That Black - Timelessness

i frequently throw around words like "epic" "cinematic" and "eclectic" when describing some of my favorite music, but every now and then an album comes along which completely redefines these words. not only is Timelessness by russian producer Vlad Kreymer brilliantly produced and the thrill to listen to, in my opinion it defines a new genre of eclectic ambient music. combining acoustic sounds of accordion, violin, guitar and vocals with tasteful synths, field recording mash-ups and ingenius sound design, this album is an expansive journey through nostalgic dreamscapes not easily forgotten.

hiddenplace music mix 7: Muttley: Stepping Into The Sun

Download mp3 110MB 320kbps

for the next addition to the hiddenplace mix series, a very special guest mix from Muttley of SubVersion. in this mix, as in many of his other mixes, Muttley goes beyond the typical crossfaded playlist and creates what is more of a musical sound collage. ambient, modern classical, electro-acoustic with some unexpected moments.

Muttley writes:
Comfort without coordination levers haphazard states. You can be safe for a short while but then a tornado appears out of nowhere to blow off your roof. Granted, we can have defences to shield us from damage. Nonetheless, ambiguity can fluster. "Stepping Into The Sun" interlocks blind, brazen spurts with the ability to process electronically generated sounds from recognisable phenomena, illuminating some of the capricious invisible forces that impact on it.

To recharge one's batteries, it's advised you listen as if you had a gig buddy, as that's how this came to be. There are lyrics in the tracks - Last Days' "This Is Not An Ending" stops my black clouds descending from the explosive noise of Paul Bradley's "Somatic", and Ulrich Schnauss' "kissing you goodbye" from "Gone Forever" marks a departure from social allegiance.

Walking to and from the city centre, I encounter palpitations which make it hard for me to breathe, whereby when complications pursue my consciousness, I require someone to set me straight when my brain turns inwards on itself. Future outcomes flash across my mind, and certain remove existence, blacking out in image. Rarely are they slowly unfolding, so snap decisions whether not making the moves I envision are right or wrong, causes reservoirs of belittling gesture to flow in multidirectional sprays, culminating with "for no apparent reason" from remembering Busdriver lyrics, or comparable psychoanalytical hinges.

If this summation sounds convoluted, it fits the event scripture of my panic attacks. An online friend from over the Atlantic says she would go out with me if in the area - the nous for this, and the component recontextualised from virtual to physical, moulding my limitations into a dialogue between history and the "now". "Stepping Into The Sun" is just that: a soundtrack I can invest with genuine power and significance, and one I hope buffers your confidence levels in tandem.

tracklist:
01. Craig Armstrong - Delay (from Piano Works)
02. Relmic Statute - A Template For Sand And Forest (from Morning Tapes)
03. Nest - Cad Goddeu (Revised) (from Retold)
04. Bas Van Huizen - Zwembocht (from Ontgalman)
05. Ian Hawgood - Let's Dance Until The Shallows Break (from Wolfskin)
06. Last Days - This Is Not An Ending (from The Safety Of The North)
07. Paul Bradley - Somatic (from Somatic)
08. RST - Tinn Sun II (from Tomorrow's Void)
09. August Stars - Inland Rainfall (from Midwinter)
10. Mister Vapor & Altus - Sparse Reaches (from Falling Out Of Orbit)
11. Bad Company - Bullit Time [stretched] (from Bullit Time)
12. Grouper - Down To The Ocean (from Cover The Windows And The Walls)
13. Relmic Statute - Illustration (from Morning Tapes)
14. P.D Wilder - Purple Brings Out The Green (from F/M)
15. Duncan Ó Ceallaigh - Low Across Dawn Waters (from Distant Voices, Still Lives)
16. Nest - Far From Land (from Retold)
17. Robedoor & Pochaunted - Roman Nose (from Hunted Gathering)
18. Jesu - Storm Comin' On (from Lifeline)
19. Ulrich Schnauss - Gone Forever (from In A Strangely Isolated Place)
20. Tori Amos - Northern Lad (from From The Choirgirl Hotel)
...

Tetarise – k.a.m.a.

k.a.m.a. is a thrilling journey made of ambient/downtempo/idm infused with an epic soundtrack style. inspired by blurred memories of the past, the music is melancholy, euphoric, contemplative, frantic, moody and filled with emotion. quiet moments of gentle ambience contrast starkly with glitchy beat-driven passages, soaring leads and rasor-sharp synths.
"Unsaid words, unfinished deeds, hopelessly lost time - all of it is like an echo with a delay fading into compressed and distorted reverberation"

Marc Doudin - Affection

"Marc's gorgeous crystalline ambiance blends beautifully with pianos and haunting reverb to form Affection, his latest masterpiece."
lovely minimalistic tones best played at very low volume late at night. Affection, as well as several other of Marc's EPs are available at the Wise Owl Records netlabel.

Beat magazine article

a special message for my german-speaking readers:
the latest edition of the german-language Beat magazine, available on newsstands this week, features an article on making music wth the iPhone, and mentions the iPhone performance which i attended last year. along with the article is a photo of me during the performance! you can see a preview of this article and several other sections of the magazine here.
i have subscribed to Beat magazine for the past year and i can personally recommend it. along with the usual gear and software reviews, it features music recommendations and interviews not only with commercial artists, but netaudio and creative commons artists and netlables as well. not only that, the editor in chief @thomasraukamp and main contributor @tokafi are fellow netaudio enthusiasts and good buddies of mine on twitter.

Ergo Phizmiz & Friends - The Faust-Cycle

i interrupt this longer-than-expected pause of hiddenplace music posts to feature what is certainly the most astonishing piece of netaudio i have ever come across. "The Faust-Cycle or, The House of Dr Faustus" is definitively the ultimate piece of sound collage.
completed over a period of 3 years, with a playing time of more than 14 hours(!!), and featuring an long list of collaborators, voice actors and guest musicians, words like "epic" do not even begin to describe the mind-boggling expansiveness of this work.
i usually try to listen to a release several times through before writing a review, but i must admit in this case, i have not yet heard the entire piece all the way through. what i have heard so far consists of surreal, dream-like spoken word narratives, interspersed with even more bizarre sample-based "songs" enveloped in extended passages of sound collage and audio pastiche made from a dizzying array of identifiable and unidentifiable musical pieces and sound sources. the moods range from melancholic to nostalgic, insane to inane, dream-like to nightmarish, classical to common; all unfolding like an opium-induced phantasmagoria played through a dust-covered 1920s phonograph found in an eccentric retired circus performer's attic. this is probably the most inaccessible piece i have featured on hiddenplace music, but certainly a thrilling and epic(?) piece of audio art for hardcore fans of avant-garde sound design.

Proton Kinoun – Apeiron

i actually had several other releases 'in the queue' to write about on this blog, but a new release came to my attention today that is so stunning that i absolutely had to write about it. 'Apeiron' is a new release on Omnitropic, a brand-new ambient and downtempo sublabel of Ektoplazm, who have quickly become one of my favorite new netlabels, as i mentioned previously.
Apeiron, by danish producer Proton Kinoun (aka Kasper Weensgaard), is a breathtaking flight into deep space-- massive slabs of star-dusted ambience, rich, deep, infinitely expanding, and occasionally punctuated by pulsating fractal rhythmic energy. if there was a perfect soundtrack for flying through white-hot, star-forming nebulae, this would be it. an absolute must-have for all fans of organic soundscapes and immersive spacemusic.

The Lights Galaxia - Global EP

a very nice ep came to my inbox a little while ago- global ep by The Lights Galaxia, with production support by Carl Sagan's Ghost who i featured earlier. this release marks the first output from the new netlabel Luxus-Arctica records International, and if this release is any indication, they are off to an very good start.
soft, melodic, and melancholic-- moody guitar and rhodes melodies glide over evolving soundscapes and subdued clicking rhythmic pulses. atmospheric, expansive and 'global' yet intimate and introspective at the same time. beautifully evocative music for autumn.
for a slightly more wordy and very amusing review, head on over to Catching the Waves, who were nice enough to plug this blog as well!

Frequent Sync - Familiar Fields

this morning a massive fog rolled in on the city, so i decided to go out and take some photos, as i am wont to do in the event of unusual or photogenic weather. my soundtrack while photographing the moisture-soaked trees and river was 'Familiar Fields' by Frequent Sync, a collaborative duo between Darren Harper, who's album Time Forgotten i previously featured, and Jacob Newman, who also has a release on Earth Mantra. this album perfectly evokes the otherworldly atmosphere of a landscape obscured in fog. elongated tones and a nearly motionless pace distort time and space in a most pleasantly disorienting way.
the album is published by the seedsound netlabel in high-quality mp3 and streaming, and is also available in lossless flac format on the artist's own website captured space.
UPDATE: the photos i took while listening to Familiar Fields (including the one above) can bee seen here on my flickr page

Darren Harper - Time Forgotten

Time Forgotten is a new release on Earth Mantra, one of my favorite destinations for creative commons ambient music.
floating weightless ambience-- long expansive washes of luminous tones-- distant echoes of the natural world, all mixed to perfection. deep and rich, yet minimal in approach-- ideal music for sleep, meditation, or escaping the third dimension for a time.

Brioskj - Mirror

full-length idm LPs are somewhat of a rarity in the netaudio world, but for those craving a little more than the usual 20-30 minutes of idm goodness, Mirror by Brioskj, the most recent commercial release from Kahvi is a very highly recommended purchase. 59 minutes of the finest kahvi-style ambient idm: beautiful sunny synth melodies, refreshing chillout atmospheres, light fluttering beats, and plenty of "that extra sparkle that Kahvi is famous for." perfect positive moods for bright summer weather.
the album is currently available on iTunes, emusic, Amazon and Rhapsody.

ManMadeMan – Children Of The Light

one of my favorite netlabel discoveries recently is Ektoplazm. they have just about everything i look for in a netlabel-- a simple but distinctive website design, a nice variety of sounds while staying centered on a specific genre (in this case, psytrance), high-quality production values and professional mastering, a reasonable release schedule, plus lossless flac and wav downloads.
one release which i particularly enjoyed recently is Children Of The Light by ManMadeMan. the style is based in Ektoplazm's signature trippy psytrance sound, but also ventures into downtempo, ambient and chillout atmospheres. pulsing synths and beats are deftly combined with reverberated pianos and voices for a thrilling, mind-bending journey. music which is equally at home on the dacefloor, in the lounge, or in your headphones.

hiddenplace music mix 6: Rudy Adrian special

Download mp3 (160kbps, 85MB)

i try to always let the artists know when i feature their music on one of my mixes. when i wrote to New Zealand musician Rudy Adrian that i had featured one of his tracks on my macrocosm mix, he offered to put together a special selection of tracks for my mix series. i've thoroughly enjoyed everything i've heard from Mr Adrian, so i readily agreed. the resulting mix of tracks, taken from a few of his earlier albums, is a blend of soft organic sounds as heard on Desert Realms, well as some more rhythmic, sequencer-based spacemusic. and as a special bonus, Rudy included an exclusive live in-studio improvisation to end the mix. definitely a treat for all fans of synth-based ambient music!

tracklisting:

(00:18) Sub Antarctica from SubAntarctica
(11:57) Kinetic Flow from Kinetic Flow
(31:10) Turquoise from Kinetic Flow
(41:33) Le Songe Du Singe from Kinetic Flow
(54:57) Happy Memories from Kinetic Flow
(59:47) Ancestral Legacy from MoonWater
(63:49) greeting/introduction from Rudy Adrian
(66:30) "Unique track"

photo: Smails Beach, Dunedin, New Zealand by S. M. Stewert

Ten and Tracer - Tsotsitaal

Ten and Tracer is a very prolific netaudio artist with releases on labels such as 8bitpeoples, Zymogen, Archipel, and Rope Swing Cities, as well as numerous remixes. most of his work so far comes from the experimental idm realm - heavily processed bitcrushed glitches and brittle, fractured beats. on hit latest commercial album, he has altered his style quite dramatically, the glitchy clicks and cuts are dissolved into layers of soft pink noise and nestled deeply in a luxurious couch of smooth minimal drones. lovely “opium-ambient-bliss” for unexplored realms of consciousness.
the album is available for free MP3 download (donations welcome!), as well as uncompressed download or cd for a very reasonable price. if you purchase a physical copy of the album, you can choose between several "special editions" which include a book of artwork also created by the artist.

Phillip Wilkerson and Tange - Ege Denizi

i have to admit, the pedal steel guitar is not one of my favorite instruments- the twangy sound often used in country music can really grate on my nerves. but the instrument can also be very effectively used in ambient and atmospheric music, providing subtle textures or smooth and ghostly leads. Gordon Macmillian's contributions to Ege Denizi are a wonderful example of the masterfully subtle use of steel guitar-- the gliding amorphous melodies and swelling textures are couched in Phillip Wilkerson's luminous pads, soothing atmospherics and occasional rhythmic elements. as noted by the earth mantra staff, an immensely beautiful, delicate and transcendent release.