Cyril Secq & Orla Wren - Branches

Dronarivm: 2016

Can't say I've ever taken in an album of classical guitar music. Have I even dabbled? The closest I can think of is Michael Brook, but his Cobalt Blue was more an ambient thing, his guitar work another layer of timbre (especially that sweet 'Infinite Guitar' layer!). I must have a couple stray examples of the stuff lurking in this pile of music o' mine, yet the fact I can't instantly recall any doesn't bode well for its prospects. Like, is Jam & Spoon's Hispanos In Space really the best I can think of?

And yeah, all those prog-rock dudes for sure lay out some complicated, classically inspired segments in their works. They're still doing it within the confines of prog-rock though, with fellow band members contributing to the overall songcraft. No, I'm talking solo, acoustic, non-folksy, improvisational technical works. With such greats as... um, okay, I don't know anyone in this field. Even bringing up Wiki-Lists draws a complete blank on yours truly. Julian Bream? Xuefei Yang? Craig Ogden? John Williams? (no, not that John Williams) Yeah, I know shit all here. But hey, even doing this cursory research into the subject has jacked a solid info-dump into my brainpan, so there's that.

Which finally brings us to Branches from Cyril Secq and Orla Wren. The former formed the experimental French folk group Astrïd, while the latter often pairs up with acoustic string musicians to make clicky fuzzy abstract ambient folk-pop. I'm assuming the two were at least aware of each others work, as somewhere along the way, Orla roped Cyril into providing guitar work for his 2013 album Book Of The Folded Forest. Mind, several musicians contributed to that one, as is often the case with many Orla Wren albums, but the creative synergy must have held stronger between the two, going into a collaborative project together. Cyril will provide the strings, and Orla will provide the treatments.

No, really, that's about all there is to Branches. Mr. Secq's finger plucking is spacious and unfussy, the very definition of music as like a meandering stream of conscious flow. Or exploring the branching paths on the limb of a tree, as it were. Of the eight tracks, Troisième Branche uses violin strokes rather than acoustic strumming, while Sixième Branche and Huitième Branche mixes the two together. Regarding the types of guitar Cyril uses, 'fraid I can't help you there. As said, I'm woefully under-educated in the intricacies of classical acoustic music. It does all sound quite pleasant though.

As for Orla Wren, it seems as though he's taken a step back in this partnership, his minimalist sounds consisting of static burbles, clicking pops, sprinkling tonks, airy feedback, weird echoes, and the sort of random electronic noises you'd expect of musique concrete. You know, pretentious art! Heh, no, I'm ribbing - Branches doesn't come off nearly as stuffy. It is extremely avante garde though, clearly intended for intellectual sorts more interested in studying minutiae than a little easy-listening enjoyment.

Aythar - Astronautica

Carpe Sonum Records: 2016

Aythar is Tamás Károly Tamás, who- wait, his name without the middle is “Tamás Tamás”! Holy cow, that stupid joke in the Super Mario Brothers movie actually has validity! You know, where the Mario Brothers are in the cop office giving a testimony, and so not Italian Bob Hoskins says his name is “Mario Mario”, while John Leguizamo is Luigi Mario. Because they're the MARIO Brothers, get it, so Mario's full name must be Mario Mario! Cripes, was that movie balls. At least the theatre line-up was almost non-existent, a novel experience after Jurrasic Park was busting all the blocks at the time. Good God is this ever a horribly long, dumb tangent. I promise I'll never do this again ...until I do do this again. (hee, hee, 'doo-doo')

Where was I? Ah, right, Aythar. The alias itself first properly emerged around 2010, but Mr. Tamás has made music for much longer than that. Go to his Bandcamp, you'll find “rudimentary and amateur” productions from as far back as the early '90s. When he finally went more public with his works, it was still by independent means, self-releasing five albums in the span of a half-decade. Still, his ear for Berlin-School ambient and space techno was too good to keep under wraps forever, thus now finding himself on two of the most prominent labels promoting the stuff in Carpe Sonum Records and ...txt. This here Astronautica is his debut album with the former print, and his first physical release period. Well, if you discount old tape stuff never meant for commercial release, but if Aythar somehow becomes as adored as Boards Of Canada, you bet those items will fetch stupid amounts of money!

As the tasty retro cover art implies, Astronautica has its sights squarely on space music, the opening titular cut featuring Apollo 11 radio chatter. Yeah, we've heard these recordings many, many, many times in electronic music, but I never tire of 'em, always drawing me out into the cosmos with those intrepid cosmonauts. What I've also heard before are those opening synth pads, almost a direct lift from the old Pete Namlook track of Pulsar as Pulsation. Because if you're gonna' impress the Fax+ community, it's always best to crib from an obscure track, amirite?

Actually, it's a very tasteful crib, Mr. Tamás making it clear it's intended as an homage. I'll buy that. Aythar even provides a dancefloor version as the original Pulsation EP did, though clearly his Deep-Tech Remix is much sturdier than the hard trance of Transpulsation.

And the rest? Mystical Clouds does the beatless ambient-techno thing. Alien Worlds Part 1 goes widescreen ambient that could make AstroPilot gush, while Part 2 goes more blippy-bloopy as a Detroit techno guy would. Reactor and Space In My Heart stretch further back to the Berlin-School era, while Moon Landing returns to dubbier, Fax+ era ambient with more astro-chatter. All in all, definitely scope out Astronautica if your old-school itch needs a strong, satisfying scratch.

RetroSynther - Welcome To Technocity

Werkstatt Recordings: 2016

Synthwave isn't hard to find, but getting my grubby hands on CD copies of the stuff remains a tricky affair. Obviously digital is this scene's preferred method of distribution, but it seems even tapes outnumber the aluminum disc options wherever I look. Thank the Moroder God that Blood Music goes to bat for its synthwave superstars, yet I can't rely on a single label sating my sweet tooth for retro synthy cheese-pop. Looks like fortunes have favoured my searching efforts though, recently stumbling upon this Werkstatt Recordings print in my Bandcamp wanderings. CD options! Oh, glorious CD options! Only trouble is they take a darn long time to deliver, and I want to write a review of one of them now, while Alphabetical Stipulation permits me. Darn it, I thought that time away at Shambhala would have delivered the goods. Ah, screw it, I'll just review this anyway. Better than having another 'Lingua Lustra - Spaces' situation on my hands. It's not like I Instagram me holding each album anyway.

So here we go with RetroSynther, a project from Hungarian Sándor Máté. He's a couple other projects under his keytar, including Electro Potato, Tony (187), and part of a duo with vocalist Klajkó Lajos as Energy Voice. If any of these names ring a bell for you, then damn, daughter, you've got some serious italo-synth game, because I'm drawing a total blank myself. Mind, if Lord Discogs is to be trusted, Mr. Máté is relatively new to the music scene, only a handful of scattered items released throughout all his various projects. Welcome To Technocity is practically his debut solo album as RetroSynther or anything else. Despite my complete lack of knowledge though, I had to check this album out because, dude, that cover! Makes me want to watch some pulp sci-fi, or play Galaga.

However, Welcome To Technocity isn't a synthwave album. Really, it's about as vintage a space-synth LP as this music gets – the totally retro synths (it's in the name, people!), the vocoders, the peppy hi-NRG rhythms, triumphant italo riffs conquering the cosmos, and all that good stuff. Some of the basslines remind me of where '80s eurodisco ended up once its transition to eurodance of the '90s was complete, but if you've heard space-synth at any point in the past two decades, you aren't going to hear much different with RetroSynther's take on it. This is a genre that prides itself on remaining as aesthetically pure as possible, which is perfectly fine if that's your aim. I sure didn't come into here expecting anything less, this style of music fun for the occasional dip every few months.

In the backhalf of the album, Mr. Máté adds a melancholic downbeat tune in New Hope, plus a short closer that gets close to the realms of synthwave (Awakening). It's not enough for me to recommend Welcome To Technocity to anyone other than those already converted to retro space-synth jams though, whose audience remains ultra-niche.

Lingua Lustra - Spaces

Spiritech: 2016

I could have reviewed this a couple months ago, when going through the previous alphabetical backlog. Spaces initially found itself in my library as a download earlier this year, perhaps as a short-term free giveaway from Lingua Lustra's Bandcamp. He has quite a few of those available, though mostly all singles and EPs, not full-length albums. Spaces falls into the latter camp, but there's no way I paid money just for a download. I've forever refused buying digital if a physical option is available. *Always Sunny In Philadelphia theme starts playing*...

No, wait, there's a logical reason for having a CD of this! See, Spaces comes care of Spiritech, a short-lived label helmed by Alireza Zaifnejad (BlueBliss) and Albert Borkent; aka: Lingua Lustra. Mostly dealing with digital, Spiritech started dabbling in CD options this past year, including a 4CD deal of their four latest albums. Spaces was among those, and I thought to myself, “Well, I already have the digital version, I may as well include it in my standard backlog in anticipation of getting the CD.” And while I did listen to this in that batch, I didn't want to 'cheat' reviewing it without first having the physical copy on hand (why do I make things needlessly convoluted!?). For some reason though, the CD order took a long time arriving, over two-months – wasn't Spiritech situation in Saskatchewan? I know we make our 'hicksville' jokes about the province here on the West Coast, but seriously? I can only assume these CDs came from Mr. Borkent's own stash in Europe, what with the label folding and all (more on that later).

Naturally, I'm going on and on (beyond the halcyon) about pointless info because I'm left with Yet Another Ambient Album With Little To Detail. Spaces contains only three tracks, each nearly doubling the length of the previous one. Opener Ruin runs about seven minutes, follow-up Eden hovers around twelve and a half, while final cut Source stretches out to the twenty-six mark. That's actually an interesting concept worth exploring, if you're into technical aspects of music compositions – studies in time signatures, hidden messages in song durations, and the like. It's all a little wanky to my sensibilities, but props to those who dedicate their skills to it. It's like a painter who uses difficult techniques creating a portrait that anyone with rudimentary ability could accomplish. Or maybe not, I dunno' - my knowledge of painting is pathetic. Oh, and I kinda' doubt the whole 'escalating track duration' thing was intentional on Lingua Lustra's part, since these pieces aren't perfectly trimmed to accommodate the concept. Just a curious coincidence.

And the music itself? Ruin is ultra-minimalist with electromagnetic drone, soft pulses, and emergent field recordings. Eden does the bright, layered synth pad drone thing. Source is practically devoid of sound, subtle bleepy electronics, impossibly distant pads, and gentle washes of white noise static leaving plenty of open spaces for a wandering mind. Fits the album theme, that's for sure.

Mick Chillage - Paths

Databloem: 2016

I spent a huge chunk of my last Mick Chillage review endlessly going on about music formats, nearly rendering (M)odes a hilarious/frustrating non-review. Not this time though. I'm giving Paths all the musical critical hyper-practical attention it deserves. But first, some background on Databloem!

I've name-dropped the label in the past, on account artists I've covered before have released material through them. Finally digging through their catalogue proper-like, I didn't realize how wide a net Databloem casts. They've put out albums from students of '80s old-school ambient (Oöphoi! Tau Ceti! Steve Stoll! Mathias Grassow!) to students of '90s school ambient (Chillage! Norris as Nacht Plank! Segue! Lingua Lustra!), and a whole lot more I don't recognize in the slightest (I think sgnl_fltr appeared on an Ultimae compilation one time). They aren't a large label by any stretch – fifteen years in business, with a half-dozen releases per – but as they came upon that anniversary, Databloem felt a swagger-itch in need of scratching. Their solution was rounding up some artists who'd released prior music on their print, and have them craft whole new albums in celebration. Only, a regular LP just wouldn't do, oh no. To celebrate fifteen years, Databloem shot for nothing less than the double-LP experience for each artist. I... can't say I've ever seen that happen before, so points for unique marketing.

Of course, dealing with ambient producers here, knocking out a couple fifty-plus minute compositions to fill that running length ain't no th'ang. And while Mick Chillage doesn't typically go to those runtimes in his works, he does indulge himself to that degree in the fifty minute long Three Years. Beyond being something of a nod to the '80s school of ambient though, I'm struggling to justify such a length. The opening section has flowing pad synths, and under normal circumstances, tidily wraps up around the thirteen minute mark, a suitable length for this sort of track. But a single, low drone carries on, and we're eventually introduced to spacier, minimalist doodling with piano touches – rather '90s style. That carries on for another twelve or so minutes, then things go brighter with drawn-out strings (I'm hesitant to drop the 'modern classical' tag on it). There's a return to prior elements for the lengthy finish, but man does Three Years ever take its time getting there. And if you feel I've spent too much word-count detailing a single track out of twelve, it's kinda' hard ignoring such a behemoth of a composition.

Three Years essentially eats up the bulk of CD2, with a couple 'shorter' ambient pieces that tread close to the realms of New Age ambient rounding it out (Hearts Of Space, yo'). If you have a craving for Chillage beats though, CD1 should get your fix in, some even getting downright peppy and funky with it (Canis Majoris). It isn't anything we haven't heard from Mick before, but chap's got a solid groove going such that he doesn't need convoluted wheels at this point.

Memex - Memory Index

Carpe Sonum Records: 2016

This is, what, the tenth collaborative project Lee Norris has partaken? Dude's a machine as of late, sucking all nearby producers into his studio. Or Skype sessions. Or whatever musicians use to share ideas and tracks over the interwebs these days. I kinda' hope they still do in-studio sessions though, the synergy between two creative people interlocking their mental and physical beings into a twisting ballet of- and there it is. I almost went five years on this blog without succumbing to a pseudo slash-fic joke.

Anyhow, we all know Mr. Norris' story, so let's focus a bit on the other half of this Memex partnership, one Darren McClure. He's been making music for a little over a decade now, and if his Discogian info is accurate, has seldom released material on a label twice, Impulive Habitat getting the honor. Of his thirteen officially listed albums (including many other collaborations), he has music with The Land Of, Symbolic Interaction, Unknown Tone Records, Dragon's Eye Recordings, Nova Fund Recordings, [Not On Label], and Inner Ocean Records. You may remember that last one as the Calgary print I snatched up a couple CDs from, among them a Porya Hatami LP. He likely hooked up with Mr. McClure through that association (both residing in Japan probably helped), as the two put out a collaborative album called In-Between Spaces on Lee's label ...txt. Ah-HAH, and thus we get our link to Norris! From which the two worked together... under a unique alias? And released the result on Carpe Sonum Records?? Huh, maybe Darren wanted to keep that 'one release for one label' thing going.

As for the music Mr. McClure makes, it's mostly of the soft drone and field recordings sort, at least of the clutch of samples I listened to. He doesn't have much on Spotify, making a splurge there difficult – plenty on Bandcamp though, but Bandcamp binging isn't terribly convenient. Still, having taken in enough for a reasonable overview of his sound, I have to say I'm surprised by how little I hear of it in this Memex project.

For sure it crops up here and there among the seven tracks that make up Memory Index. Swing Strings has flowing water sounds and mechanical drones, Just Wake Up utilizes ghostly passages like being lost in a robot park, In Advance has twittering birds and crunchy static, and Steps In The Way bubbles with shoegazey fuzz. Short ambient piece Disengage is about the only track where it feels like McClure's style dominates though. Mostly, this album is led by Norris' ambient techno beatcraft and bleepy melodica, ofttimes coming off rather retro in a HIA sort of way.

Which is fine where I'm concerned – can never get enough of that vintage 'bleep ambient' action. I just figured I'd hear more of Mr. McClure's aesthetic in this effort. Or is he also down with the acid-chill sound, but with little opportunity to explore it before? Freedom to indulge rhythms at last!

Dronny Darko - Spira Igneus

Cryo Chamber: 2016

Sure enough, about the same time I get to one of Dronny Darko’s latest albums on Cryo Chamber, he goes and releases an even newer one. I’m constantly behind the eight-ball on Mr. Puzan’s output, forever chasing, never first out of the gate. Yeah, yeah, that’s all due to the stipulations I place upon myself going through new music, but it feels strangely coincidental this keeps happening. About the same time I was catching up with his prior LPs of Earth Songs and Neuroplasticity, he put out a collaborative work called Rites Lost on Sparkwood Records. I suppose if I hadn’t been so lax on reviews this year, I’d have gotten this particular review for Spira Igneus out about the time his other recent collaborative effort with Ajna came out, Black Monolith (ooh, a double-LP is it?). But as it stands, I’m reviewing Spira Igneus as Abduction has hit the streets. Thus concludes my convoluted method of bringing y’all up to speed on Dronny Darko’s musical endeavors since last we saw of him on this blog (almost a year ago!).

As with Outer Tehom, Spira Igneus is the sort of dark ambient most folks associate with the genre: moody, creepy, something something occult. Far as I can tell though, the idea of ‘spira igneus’ is a wholly unique concept, not drawing upon any specific piece of obscure folklore. My very, very rough Latin translates this as ‘the fiery tower’, or something to that effect, which shouldn’t be a surprise given there’s an actual tower on the cover of this album. The art kinda’ reminds me of the end of The Neverending Story, when The Nothing has consumed all of Fantasia, save the Ivory Tower, though in this case, it looks like even the lair of The Childlike Empress isn’t such the beacon of hope as in that movie portrayed.

And damn straight Spira Igneus is all sort of crushing, suffocating bleakness as only the most classic dark ambient goes. Mostly it’s of the minimalist droning sort (of course), with added sounds and effects complementing a particular track’s theme. Opener Scriptures has chants lurking in the shadows, as does Three Rulers, though even more indistinct here. Rotten Orchestra sadly doesn’t feature any cacophonic instrumentation, but does bring machinery hum and clankery to the mix. Endless Cave holds low throbs and plonks as though mimicking endless echoes in deep caverns. Grey Echoes has echoes of their own, though emerging like shrieks penetrating the relentless drone, such that even its omnipresent tone recedes in fear. The ‘big’ track on here, ten-minute long Forbidden Wisdom, comes off like a trip through your own psyche, slowly losing yourself as though you’re overwhelmed by whatever unholy secrets the spira igneus keeps closely guarded. Ol’ Dronny definitely knows his way around some warped soundscapes.

As an aside, I’m continually fascinated by his construction of ‘perfect minute’ tracks that never feel too short or long. That’s some serious dedication to self-imposed constricts within one’s craft. I should know.

Fjäder - Shades Of Light

Shaded Explorations: 2016

I forget how I stumbled upon this. For sure it was via a Bandcamp link, but given my conservative excursions through the website, it wasn’t intentional. Perhaps it’s because Shades Of Light came out on a label called Shaded Explorations. It just so happens that I did a review for Shaded Explorer this past half-year, and some Bandcamp Googling for the latter may have accidentally led me to Ms. Fjäder instead. I do recall, however, that the moment I saw the CD packaging displayed, I was intrigued; a black cover with an intricate cut-out, and a simple cardboard sleeve slipped inside. It’s always nice when hopelessly underground artists take extra care in crafting their ultra-limited run hard copies. A very quick sampling of the music confirmed Shades Of Light was at least electronic, so I took the gamble and waited for the goods to arrive for audio consumption.

And this… I wasn’t expecting this. Something dubby and ambient, sure, as the brief clips I played suggested as much. But ethereal dub techno with live instruments? (Pianos! Voices! Strings! oh my) Is this even a thing? I feel like this should be a thing, but I can’t say I’ve come across anything like Fjäder’s music before.

The lass behind the moniker, Ida Matsdotter, has been making music for a few years now, her most prominent bit of exposure coming at the tail-end of a 4CD M_nus box set titled Enter.Ibiza 2015. Cool that she got to rub shoulders with the likes of Slam, Beltram, and the Plastikman himself on that particular set from TM404, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she went overlooked regardless. Still, a couple more appearances on various compilations, podcasts, and the odd single has given her a decent start in the world of techno, thus we now arrive for Album Time with her debut of Shades of Light.

Opener Yellow Cosmic Sun is a beatless, dubby, droning piece with various strings and vocal snippets fed through heavy, throbbing effects, feeling more of a meditative outing than something intended for club use. Second track तूफान केंद्रअ (Google translate tells me this is Hindi for ‘eye of the storm’) brings in ethereal chants coupled with a marching rhythm that sounds like it’s being dropped into digital water. World beat with a dub techno twist? I can dig it.

The one consistent element I’m hearing throughout Shades Of Light is no genre fusion is off limits, a remarkable strategy considering dub techno’s staunch, stuffy traditionalism. There are a couple examples of that deep, minimalist, rolling warehaus thump in tracks like Abyss and Dragonfly, but elsewhere Fjäder breaks those beats up into something more akin to experimental trip-hop (Talk To You, twelve-minute long Vintergatan). There’s ethereal ambient (Shades Of Light), crushing drone ambient (Venus), and feedback-fuzz ambient (Hjärtans Fröjd). I also quite like that she isn’t afraid to manipulate her voice to such a degree it’s almost unrecognizable from other layers of timbre. No ego here, my friends.

ASC - No Stars Without Darkness

Silent Season: 2016

I guess if I wanted to know what an ASC album on Cryo Chamber would sound like, I now have my answer. Or maybe …txt, No Stars Without Darkness not exactly a dark ambient album. It sure is lonesome though, feelings of stark melancholy permeating the mood as one looks upon an endless night sky, feeling hopelessly remote from every grand tapestry the cosmos closely guards behind an opaque veil. It’s not a vibe I’m accustomed to hearing with Silent Season, is what I’m getting at. Passages of reflection, sure; dubbed-out drone is part of the label’s manifesto, and few things get you lost up in your own brainpan better than infinite layers of pad and timbre. I seldom get a sense of suffocating isolationism though. Like, it’s fine to take a solo hike through damp, coastal old-growth, but Van-City remains a few kliks away.

This one though, there’s just a little more isolationism, a little more bleakness in the void ASC is painting here, even going by track titles alone. Idyll Of Sorrow, All Come To Ruin, Nothing More To Give, Elegy For An Empty Shell …not the most cheering of themes here, and the music doesn’t liven the mood either.

Sorrow features mournful pads and down-trodden melodies as impossibly distant whispers penetrate the somber tone. A Moment Alone does the abstract, cosmic drone thing that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Alphaxone album. Ruin treads closer to a calming ambient vibe, though is so drenched in overdubs, it’s about as soothing as the stuff Aphex Twin offered on SAW II. Silence and Waning Hours add minute melodic content, acoustic guitar strums penetrating the desolation. And after eight tracks of oppressive drone, The Promise In Your Lies opts for a quieter piece to finish on, though no less spacious and vast in soundcraft, like you cannot help but forever keep staring upward in the futile hopes of seeing more stars in the infinite black above.

No, seriously, it can’t be done. I know what you’re thinking: it’s paradoxical that we can’t see all the stars if they’re all up there, right? That’s the crux behind Olbers’ Paradox, after all. Well, there’s a reason space appears as black as it does. First off, the universe is big [citation needed], light taking time to reach us, some stars so distant that their photons will never strike our planet. This is due to the universe’s expansion, such light typically red-shifted across the electromagnetic spectrum from our vantage point, much of which is shifted so far, it’s beyond our visible range of sight. Interestingly, at the longest wavelengths (microwaves), the cosmos does light up as though it was filled with infinite stars – it’s called the Cosmic Microwave Background. With our limited visibility though, we’re stuck seeing only the closest stars (cosmic dust doesn’t help either), universal expansion blinking ever more out of our view. At some point, there won’t even be stars in the darkness. And that gives the sads.

Kolhoosi 13 - Monuments Of Power

Cryo Chamber: 2016

*we now return to EMC’s series premiere of Cryo Chamber Idol, where budding dark ambient artists hope to win a deal with Simon Heath’s ever growing print*

Heath: “We have room for another act that deals with decaying civilizations. What’s your angle on this concept?”
Contestant 12: “We’re the Far-Flung Sons Of Camden Town. And we got… DEAD CITIES!”
Heath: “Yes, that’s what I’m after, but what’s your unique pitch?”
Contestant 12: “DEAD CITIES!”
Heath: “You just said-“
Contestant 12: “DEAD CITIES! D..E..A..D C..I..T..I..E..S.. D…..E.....A…..D…..C…..I…..T….I….E….S….”
Heath: “O-kay. Metal might be your thing instead. Who’s next?”
Contestant 13: “So, you know how all these post-apocalypse Hellscapes are set in the future, after the end-times? Well, how about a project where we put the listener at the cusp of everything falling about?”
Heath: “That’s kinda’ what Cities Last Broadcast implies in his name though.”
Contestant 13: “Yeah, but did he actually deliver on that?”
Heath: “Hm, not really. At least, not with the album we got, what with all that séance business and all.”
Contestant 13: “Right! But we got your back on this one!”
Heath: “Alright, sure. It’s lunch anyway, and I’m hungry.”

As for the name Kolhoosi 13, time to brush up on my Finnish. Seems this refers to Soviet communes (kolkhoz), where State-supervised peasant farming took place across the Eastern Bloc, with many kolhoosi granted autonomy after a time. Not so harsh as the gulags then, but no picnic in the summer either. It invokes a simpler, yet harsher time in Europe’s history, a product of a bygone era from a failed state. Unless, of course, society crumbles and we’re reduced to feudal tillage once more. As for the ‘13’, I’m not sure where that comes from. Maybe the chaps behind this project, Niko Salakka and Juho Lepistö, simply felt it had a nice ring to it coupled with ‘kolhoosi’.

Monuments Of Power is their debut album (natch'), and according to Lord Discogs, their debut anything. For the past couple years, Kolhoosi 13 have gone around gathering field recordings, looking for common themes in their samples, and found a fascination with mankind’s ode to the infrastructure that’ll outlast our hubris. At least, that’s the gist I’m getting from this album of almost pure drone.

The opening track, From Comradery To Sustenance, is quite effective in putting you in the middle of a war-ravaged area, scurrying and scuttling about crumbling ruins as mortar shells bombard areas far away, yet too close for comfort. And yet the distant sound of war is surprisingly comforting, as there’s little sign of humanity after that. Sometimes the clank of automated machinery and low thrum of churning engines accompany your haggard travels through an industrial wasteland, but there’s almost no music to nurture the soul here. This is ambient drone stripping away any vestiges of hope for a future, save those who find glory in our brutalist architecture.

Mick Chillage - (M)odes

Carpe Sonum Records: 2016

And yet another ambient album. What, is May gonna’ be The Month Of Ambient from now on? Don’t be silly. We’ve already had two non-ambient albums thus far, and following this, I count at least… um, hm. Well, a couple in the current backtrack queue that are half-ambient, so at least one fullish LP’s worth. It just so happened the comparatively scant items I bought over the winter were mostly of the chill sort, focusing on my primary preferences as I reeled in my spending habits. Once we get down to the ‘V’s though, we’ll start seeing more variety again, where the ratio of downtempo and ambient albums only constitute around… half of them? Ooh, but look – metal!

Enough side-tracking. Let’s get back to what’s important, yet another ambient album up for review. This one comes from Mick Chillage, whom we last saw on this blog over a year ago when I touched upon his Tales From The Igloo debut and remix album. The Irish native has been quite busy since then, the year 2016 seeing him release three albums, a mini-album, not to mention five LPs with Lee Norris as Autumn Of Communion, plus a triple-LP this year, if you want to designate a memory stick album as such.

How should we indentify album length in that format anyhow? Used to be was by the runtime of available physical medium. What was considered a double-LP in the age of smaller vinyl could easily fill a standard CD – thus an LP, once considered anything around thirty to forty minutes, was now extended all the way to eighty minutes, with double-LPs now anything beyond that mark. With albums potentially boundless in the digital age, there could technically be infinite-LPs, though it seems we still stick with however many pieces of physical medium they take up, whether CD, tape, or vinyl. But the use of USB sticks as a physical medium has thrown this convention totally out the window! All we can go by now is runtime length, with the traditional ‘fifty-to-seventy minute LP’ being a rough barometer in gauging an album’s official LP designation. Or maybe it’s time to throw all “ep, lp, lmnop’ standards to the dustbin of dated, obsolete terminology. What strange, uncharted worlds albums find themselves on the precipice of.

Alright, enough rabbit-hole side-tracking. (M)odes is a fairly standard LP of ambient music from Mick Chillage. The opening track Nico’s Gate uses some field recordings that sounds like we’re at construction site in the middle of the night, which serves as a rhythmic backbone as lengthy passages of pads and pianos play out. Midnight Mist, Suspended Thoughts, and Microscopic go for the bleepy minimalist ambient stylee that’ll get your Fax+ triggers going, while We Are Light goes old-school Iasos on our earholes. Closer Visitors adds a dubby beat to its ambient timbre, which makes me wish there were more moments like this throughout (M)odes to break up the ambient monotony. Still, gotta’ love those Chillage textures.

Phonothek - Lost In Fog

Cryo Chamber: 2016

Yes, I'm still astounded that Cryo Chamber keeps unearthing unique artists that must satisfy whatever micro-niche taste one might have. How does that selection process go, though? I mean, a dark ambient label that’s gained an impeccable reputation in such a short time must get sent demos constantly now, budding artists looking to make their mark with Simon Heath’s blessing. I can imagine it almost turning into American Idol:

Heath: “What sort of dark ambient do you make?”
Contestant 1: “I make cold, wintery music, like you’re traversing the Arctic.”
Heath: “Sorry, already got one of those. Next.”
Contestant 1: “No, wait, I meant ANT-arctic!”
Contestant 2: “Haha, too late. So yo’, check it, Sabled Sun, m’man! I’m all about that bleak, future-shock dystopia sound too.”
Heath: “Why would I add another artist that makes music like myself?”
Contestant 2: “’Cause – and this’ll blow your mind – it’s from the perspective of the Star Wars universe, man!”
Heath: “That… might be too specific for what we do here. Wait, aren’t you MC Chris?”
Contestant 2: “Uh, …no?”
Heath: *sigh* “And you, sir, what unique angle might you bring to Cryo Chamber?”
Contestant 3: “I play a trumpet.”
Heath: “Ooh, do tell!”

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the trumpet is Phonothek’s defining characteristic, but it’s certainly the first time I’ve heard it so prominently used in a dark ambient project. From what I gather, there’s a whole sub-set of ‘industrial jazz’ or ‘doom jazz’ out there, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Jazz musicians gotta’ try every form of genre fusion they can.

Phonothek is primarily the brainchild of George from Georgia (oddly, I can’t find a last name for him), with a musical assist from his wife Nina. He has an orchestral background, and while the trumpet is his main sonic weapon of choice, he doesn’t rely on it, only half the tracks on this debut album of Lost In Fog making significant use of it. For the most part, Phonothek does the modern classical thing with ample instrumentation and digital manipulations, but in a loose, freeform, jazzy sort of way. This makes it quite the fun headphone album (those ping-pong sounds!), though a 5.1 system should do you fine in a pinch.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular theme with Lost In Fog other than weird, abstract music making for its own sake. When the trumpet playing does lead (Heavy Thoughts, Old Swings, Lost In Fog), it creates a melancholic mood, almost right out of a noir film. Some tracks use discordant strings or sampled voices to create unease (Last Train), sometimes it’s traditional piano (Dancing With The Ghosts), others chopping up synth pad and droning passages such that they seemingly play out of sync, yet flow together regardless (Something Happened). Meanwhile, Clown Is Dead goes from creepy to forlorn to positively strident with its ethereal marching. Yes, Phonothek has made ‘ethereal marching’ a thing, though wasn’t that Dead Can Dance’s thing too?

ProtoU - Khmaoch

Cryo Chamber: 2016

The pace some of these dark ambient artists release material, I swear. Hell, since making their debut on Cryo Chamber alone, a few are already on their fourth and fifth LPs, the wait for follow-ups short indeed. Names I only discovered this past year didn’t waste time in keeping the creative embers hot, some releasing two albums within the same twelve-month span. It makes maintaining an ear on every producer that’s caught my attention nearly impossible, even the ones that I really, really like and stuff. I’m only now just getting into the last five-CD bundle I bought, and already Simon Heath’s print has enough new material available that I’m itching for another five-CD bundle. I suppose I should be thankful that I’m this deeply intrigued by only one such label – if the likes of Ultimae or Silent Season had a schedule at this clip, I’d be financially insolvent in no time (bankrupt? never!).

As ProtoU, Sasha Cats has been one of the busier, um, cats at Cryo Chamber, four albums now under her belt. Two of those are collaborative efforts, but for the year 2016, she stuck to the solo scene, releasing both items within the span of eight months. Lost Here was a shade lighter as far as dark ambient typically goes, and rather ambiguous in ideas at that – felt more like an introspective record compared to other albums on this label with clear narratives and definitive themes being the norm. It also made it one of the easier albums for a dark ambient novice to get into, since it shared enough attributes with ambient-proper without getting lost in ultra-dense, uncomfortable head-fuckery.

If anything though, Lost Here felt like a feeling-out process for Ms. Cats. She must have been satisfied with getting that debut out of the way to not only quickly follow it with a second album, but one that has a clearer theme in mind. For those not in the know, Khmaoch is a reference to those who died from unnatural causes (suicide, murder, genocide, etc.), and, according to Southeast Asia mysticism, are now wandering as phantoms or spirits lurking about abandoned areas. At least, that’s my best assumption, the word khmaoch surprisingly sparse in Google searches when it doesn’t involve ProtoU’s album. Leave it to dark ambient muses to unearth all manner of obscure macabre folklore.

Thus Khmaoch is a bleaker, creepier outing than Lost Here. Quite a few sections where ghostly whispers, veiled cries, and haunting tones permeate the atmosphere, and that’s just the first track Bridge Of Storms. With ample amounts of shuffling stones, flowing water, and claustrophobic echoes, it feels like you’re a crypt explorer, unearthing whatever calamity created this realm filled with khmaoch memories. There are moments of distant, soothing pad work, as though the soul is easing itself into a restful slumber (Stygian Vortex, Dai Robsa Preah), but sometimes cruelly snatched away into foreboding drone just as you’re settled into a state of peace. No rest for even the innocent.

Stormloop - Into The Void

...txt: 2016

With a name like Stormloop, I keep expecting blistering, grimy warehouse techno tools. Never mind this comes care of …txt, whom I’m darn certain specializes in ambient. Or the fact the Kev Spence alias closed out that colossal Pete Namlook tribute project Die Welt Ist Klang. Heck, even if you knew full well Stormloop is ambient, the name maybe suggests the noisy sort, more an assault of densely layered field recordings, blasts of white noise and static, and all manner of sound chaps hanging out in the noise scene getting weak in the knees over.

‘Tis not so. As Stormloop, Mr. Spence has released twenty albums over the course of a decade, the majority of which contains your traditional droning ambient. For sure there’s different ideas and themes approached throughout them all. Some explore seasonal moods (the Winter EP, Autumn & Autumn II), others the always popular cold wasteland regions (Snowbound, Nocturnal Winter, Arctic Conditions), a few dabblings into the Hearts Of Space school of New Agey ambient (Kaleidoscopic Blooms, Fragile Systems), the abstracted drone stuff (Transforms, Modulated Meditations, No True Beauty Without Decay), and my personal go-to style, space ambient (Signals, Back To Dust, Distant Star, Cluster).

Wait, did I just summarize the near-entirety of Stormloop’s discography? Well why not, since it’s at his Bandcamp anyway. In fact, Mr. Spence is pretty much strictly independent, almost all of his material solo-released. This means a near-complete lack of physical formats available of his work, and what he release on limited CDrs is absolutely snatched up at this point. So while he does make some nifty music that tickles my earlobes, the lack of physical options means I probably won’t be buying many Stormloop items in the future. May as well talk about his other stuff while I have the chance, eh?

Still, he has found distribution with a couple labels. Glacial Movements Records released one of his Snowbound* albums a few years back. A little while later, …txt came along and offered a Memory Stick deal, consolidating five of his albums into a USB stick. Huh, would that count as a physical release? I mean, technically it’s a mini-box set, but I dunno’ – kinda’ hard to impress the ladies having that on your vinyl wall.

This past year, Stormloop released another item with …txt, a fresh album called Into The Void. Though sticking to his usual assortment of droning synth timbre, it has a more grounded theme compared to his other works, a reflective ambient journey through the night (Deep Into The Dark).

Imagine you’re wandering through lonely streets (Another Drift), near empty park lands (To A Light) or suburban countryside (Night Ride), your only companion a frequently obscured Luna above (Clouds Pass Over The Moon). Insomnia keeping you from getting any rest (When Need Of Sleep), leading to some tense moments of the mind (Out Of The Dark), but all is well once the sun rises again (Into The Dawn). So, uh, what comes after Omega?

The Green Kingdom - Harbor

Dronarivm: 2016

I feel like I’ve seen Michael Cottone’s project somewhere before, but my memory fails me. It could simply be a case of mistakenly misplacing The Green Kingdom for any other number of ambient aliases or titles over the years, this combination of words evoking similar imagery for any open field or deep forest. Or perhaps it’s an association with the more shoegazey side of mellow indie rock. For sure the sound you find on Harbor contains some of those markers, what with mellow, gentle acoustic guitars riding along calm, floaty pad work, but this is still firmly in the ambient-Proper camps.

Scoping out what Lord Discogs has to say, I’m left blank as well. Mr. Cottone’s been releasing music as The Green Kingdom for over a decade now, but he’s as much a label journeyman as you’ll ever find - almost every release of his came out on a different, obscure print (Heldernacht, SEM Lable, Own Records, The Land Of, Nomadic Kids Republic (!), Tench). If anything, he seems to have finally settled down with Dronarivm, this and his previous album Expanses both coming out on the Russian ambient-drone home. He also provided a podcast mix for the blog A Strangely Isolated Place, thus rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ulrich Schnauss, Carbon Based Lifeforms, ASC, Bvdub, Martin Nonstatic, and a slew of other names I don’t recognize (so… many… ambient…).

Still, even this wasn’t enough to spike my memory, so I went to Last.fm to see if there was any additional info The Lord That Knows All may have missed. And holy cow, what is up with this Expanses 2 track? It’s gotten tons of plays, the rest of his music only modest scrobbles. Is it the same with Spotify streams? You bet, the track garnering over three-hundred fifty thousand plays – the next closest, from the same album, barely squeaks over the twenty-thousand mark. Dear Lord, why has that one track gotten so much atten- oh, it was in the Hotline Miami 2 soundtrack. Yep, that’ll do it for ya’. Can’t say that’s why The Green Kingdom looks familiar to me, but interesting finding this out nonetheless.

So, Harbor. The concept is simple enough, Mr. Cottone looking to guide the listener along the soothing waves of seaside shores. Surprisingly, there’s little use of wave samples, Green Kingdom instead letting the rolling drone mimic the feeling of chilling on a beach. Some tracks offer a chipper, mellow vibe with guitars leading, almost like an overdubbed version of Kruangbin (Harbor, Jade Star). Other tracks skew closer to dub techno, though with plenty of warm pads keeping the cold sterility away (Haze Layers, Morrowloops). Mostly though, we get calm, dubby pad drones with heavily treated orchestral and acoustic instruments. It all rather sounds like… wait, the opening part of Evergreen Sunset… that really sounds like… Vangelis? Creation Du Monde? Yeah, it totally does! Oh man, forget the next Miami Hotline game, get The Green Kingdom to score the next iteration of Cosmos.

S.E.T.I. - The Guide Lockstars Of Astro Myrmex

...txt: 2016

Now doesn’t this look all ultra egg-headed in concept and design. Guide Lockstars? Astro Myrmex?? S.E.T.I.??? Right, that last one’s been a staple of electronic music for ages, musicians inspired by deep space frequencies traversing the endless void in meager hopes of finding kindred intelligence. Or something better, far superior to our primitive means, that’d be pretty dope too, but we’ll take whatever the cosmos sends our way. Beggers can’t be choosers.

Honestly, I picked this up because, hey, new S.E.T.I. – gotta’ check that out, yo’! Never mind I initially wasn’t sure which S.E.T.I. I was dealing with. Like, it seemed odd that the dark, abstract ambient project of Andrew Lagowski would end up on …txt, especially since his last few releases came out on industrial-leaning print Power & Steel. That other Seti project then, that consisted of Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree, they’re more up the alley of Lee Norris’ label. Then again, they haven’t been heard from since the ‘90s, so odds of this being the same group were remote. Could it be a whole new S.E.T.I.? Lord Discogs surprisingly lists few acts with such aliases, so a young cheeky producer could take it on too.

But nay, turns out it was Mr. Lagowski all along, finding a home with …txt as he takes his project into the realms of narrative concept. The Guide Lockstars of Astro Myrmex is the second of what appears to be an ongoing tale of sorts, started with The Data Logs Of Astro Myrmex, released the year prior. Little information is given on what ‘Astro Myrmex’ is, beyond something that’s travelling the cosmos. A ship captain? Interstellar cruiser? Robotic probe? Evolved light being? Something definitely advanced compared to our current technology, what with Data Logs’ liner notes mentioning ol’ Astro exploring wormholes. Lockstars offers a morsel of additional information, explaining that Myrmex’s journey was initiated by the Nibiru Cataclysm. Ah, that event, as predicted by the cover art of Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet.

The music within, such as it is, does offer the sort of space ambient you’d expect of such a hard sci-fi story. Opener Instrument Calibration spends a chunk of its early portion with distant transistor pings and other sounds you’d figure robots communicating with radio antennae would emit, accompanied by low thrums that all dark space ambient must include. This isn’t a dark piece though, spacey pads joining the effects, nicely selling a cosmic grandeur vibe.

Guide Lockstars generally alternates in tone throughout, with S.E.T.I. exploring different forms of sci-fi sounds and abstract music. Mirach, LoS Jitter Summary, Adhil, and especially Black Engines are quite dark and droning, giving me pause whether I’d accidentally thrown on a Cryo Chamber CD instead. The longer tracks of Gravity Stupor and Almach are more bleepy and benign, though still feeling isolated between the stars. Still, it’s nice hearing a hard sci-fi, space ambient album that includes both ends of the vibe spectrum. (not as famous as the electromagnetic spectrum)

Czarface - A Fistful Of Peril

Silver Age: 2016

Faster than The Flash pulling a Lickity-Split, Czarface returned with a whole new album, on a whole new label, with a whole new promotional campaign targeting the comics industry. I doubt Deck, Eso’, and 7L had such a business partnership in mind when they created the throwback project, but one couldn’t ignore how much influence they were drawing from nerd culture. Likewise, geeks couldn’t help but get hype to an underground rap act celebrating their cherished institutions, and it wasn’t long before bootleg Czarface material hit the comic-cons. Well shit, son, if there’s a market for t-shirts, action figures, printed comics, and skateboards (!), y’all may as well get in on that gravy too. A Fistful Of Peril feels like it was released quickly not because Esoteric and Rebel INS were filled with tons of creativity they just had to get out, but to capitalize on all the positive buzz Czarface was generating with the nerds of America. Man, they really are influenced by the comics industry!

But this one isn’t as good as Every Hero Needs A Villain, if for no other reason than it’s a skint offering compared to the previous album. Inspectah Deck and Esoteric are dropping battle and brag rhymes with the same level of skill, though the punch-lines don’t hit quite as hard. Sometimes Deck is recycling stuff from old Wu joints like a comics penciler re-tracing famous poses - Revenge On Lizard City in particular apes Method Man’s Bring The Pain for a couple bars. That said, this bit of movie metaphor from Eso’ in the same track made me do the ol’ “DAAYY-YYUMM!” double-take:

“Stop your motion like Jason and the Argonauts
Ray Harry how I'm housing in the parking lot
Rap whiter, track writer, rap writer around your neck
I fuck up Superman like Zack Snyder on the set"

Music wise, A Fistful Of Peril also takes a step back, sparser in production, moodier in tone, and more reliant on straight-forward loops compared to the dynamic shifts displayed in Villain. A few tunes do come correct with the freestylin’ beats though (Dare Iz A Darkseid, Steranko, an extended turntable session in Sabers). And while my enjoyment of a rap record doesn’t hinge on the quality of guest verses, it cannot be denied there’s a major drop-off in that category too. Psycho Les, Blacastan, Conway, Mayhem Lauren, and Rast RFC handle themselves fine, but c’mon, they ain’t no GZA, MF Doom, Ghostface, Action Bronson, Method Man, Large Professor… you get the idea.

There’s still enough solid, straight-forward hip-hop in A Fistful Of Peril to enjoy, but I can’t see the Czarface project lasting long if it keeps falling back to boom-bap brags filled with geek culture references. Why not take things to the next level, go full nerdcore by adopting the Czarface persona completely, and telling a full-length narrative of his exploits in the process? Tell me that wouldn’t be dope as all hell. This project is practically preordained for it!

James Murray - Eyes To The Height

Ultimae Records: 2016

Mister Murray made his debut with Ultimae Records when the French label was in the midst of its Second Generation push. This included acts like Cell, Hol Baumann, Hybrid Leisureland, and I Awake, most of whom I snatched albums from once I finally decided I should splurge on Ultimae’s entire back-catalog while they were still in print. Um, Murray’s LP, Where Edges Meet, wasn’t among them, so don’t go expecting that review once I get to the ‘W’s in my endless musical quest.

Lord Discogs says he didn’t do much after that for a few years, though eventually got into the label game with his own print, Slowcraft Records, started up in 2012. He floated among a couple other labels, and provided some podcast mixes for the webzine Headphone Commute, all the while dropping an occasional track for an occasional Ultimae compilation. He didn’t seem terribly high of profile with Aes Dana’s print though, so it was a small surprise that he’d return to it with another full-length album eight years after his first one.

And friends, thank Chillzarn, The God Of Chill, he did, because ol’ James has brought with him something that’s been seriously lacking throughout many Ultimae releases of late: actual melody! As in, chord progressions that lodges in your head, tones that tease out more emotion than isolated introspection, and much less emphasis on losing your headspace within the spacious dub-chill mixdown Ultimae’s been enamored with. For sure it’s still there, with pad work that paints a widescreen canvas like the foggy backdrop of an open field; however, things aren’t so obscured and impenetrable as the label’s recent releases go, details and foreground scenery present and clear. (the cover art really is apt for the music within)

I should make clear we’re not talking Solar Fields level of melodic power here, but it’s definitely more than we’ve heard since… geez, Circular’s Moon Pool? For the most part, Mr. Murray applies a gentle touch to his music, spritely tones found in tracks like The Black And The Grey, Holloways, Eyes To The Height and Ghostwalking. Others, like What Can Be Done, Passing Places, and Laterisers, go more towards the dronier aspects of ambient dub, muffling his melodies as though wrapping them in a soft blanket. Particles, which features two parts in this album, makes use of heavily treated piano, creating a lovely refrain complemented by breathy vocal pads and delicate rhythms (seriously, I feel as though these ‘beats’ could break if I breathe on them). Part 2 of Particles is about as close to a Solar Fields styled ambient tune as we’ve heard on Ultimae in some time, and closer Copestone offers a little vintage ambient-bleep vibe. Not quite HIA On Ultimae, but nice nonetheless.

Even if you’ve been wishy-washy about this label’s dalliances into dub-techno these past few years, Eyes To The Height is well worth scoping out. Murray brings some genuine feels back to Ultimae’s ranks, a trend that hopefully takes hold in future releases.

The Future Sound Of London - Environment 6.5

fsoldigital.com: 2016

So Environment Six had its moments, but didn’t gel terribly well as an LP experience. And dammit, is it so unfair of me to want that? The Future Sound Of London made their mark in the ‘90s as one of the few electronic music producers who could successfully release fully-formed albums. We know it’s within Cobain and Dougans’ ability to do so, and though the Environments series has flitted with loose themes thus far, I can’t see an abandonment of it in favor of total freeform music making doing them many favors. With the simultaneous release of 6.5, also featuring a whopping twenty-three tracks, I worried we were in for another lengthy dive into the duo’s erratic muses.

Instead, we’re greeted with one of the biggest opening salvos FSOL have ever committed to record. Axis Of Rotation serves as a brief effects-heavy intro, a suggested orchestral melody emerging. It then melds into a thudding tribal rhythm in Solid Earth, where the same melody plays out in a haunting, subdued fashion. Wait, I should call that melody a leitmotif, because FSOL bring it back way down in track fifteen, The Day The Poles Shifted, and as a grand opus at that. Holy cow, does Environment 6.5 have an honest-to-God concept behind it?

I’d say so. For one, the tracks all flow much better together compared to Six, moments of calm and tranquility explored for stretches before easing along to tunes more brisk and experimental. If a number of these tracks started out as unrelated sonic sketches, FSOL tweaked and twisted them to fit whatever theme holds everything together. Even that, so often vague and obtuse in prior Environments, comes off more concrete than before. For sure explorations of ruined civilizations is well-tread territory where these guys are concerned, but with 6.5, I feel as though I’m directly involved in this musical trek rather than being an outside observer of events. This undoubtedly sounds awfully wanky, but the journey takes you through dark, underground passages, past dwellings both ancient yet futuristic, finally emerging into a new dawn as the surface finally recovers from its cataclysm (by force of nature than anything manmade, it seems).

Individual tracks, then. How do they all come off? Oh, the usual sort of FSOL eclecticism. Anacro Rhythm: far East psychedelia. Opal Light: noir ambient dub. Dark Seed: chipper braindance acid. I Dream In Viral Blue: widescreen jazz-fusion. Ain’t Gonna Lie: far flung ambient techno. Emmissions Of Light: dubby ambient glitch. Strange Allure: pure ambience with bubbling weirdness. There’s more, of course, but gotta’ save some surprises for y’all.

Why this wasn’t the Environment Six Prime album, I haven’t a clue. It’s so much better, Actual Six coming off like the b-side companion an album titled 6.5 should sound like. In fact, I’d rank this one on par with their ‘90s material, if for nothing else than that Axis Of Rotation leitmotif remains stuck in my head. Can’t say the same of most other Environment pieces.

The Future Sound Of London - Environment Six

fsoldigital.com: 2016

It should have marked a triumphant return to electronic music media. Instead, Environment Five, The Future Sound of London’s first full album of original material since the ‘90s, was met with another indifferent shrug. For sure a few of the UK’s more prestigious rags scoped it out, in the process allowing some nostalgic look-backs to groundbreaking rave era Dougans and Corbain material. Having exhausted that angle, however, and FSOL failing to deliver the Instant Modern Classic such folks assumed was in the works, most music journals moved on, Environment Five joining Boards Of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest in the Over-Hyped Return bin (when can we add Random Access Memory to the pile?).

Thus it is with as little fanfare as possible that we return to this series a couple years later. Seriously, I saw no PR leading up to Environment Six, the only hype apparently a Facebook posting. I only found out about it by chance, checking their website for details regarding another side-project, Blackhill Transmitter. Then lo’, there it was, not one, but two new Environment albums. Well geez, better snatch those up post-haste. Surely folks will be buzzing about these soon enough (nope).

At twenty-three tracks, Environment Six looks daunting, but less than half of these break the three-minute mark, only one passing six minutes. Not that this is anything new, FSOL long known for their sonic doodles and half-formed musical ideas, such pieces serving as interludes, transitionals, or experimental indulgences that could never form Proper Tunes. And we generally allow it as they often serve a greater thematic whole within the context of their albums. Even these Environments, as loosely defined as they are, still adhere to some conceptual structure. This one though, I dunno – there’s more random meandering than ever here.

It starts out fine enough, the first few tracks reasonable lengths and exploring the usual future sounds Cobain and Dougans so often do - Polarize does the epic post-apocalypse thing, Mountain Path a meditative ambient thing, Thought Pattern a minimalist ambient techno thing. Elsewhere, Lichaen takes the tried-and-tested psychedelia path, Sol 7 goes all dubby glitch, Symphony For Halia provides a haunting, static-dub vibe straight out of Ultimae’s textbook, Plausibility opts for pure orchestral psychedelia, Yut Moik comes off like a long-lost track from Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series, and Leak Stereo 70 does a brisk, micro future-funk jam.

A nifty assortment of FSOL tunes, all said, though little thematically linking them together. Matters aren’t helped that tons of disjointed sonic doodles are littered amongst as individual tracks, seldom letting anything stick in your brain before quickly moving onto the next wayward muse FSOL follows. An ultra-short synth-arp tease in Seq/-9 is especially egregious. The final couple tracks - Meanders and Solace - are decent closers, but fail to sum Environment Six in any meaningful way. I don’t have much problem with ‘music for its own sake’, but it’s nice having some cohesive reason to sit down and take a full album in.