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March/April 2007 reviews (A-Z)
Artist: Astrolab
Call me a hippie but there's a lot to be said for sitting on grass on a warm spring day, strumming guitars and smoking funny cigarettes. At least that's what this gorgeous debut from UK band Astrolab sounds like to my ears. These are pastoral, folksy, gently psychedelic songs and instrumentals turned into ambient pop gold thanks to a special sense of space and the brilliantly subtle use of looped beats, synths and clever sound design. Vocalist Kim Chandler sings like an angel and the guitars and keys fall like dappled sunlight through trees, coalescing just enough to create musical structures you can recognise while still leaving plenty to the imagination. Feel the love, baby. Rating: 4.5/5
Artist: Bombay Dub Orchestra
This is a slickly produced brand of loungey world beat that, superficially at least, echoes Aussie label One World Music and its Zen Connection series. There's luscious strings, sweet flutes and Vedic vocal sounds, relaxed beats and tablas, bits of piano and slide guitar and sundry other colourings. Despite the organic sound and strong ethnic roots of these tunes, the digital patterns and textures of club music are still detectable for those with sharp enough ears. Bombay Dub Orchestra has a little more pop appeal than most albums of its ilk, a plus or a minus depending on your sensibilities. There's no denying the duo's excellent craft but, really, there's nothing here we haven't heard before. Rating: 2.5/5
Artist: King Never
I don't know whether "purist" is the word but Californian ambient guitarist King Never takes pride in choosing the riskier path of recording his tracks live, with no further editing or overdubs. With his electric guitar, effects and loop machines he creates a seductive and surprisingly broad palate of nocturnal sounds on Lullabies And Sleepless Nights. It's beatless and mostly gentle, shifting between tonal and slightly dissonant. There's the odd burst of jagged distortion just in case, I presume, you've nodded off too early. This is often impressive and eerily beautiful stuff and not just for guitar fans by any means. Rating 3.5/5
ORANGE CRUSH
Free music anyone? Net label Archaic Horizon has taken the concept of the digital download-only label a step further by offering all seven of its releases for free. The roster of artists is international and intriguingly there's nothing on the website that indicates the label's geographic location. Which begs the question: does that matter anymore? Here's a sample of the catalogue currently available at www.archaichorizon.com. Orange Crush is a Norwegian composer whose slow ambient pop instrumentals are lyrical, a little sad, and gently trance-inducing. His new album The Fields is a wondrous thing, a tone poem for autumn spread over 13 varied tracks. Like Boards Of Canada he wobbles his pitches and artificially ages his sounds to give them the vague fuzziness of fading memories. The good news is that he does it his own way so he's not mimicking anyone. The beats lack the brittleness of classic B.O.C. for one thing, and his synth tones are consistently warm. Fluffy yet never lightweight, this is a highly seductive trip and every play offers more revelations. Rating: 4.5/5 New Zealand act Sora Shima has produced a strange, shadowy, beatless 4-track e.p. of processed guitar ambience that hovers between tonal and dissonant. The first three tracks barely begin before dissolving back into silence. The closing track "Afternoon Epiphany" is more engaging and passes through several distinct phases, its length better suited the band's glacial style. In the end Distancing sounds like a taster for something more substantial to come. More please. Rating: 3/5 The Californian-based Renu's fondness for crisp, lumbering hop hop beats is clearly evident on his latest e.p. Hello How Are You. Fleshing out the beats are retro-sounding analogue keys and synths, best heard on "Come In And Sleep With The Moon" with its sunny, jazzy major-seventh chords. The closing "Monotonic Moonbeam" is the other highlight here, a beatless and nostalgic piece of retro-ambience with wafting melodies and a pastoral feel that suggests Eno circa Another Green World. Rating: 3/5
SLOW DANCING SOCIETY
Aussie-based Hidden Shoal Recordings is pioneering the brave new world of labels dedicated to digital download albums, dispensing with expensive CD production altogether. With a broad and open-ended repertoire of independent artists from around the world it seems the only criteria is quality. Among the releases so far are several examples of what you might call ambient or downtempo. The pick of the bunch is the sublime debut album of Slow Dancing Society, the one-man show of Washington-based composer Drew Sullivan. The Sound Of Lights When Dim is very gentle yet surprisingly melodic for music so understated. He uses various combinations of piano, stately organ, synthetic tones and clicks, and guitars in various guises. The unusual intimacy of his compositions is reflected in the wonderful titles: "How Life Was Meant To Be Lived", "A Lonesome Sentiment", you get the drift. "A Song That Will Help You Remember To Forget" overlays multiple guitar motifs on a subtle bed of keys with such tenderness it may well bring a tear to your eye. This is mesmerising stuff, thoroughly addictive and, yes, best played when the lights are rather less than bright. Rating: 5/5 Hailing from Germany, Sankt Otten does a slightly grungy brand of jazzy, electronic soundtrack music that wouldn't be out of place in the worlds of David Lynch, Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone. String sounds are effective although understated, and the electric guitar lines have a suitably cinematic twang that evoke a wide range of images: sleazy motels, baking desert vistas, doomed French love affairs. These twelve instrumentals are retro of sorts but Otten is cleverer than someone merely quoting the past. His brittle and sometimes thundering drum loops are very much of the digital age, as are the subtle bleeps and lo-fi synthetics. There's also a bristling tension just below the surface that seems ready to explode but never quite does. Wir Koennen Ja Freunde Bleiben is imaginary movie music for the mind, an often striking if uneasy listen. Rating: 3.5/5 Also new from Hidden Shoal is Somewhere Someone Else by Wes Willenbring. Of the three HSR albums reviewed here this is the most landscaped in an ambient sense and also the most sombre. He uses ringing drones and hovering strings to good effect on "Lost Illusions" and "As You Fade Away", over which he sprinkles some lovely electric guitar figures. The overall picture is a fairly monochrome one, with some lonely piano poking through the gloom on "Aperture" and "In A Quiet Dark Room". As the album's title suggests there is an overall sense of alienation and loss in these instrumentals, even death on "While My Lungs Fill With Water". Intelligent music, unquestionably dark, and not for the easily distracted. Rating: 3.5/5
Artist: Sounds From The Ground
This pioneering UK duo's 4th album on Waveform is their most restrained release to date, with a surprisingly soft-edged ambience to many of the grooves. High Rising didn't register with me at all on the first few listens, perhaps because my expectations were for the crisp, epic, exotic style of ambient dub that SFTG pioneered in the 1990's. Upon further listening it seems the colour is still there, just more muted. Often muted, too, is the famously big bottom end. Given time some of these tracks do sink their hooks in, like the smooching "Beautiful Feeling" and the glistening ambient techno of "Modo". Towards the end we hit "Speedbumps", a textbook Sounds From The Ground track with its big, bright, spinning melody and crisp, driving dubby groove that's just the ticket for long-time fans. Overall this is a tad disappointing and for newcomers the earlier Terra Firma (1996) would be a better place to start. Rating: 3/5
Artist: Various
Interchill releases tend to get filed under psy-chill or dub these days, which is a barely passable description of the Canadian label's lastest release Bliminal. It's a product of the same open-ended philosophy that defined past label compilations such as Magnetic Blue (1998) and Dissolving Clouds (2005). On the psy-chill front we hear superior examples by Slackbaba and Hibernation - muscular rhythms, strong chord progressions and celestial melodies. There's chilled but spiky mid-tempo electro hybrids from Gaudi and Evan Marc. The Danish composer Moravec evokes early Aphex Twin synths on the lovely "Kedelstarrt". A couple of the distorted glitch-based tracks border on painful to the ears - perhaps your definition of chill but not mine. Closing the album is an exquisite, luminous piece of environmental ambience from label regular Ishq. By turns intriguing, beautiful, adventurous, annoying - in other words, another good Interchill comp. Rating: 3.5/5
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