Sylvie Walder and entia non (James McDougall) are well-known names in the netlabel-world and beyond. Sylvie Walder released collaboration-albums with Phillip Wilkerson, Siegmar Fricke, and “_” (as Kakitsubata). entia non has released solo-works on test tube, IOD, u-cover, Resting Bell and contributions on compilations for duckbay and Slow Flow Recs.

On “bewilderment“ Sylvie and James create a rich and deep organic sound-cosmos. Droning background-layers, instrumental fragments, field recordings, voices, athmospheric glitches and crackles, all assembled to a breathing, living collage. Especially the first three tracks work with this sound-model. Based on Sylvie’s piano recordings, James built up an impressive ambience by processing, re-arranging and re-structuring the material. The last track “le petit lac“ is more guided by Sylvie’s piano playing with only very subtle accouterments and mastering by James. The artists cooperate together over the huge distance between France and Australia, but the result actually sounds like they have sit together in the same studio and knew eath other since their school days.

Published by Resting Bell netlabel. Download from here.

Excerpts:

• un soir d’octobre
• le petit lac

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Matúš Mikula, aka 900piesek, è slovacco, uno dei giovani musicisti elettroacustici europei che creano una sorta di science fiction ambient con un po’ di nostalgia degli anni ‘70.

L’album, dal titolo Dea Varanus, è pubblicato da Test Tube ed è scaricabile qui.

All four tracks emanate sound through a dense and foggy underwater-like world… as if we were in a different dimension. Audio data is served to you using computers and machines from another time. Referencially, this is ambient electronics circa 1970’s, while some keyboards sound definitely like Vangelis, Blade Runner period, which is actually very appropriate.

Dear listener, we recommend the use of headphones throughout this journey, as the fine subtleties of the atmospheric and environmental audio pieces you’re hearing will surely gain much detail simply because of their use.
This is a ‘vintage modern classic’, with drones. Enjoy. - [Pedro Leitão]

Excerpts:

• 900piesek - Ra

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Ok, un po’ di tranquillità dopo lo sforzo organizzativo del Premio Nazionale delle Arti.

Eno ha concepito questa musica nel 1998 per una installazione realizzata in collaborazione con Jiri Prihoda a Praga. Il CD risultante è stato poi venduto a un’asta di beneficenza per £ 400 nel Gennaio 2001.

Si tratta di una lunga traccia ambient (un’ora di musica) in cui varie linee melodiche in loop con durate diverse vengono sovrapposte casualmente, nel classico stile della musica generativa di Eno. Il risultato sonoro è simile a Music for Airport, ma privo di loop sensibili e con la differenza che qui gli interventi sono ancora più radi. Ne risulta un insieme che evolve molto lentamente, sempre diverso ma sempre uguale.

Ve ne proponiamo un estratto di circa 15 minuti.

Brian Eno - Excerpt from Music for Prague (1998)

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Ben Stepner costruisce atmosfere meditative tramite chitarra e computer. Semplice ambient music, sotto molti aspetti banale, ma vengo sempre colpito dal potere della consonanza.

Qui non si parla di tonalità e nemmeno di modalità, ma solo di sovrapposizioni di armonici che a volte (non a tutti) inducono uno stato di relax.

Sleeping in the Forest è distribuito da Pure Potentiality Records ed è liberamente scaricabile qui.

Un brano come esempio:

• Ben Stepner - 05

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Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) played a very important part in the concept and development of ambient music. One could say that ambient music is not a music to be listened to, but a music to be heard, as a subliminal background creating a soundscape for various places or buildings. Supermarkets and elevators are usually places where a poor music is played, one calls it muzak. Brian Eno’s idea was to conceive a sophisticated musical soundscape instead of this anonymous FM music, and he chose airports as the best places where such a music could be heard and understood, creating an unusual and quiet sonic background among all the noises and announcements of a airport terminal.

Music for Airports is a masterpiece, with its subtle piano tracks, its complex electronic treatments, its choral parts, and its slow and organic development.

In 1998, Point Music, a label directed by Philip Glass, released this amazing interpretation of Music for Airports by Bang on a Can: Robert Black (bass), Lisa Moore (piano, keyboards), Evan Ziporyn (clarinet, bass clarinet), Maya Beiser (cello), Steven Schick (percussion), a choir of female voices and additional musicians playing pipa, flute, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, mandolin and mandocello.

This chamber music ensemble plays Eno’s compositions with fidelity and creativity at the same times. The acoustic instruments create a rich harmonic soundscape and add a very original touch to the original recording.

This peaceful, quiet and slow music is very evocative and poetic: the cover version is as beautiful as the original…

Excerpt from Brian Eno - Music for Airports 1.1 - played by Bang on a Can

Via Just Another Garden

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Searching the old releases from Test Tube, I found this EP by Ubeboet, a sound artist based in Madrid involved in electronic/experimental music since mid 90’s. This work, titled Bleak EP, is dated 2004.

Bleak EP, by Ubeboet, is one of those kind of releases that lives on lasting relationships and on constant reintegration processes, achieving ‘that’ multidimensionality (big word) typical of the acoustic universe, giving so much freedom to the listener, that he (or she) will diminish or amplify the particular singularities of the sound particles that go in and out of the brain.
This work could be very easily integrated into the art of installationism, although never leaving the ‘soundscape’ genre. A constant struggle to arrive (or at least try to) an ideal of ‘musique concrète’. Holding itself to the capturing of sound landscapes, submitting them to a low-frequency treatment, Ubeboet breathes a comforting ‘less is more’ ambient, (re)created and integrated into unhabited sound habitats, or sometimes directly injected into the overcrowded urban territory. Ubeboet rests in the complex world of the ‘anti-fast listening’, where the perception and the raw and naked power of the music are intimately connected. A not-easy, not-clear and not-resolved world, into which we are forced to submerge and seek for the unknown. Highly recommended.
[Bruno Barros]

Two excerpts

• North Wind
• Nocturno (Danny Kreutzfeldt version)

Dowload the whole EP here.

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Qualche novità dalla netlabel test tube. Per una volta c’è un italiano.

David Fungi, from Varese, Italy, is clearly inspired by nature. Field recordings pop up from the initial sounds of “aal_sentieri”, blended with synthetic and metallic electronic sounds which produce the kind of ambience one might recognize from William Basinski. It is this razor edge that defines the strong personality of this recording. Even though “Aal_sentieri” is ambient music, it is also restless, menacing, provokes the listener and gives him a sense of travelling through a mysterious and dark forest. As the piece unfolds through its 23 minutes, the sound layering becomes more complex, while one can only guess the origin of the animal noises underneath. When the path comes to an end, a climax appears in the last 4 minutes, first with a burst of industrial noise and finally an orchestral and cinematic climax, finishing the track. “aal_sentieri” leaves the listener in the company of silence, which in a strange kind of way almost works as a reverberation of the track.  It is not easy to capture one’s imagination like this, but David Fungi has that skill to mix disparate sounds in a coherent manner, making “aal_sentieri” a fine and peculiar release.»
[César A. Laia]

L’album è liberamente scaricabile qui.

• David Fungi - aal_sentieri

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Phantom Channel is a new netlabel devoted to non-commercial, uncompromising ambient music. The first release is a very interesting compilation with 9 tracks by different artists. The music is minimalist but emotional.
You can download the whole here. See below for some excerpts.

Phantom Channel è una nuova etichetta dedicata all’ambient non commerciale e privo di compromessi. In teoria non dovrebbe ospitare quelle musichette idiote e sedative comunemente spacciate per ambient e in effetti la loro prima uscita mantiene le promesse.

Si tratta di una compilation di nove brani e altrettanti artisti scaricabile qui.
Come preview vi mettiamo:

• Mosca - Brand New Polaroid
• Parhelion - Forgotten Outpost

ma se poi volete quelli più duri ascoltatevi questi (e abbiate pazienza perché inizia molto piano)

• Engine7 - A Few Remaining Moments

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Una serie di drone per chitarra dal sapore ambientale (i titoli sono cose come Castello, Roccia, Alberi, Sentiero, Fiume …) in questo album di Brad Mitchell sotto lo pseudonimo di Pocka e pubblicato dalla netlabel lusitana Test Tube.

Pocka - Wanderweg

• Burg - mp3 - streaming audio
• Felsen - mp3 - streaming audio

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Krypton is a solo project of Krzysztof Berg from Szczecin in Poland (born in 1986). He’s been fascinated in sounds since 1999, when he recorded his first track on of most popular music software in that times.

It’s hard to consider krypton’s music – mostly it’s electronic music with enormous variety of deep & atmo sounds. Most often krypton experiments with many different sounds simultaneously, that’s why many people consider his music little “strange”. For a while now, he’s been more focused on the silent & dark melodies, structure and arrangement of his songs. His music is for all people but not for everyone.

[from Krypton’s site on MySpace]

The last work by Krypton is “Silent Drama” published by the netlabel Test Tube.

From Silent Drama

• Silent Drama
• Human Rights
• Croon

Download the whole album
________________________

Personalmente, questa musica eterea mi piace e la ascolto volentieri, ma da un po’ ho dei dubbi sull’artisticità della faccenda. Con i sistemi attuali, mettere in piedi pezzi del genere è maledettamente semplice e non particolarmente innovativo.

Non che la semplicità in sé sia un problema. Anche comporre come Cage era semplice, ma all’epoca aveva un suo senso. Anche i loop del primo Eno erano semplici, ma erano una novità.

D’altra parte, Krypton è piuttosto raffinato, per cui lo segnalo. Chi vivrà vedrà…

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