, as well as a (you guessed it!) white CD, carrying the album title), print run (a mere 150 copies will be pressed – period), marketing and public relations (a tiny amount of promos sent out has resulted in a tiny amount of reviews and meta-information) and music. But even within this clearly defined space, «directions» is a testimony of a new stripped-down philosophy of listening.

«Asher lives in Boston, USA» is all the leerraum-homepage has to say about this disc’s creator, but after absorbing its sounds, it seems as though these words are indeed everything that needs to be said. To be more precise, words are a distraction when trying to describe «directions» – and there are more reasons to that than the fact that you need to be very quiet to actually hear something at all without turning up your stereo full-notch. There are three tracks here, all of them around a quarter of an hour long and with striking resemblances. The basic building blocks are crispy vinyl crackling, low bass hummings, ondulating drones, intermittant waves of warm feedback and occasional high-tone clusters. It is the way they interact, their pitch and their funtionality which differentiates the individual pieces: «01», with its regularly pulsed cuts and spacious backdrops has a very open character, gently coaxing the listener forward and introduding him to this world in white. On «02», a black gauze veil covers the eyes, syruppy feedback fills the cavities between the increasingly heavy breathes of sound and burps of sine waves appear from nowhere. The potentially alarming ambiance is however softened by the continual substantiation from its undefined genesis to a state of vivid liveliness, bustling with a plethora of parallel lines of progression. The atmospheric deepening reaches its climax in the final part of the trilogy, which cools down almost to the point of absolute zero, with particle movement restricted to a minimum – the crackling has slowed down considerably and suddenly becomes the music’s axis, around which all other elements flow like lava in a cotton candy machine. Words fail in this territory, because there is nothing left to talk about – the mind drifts through phases of comfort and estrangement, while the body sits in silence.

There are two phenomena which need to be imparted here: While one should suspect such discreet compositions to vanish completely from the radar of consciousness, they create an extrememly dense net, which soaks up the observer entirely – you will find it hard turning this off again. And secondly, the closer one listens, the less random the structures appear and the more one discovers beautiful and imaginative details. Even when there seems to be nothing happening at all, there are invisible currents running through a meticolously carved-out riverside. This «Leerraum» isn’t emtpy at all!
Tokafi

sold out visit Asher & Leerraum [ ]

try

Cryosphere (Glacial Movements Records, 2006)

1 Closing The Eternity Pulse Of Iceilence (7:56)
2 Northaunt Crocker Land (6:10)
3 Tho-So-Aa Cryotesk (9:33)
4 Lightwave Proxima Thule (8:58)
5 Tuu Silent Writing (7:26)
6 Troum Giascei (11:57)
7 Aidan Baker Beneath The Ice (10:16)
8 Netherworld Kryos (10:14)
9 Oophoi Cold Sun (6:50)

sold out visit Glacial Movements Records

try

MNortham - A Great And Riverless Ocean (Mystery Sea, 2002)

1 A Great And Riverless Ocean (53:58)

Long drone jouant des différences de tons entre corne de brume et cithare....

mnortham is a nomad, an attentive and intuitive observer of neglected lifeforms from which he captures the internal resonances & vibrational essence...
for more than 10 years now, he has shared his many journeys of perception with the curious listeners, leading them through mysterious environments...
His work is a constantly unfolding experience operating on various levels...
"a great and riverless ocean" perpetuates this tradition as well as sowing new seeds...

From a faint circular and buzzing pattern, a cyclic schema is broken out of its stasis to reveal hidden harmonics & radiant occurrences...
recomposing themselves through superimposition, elements gradually grow into a distinct entity, a sonic metaphor of molecular activity...
For those who like to come closer to the apprehension of reality, "a great and riverless ocean" is a gaze beyond reflections, a shortcut to imaginary landscapes, a fluid raga for meditation...
Mystery Sea

sold out visit MNortham & Mystery Sea

try

Ea - Öl (Mystery Sea, 2002)

1 Untitled (10:44)
2 Untitled (10:19)
3 Untitled (17:17)
4 Untitled (19:41)

Drones à base de guitare préparée et de field recordings, évoluant lentement et tout en profondeur ...

"Schroedinger's cat meowing in an atomic cage.
Being in two places at one.
One is quite tangible, present at the distance of sight,
the other cannot be easily located, thus establishing a genuine sonic horizon.
One can no longer tell his inner elusive sounds from the audible surrounding.
Is it the acoustics of a space producing an echo or is it your mind repeating what it has already learned to hear ?
Like mantra uttered selected number of times resonates endlessly loosing its primal shape, a physical place is sipping into one's mental essence, so that you can barely escape the impression of being into one place only.
This sound research made by EA is aimed at revealing a frontier between the perceived and the recalled.
It is you who must find out."
- Ea, March 2002.

sold out visit Mystery Sea

try

Gareth Hardwick - I Dream Of Red (Low Point, 2006)

1 I Dream Of Red (17:32)

Voyage de 17 minutes au travers d'un drone crépusculaire...

Almost as soon as the song begins there are gossamer sinewy strands of sound that peel away from the song’s main tone. Unlike much music that heads out into ambient space this doesn’t just drift along without any purpose. It moves finely from melodic idea to melodic idea on its dawn-stoned and bleary eyed journey. Its difficult to tell whether the sounds are sourced electronically or whether its born of six strings but ether way (or anyway) they’re as close to transcendence as its possible to be by human means.
A title containing ‘red’ leads the mind to traditional values associated with that colour; this seems more likely to lead to dreams of blue or white. Deep breaths are held tightly and expelled slowly as chord by chord washes away into a comedown spiral and fade out. “I Dream of Red” moves with a naturally evolving and uncoiling evolutionary movement from start to finish.
Brainwashed

sold out visit Gareth Hardwick & Low Point

try

Mirko Uhlig - The Rabbit's Logbook (Field Muzick, 2007)

1 The Rabbit's Logbook (18:24)
2 The Sacred And Her Journey Home (4:48)

Drone profond à base d'orgue, de field recordings, de violoncelle, entrecoupé de silence...

True traum muzick - concret sounds embedded in drones and tones point to the real world, but it's too clear - that is a dream. The lady saw the rabbit planting melons on the fence.
Field Muzick

sold out visit Mirko Uhlig & Field Muzick

try

MØHR - How To Make Darkness Visible (Drone Records, 1993)

A Inter-Sense (8:10)
B Collected Light (8:53)

sold out visit MØHR & Drone Records

try

Ora - Final (ICR, 2002)

1 Distances (7:55)
2 New Movements In G (12:45)
3 Things Shall Fall (9:45)
4 Gamela (11:23)
5 Inkwell (8:30)
6 Abstraction (9:34)
7 Roses? (8:06)
8 Across (4:48)

Disque composé de morceaux rares et de trois inédits, devant au départ être un double album... les morceaux manquants formeront en fait After Rainfall... Drones à base de field recordings, d'effets électroniques divers, saxophone, flûtes, sitar, etc...

Many moons ago, Darren Tate and Andrew Chalk found their way to Colin Potter's IC Studios, where the three initiated the humble yet eccentric drone project Ora, with occasional help from the likes of Jonathan Coleclough, Daisuke Suzuki, MNortham, and Lol Coxhill. The majority of the Ora releases have been small editions of CD-Rs following in the tradition of the UK underground cassette culture, where artists would simply release things themselves whenever the albums were finished and without having to adhere to the timetable of a record label. The obvious disadvantage in Ora's case is that their limited nature discouraged many from ever discovering the beautiful sounds found on Ora's odd CD-Rs. Fortunately, Ora has compiled several anthologies from those CD-Rs, the first being the Streamline 2LP "Aureum" (which has unfortunately received the same fate of the CD-Rs and has gone out of print), and more recently, the "Final" CD released on Colin Potter's ICR label.
With Darren continuing on as Monos, Andrew working in Mirror, and Colin busy engineering / collaborating with Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Monos, and dozens of other projects, Ora has ceased to be, and "Final" is probably the last Ora document to be released. Culled mostly from the CD-Rs "Live," "Distances," and "New Movements In G," this anthology does also include a couple of unreleased tracks. As the more recent Monos and Mirror recordings reflect, Ora's specialty has been the construction of the opiated drone that implores a sort-of calmness but at the same time actively confronts the listener with its sound rather than floating to the back as aural wallpaper. Built from field recordings, bowed metals, and various electronics, Ora situates their drones within a wide spectrum of textures -- ranging from the sporadic use of angular blurts from Lol Coxhill's sax and accompanying dense scrapes like a huge boulder getting pushed across a concrete floor, to tiny fluctuations from flutes and sitars. "Final" stands as yet another exceptional record from this small aesthetic circle of UK drone artists.
Aquarius Records

sold out visit ICR

try

Ora - After Rainfall (Fungal / ICR, 2003)

1 Gnome Culture (9:14)
2 The Slope (12:24)
3 Darkness (11:35)
4 Attribution To Memory (12:52)
5 After Rainfall (21:25)

These are the Ora tracks that should have formed a double album with "Final" but were thought to be lost.
Thankfully, they were found.

sold out visit ICR

try

Jeph Jerman - Soundhouse (AARC, 2003)

1 Window Amps 12 7 02 (3:08)
2 Amplified Soup 11 16 02 (6:13)
3 Window Amp/Chores 2 14 03 (8:20)
4 Two Amplified Long Strings 6 4 01 (13:47)
5 Metal Bedframe In Shed 5 6 02 (6:42)
6 Cooking Amplified 11 ? 02 (4:56)
7 Water Heater Amplified 11 ? 02 (5:44)
8 Soundhouse Sunset 1 1 03 (15:55)

sold out visit Jeph Jerman

try

Jeph Jerman - Soundhouse 2 (AARC, 2003)

1 Untitled (13:18)
2 Untitled (28:36)
3 Untitled (0:09)
4 Untitled (0:08)
5 Untitled (0:13)
6 Untitled (0:06)
7 Untitled (0:18)
8 Untitled (0:13)
9 Untitled (0:43)
10 Untitled (24:42)

sold out visit Jeph Jerman

try

Wilt - White Chrysalis In Blue (Mystery Sea, 2002)

1 Submerge (6:23)
2 Dim (7:22)
3 Pierce (7:55)
4 Oxidize (4:03)
5 Collapse (5:44)
6 Evolution To The Main Sequence (4:12)
7 Evolution On The Main Sequence (3:08)
8 Evolution Off The Main Sequence (6:39)
9 Evolution To The End (3:12)
10 Zero Transformation (3:16)
11 Infinite Matter Defined (2:35)
12 A Beginnings End (4:09)

James Keeler (Wilt) beaucoup moins lourd et bruyant que pour d'autres réalisations laisse place à des rêveries marines, musique organique, sombre et profonde....

WILT (James P. Keeler's main musical vehicle) is a name currently on everybody's lips in the field of experimental/dark ambient noise...
From project to project, sound sources may vary greatly, moulded by a concept or a prevailing mood, but there's always some common denominator & unique stamp.
For MYSTERY SEA, WILT has dived into its quietest realms so far, offering a textured snaking audio-exploration of low submerged plateaux, a flow of muffled clanks and ghostly resonances...
.white chrysalis in blue. is the soundtrack to a desolate laguna under an orange pale light, a dark pool of decomposed thoughts bathed with silvery-moon reflections, a path to oblivion...
along this rolling , breathing shapeless sea & deep below, .white chrysalis in blue. unfurls revealing subtle minimal evolving tones, composing the colours of a solemn drowned dream...
Mystery Sea

sold out visit Wilt & Mystery Sea

try

Maeror Tri - Mind Reversal (Blade Records, 1993 (2000 reissue))

1 The Subjective Mind (18:25)
2 Sempiterna Memoria (9:33)
3 Big City Breathing (14:57)
4 The Awake Of Light (3:37)
5 Fountain Of Your Self (5:17)
6 Dusa (6:44)

no need for a review...

sold out visit Maeror Tri

try