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----------Amethystium
- Aurorae EP |
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STYLE |
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January
2012
Enigmatic, cinematic electronica.
Aurorae is a moody, timeless EP of evocative electronica threaded
with organic string melodies and textures. The passionate
sounds of Harding fiddle and cello emphasise the celtic aspect
with which Amethystium often invests his music; nostalgic
and wistful, very evocative. The shadow tones and twilight
atmospheres that Amethytium develops so well are strong here:
the opening track Nightfall setting the tone with a low thrumming
beat and deep drone underpinning an ascending string pattern
that swells achingly into heaving sighs. All of the pieces
here develop a similar story: lush, dreamy and full of emotion
- from the dense, stirring tug of Solace through the lowkey
melancholy warmth of Faraway to the gentle Outro where previous
themes are hinted at, distantly recalled with hypnotic brushed
snares and piano overlays. |
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| ARTWORK |
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This
is a digital release, so the artwork comes in jpeg format.
The cover image is an ambiguous swirling of aqua blue green
hues: the northern lights animating a night sky; reflections,
ice crystals, submerged details in water; ethereal forest
forms with glowing auras ... Aimee Stewart is the artist -
her delightful website Fox
Fires is well worth a visit. A darker monochrome image
also is included upon which credits and technical details
are listed. There is no tracklist. |
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| OVERALL |
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This
latest EP from Norway's Øystein Ramfjord finds Amethystium
on top form. A self-released collection of four tracks;
very beautiful yet subtle - pure, refined Amethystium. The
understated, crepuscular elegance recalls the Autumn Interlude
EP from way back in Øystein's days as an mp3.com
rising star. Now, of course with a string of albums behind
him, the technical quality and depth of the music is greatly
developed, but Aurorae demonstrates that the passion is
still burning strong. The music can be heard at Amethytium's
Youtube channel and can be purchased directly through
the official
Amethytium web site where you can set your own price!
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----------Katyayani
- Four Seasons |
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STYLE |
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February
2012
Downtempo nujazz-hiphop fusion songs with both male and
female vocals.
Four Seasons brings together a smooth blend of warm keyboards;
lightly trembling, sonorous vibes; clean, blunt bass lines;
sax and brass flourishes with crisp drums and a sophisticated,
contemporary lounge atmosphere. Musical arrangements are
uncluttered and light, for the most part built around meandering
epiano/Rhodes melodies with subtle electronic bass underpinning.
Singer Catarina Ahlsrand-Jalonen has an intimate, lucid
vocal style: clear, wistful and slightly dreamy. Husband
Tapani Jalonen by contrast, raps with a laid-back, near
spoken style - close up and confiding, philosophising, street
savvy. The oufit is completed with Jaakko Martikainen providing
tenor soprano, sax and flute and Juha Tuukkanen manipulating
beats and samples. There are frequent retro references:
fashionable sixties nods; gritty hiphop passion from the
nineties ‘golden era’; timeless heartfelt jazz
improvisations and modern urban colouring. |
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| ARTWORK |
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The
front cover image for Four Seasons shows a concrete jetty
thrust out against a steely sea, hazy grey sky above. Curling
up from the lower left corner is a tangle of graphic curls
stretching in another shade of pale grey to the edges of the
sky. The rear cover provides track titles along with writing
and performance credits. The package is a digipack of two
panels. |
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| OVERALL |
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Finland
based Katyayani take their name from a word of Sanskrit origin
meaning “The one who incarnated to help the Devas”,
it is also names the sixth form of the Hindu goddess Durga,
associated with courage. The band release their debut Four
Seasons both digitally and in cd- format (digipack) via Geisha
Music with samples on their Soundcloud
page at and at Myspace.
Biographical material explains that Catarina met jazz pianist
and husband to-be Tapani Jalonen in 1998 whereupon they started
out performing as a jazz standards cover duo. Live success
subsequently led to writing and performing their own material.
In 2003 Juha Tuukkanen, founder of Spyritual joined the act
and with fourth member Jaakko Martikainen, the band was complete.
Geisha Music is an unusual platform, official information
explains: Geisha Music beta version offers free online multisampler,
synthesizer and mixer with features such as wav export, mp3
import and SoundCloud integration. It also offers worldwide
digital distribution and releases gemstone albums created
by its community.
Geisha Music Soundlab is at its best while creating loops
and musical ingredients, which can later be mixed and finalized
DIY style into full length masterpieces with one´s own
favorite software. There are plenty of sounds and loops
to play with. Feel free to use sounds and loops in Geisha
Music Sound Library as a part of your next creation. |
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| TECHNICAL
DATA |
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Contact: info@geishamusic.com
Website: www.geishamusic.com |
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----------James
Murray - Floods |
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STYLE |
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February
2012
Electro-acoustic soundscapes.
Sparingly developed melodic motifs slowly amass within ambient
spaces: simple repeating refrains reverberating in rhythmic
regularity; lustrous synthetic textures coruscating in beds
of structured noise; subtle pulses amongst layered loops
and sonic disturbances. It's often hard to say what sources
are used to produce the closely interwoven sounds of Floods:
there are hints of subtle guitar fingering with the more
distinct sounds of fingers sliding across wound strings;
there are zones of hiss and sleeting grains of crackle;
chimes and bell-like tones tinkle in hypnotic cycles; bass
lines lurk somewhere between struck notes and dull drones;
very distant piano touches or muted keyboard phrases arise
out of rippling arpeggios and fog banks. |
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| ARTWORK |
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Floods
arrives in a "custom designed 4-panel recycled card sleeve".
A tactile matt beige with rubber-stamped lettering; the package
has a distinctive hand crafted feel to it. Simple and uncluttered,
the sleeve in two folding panels with minimal writing, performance
and production credits attributed to James Murray, There is
a dedication: To the waters. A few poetic lines appear to
hold the centre of the right section, but these are track
titles: evocative, pithy, melancholy. Each copy conceals a
folded, signed insert of similar rough card with the words
SEEK HIGH GROUND on the front. Promotional material explains
that "Everything has been sourced as ecologically responsibly
as possible here in the UK." |
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| OVERALL |
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James
Murray releases Floods on his own Slowcraft Records label.
This delicate release follows up on his debut Where Edges
Meet, stripping away the beats and allowing the meandering,
introspective nature of the music to fall into melancholy
reverie. The seven tracks have a similar nature and attitude,
maintaining a constant mood to positive effect from start
to finish. The mesmeric Greenlands has, perhaps, a mildly
brighter atmosphere, a faint break in the clouds, a glimmer
of sunshine upon the geometries of raindrops - Murray revisits
this theme toward the end of the album in the more subdued
Greenlands Lament where the signature sequence is now deep
below the surface - a greyer outlook, a more washed out
palette.
Find out more, listen to tracks and purchase the album at
James'
website. |
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----------Olan
Mill - Paths |
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STYLE |
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March
2012
Contemporary classical, melodic ambient.
Paths is a deep immersion of shadowy, melancholy beauty:
lush, emotive strings; entangled piano lines; dense processed
drones. Initially, Paths sweeps into place with aching violin
layers and subtle electronic underpinning that well exemplify
the promotional comment about Olan Mill "reconciling
the ambition of an orchestra with the limitations of a duo."
Indeed it is the classical instrumentation that most strikingly
greets the listener, until Amber Balanced that is: here
a disquieting mass of tone wells up threaded through with
less distinct bowed elements and peculiar sonic ephemera
- dark and brooding, insistent, grave. The six pieces of
Paths were originally captured from two live performances
in Bristol and Reading in late 2010. Source material was
then "sewn together" from the multi-track recordings
into the resultant lush compositions suggestive of a much
larger ensemble. |
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| ARTWORK |
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I
haven't seen the packaging for Paths, but I understand that
this release is presented with a 4 panel letter pressed CD,
a booklet written by Olan Mill in collaboration with Vincent
Vocoder Voice for Olan Mill, limited edition 12x12 prints,
A2 poster and interconnected artwork by Jurgen Heckel. All
collated in the characteristic hand stamped, sealed and numbered
Facture fashion. |
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| OVERALL |
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Olan
Mill, despite their breadth of sound, is duo Alex Smalley
and Svitlana Samoylenko. Their music has been described
as "unashamedly romantic" - it certainly has a
cinematic passion that tugs at the heart and invites closed-eye
reflection. Released on the Fluid Audio sub-label Fac-ture
Records, Paths comes as follow-up to the duo's striking
debut Pine, which was put out in 2010 on Serein. This limited
edition album comes as a run of only 300 copies on 180gm
vinyl mastered by Shawn Hatfield. Tracks range from just
over two minutes to eight minutes twelve seconds. Both sides
of the album have two shorter recordings followed by a longer
piece where ambient dronescapes are given the space to unfold
in unhurried evolution. You can experience Olan Mill at
Soundcloud
and at the Fac-ture
webite. The Olan
Mill site is well worth a visit also: here you can find
information on live performances, other projects and available
releases. |
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----------Various
Artists - Greenosophy |
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STYLE |
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March
2012
Hypnotic ambient and progressive trance.
The album emerges from silence into shifting breezes of
sonic turbulence; plastic disturbances and a reverberating
female voice musing in French lead the listener onward and
into a harmonious ambient floatation zone. Seamlessly tracks
segue one into the next, Rildrim's Tear-blind eyes building
a disquieting sense of mystery with intermittent beat structures
that seems to fall with a sigh into the welcoming light
of Liquid Stranger's Minimum. Sparkling fluid movements
and lazy downtempo grooves develop into denser beat structures
toward the middle of the album: a throbbing bass form from
Sesen on shadowy ground; a brooding international montage
from Cell; subtle dub elements and rhythms courtesy of Ajja.
Tripswitch lays a percolating sequencer pattern upon a regular
kick throb - stratospheric effects and washes swirling in
tandem; a mesmerising bass pulse builds into a climactic
Solar Fields epic. The pace winds down once more, a ponderous
low bpm piece with a sombre tone and melancholy interludes
from Miktek leading into organic ambience of the penultimate
Folding Pattern from James Murray. Cygna concludes the collection
with a gamelan-like bell and chime composition backlit with
burbling arpeggiations; acoustic guitar and strings shift
moods midway before everything ebbs away into smooth drones
and gathering silence. |
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| ARTWORK |
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Greenosophy
arrives in a sharp three panel digipack of icy metal hues.
A casual glance might mislead a viewer into assuming that
the artwork is a series of cutting edge 3D renders wherein
chrome or glass spheres ride arcing wire supports like some
intricate metal light fixture. Actually the images are close-up
photographs of dandelion seed heads bejewelled with water
droplets. Beautifully captured and displayed upon a flat grey
ground, each image dives in closer and deeper leading to the
words 'are we interconnected bubbles?' The theme of droplets,
bubbles, intricate filaments and natural abstraction continues
into the sixteen page booklet concealed in the end section
of the package. Each track has a booklet page with credits
and image; thanks, inspiration and technical details bring
up the rear. |
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| OVERALL |
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Ultimae
present Greenosophy as a collection masterminded by 'our
Swiss activist dj Cyril Miserez aka Mizoo.' The eleven recordings
gathered here are especially immersive and unhurried, unfolding
like natural forms into striking clarity. Most pieces are
well over the five minute mark, Cell's Idea Spiral (a live
edit from the Ozora Festival) peaking at eleven minutes
and forty six seconds. Ultimae mainstay Solar Fields provides
the next longest track with almost nine minutes of Cobalt
2.0. Other familiar artists and those less regular at Ultimae
include Liquid Stranger, Cell, Tripswitch, James Murray,
Mnnsk & Mizoo, Rildrim, Sesen, Ajja, Miktek and Cygna.
The Ultimae
web site holds sounds for each track and there is a
video
presentation at Youtube that previews the whole collection. |
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----------Mythos
- Quasar |
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STYLE |
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March 2012
Progressive electronica and synth rock.
Mythos hereby continue their ongoing re-releasing of classic
albums. Quasar, originally delivered back in 1980, is something
of a Janus album: looking backward it recalls the progressive
rock roots of the band - Tull-like flutes, dramatic Krautrock
moogs and ambitious melodic structures; looking forward it
hints at the synth-pop explosion that was to dominate a lot
of early eighties music. Berlin school music as well as much
of the popular rock output was undergoing swift change at
this time and Mythos seem to capture the whole spectrum of
that change here on Quasar. There are some fairly heavy sections
where chugging rhythms and live drums propel earnest male
vocals and zappy, squirting leads. Other tracks have a Teutonic
grandeur, focussing the lengthy pomp of the seventies into
brief three-four minute tracks. Electro-beats of programmed
percussion running in tandem with sequencer patterns form
the back bone of other recordings. |
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| ARTWORK |
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Quasar
has been lovingly repackaged into a sharp digipack of two
panels with a generous sixteen page booklet insert. The outer
cover presents the artwork from the SKY Records vinyl original:
the brittle form of a huge insect held aloft upon a backdrop
of strikingly red craggy hills and distant settlements. The
rear cover holds a tracklist with times alongside. Within,
a studio shot under twin lighting umbrellas hides behind the
booklet; a simple logo on black ground to the right. The booklet
holds a fascinating collection of performance photographs
and gear shots that nicely reveal something of the musical
environment of the band. There is also a lengthy explanation
in both German and English of how the album came about. Details
are revealed of the recording challenges of the time and the
choices facing a band with personnel concerns and an exploding
array of new technological options. |
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| OVERALL |
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Quasar
was released originally via Hamburg label Sky Records at a
turning point for Mythos - the third line-up was approaching
its end with a couple of vinyl albums under their belt - a
plethora of novel kit items was opening up - musical styles
were rapidly evolving. The 1980 release of this follow-up
to the previous year's Concrete City straddles this period
of flux. Mythos main man Stephan Kaske began with a seasoned
touring band and concluded as pretty much a one-man outfit
producing the new album with studio musicians. There are eleven
tracks here from the original release, most a little under
or over the four minute mark - pithy concentrates and brief
gutsy statements as opposed to the lengthy extravaganzas of
the previous decade. The album concludes with an almost ten
minute montage of Mythos radio, TV and film music jingles.
This record is one of the few Mythos creations that has thus
far eluded re-release (along with 1981's Grand Prix) - catch
it now restored to its former glory |
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| TECHNICAL
DATA |
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Label:
Sireena
Websites: www.Sireena.de
and www.mythos-music-berlin.de
Purchase: Sireena
Amazon
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