Ambient guitar with: elskavon, and Tristan Welch #Ambient #Drone #Electronic #Guitar

•July 5, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Ambient Sunday is focusing on the guitar this morning. Both artists – elskavon, and Tistan Welch – use guitar in their tracks. Sometimes clearly and sometimes a bit more hidden away. Sit back. Relax. Press play.

elskavon is Chris Bartels from Minneapolis. The track is River (Blue) from his forthcoming Patience EP. It’s a lovely, almost folktronica, track that lets the guitar be plucked gently and wander free. The surround is an IDM treasure trove of organic sounds offering a jittery, clattery, bobbling, babbling brook of sound. He says, “On this track, I used lots of recordings captured in Duluth last year – my friend went up to the area for a day and recorded all sorts of percussive sounds and textures – rocks, water, wood, metal, leaves – anything we could find.” It’s all machine and all organic simultaneously. And awfully cute.

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Bit of concentration required with this one. Tristan Welch is, “a musician, artist and activist based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.” His work is mainly creating soundscapes via electric guitar, treated with electronics. And that’s what you get here, spread across eleven minutes of sound.

Asset / Defect is an ambient drone piece but manages not to be too ‘droney’. It’s more waves of intermingling sound that come, pause, and retreat. You’d not really know there were guitars in here. It’s all been processed around. As a person in recovery, the title of the piece comes from the reckoning of positive and negative personality elements. As such the piece is a very inward looking one. The overall slow vibration of sound encourages a kind of contemplative or meditative air but with a hint of fuzziness that all is not well. A little oasis of near calm in an otherwise noisy over-stimulated world.

Bandcamp (CD available)

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Pub + Techno = Neon Core, and Blind Pharaoh #Acid #Techno #Electronic

•July 4, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Today is pub opening day here in England. There’s one at the top of my road. And we’re not well know as a society of restraint so it’s going to get very messy and noisy very quickly. Think I’m going to skip it in favour of some head battering acid techno from Neon Core and Blind Pharaoh.

Neon Core are Matt Davis and Beaumont Standford from Florida. They have a new Shapeshifter EP out. From this I’m featuring ten minutes of acid pleasure in Shapeshifter 3. This track has a total disregard for anything in the last 20 years or so. This is back to the 90s with a bang acid. Rather Richie Hawtin in its air of casual minimalism. Proper beats. An analogue sounding approach. Acid fizzing and breaking over you in waves. It’s a seductive, psychedelic, disorientating experience. Heavy as anything and utterly captivating.

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Next, Blind Pharaoh. The biog says not entirely helpfully, “From the ashes of our shared past comes the rise of ancient futures.” The track title is the reductive but helpful Strobe / Smoke / Acid. And that’s what you get. A happily old school acid track but with an odd use of old school funky drummer breaks before the acid takes over. It’s a pacey joyous affair. Doesn’t take itself too seriously but covers a range of 90s staples from the synth stabs, breaks and lost shout outs. This really really needs a club for full effect.

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New Music: Hell, it’s paradise · Maybe It’s Love #DeepHouse #Electronic #Techno

•July 3, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Some deep house released today from Hell, it’s paradise.

Hell, it’s paradise is French film director Victor Willems. Although he released a track in 2016 and has done a film soundtrack here’s a track from Heaven Is Near, his first EP.

The track is Maybe It’s Love. It’s a lush, deep, deep house tune that bleeds gently into synth techno. There’s a real romantic streak to it, centering on the movie dialogue in the middle of the track that gives it its name. Beats are synthetic and burbling. Synths have a dramatic and lovelorn quality almost becoming sax or guitar in places. It’s slightly retro in its Vangelis appeal. A widescreen love affair. Doomed of course. But, you know, love hurts. This track, life life, is filled with pleasure and pain.

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Heaven Is Near EP

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Let’s go B-Boy with: Charodey Jeddy – Manifest #HipHop #Breakbeats #Electronic

•July 2, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Break out the pre-Friday grooves in style with Charodey Jeddy. A bit of a B-Boy bust out on Manifest.

Charodey Jeddy is from New York City. Where else, right? There’s a load of break dancers in my local park doing head spins and all manner of funky tumbling. They’d go mad for this one. It’s a big boasty sample set atop some evil breakbeats. And then squally of brass come in at exactly the right moment. Funky, jazzy and lashings of attitude. Bust yo moves people.

Charodey Jeddy says, “This song was specially made for b-boys all over the world. But this doesn’t mean that if you are not somehow involved in this culture, you will not be able to enjoy this groove. The song is filled with tons of energy, and this is exactly what you need to start the summer right!”

From the album Don’t Fix The Breaks Vol 3

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Awkward chill with: Broken Ballerina, and Mi-Lo #Chill #Downtempo #IDM

•July 1, 2020 • Leave a Comment

A couple of chill tracks with something a bit different about them from Broken Ballerina and Mi-Lo.

Broken Ballerina is Jay Westfold from Melbourne, Australia. His background encompasses a common trail through rock and metal before ending up in electronic. His work is about sounds, as opposed to simple tunes. There’s an element of exploration and discovery that makes this a less than usual experience. The track is the strangely titled I Am A Forest.

The inspiration for I Am A Forest is our current situation. He explains that, “On the last weekend before restrictions came in to place for the Covid-19 Pandemic I wanted spend some time in nature and was drawn to a giant Californian Redwood Plantation Near my house. I took a recorder with me, just to see if inspiration struck and I’m glad I did as this is where I captured the field recordings used in this piece.” And yet what we get is something that makes no attempt to be organic or analogue. It’s nature processed through the heart of the machine. Beats are as synthetic as anything and synths bloop around oblivious to what’s going on. IDM awkwardness tumbles through the track shifting sounds in an angular manner.

This is chill constantly interrupted by the life of the machine. He explains that, “without even realising it, I was including this disruptive horn like synth layer punching through in the bass frequencies and little glitches on the periphery to disturb it all. By the end I felt a sense of relief, like I had created something that really felt like a stark representation of our current situation in isolation.” And that isolation ends up being the overwhelming emotion generated by the track. This doesn’t seek to soothe the circumstances but to exemplify them.

Mi-Lo is a London-based bass guitarist. The track is Patient. It’s not the bass focused track you might imagine. It’s a lovely tropical chill. It’s also another track inspired by the current circumstances. Mi-Lo explains that, “This song was made in quarantine as a response to an artistic brief by Plantain Papers magazine. They offered the word “STILL” as a starting point for artists to create and this song is my effort.”

Patient is therefore about waiting rather than being a victim or needing care. It has a central stillness that offers a beautiful oasis of calm. Wood block beats shuffle about with an almost dub sense. And there’s a kind of tropical vibe to the largely wordless vocals. Synths offer a lush melody to an already dreamy track. This is covid-19 as a kind of place for a reverie after which things will in some way be healed. It’s really delightfully beautiful. Enhance your life with this track.

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Study beats with: Dopeman – September #HipHop #Instrumental #Electronic #Chill

•June 30, 2020 • Leave a Comment

It’s the working week so you need some study beats. Like, when did that become a genre? It’s nice and chilled instrumental hip hop to me from Dopeman.

Dopeman returns from Kiel in Northern Germany. He says, “I’m Niklas and I make music on my computer.” Keep on sitting at your computer is all I can say. September is taken from his EP Summer. It’s fabulous. Big phat beats come punding in like the aged jogger. Slow, steady and determined. But all around are wordless joyous vocal elements and banks of synths. The synth piano chords make most of the running and give the whole thing a lovely summer lift. Seriously lovely track.

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Drum and Bass with: Mafspace – Immersion #Electronic #DnB #DrumAndBass

•June 29, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Some Russian drum and bass with a rock attitude by Mafspace on Immersion.

Mafspace is from Saint Petersburg in Russia and mixes guitar with dance. Immersion is filled with opening guitar that has that chiming sense of The Edge and and a strong rock dynamic. Meanwhile the drum and bass beats eventually make their way through. This all gives it an epic sense of self. It’s full of drama and windswept glory. But it just about stops itself going for melodrama through the use of a dirty underlying bass. That gives it an angels with dirty face appeal.

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Ambient Sunday with Illuminine, and Jason Barty #Ambient #Downtempo #AmbientHouse #Minimal

•June 28, 2020 • Leave a Comment

I love Sundays. A bit more relaxed than other days of the week. And I try to do everything to keep it that way and do nothing to get too excited about. This week, though, I’ve a tricky work call this evening. So it’s with relief that I can slip back into Ambient Sunday with Illuminine and Jason Barty.

Illuminine is Flemish composer Kevin Imbrechts from Belgium. He’s a neo-classical artist with elements of post-punk. He’s released a number of albums and also reworks by other artists. For Dear, Piano his initial idea was the same. But this time he decided to ask all the artists who influenced him on his musical journey. Without knowing most of these artists he simply texted them via their socials asking if they wanted to be part of this album.

Here’s Jameson Nathan Jones’ rework of Dear, Utopia. There’s still the crystalline elements of Iceland (where the original was recorded) in the track. It has a delicate glittering beauty and the fragility of your breath in the cold air. It’s all very neo-classical but with a gentle cinematic and organic feel. The three and a half minutes slip by in a trice.

South Africa’s Jason Barty returns with another beautiful track. Waterfall, is as the name implies, inspired by the rushing sound of waterfalls. It opens with an almost Japanese strings sense to everything. All very Zen. But then it gathers a reverberating bass sense of the pool at the base. It also manages a bit of a nod to the past in terms of being confident enough in the chill to use house beats and give it an early 90s ambient house tinge. It has a lovely confidently dubby sense of what’s what and that you’re going to stay the eight minute course in these social media distracted days.

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Mixed blessings with: Non-Functional Harmony, T O C H E, and Max Day #IDM #House #Techno

•June 27, 2020 • Leave a Comment

A mixed set of track today from Non-Functional Harmony, T O C H E, and Max Day with sounds ranging from IDM, techno and House.

Non-Functional Harmony is a Berlin-based producer mainly operating around the fringes of ambient and IDM. But for new track C he’s got Broken Wires in to give it a remix. This takes the original somewhere darker and stranger. Broken Wires does mainly drum and bass. The tack is therefore a fusion of ambient IDM with some drum and bass elements. Gives the track an added dimension. Ambient chords drone away and offer drifting banks of sound. Meanwhile jittery synths scud about with the occasional echoed drum and bass beat for company. This gives it an unsettled and unsettling air. Properly challenging music.

To France next for T O C H E. Not Paris, for a change, but Toulouse. T O C H E are a duo Baptiste and Quentin. Their work is very melodic, blending ambient and prog house. Here’s the title track from their new Prélude Du Désespoir EP (tr. Prelude of Despair). It’s a 90s trance techno track taken down a peg or two into something more ambient and then twisted back up with some contemporary techno beats. TBH, there really isn’t anything very despairing here worthy of a polo neck and a Gauloise.  Instead, the track manages a melancholic epic quality with the banks of synths and beats allowing the track to intermittently soar.

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Finally, back to the UK for Max Day. Inspired by Above & Beyond here’s prog house stormer Drift. This has that uplifting quality of the best prog house but without the need to go for cheap emotion. The found sound backdrop locates it in the here and now. Nonetheless, you can’t help being lifted and charmed by the beguiling, always rising, synth work. And the beats chug away like they need to giving the whole thing a really solid platform. It strikes a properly positive note to start your day.

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Friday’s chilled liquid DnB with: Coded (UK) Again #DnB #DrumAndBass #Liquid

•June 26, 2020 • Leave a Comment

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Let’s head off to the West Country of Friday for a drum and bass supplement from Bristol-based Coded (UK). The track is a lovely liquid drum and bass affair called Again.

The sun is out. The weather is hot. The drinks are cold. And this is just perfect for a late afternoon snifter of your choice. Extra ice in mine, please. This whooshes around for that extra chilled dry ice vibe befoe running off with a light lead line. The beats are kept light but focused. They keep the track vigorous without feeling the need to makes themselves too heavily felt. There’s a bit of vocal for some organic feel but nothing too saccharine.

A fine tune for a fine day.

Coded (UK) · Again

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