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

Check this out http://boomkat.com/cds/422019-various-unseen-for-nihon

FTAL Reviewed 005 - June - July 2011

Various Artists - For Nihon
Unseen CD / Download



Strawberry sweet 38-tracker from Keith Kenniff's Helios-famed label, with all benefits, like Fluid Radio's "Kanshin" and Antiopic's "Benefit" compilations, for Japan recovery. Keith's taste always shines through as endearing, multifaceted and further exploring electronics than the aforementioned predecessor compilations. Last Days and Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd's contributions are life-affirming rarities, edging crumbling technicolour guitar against 'verb-heavy soundscape crush. Cohesion is of equal discordance contemporaneously, but given that quick-fire assembly obviously contrasts Keniff's long-realised albums, that can be excused in this case. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for piano that this album brightened the mind so highly. Or it's simply since the music's friendlier than namaste to good samaritans.

http://www.unseen.bigcartel.com/product/...on-various

Donato Wharton - A White Rainbow Spanning The Dark
Serein CD / Vinyl / Download



From getting besotted with Nest's "Retold" in 2010, Donato Wharton's "Seasons" opener initially left me disappointed. Gone are dreamboat tapestries; in its place fragmented aural-documentary; guitar and booth door opening, closing; being kept ajar by wind, field recs and hiss spliced with silence. Continuity lacking, the hollowness did reinforce a buyers' adage as I bagged it one-click: don't underestimate the power of stock phraseology in any rehashed-press-release-psyche - trust in the source provider and the rewards will be longer. As I stuck with it, it became apparent that Wharton's music is uniquely stylised, Oren Ambarchi-like in its timbre-tatter - and "Breath Held" is definitely worth a fiver for the small Mp3 package. Sometimes the small things are the big things, however expect an intermittent depression.

http://www.serein.co.uk/releases/sere11-...nning-dark

Mystified - Bone Drones 3
Webbed Hand 200 download



Re-processing instruments has less uniqueness in experimental scenes, but don't downcast Mystified's stretched trombone-drones for knockin' on solemnities door. It's two-EP dark/abrade evolutions here work three notes of muted trombone; processed, mixed, with a previous dedication dark ambience for Philip K Dick; reminder to not monopolise or agitprop drones' suspension module. Indeed there's a sciencey pretence about "Bone Drones 3": the sense of weight bearing down from the bass and layer interdependence. It presents minimalism, as calibrated by tension/conundrum, sidechained- always attempting non-stalemate - and in another the sheer bullheadedness of non-conformism rhythmically, a reciprocal void where you fall deep into thistle-like stimulus; gladly with soreness removed.

http://webbedhandrecords.com/wh200-mysti.../#more-620