For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001

Helios - Moiety (Unseen)

Free download / donate here = http://www.unseen-music.com/free/

Padang Food Tigers - Ready Country Nimbus (Bathetic Records)

Stream the whole album here, very nice ambient folk. http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-gr...bum-stream

Talvihorros / Damian Valles - Monuments & Ruins (Textura)

This sounds incredible http://www.textura.org/pages/archives.htm

Thomas Koner - Novaya Zemlya (Touch)

The artwork, by Jon Wozencroft, includes an essay by Thierry Charollais, "Thomas Köner's Novaya Zemlya: towards a metaphysical geography"

http://touchshop.org/product_info.php?products_id=519

‘Sparks’ is the first full collaboration of the Black Elk quartet of Ian Hawgood, Tim Martin (Maps and Diagrams), Danny Norbury and Clem Leek. Whilst Ian and Tim take over acoustic, electronic, mixing and compositional duties, Danny is on cello and Clem on piano. ‘Sparks’ will be released July 27th. The follow-up, and connected work, 'Anchor' will be released at the end of the year. 'Sparks' was mastered by Lawrence English.

http://soundcloud.com/komusounds/komu002...arks-album

Norman Records are selling a lot of the Serein catalogue for dirt cheap prices.

They include artists like Nest, Olan Mill, Hauschka etc on 10" vinyl and a cd each under £4.

http://www.normanrecords.com/label/4296+serein

FTAL Reviewed 014 - March - September 2012

The Circular Ruins - The Birth Of Tragedy
Data Obscura CD / download



The Data Obscura label huddled my radar from the excellent lowlightmixes.blogspot.com Ambient set base. APK (Anthony Paul Kerby)'s 50th instalment for DO reviewed in FTAL 001. Here he goes solo from The Winterhouse's transcendentally mellow brilliance, amassing his best solo record as The Circular Ruins. "The Birth Of Tragedy", in intrapathic grandiosity to James Kirby's "Sadly, The Future", surpasses the scope to 3 CDs in 1, cradling a fallen empire of Ambient tectonics. The third time I listened, I lay down in my rest room, lights off, soaking up unearthly sombre splendour. How it felt was indescribable. Apart from: wow - incredibly moving. I've not praised a record this highly since Ateleia's "Formal Sleep" on Xeric. Buy asap.

http://www.dataobscura.com/proddetail.php?prod=DO-056

v4w.Enko & D'Incise - AM P.E R.E.M EC
Everest Records CD / download

Piston-frenzy first-foot in noise conglomeration, v4w.Enko & acousmaticist D'incise's 8 tracker is Improv grown sacs of upper body genital muse. Dissemination between genetic biodiversity and plonk-sleazy Improv doesn't emplace. As "a pic urb n" enforces with proto-Techno wheelspin, veering Up Pompeii into a lava-like depth chasm, uncertain moments of eruption beckon, while safeguarding the listener like a honeycomb cocoon.

"Le declin des especes" - an acidic bath of disintegrating music concrete, truncated off the wall like a dismounted hive of wasps, swarming, writhing around in pebbles of ice. "Rcr d 4 rm_ s.p.c.s" pits Basic Channel machinery, embalmed with loose trinket taps in sunset. Somewhere close to Electroacoustica from Maps & Diagrams, except v4w.Enko & D'incise abridge desire of abandon; plenty churns here. "Par la gauche" dots an apron with flares of beatific smoke, more gossamer thick Amon Tobin circa "Journeyman". "Rec-8-3-rem"- a smooth, fine drone, Cindytalk's "Hold Everything Dear" reminiscent. Unlike their LP, it's a real in-the-attic environmental sound plunder, one engaging the correct intervention of sonorous guitar bass, squeaks and crackle.

"AM P.E R.E.M EC" retains a swelling balance of anti-comical instrument tomfoolery. Like playing an old school Space Quest game with extra lives, chinks, rattles, light blasts, but nothing austerely pin-pricking. As belies circumspect to the snotty freeze thrown at Improv. "Clm plt mer. de la tranquillite" begins very bracing, without murmured upset, all the layers, formulas coalescing into signified paper mache. Since snipping sounds and glued harmonic interdependence wash over, crystallising fundamental tune density: slow burn, always returning rising damp. "Dsd flux. never get burn" postulates wholesomely angular, introducing tension fragments, sounding as if escaping a previous fugitive spook life.

Now riding neural marketing by this point, swigging trick downers on finale "Amp-ex-excavation". Sooting the lid underpunctual in terms of fresh texture, regulating less harsh anticlimatica to the Improv send & receive, rotary pause/deflect. Pulse creeps slowly on, breaths audible, quiet in a serene, alert slumber. It's rather unlike any Ambient/Improv I've heard to date, closing the engrossing 45 minute record from v4w.Enko & D'incise' unilaterally: whichever direction you approached it in, one command: crank that amp.

http://everestrecords.ch/shop/buy/amperemec

Mirada - Unfolding Memories
Recommended free release



A great aspect of free recommended releases is an always indebtable mystery identity. Certainly, first time I heard "Unfolding Memories" the only associative beautific resonance was really Colin May aka Quosp. To this end, the LP has developed to a concomitant circumspect of interpolative regression and progression; thematic tonal dialects aptly converse each other as a concave refraction of drift culture. These are not static soundscapes: they are contraprismatic, reflected in the title beginner "A Revealing Moment". While second eponymous piece "Unfolding Memories" positively sweeps dreaming, one occult fantasia, a candle to the winds of change. Mirada's music in this ZIP file works seriously sweetly as a collection of sleepy-time lullabies, but also has the integral locust of stimulative control.

http://mirada.bandcamp.com/album/unfolding-memories

Some dirt cheap releases at Norman Records,


Talvihorros - Descent Into Delta LP (Vinyl) £1.99 reduced from £9.99

http://www.normanrecords.com/records/128...into-delta

Offthesky - The Beautiful Nowhere LP (Vinyl) £1.99 reduced from £9.99

http://www.normanrecords.com/records/127...ul-nowhere

Spheruleus - Voyage (CD) £1.99 reduced from £7.99

http://www.normanrecords.com/records/129...eus-voyage

Kettel & Secede - When Can (Sending Orbs)

When Can is the new album by Kettel and Secede, a collaboration that has been anticipated by fans of both artists for a long time. When Can also marks the return of the Sending Orbs record label after two years of absence.

As early as 2005 Kettel and Secede hatched plans to produce a full-length collab. The two friends have been working together, on and off, to grow a style and craft an album that wouldn’t be just a merger or an addition, but that would render a genuine novelty. This year they delivered.

When Can is a treasure. Genreless and unique on all counts. Based on composition and ideas, not on form or hype. The eleven tracks are hauntingly diverse, yet each track seamlessly blends into one whole. Explore it. When Can will surprise.

http://www.sendingorbs.com/products-page...-when-can/

Mindspan - The Second Cycle (Silent Season)

“Magic of magics, secret of secrets. Fearfully strange, but familiar, too. Like a memory rising from deep within you. Or an invisible companion, finally spied.

‘Not that it matters,’ a deep voice murmured. ‘When you dream, there’s no outside or in. Your mind is an unimaginable bloom. A willow catkin as big as the moon. With billions of anthers, shaking pollen like stars. It may seem strange, but in this boundless place – You’re not alone”. – Rich Shapero, Too Far, Page 52.

The cycle: a very care-emittent term applied daily in psychology, cardiovascular work and engineering. James ASC, the sun behind 11+ LPs of released artifacts spanning a crevasse of invisible relics, that stretch round the perimeters like an orange strobe, slowly turning to soil brown; Nesquik Chocolate Milkshake poured on versionism’s burning furnace. Like downing a handful of Lozengers to cure a numbing headache, early morning. “The Second Cycle” is a soothing, immaculately effective relief of breezier conditions, of silent seasons where drift culture resonates inter-liminal preternaturality with drone, bass, echo, and intrinsic space.

James is primarily known for his work under the ASC producer name, a musicianship base that extended himself across chords and Superman’s Kryptonite like a black star in the head and heart. A multi-genre errand-getter, he certainly appreciates on this evidence where to put ‘second album’ and its past-wise antag-o-coathanger to the mettle of endurance. “The Second Cycle” is full of aerodynamic proof-techno, almost pre-drone. Aerodynamic wind tunnels, of dubbed out, sandy but never samey bass. Quick to penetrate the low frequency spectrums of your ears, with its own invaluable Marconi Union-unharm jackknife-esque air slicing ambiences, speaking of Loscil with a perfumed scent. Real ambiences for real people.

But as with magic and secrets, there’s one thing underpinning ASC’s brand of molecular individuality. I feel it deep within me, the “Awakening” subjugating a Buddhist peace-to-chant, an Origami biro continually folding into itself. And then expanded to produce new, beautific dreams that give no end, or beginning, to a wall of wondrous. James’ work has unilaterally been a search for courage, of his unique sound, and as Joe Mcphee commented in The Wire 294 regarding ‘lateral thinking’, you can use his ideas from listening to ASC records to move from a set of ideas to approach new ones. However, what remains is you’re let to take the music from the purchase, but you can’t take the music from the creator. “The Second Cycle” is one testament for aquiescence that respirates these compositions via economy and emotive synchronicity – he might be “Out Of Sync” at times, to quote his latest ASC ouevre, but he’s definitely not out of unconditional love in making and releasing music.

Concomitant circumspect – the phrase I word to examine all tenses past, present and further fields of angle-curvature-embrace, certainly applies to ASC’s craft. “The Second Cycle”: intuitively, James began the project late 2007 as experimental frequencies in “The Aeon Expanse”, an egg of hatched Ambi-techno that was as much a sleeping partner to me as it was an “Everything is beyond suffering now” luminousity. Previously nudged into realms of intelligent Electronica in the early nineties by pioneers including Future Sound Of London, later resounding influences including Ulrich Schnauss, never-the-benefactor: James’ thinking pattern, as shown on “Lateral” with its impounding refractive assuaging, associates with your psyche when you’re listening to an ASC LP, and just that – no-one else comes close referentially.

This is an important and decisive marginality, I find, when analysing – Mindspan’s music in all senses is unilateral: Bengalfuel and Diamond Catalog were the only two names that sprung to mind like seriously good light. They, too, both came from my previous reviews on Fluid Radio’s treasure chest of Ambient, dub Techno, proof-Techno and Electroacoustic rhythms. The eventual cycle, being: knowledge you’ll return to your cyclical drive is totally demanded time, just the handlebars run loose with this collection of works – as far as your imagination takes you. “Dying Embers” takes me back to working with James in DE’s Techmospheric Drum & Bass guise in early 2007. In ASC, a period where sumbliminal sign language of musicality and rhythmical data transmissions were both thriving and perspiring. This tune, and James himself, has no sibling rivalry with Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, but there’s conclusively beer at the after-party in terms of “Selected Ambient Works” not losing their stimulative locust-cuteness and cuddly demeanour.

Cycles are about a lot of things on the whole, but the best things in life aren’t things. They are experiences, life’s inner heartbeat, its’ now ululating rhythm for freedom from fear and pain, diminished as bulldust, regained as preserved produce for the holy cows of the coming generations. As Barbara Cartland said for the two unconscious as one in the world: “I love you madly” – that’s me to this Mindspan creation. It matters where it is: sequenced beyond “The Light That Burns Twice As Bright” on Silent Season later on last year, and beyond cow-ardly exposure to a tributary ‘no sense, all love, no feeling’ idiomatic sensitivity as opposed to ‘nonsense, bad feeling’ in-any-actuality-of-reason dogma. I’ve already mentioned the internal memo being the impure imaginative. It fits here to explain that ASC’s sun relationship is a love triangle with the stars – the sound is pure, very deep and always moving towards a state of proper sleep. As does the knocking on door of ASC’s “Talisman” on “Out Of Sync”, where the sample annotates passionately: “And you can see the future, you think you’re capable of changing it? But you’re just a witness to Godly movements, unable to help. Beautiful Mick and Lata, and maybe, you don’t. Sometimes I think you’re supposed to learn something, about patience, and distance. But in the end it’s all about desire, seeing things you don’t always want to. But just believe.”

You’ll never fall asleep in quite the same way again. Like a memory rising, unearthed from space and time, paper to pen. Buy this and it’ll be the best season you’ll forever spend – an Autumn in love with your significant other, and a finding of true wisdom and worship within.

what is this. I don’t even…

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/10/min...ond-cycle/

Bvdub - All Is Forgiven (n5MD)

In times of trouble, it’s totally natural for elements to change. Like your bedroom at your folks’ house, being given a secret overhaul, while away grafting. Or a cup, pinched from view, disposed at a mental health hospital. Scientific times of great significance occur all the time, as do weathering times of great contrast. Diagnostic counterbalance under-resulting (and unifying) from every conclusive supplication is an onion; being peeled back slowly by the accepting, dotting the trans-fusion of the work, like a dream diary inked with tears.

In troubled times, we also – at least me – are always able to (re)turn to tuning and tempering sound. As with my experiences, transcendental introspection comes naturally to Brock Van Wey, aka Bvdub. He’s a dextrous master now, from dozens of records, for-and-including: Home Normal, Nomadic Kids Republic and Darla. Coral reef deep-as-you-love layered artefacts. He’s the right artist on Fluid for me to introduce ‘revolvent retrospectivity’.

You see, when I hear Bvdub, I don’t hear paint drying. Rather, a fruit cocktail, laced with mint and thyme. Brock’s revolvent retrospectivity is to take an already established idea (of his own), and brandish it anew, bells, whistles et al. In this sense musicians counterweight their individual identities, and also admonish suggestions of sameness. But I’d only apply the revolvent retrospectivity concept to someone of equal calibre to Bvdub. His revolving, magnum-melt melodies curtail as diamonds in a soundstorm; untouched by dirt, simply supple and soft. They become diamels: pure oddities of purpose and his vision. The iconography of Bvdub also fits: a transluscent, elusive character who expounded a choice quote in his interview with Organic this year.

“I’m sick of hearing people call Ambient ‘sad sack music’” responded Brock, defiant to the end of all expectatorists. It’s equivalent of putting a bumper sticker on your car, saying “Don’t like melancholy music? Don’t listen”. A pro-life approach that also respects those depressed by sad music. Brock, saintly and mercifully to credit, tapers off woes, of sovereign male and female wisdom. A keystone in embracing feminist raunch while amassing it in multi-lathed stock and share of colour, synchrony (visual mixing with triplet vocal myriads) and timing.

Sonically, it builds cumulative and innate narcolepsy on every Bvdub release; mango chutney relished, both by audience, and the affluent antibacteriality of ethnicity ulti-culturalism. The musical effects are clear. Like a bubble, too, it depends on the context how it pops. On this 19 minute piece for vocals, synths, drum machine and piano, Brock is a submarine, combing through the waves, and he puts every porous rubric in, with no snap or crackle in love.

“I could not feel life more than this / Even if it’s far away” is such a beautiful vocal harmony on this record. At 6 minutes, stylistically, it would be crass comparing Bvdub to Burial without definition. Where Burial lets whole lyrical passages ghostwrite his tunes with beats, Brock collages them in surfeits that are pastoral and elegant. Indeed, Burial’s “Untrue” and Mogwai’s “Come On Die Young” are the first compatriots power-based, always, to this “All is Forgiven” compendium. Mogwai have the noise intensity and dynamics, while at last strand, Bvdub is able to foster in elements of Boards Of Canada’s “Dawn Chorus” to complete a sensational brew.

N5md are still relatively underground on the experimental frequencies radar, with brilliant label releases from Port-Royal (“Dying In Time” and Bitcrush (“Epilogue In Waves”. Their interpartially soliptic title bank, for albums they produce, underpins them as one with a revolvent retrospectivity all theirs. Beats of drums are Dalek sharp; vocal passages soothe like sorbets; ordership is inconsequential. Nothing is rushed with their catalogue, and they exist to test your wallets’ resistance, fully deserved.

Some final words. I felt so grateful receiving this music from Fluid Radio HQ, as it influences my output as Foci’s Left in future, and second, the message behind the music couldn’t have come at a better moment. It reminded me again that “All Shall Be Well”, but as a fundamental extension, “All Is Forgiven”. “The reflective person feels a grief that the unreflective do not know”, wrote Immanuel Kant in Speculative Beginnings Of Human History, “a grief that can well lead to moral ruination: this is a discontentedness with the providence that governs the entire course of the world.” But Brock, whatever you do – don’t stop. You’re a candle in the dark that lights a thousand shadows.

what a review…great stuff about a great artist and amazing guy

great review Mick

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/bvd...-forgiven/

Holy mother I just (partially) read this thread again, and found so much more music I previously missed, and how huge it's got. Like the Fennesz and Father releases, that I'll be purchasing from boomkat tonight.

I'll keep on reporting and blogging away in here, with FTAL 003 (mix) on the soon horizon. Thanks Annastay and DIB for your contributions I've re-read.

Heathered Pearls - Loyal

Yet, there’s a love about Heathered Pearls that warrants returning, like the pull of soaking yourself in all this, as if it deifies your whole being. Principally, deifying music has long and often been discussed, obliquely or tangentially by sound, art and music writers out there, as Immanuel Kant would say “treating people as if they were ends only”. But there’s a whole other dimension, an infinity beyond the finite, “Beach Shelter” for a title word, for sound that extends a refractive assuaging scope on our temples; that calms, and breaks open lockers on theoretical chaff. Some people previously perceived Muzak, and existence, for that strand, as needing conformism to the finite. There are no flowers in a pot of dark pills, but there are imaginistic boundaries permeable through heathered pearls. Transcendentally introspective, so to bring something new out of the telepathic m-ale-strimmer, that cuts down the pollution of charlatan producers, with one fell swoop.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/hea...rls-loyal/

My other three recent reviews for Fluid Radio in hyperlink form (newest first):

Dylan Golden Aycock - Rise And Shine

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/dyl...and-shine/

Alex Cobb - Passage To Morning

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/ale...f-morning/

Mind Over Mirrors - Check Your Swing

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/min...our-swing/

Glacial Movements' Netherworld sent me an email 2 weeks ago with a list of equipment for sale. If I had the money I'd get the condenser microphone. Might appeal to all the hardware heads out there:

Hello my friends,

below i show you a list of musical instruments and electronic equipment (second hand), but in excellent condition:

Roland Fantom X6 workstation € 750.00
Roland V-Synth XT synth € 1100.00
Akai Z4 sampler € 400.00
TC Electronic M3000 multi FX € 650.00
TC Electronic MONE XL multi FX € 250.00
Rode NT1 A Condenser Microphone € 140.00
Korg K25 midi keyboard 2 octaves € 70.00
LX20 ADAT multitrack recorder (with dozens of super VHS sealed) € 400.00
Mackie 1604 VLZ3 16-channel mixer € 500.00
Alesis Monitor € 250.00

prices are shipping costs excluded. If you are interested to purchase, or if you want more information, please respond directly to:

Gianluigi: [email protected]

For a sample of Netherworld music, download my 15 Minutes Of Fame Pt. 17 - "Better Days To Come" here:

http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthre...-Autechre)

I donned my poetry cap for the special 15th instalment of FTAL, with "Concrete Wholemeal", FTAL Mix 003, posted next.

FTAL Reviewed 015 - November 2012

Kyle Bobby Dunn - In Miserum Stercus
Komino Records LP



Reflective poem: "Justifying Toppling The Tarsel Of Flex".

Muttley - Justifying Toppling The Tarsel Of Flex

Castle of boundless wonder, cradling your newborn
Took to levels of quasi-suppression, bio the janitor
An abhorrent slapstick of gloom and off-Jupiter firecracks
Left locked in the cellar basement with the easel of flex.
Explosive not thanks to a test jet, running the helipad swarm
Like justifying toppling the tarsel of flex.

Mansion of secrecy to plunder, counselling the skeletons
Brook of river breaks open, fire the search engine
An intrusive Mars bar deep fries the prefrontal cortex
Left locked in the cellar basement with the easel in flex.
Arduous when all the rooms need a drainin'
Like justifying toppling the tarsel of flex, in miserum stercus.

House of horrors to tear asunder, reinventing air conditioning
Crooks in the ghostwriting, parallel universes collide, fry onions
An extrusive Venus, the world a house on fire to everyone.
Left locked in the cellar basement with easel of flex.
Alarming the snapple, crackle, popple of the vexed ghouls
Like justifying toppling the tarsel of flex.

Box of homeless shelter, shadowing the true self
Kooks in the yielding, cook the base of the cardboard in coolness.
That justifies toppling the tarsel of flex, in miserum stercus.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/10/kyl...m-stercus/

Natural Snow Buildings - Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches
BaDaBing Records 3CD



Reflective poem: "Night Coercion".

Muttley - Night Coercion

I haven't been boiling corny noodles for this rettle tea
It merely takes me that I must proscribe its real beauty
Witches, boo, I will not scare you. But you don't scare me!
Your fangs took a bite of my stake, and it's getting minted.
Just like an o-ger with a throne in peace soupy
But I can't give Natural Snow Buildings jip for a wonder roof.

The remedy to earcache is potentially in psychedelia, NSB
And you know drill, majestically sculpting your beam boxes.
Duckula the count wants some bikkies for tea. Witches?
Can-yo cast Mehdi-ocrity to a hidden place? Yes, reply back said.
For the drone of NSB is like a snowfall; douer past longings
With "Night Coercion", we get brilliant untamed, erasure me
Addicted to this record of beauty, doesn't scare me, mintings
Diametrically focused, but not long in the tooth or disproved.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/10/nat...f-witches/

And The Forest Will Breathe - And The Forest Will Breathe
archive.org free download



Reflective poem: "And The Forest Will Breathe, Even With Glutinous Gumbos".

Muttley - And The Forest Will Breathe, Even With Glutinous Gumbos

Glutinous gumbos are rimshot pool games in the blues mobile...
The melange of, wild life, like a WWF panda bear; sides delish
Honey moon is glutinous, with them; swimming in the lopes
...Of life, like gym a subject of sticky poetry....Know your worth.

Love one, a smothering sun and get burnt, from tension.
Love another, with the bottom end bristling with bass hum...
Resplend-to-the-end here with this pendant; grounded in joys
Our spirits rise with epic intergalactic syntax, high-flying

Daylight shines to break the day up into a re-listenable fry
Sumptuous Bermuda love triangle, where douer-ness is doomed
Glutinous gumbos; not in the forest with breathe my men
In these times, of wandering interlopers, women often ask:

"Does my Gumy headphone set suit this"? I'd say: a big yes.
Only the, loneliest Ambiente fan, couldn't enjoy these pieces.

http://archive.org/details/AndTheForestWillBreathe

FTAL Mix 003 - Muttley - Concrete Wholemeal (December 2012)

Grit is part of a GUI's daily 5
But harm to natural alignment ain't striving
Harm to the book line domino piled
If left to topple the tarsel of flex.

Bread comes in many grains and batches
Except the ones getting ingrained grit
Some so tough I wonder who pack it
And some mouldy I worry men ignore.

The wholemeal grain isn't concrete
It's the mother's milk not silk purse
Silk purse's get clogged in sow's ears
The saints go marching hygenically.

Do they enter bracing though, I doubt
It seems they're too busy finding
A concrete surface for a toaster.

Muttley - Concrete Wholemeal - Tracklist

00:00 August Stars - November Et Decembre (Midwinter EP, Make Mine Music, 2007)
01:48 Pilote - Immobile (Do It Now Man LP, Certificate 18, 2001)
03:51 Quosp - Mound (Green EP, Metanoia, 2006)
05:02 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Meadowfuck (In Miserum Stercus LP, Komino, 2012)
06:41 Robert Fripp & Brian Eno - An Index Of Metals (Wind On Water LP, 1986)
10:57 Satellite Clouds - Turtles All The Way Down / Triumphant (Degenerate Sons LP, 2011)
18:05 Rhythm & Sound - Imprint (R&S Digital Release, boomkat.com downloads, 2012)
18:45 Ateleia - Salt Horse Scultpture (Formal Sleep LP, Xeric, 2007)
22:48 Jan Jelinek - Palmen Aus Leder (Tierbobachtungen, Scape, 2006)
24:53 Mindspan - Co-Axial 1 (The Aeon Expanse LP, Covert Operations, 2008]
25:20 Alva Noto - Xerrox Phaser Acat (Xerrox Vol.2, Raster-Noton, 2009)
26:04 Alex Cobb - Bewildered By It's Blue (Passage To Morning LP, Students Of Decay, 2012)
30:51 Steve Hauschildt - Kept (Sequitir LP, Kranky, 2012)
32:23 Helios - Ours Everyday (Moiety LP, free download, 2012)
32:57 Bvdub - Peonies Fall For Kings (All Is Forgiven LP, n5MD, 2012)
45:10 end

Download

An epic piece of work this - check it out on Fluid Radio with a strangely moving accompanying video:

XXIII: There’s A Light In Vein

"Dirk Serries’ microphonics xxi-xxv, poetically titled ‘Mounting Among The Waves, There’s A Light In Vein. The Burden Of Hope Across Thousands Of Rivers’ does hint towards an emotional statement, one that boldly goes beyond what previously achieved. A musical fusion that unites elements from all of his previous projects and alter-ego’s into a heartbreaking symphony of echoing themes, wailing overtones and beautiful desolation."

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/xxi...t-in-vein/

Released: 16th March 2013
Formats: CD, LP with 50 page art booklet.

Foci's Left - FTAL Attraction EP



Download

01. In Patient (Music Studio 1)
02. A Rose In The Dessert Wind (Music Studio Vocals 1)
03. The Astral Plane (feat. Elle)
04. It's Been A While (Staind Vocal Cover)
05. Out Patient (The Rhizome Clinic)
06. Speech In Order To Think (13.12.12 feat. Mystery Baby)

Patience, objects, human philosophy and communication - all subjects making up the six tracks on my second EP. Foci's Left is the production name of Muttley, aka Mick Buckingham, whose "Spillage" EP on "Audio Gourmet" (Wire advertised) in 2010 became very popular. I self-admitted myself to a mental health institute in September 2012. Two weeks later I was moved to where a recording studio lay. The story is: the first three tracks were recorded in one day, as one take improvisations, whereas Staind's "It's Been A While" (Vocal Cover), "Out Patient (The Rhizome Clinic)" and "Speech In Order To Think" (recorded 13.12.12 and featuring a mysterious baby's voice saying "Alright Dad" at 00:37) were two take improvisations of voice and environment as an instrument outside mental hospital (keyboard, passing acoustics, and magical proxy) into my Cowon J3's mic.

These are Wav files, 64kbps to 1411kbps, to listen to and enjoy as you wish, with an 85MB RAR size. The title is an ode to:

"For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001"

...which is the only place you will find this rehosted, a topic with 24, 520 views to date.

Right now it's limited to 50 downloads.

Merry Xmas subverts, hope you enjoy it.

M

Holy mother I just (partially) read this thread again, and found so much more music I previously missed, and how huge it's got. Like the Fennesz and Father releases, that I'll be purchasing from boomkat tonight.

I'll keep on reporting and blogging away in here, with FTAL 003 (mix) on the soon horizon. Thanks Annastay and DIB for your contributions I've re-read.

No worries , Love posting stuff when I find, havent been able to do much of that lately even tho... I have to do ALOT of re catching up in this thread, so many things I want to check in here, unfortunately buying music isnt on the menu for me atm but Ill def be re reading this thread once I have other things in life settled more..
luckily I caught the 50 , on the dl now.

for Anna and Catherine.

The four next reviews to link:

Felicia Atkinson - Summer Eyes

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/fel...mmer-eyes/

Oren Ambarchi & Robin Fox - Connected

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/11/ore...connected/

Ethernet - Opus 2

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/ethernet-opus-2/

Journey Of Mind - Oil Burner

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/jou...il-burner/

Oh, Yoko - Seashore

Picture the scene: time is suspended. You kiss the air like a jewel without. Knives round the corner. People are frozen, standing motionless before you. Their actions are as well, driven into the core of Earth like reversal of all that is infinite and known as infinite. This is a depressing situation – how do we rectify it? Mario Martinez might say each wound carried creationally has a healing field, an empowering component that honours its original organism to create the best outcome.

Look at where you’re manifesting the wound – you can get angry with shame, but what you feel then is humiliation? Look and think “What is the honourable thing to do?” Honourable consciousness is to respond to a shaming consciousness, and this kills the language of shame. Commitment, honour and loyalty through setting clear limits. and people generally don’t like joy; it’s a dangerous emotion. Inflammation of joy is caused by the shame brought from it, of another – knowing pro-flammatory products causes health to improve. Immunologically, people still sometimes die to protect the flag. But the reality is they’re only dead for a short time. And like the sea shore, the tide comes back in to thrive.

The “covenant of safety” is the thematic composite of Oh, Yoko’s “Seashore”, a 26 minute three-tracker released on Normal Cookie. The cover art depicts a small Japanese female reaching outside a car door, seemingly motionless besides arm-movement. Definitely, this is a good metaphor for Rie Mitsutake and Will Long’s music, seeing as these lull-isms have a reasoned resonance Sawako might aim towards, a cot-to-and-fro, “Seashore” unfurling its guitar with plink/plonk, casual indeterminancy that recalls Charles Hayward’s percussive rhythm dynamism, set to harmonic prop-petting beyond mast-iculation. Or: overarched grandeur of the emotional heft and transmogrified settings, which even on “Sprinkles Ambient Ballroom”, the duo don’t cut their slack too loose on what they’ve offered up. Which is bliss.

Normal Cookie as a label is new, a self-publishing music and art emporium, based in Tokyo, Japan, where Fluid regulars Will Long and Bvdub have visited in recent times. The final mix of “Seashore” here is fundamental to the child’s look – “Right just now you feel lost and confused”; “How do you know that?”; “I just do” the conversation passes on. With a solid shimmering 4/4 and choral tones backing the brigadeering, there’s a certain early noughties feel of electronic Plaid and Pilote that runs through these compostions. Quietly soaring and purposeful, Oh, Yoko show us where manifesting the wound is as much an exercise in condemning the absolute, as it is about ‘sound baggage handling’. In other words, we avoid the new at times because the old has more of an astute blend of influences; it doesn’t meek.

“I learned… that to condemn others is a grave mistake, since hatred, and even the wrong kind of criticism, is an evil which recoils upon its author and poisons every human relationship.

That does not mean we should be blind to the weaknesses or wickedness of others, any more than to our own, but that we should learn to look at them as the limitations of birth and circumstance, limitations which it is our duty to help them rise above. In this I have found that example and service are more helpful than advice or preaching.” ~ Margaret Bondfield, What Life Has Taught Me.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/oh-yoko-seashore/

Various - Outliers Vol.1

For my 60th article on Fluid Radio, I’m provided the film and soundtrack to “Outliers Vol.1″. A film about composing a film, on one hand, of inter-disciplinary travel – in this case to Iceland; otherwise a soundtrack – no film re: Iceland would be complete without a raft of accompanying musicians – documented through modern classical, electronic and divergent adventures into combinatory sonic structures.

I first heard the OST on my Gumy headphones, and while not blown away by the quality, this is endemic on first listen to a writer who’s normally reviewing idiosyncratic sequences, over collections of tracks. As time went on, my appetite was whetted, and once I had seen the film to see where the music fitted in, the spectograph was complete…

October 2011 is a cold time, especially for photographers accompanying expediants to Iceland’s countryside. The landscape, traditions and people are references. In these cosmic vignettes lies a propulsion-purpose, worldly phenomena metamorphosed with homeliness to the jurisdictions, and limitations, of travel time. Thirteen composers posit soundtrack; I want to approach this dualistically with filmic events.

Sounds open with a fitting throb of OST bass: Asure’s “A Word For Warmth” activating that ‘propulsion purpose’. The beats are bear-huggingly motored; the timbres resemble Metanoia’s IDM excursions and a hardened pace outlook; the tempo opens a cool vista. A selection of the artists greet each other at the airport chosen, and Patrick Feaster might say, in his “paleospectrophony” concept, whereby annotating visual arts as interconnected to visual records, educing each other from art and science – the shorthand concept for resonations of imagery in cross-contextual artforms; this is inked into mastery reels here.

It certainly doesn’t sound fully Westernised as a soundtrack. There’s magical times in the drums, piano and strings fullsome, curated by Deru, of the wonderful “Straight Speak” on “Idol Tryouts” compilation some years back. Great beauty and irrevocable iciness swells with Iceland’s geographic peninsula, introducing you suitably. Personally I feel the soundtrack is minimized by its sequencing alone – it needs isolatory approach, singular tracks, or additive synthesis to commingle the stereo sound to the headphones sound, so it forms a coherent whole. This is the only “real” downfall of an otherwise excellent aural dichotomy.

There’s a “refractive assuaging” of psychedelic elements for compilations that feature a score of tracks and under, a future-looking idea that permeates much of my thinking for why concept albums mostly work better than releases made up of silence / cadence / silence and back. Think about it: the light gets shined through a prism, or through from the soul, the plates turn over each other, but where does the paleospectrophony end? It ultimately has to end in a specific timeframe, for without sound conceptions of aural phenomena are nothing at all, and 90 minutes is seemingly the maximum one can take of this development. The audio detective’s toolkit also remains a stimulating thing to emote.

The film itself is great, just great: an abundance of narratives, well shot, depicting much of the traditions of the Icelandic lifestyle as it rises to prominence, in the various cadences of the spectacle. The black and white intro fades and the cast credits perk up your attention, as well as emphasise the brittle colour coding of ice and its visuality – is it any wonder, I remember, why there is a higher suicide rate in Siberia? It’s an illustrious yet limited palette that tips totals, and names: the lovely Heathered Pearls; the esteemed Ryuichi Sakamoto; the magnificent Goldmund, Keith Keniff’s solo piano alias; the ocean deep Loscil – the visuals are strikingly at ennui with the films’ infrastructure – as an exploration of the banally fragile, and this metaphor runs, rings and rallies true for the majority of scenes in the Outliers Vol.1 ouevre.

The exploration begins in Rejyavik in Martin’s house, where a group of the photographically minded among the team are staying. “Mentally, we’ve been on this trip for 6 months already” / “It’s a strange feeling setting out from the same place, trying to get together as a crew” states Kim Holterland in the first car scene. Thin shoots fray in the wind; sun beats across a mountain; water splays over a bed of rocks. It’s all beautiful stuff to see, and not in the least bit hackneyed with the knowing the sounds have been brought to life in great synchrony. “This landscape is unlike anything any of us have ever seen”.

“It feels as if our creative ambition and collective spirit act as some kind of emotional glue” Kim says of the webcam / photos on web state of affairs these two photographers share before starting a real life friendship. Certainly, one can draw parallels with how the music and formatting relationship benefits from outside involvement, as much as real life doings benefits from real life interactions from what was originally virtual reality. The internalised dogma to counter-realities as a result of seeing little of what’s outside the base sphere is also touched upon; Tim Navis explains how his Dad was a pilot but would never fly anywhere, “he’d always drive. When you fly you’re just going from point A to point B” – you don’t get to see what light of the refractive assuaging prism arises out of experience that would otherwise be killed by anxiety.

“As long as I’m using my hands in creation and whether it’s for profit or not profit, I’m a pretty happy guy” Navis says. This really puts in perspective the fundamentals of the whole project and its projections. You’re getting to hear about, while an array of stock ideas on the creative life, in a context where you can make use of them for repeated watches. They are delivered with wit, with humility, with care. Not to mention this is the first time I’ve really been able to traduce paleospectrophony – or just music as images extensions – normally I listen to sound as purely sound, and imagine the rest. Ocean waves crash in one image / sound combination, for instance, and give me an opening into synaesthesia.

“Outliers Vol.1″ is a special film, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it besides affection, except to quote Holterland once more. “…Something too beautiful and magical to exist without having been created.” This is the best epoch gleaned. You have to act to react, and without reaction, there is no action.[/quote]

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/var...ers-vol-1/

White Blush - White Blush

“True love never dies”, so it begins. Sonically, socking it to Eurythmics splatter-graphed with Zola Jesus, miking it up with Liz Harris esque vocals. You’ll know I love Liz for her music, while my love for Goth pomp is less known, and White Blush is ascertained to please those venturing into her sound from here, and that of White Blush’s necessarily from the Indie market.

These beats are rife with overweight flea infestation so that they scuttle along with a het-up in link to the glamorous get-up of the cherry mascara vocals and synthesizers. “Jolene” is especially gloopy, an ode to the summer spitting splendour of artists like : papercutz and their “Heart Shaped Rock” antithesis to sorbet softness. “Wait”, comparatively, douses the flames of Techno-discolour with a wall of tender female vox counter-played against gained male snippets.

It’s not all harmonic reverie, though: “808 Myst” goes discord-tastic with a stepper rhythm, later giving way to Tangerine Dream-like chords that sit on top then get reshuffled into the tonality deck. The effects are mesmerizing, like a Murman rising from depths of murky marsh water. It starts to get a bit Students Of Decay-ish by 2 minutes in, while “Juice Of My Heart” sucks at ventricles with a leech-hungry abandon, playing a paradox on itself in the heat.

I’ve been really impressed by this release, and best of all it’s in time for Xmas, and it’s “Name your price” on Bandcamp. Go get some, tame your inner vampire, and let the ghosts of halloween come out at night so you can fixate on what pumps the blood to the mind. Utterly non-forgettable, White Blush turns in a corker here – “heaven is a place on Earth with you”.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/white-blush-st/

Jasper TX - An Index of Failure (Handmade Birds)

Exclusive full stream of the final Jasper TX album An Index of Failure out January 22nd on Handmade Birds

http://experimedia.tumblr.com/post/40257...lbumstream

Good album that.

Resident Advisor's "Ambient Mixes/EPs etc...." topic is a brilliant source of free material. Two finds from there this week come from Bvdub and Biosphere:

Saimonse - Time Of Brock Van Wey



brock van wey – too little too late
bvdub – without a chance to say
bvdub – only the willow remains
bvdub – to live
bvdub – a sisyphean silence
bvdub – descent to the end
bvdub – my skies cry your name
bvdub – nothing you can say
bvdub – nothing like you
bvdub – serenity
east of oceans – 9 winters to tell you
bvdub – my sun shines through your rain
bvdub – love
earth house hold – make it to tomorrow
east of oceans – 1995 to forever

https://soundcloud.com/saimonse/saimonse...ck-van-wey

An exclusive mix by the arctic Ambient pioneer Biosphere



01. Pyrolator – Minimal Tape 1/8 [Ata Tak, 1979]
02. Dome – The Red Tent I [Dome Records, 1980]
03. Throbbing Gristle – Beachy Head [Industrial Records, 1979]
04. B.E.F. – The Old At Rest [Virgin, 1981]
05. Chris And Cosey – Moving Still [Rough Trade, 1981]
06. Colin Newman – Fish Four [4AD, 1981]
07. The Human League – Toyota City [Virgin, 1980]
08. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Progress/Once When I Was Six [Dindisc, 1980]
09. Throbbing Gristle – Distant Dreams (Part Two) [Industrial Records, 1980]
10. Thomas Leer & Robert Rental – Six A.M. [Industrial Records, 1979]
11. Throbbing Gristle – Walkabout [Industrial Records, 1979]
12. Thomas Leer & Robert Rental – The Hard Way In & The Easy Way Out [Industrial Records, 1979]
13. Yellow Magic Orchestra – Castalia [Alfa Records, 1979]
14. Thomas Leer & Robert Rental – Perpetual [Industrial Records, 1979]
15. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Thatness And Thereness [Alfa Records, Inc, 1980]

Listen/320 Mp3 Download

[Statto]

that's a mix for me