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.

EDM Weekly World News, May 2017

Happy Valentines Day. What do you mean it's not? We sure are selling the same amount of flower bouquets. You've never seen so many buggies filled with blossoms! As for the tragic events of this major bone-breaking news, like the murder-spree of a few years past, I'm sure these living jukeboxes will make a full recovery. Not so sure about their mixing 'skills' tho', but that hasn't stopped them from having headline careers yet.

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.

MO-DU - MOD01

Mata-Mata Records/...txt: 2015/2016

No, not Mo-Do, though I wouldn’t mind reviewing that charmingly cheesy Italian eurodance act at some point either. Come on, you already have Eins, Zwei, Polizei playing in your head at the mere mention of it. Their lone album of Was Ist Das? can’t be going for more than a buck or two on the used Euro market now. Maybe I should look into that.

But no, this is MO-DU, a side-project of Moduretik. Or maybe a new project, since the man behind it, Jan Jiskra, hasn’t put out any new Moduretik material for a few years now, save a retrospective in 2016. As Moduretik, he put out a few albums on micro-label Bleeder Ear of way-retro sounding darkwave tunes. It’s all rather under-produced, which I have no doubt is the point, capturing the messy vibe of musicians inspired by synth-pop of the early ‘80s, but trapped in the Eastern European bloc. Gotta’ make do with whatever gear you can grab, and get that stuff out on the streets of Prague while you can, before militsiya surrogates come a knockin’. There’s a punky, romanticism about it, which may be somewhat fabricated, but that doesn’t stop modern musicians from making tributes and odes to the era.

Then ol’ Jan tried his hand at another form of obscure European electronic music of those free-wheelin’ years, kosmische Musik, pairing up with Adam Holub as Neden, resulting in a self-titled album (on vinyl!). Jiskra must have been inspired by that session, as he didn’t wait around for Holub for another round of music making, striking out solo for more of that Berlin-School stylee as MO-DU. He’s released two albums now under the moniker, essentially self-released on his Mata-Mata Records print, with the first LP already out of print (because tapes). Somewhere along the way, Lee Norris stumbled upon it (was sent a demo?), because now we have a re-issue of MOD01 on ambient print …txt. What a strange journey this has been for Mr. Jiskra.

Stranger still, this album doesn’t sound like a pure ‘70s throwback, at least compared to Jan’s work as Moduretik. For sure the equipment used keeps things in that warm, analog era of electronic music, but the songcraft feels more of the ‘90s brand of ambient techno. Heck, opener Scoloyd wouldn’t have been out of place on Boards Of Canada’s last album, though to call MO-DO a Boards clone is quite a disservice, as there’s none of the trip-hoppy beats the Scottish duo are known for.

Nay, Mr. Jiskra keeps his rhythms as faithful to the old-school as he can, whether it’s clip-cloppy beats in Hangaduga, Sorson, and Kapusta, or something closer to synth-pop as in Asitrea. Elsewhere, he lets pulsing modulations and dubby effects act as his guide (Hicarn), or opts for the gentle ambient glide (Boditanka, Tongo, Ubitanka). It reminds me of the stuff those way underground ambient techno labels of the ‘90s would put out (hi, em:t!). Ah, no wonder this ended up on …txt.

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?

Porya Hatami - Land

Somehow Recordings/Inner Ocean Records: 2012/2013

This is the other CD I picked up from Inner Ocean Records’ Bandcamp, completing my collection of Inner Ocean Records CDs as available through the label’s Bandcamp. And if I do some serious hunting and digging, I could get all the CDs the Calgary print released, including Jarrod Sterling’s Distance Is Relative, Void Of Sound’s Black_White, and a remix album of this particular disc too. There might be more, but Lord Discogs doesn’t suggest any, so I’ll take it that’s all Inner Ocean made before transitioning to tape production and the occasional vinyl. I wonder what the cost-ratio with tapes is like. I’ll assume it’s cheaper than CDs, but seeing as how the discs are already pretty darn cheap, it can’t be by much. Is there more of a profit margin on tapes now that they have much greater hipster cred’ than in decades past, folks willing to pay more than the ‘free handout’ price of before? Land of confusion indeed.

Speaking of land, here is Porya Hatami’s debut album, Land. This version on Inner Ocean is actually a reissue, the first coming out a year prior on Somehow Recordings, yet another ambient micro-label that released well over one-hundred items between 2010 and 2013, all on CD. Holy cow! Most of their material is totally new to my eyes, though a couple familiar names do crop up, among them Lee Norris’ Nacht Plank guise. Say, is that where he and Mr. Hatami first crossed paths?

Porya’s style of ambient is mostly defined by his manipulation of field recordings coupled with a delicate touch of glitch-static, soft pads, gentle pianos, twee chimes, and other manner of minimalist melodica. He even released an album called The Garden, with track titles naming off the tiny animal fauna one might find there. Land is obviously larger in scope, but even here ol’ Porya takes a moment to gaze at the very small, with closing track Bug. The melody used in this one sounds as though it could have been sampled from a toy box, including some of the creaking wood one might hear when opening it. Or that could just be recordings played in reverse. It’s all rather abstract, Mr. Hatami aiming for mood over imagery, though I do often feel like I’m chilling by a river or in a field while this plays.

Eight tracks of around six to seven minutes feature in Land, each touching upon a different idea while following a similar structure. Some go super cutesy and tender (Autumn, Sea, Snow), others more droning and abstract (Rain, Storm), and sometime they’ll mesh the two approaches (River, Winter). It all does sound rather similar though, the sort of minimal ambient that navel gazes into its micro-glitch effects to such a degree that it seldom focuses on anything of substance for long, beyond the general tone maintained. Land is a nifty little album for those who appreciate ambient’s form over its function, but does get lost in the background rather easily 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.

Mystica Tribe - Island Oasis

Silent Season: 2017

Of all the dubby releases Silent Season has brought us, I never expected something like this. Dub techno, sure. Ambient dub, absolutely. Even when getting away from music with a steady rhythm, going pure ambient littered with field recordings, there’s a touch of the dub resonance in all those layered timbre and effects. This one though, the debut album from Mystica Tribe titled Island Oasis, is unlike any sort of dub release I’ve heard from Silent Season thus far. Maybe I’d find something similar further back in the label’s catalog – of course I haven’t taken in everything they’ve put out – but this one, my friends, is a first.

And what sort of dub can I be talking about? Yes, what is this unprecedented, ‘brand new and good for you’ style that has gotten my head all double-taking an’ shit? Reggae dub, mang. As in, O.G. ‘70s stylee. The bare-bones production, simplistic melodic instrumentation, with the cavernous snare hits, dungeon-deep bass vibes, and echo effects emanating from the furthest reaches of Zion – all from the Book Of Tubby. Not that it’s surprising to hear throwback reggae dub nearly fifty years since its creation, as the genre’s been remarkably persistent even as new approaches and variations on its core concept continue being explored. It’s like the blues: you can do all manner of strange and different things with it, even taking it down roads that lead it into territory far removed from its original ethos, but there’s still something about returning to that vintage, uncomplicated, twelve-bar/stripped-down sound.

So that Silent Season would throw their hat into the reggae dub pot (tee-hee) is a bit of a surprise, but not totally out of left-field – probably an eventuality anyway. What’s caught me even more off-guard is the chap behind Mystica Tribe, one Taka Noda from Tokyo, Japan. Not that it should be – white folk have been making reggae dub for years now, so why wouldn’t someone from the land of the rising sun get in on that action too? From Jamaica to Britain to Japan, island nations gotta’ represent, yo’. And as Mystica Tribe, Taka’s released about a half-dozen EPs, some on SD Records, a print into techno of the acid n’ dub sort, and more recently with his own print. Those records mostly toed the dub techno line, making Island Oasis all the more surprising as a doe-eyed throwback of dub music (including an analog mixdown!).

As for the music, yeah, it’s a reggae dub album, with little in the way of surprises. The echo, reverb, and delay effects are well placed and suitably spacious, the bass has plenty of beefy resonance for your sub-whoofer needs, and there’s typically a different, though familiar, form of melodica leading in each track: organ, harmonica, piano, xylophone. It’s all stuff I’ve heard plenty times before, though interestingly, when I played it at work, one of my older co-workers remarked how strange and different it was to her. What, she never heard UB40?