Pilot Voyager – The structure is still under construction

So on mornings where I don’t have to go to work, my current routine involves sitting my sofa with my pencils and coffee, doodling away whilst having the Bandcamp app set on the feed of what people have bought who I follow. If I relied on my old method of seeing what catches my eye from the emails Bandcamp send, I probably wouldn’t have tried this since it is one 46 minute piece, though who knows. But anywho, as it happens, it just played, and after about ten minutes, my impressed levels rising and rising, I looked more closely, added to wishlist, played on my bigger speakers the next day, bought.

The highpoint for me is the 10-15 minute section, spine tingling it is. But the whole thing is a very relaxing, exploratory journey in sound. At times it made me think of sitting in a warm bath with no lights except a candle, maybe a lavender scented one (or relaxing smell of your choice).

Highly recommended.

Coral Club – Nowhere Island

Tribal ambient, anyone? Although it’s a given value of ‘ambient.’ We’re not talking William Basinski here.

Coral Club is Alexander Sirenko of Moscow, who is described on this bandcamp page as an ‘electribalist.’ This is a simply brilliant job description. They should offer this at all careers fairs. Every institution should have one.

So, it’s trippy and trancey and ambient in the sense that I can imagine another life where I get to spend evenings in the sun doing percussive things and/or synthy effects and noodles whilst others join me in doing those or other things too, and we all feel proper restored afterwards, in that way that New Age music tries to do. But you can probably dance to some of it as well. I don’t dance these days; take that as a suggestion rather than an instruction born of experience.

Not a million miles from Suns of Arqa? Less Oriental though.

Wasted Cathedral – I’m Gonna Love You ‘Til The End Of Time

I’m probably the last person to comment on the incongruity of artist name versus album title. I actually have nothing useful to say, other than that, to me, the combination is incongruous.

Meh. Regardless, the album is really rather good, and by really rather good, I mean excellent. My only minor quibble is that the short pieces are good enough ideas in their own right to be fleshed out further than they are, but as long as they’re good, right? Right.

The longer pieces are well trancey, which is something I’ve rattled on about loads before so I won’t again, except to say that if you want to lose youself in some monging drone, then this here is for you.

Dude here also does other things – The Switching Yard, The Radiation Flowers, and Shooting Guns.

I actually meant to post this the other day with those other two posts I did, but my mind went blank. There was also another one too, but that isn’t actually released til the 23rd of this month and you all know how I feel about posting stuff that isn’t actually available yet. I’ll try and remember on the 23rd.

Thousand Foot Whale Claw

Sudden ambient phase?

As ever when I do posts on those really obscure artists that I listen to every so often, searching for this has informed me they have music available that I have yet to hear, so I will most definitely be having a browse around Holodeck records Bandcamp page tomorrow (payday!)

But first let me tell you why I love the above embed, Dope Moons Vol. 1.

Actually, I can’t. I just love it. I listened to it again last night in quite a grouchy mood, and it did a very good job of de-grouching me. It’s proper chill out, tracks 1 and 4 are more in the soundscape mould, whereas my favourites, ‘Phobos’ and ‘Ganymede’ are more propulsive in the mode of an album I’ve mentioned before, the wonderful Ambient Dub Vol. 2: Earthjuice which people of a certain bent and generation (bent generation?) will be familiar with.

And because, as mentioned before, I don’t like describing music, I’ll end it there.

The next post will be louder.

Matchess – Seraphastra

As you can tell from the categories I’ve had to devise for these posts, I really don’t like categorizing things. I mean, there’s much about this album that mellows me out, but listen to the clanging guitar at the end of ‘The Need of the Greatest Wealth’ and you’ll agree that any future appearances on ‘Now That’s What I Call a cash cow Ambient LXCVII’ are pretty much ruled out.

Matchess is a one-woman band (Whitney Johnson), so I naturally have an affinity, particularly as it presses so many of my favourite buttons. It pulses, there’s drone and repetition and a lot of low end, and the atmosphere is singular. It’s almost as if Seraphastra is another world that Matchess has taken us to for the duration, a world which welcomes visitors but doesn’t pander to them (my favourite kind of world, in fact). Those of you who are/were familiar with a mid-90’s compilation album called Ambient Dub Vol II – Earthjuice (TommyNooka!) may understand why I’ve got the word ambient in the tags, even though this isn’t ‘ambient dub’ (whatever the bally hell that means). It’s psychedelic in the true meaning of the word, not the genre meaning of the word.

And as ever, it’s the songs which elevate this thing into the realm of great. Each piece is a self contained unit which functions beautifully within its own frame of reference but also contributes to the overall world of the album; they are truly Janus-like in that respect. Indeed, I think the album itself may perform a similar function. I think I’ve just had a germ of an idea for a macro-post.

This was all set to be on my best of 2014 list, and then I discover that it was first released only on cassette in 2013. Is it just me, or are year end lists becoming increasingly irrelevant? Maybe marketing people like them. I’m doing one anyway, but I shall do a ‘discovered in 2014’ list as well.