Experimental / Ambient

Christina Vantzou follows her role in the superb CV & JAB album for Shelter Press with the starkly haunting No.4 in her chrono-numeric series of albums for Kranky. No. 4 took shape across roughly two years, incorporating a diverse array of musical and conceptual collaborators, including fellow Kranky artists Steve Hauschildt and John Also Bennett (of Forma) as well as Angel Deradoorian (ex-Dirty Projectors), Clarice Jensen, Beatrijs De Klerck and members of Belgium’s Echo Collective. During the …

Cinema Perdu is Martijn Pieck's solo vehicle for what he calls 'soundtracks without movies': field recording as compositional starting point, layered with synthesizers, contact-microphone material and other electronic sources to reconstitute the feeling of a place at a moment. Interventions in a Landscape unfolds across four pieces drawn from coastal sites where human modification of the terrain sharpens existing contrasts. Place-based composition on the musique concrète-ambient threshold.

Fantastic! This is one of the best long-lost treasure from the 80s – and it's one long composition filled with raw sounds from the jungle, natural objects and electronic treatment. The idea to evoke a deep journey in the Amazon rainforest has affected various musicians in the history of popular and experimental music, but comparing to other works this rare Amazonia 6891, released only on cassette in 1986, appears as totally original and extreme in his conception. Here,  the interest in eth…

Prefigured by the inclusion of a secret extra pocket in the original packaging of Far West (IMPREC 386CD/LP, 2013), this painstakingly crafted complimentary LP is intended for synced playback with that release. With two turntables or other playback devices, the listener can experience fully unique quad playback. Further West Quad Cult LP offers deeper journeys into the cave where the self dissolves. It also stands alone as an inverted Far West universe, and the listener is invited to enjoy it…

Asmus Tietchens and Thomas Köner exercise a collective marketing genius with their decision to end a fruitful collaborative series in brute, anticlimactic style, issuing this limited, (naturally) expensive box meant to house the duo's previous four discs. Such closure is especially disappointing as it arrives just behind last year's n, Kontakt der Jünglinge's most dense and engrossing work to date, a haunting deepspace symphony of icy gleam and relentless sprawl, one of my late-year favorites. F…

Completing the essential quartet of Brian Eno's early vocal albums is 1977's Before and After Science. The first half is vibrant, rhythmically complex songs (No One Receiving, Kings Lead Hat etc) before slipping into gentle relective moods for the second half. Cluster's Moebius and Roedelius, Can's Jaki Liebezeit, Phil Collins, Robert Fripp, Fred Frith, Fairport's Dave Mattacks, Phil Manzanera etc are amongst the players.

Pekka Airaksinen’s Mangala is a landmark album blending experimental electronic and jazz influences, originally composed in 1986, recorded in 1998, and remixed for its 2015 reissue. The LP features five expansive works, including the title track Mangala, which Airaksinen described as capturing moods reminiscent of Miles Davis and Urban Sax at the Pori Jazz Festival. The album’s soundworld is complex, timeless, and immersive, with King of Snakes symbolizing the force that overcomes evil. This rel…

Recorded in January of 1996 in a ravine in Seattle next to the house of Jim Woodring for a proposed and unrealized collaboration with this visual artist.

“Apropos Cluster” was released in Coralville, Iowa, in deepest provincial America. Youthful enthusiast Russ Curry (sic) set up the Curious Music label on his own initiative to release this very album. Emboldened by the spirit of the independent movement, he paid for manufacturing himself and took care of CD distribution, as well as doing his best to ensure that a few copies made their way to Europe. In common with so many independent label operations, Russ Curry lacked the financial clout to mar…

More music involving the seemingly always-at-work Wojciech Kucharczyk (does the man ever sleep?), this time in a quartet alongside B a ej Król, Jerzy Mazzoll and Radek Dziubek. The project's title Dwutysi czny translates as 'two thousand' - referring, according to a brief recent interview with Easterndaze, to the year when Król first came across the music of the other three players, a discovery that eventually led him to write to them to ask if they'd donate him some of their recorded sounds to …

An internationally known artist, Franco Battiato has been everything in his long career, from beat singer to avantgarde performer, producer, contemporary music composer.His beginnings lay in the mid 60's, with many singles released with no particular success, the first two under his real name of Francesco. He had left the native Sicily (he was born in Jonia, near Catania in 1945) moving to Milan around 1965.Fetus, housed in a outrageous cover (reproducing a foetus) was definitely a prog al…

 Like the strong scent of copal brings ancient memories and visions, each track here depicts a scenery and involves the listener directly, totally. Introduced by the obscure night of "Notturno", like in a wood, crowded with spirits and animals, you're guided through 9 gates, each one opening on a different space and time. As if the purpose was to awake the slumbering ancestral memory of man, this record is fundamentally based on the dualism of elements strictly relating to the human being: "voic…

Seems like only yesterday Barn Owl had a new record on Thrill Jockey, and in fact this, Lost In The Glare, is their third for TJ in about a year, coming hot on the heels of their Shadowland 12" which ranks up there as one of our favorites. Lost In The Glare doesn't radically reinvent their sound, just further stretches it out, and refines it, the opening track as fierce as anything we've heard from them, lush tangles of guitar, over swirling droned out shimmer, culminating in a wild squal…

There's a disarming honesty to the way Michigan-based husband and wife duo Windy & Carl communicate with one another. A blog post from Windy, published in late 2011, describes the making of We Will Always Be, framing it in the context of their relationship. "Yeah, we have had bumps in the road, and on occasion it seems as if we may never recover from these bumps, but we do," she wrote. That type of candor doesn't stop at the written word; it also bleeds through into the duo's music. Often their …

Terrific triple CD set...Formerly of 1990's dark ambient pioneers Endvra. Three previous full lengths on U.K. label Cold Spring. Over three hours of music focusing on subtle changes that command attention and focus; imagine if Philip Glass composed a three hour drone piece... Triple disc set, each disc with its own artwork, held together by a custom band with genuine letterpress printing. Original landscape photos reflecting the mood of each disc by Chris Walton himself, and packaging design by …

2011 release ** The departure from Volume 1 starts here! Found sounds, field recordings and and more, echoing to you from way back in 1992. Straight out of Aachen! Second in this on-going series of collaborative works recorded in the early 90’s by christoph heemann & jim o’rourke, later conceptually aligned with the mythos of noel scott “walker” engel ... contrasting vol. 1’s “synth freakout” bluster entirely, this is instead a single, extended musique concrète piece (heavily reminiscent of luc …

Packaged in hand stenciled gatefold jacket with silkscreened inner sleeves. Key Of Shame is the most extreme entity to come from two cult collectives of the New York underground, No Neck Blues Band and Sightings. PLANAM proudly presents their first recordings, four threnodies for Judas Iscariot as performed by Mark Morgan (Sightings) and Pat Murano (NNCK, Decimus). Jesus answered and said "You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations -- and you will come to rul…

A collection of psychedelic love songs paying tribute to all things analog. Similar to older Kid606 releases like PS I Love You, GQ on the EQ, The Soccergirl EP and Why I Love Life. This album was carefully constructed to be the soundtrack for the peak 72 minutes of your next trip. The songs all linger on too long but just long enough, you hear voices you can't understand, but you will know what they're saying. Every track has its distinct identity and direction to completely throw you from one …

Lotus Eaters is Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O))), KTL, etc.), James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher, etc.) and Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, etc.). Initially released on CD in 2002 by Neurot Recordings, Mind Control For Infants has been expanded, remixed and rearranged for this vinyl edition using alternate takes from the original recording sessions. Quietly subversive and contemplative, Mind Control For Infants features droning and silvery finger-picked guitars that conjure holy states, grumbl…

2008 release ** "Maurizio Bianchi is more than a legend in contemporary electronica, he is beyond good and evil by now in what respects to creative effort, he has surpassed all genres and styles, has reinvented and deconstructed himself, has even recessed from doing music during years and has come back again fresh and rejuvenated. With a vast discography and extensive musical career as sound sculptor and textural colonizer Bianchi is more alive than ever. “Innervation” released by the excellent …