Autumn Of Communion - Reservoir Of Video Souls

Fantasy Enhancing: 2018

It appeared that Lee Norris was shifting his music ventures down different avenues, stepping back from managing ...txt while consolidating his Autumn Of Communion works into a box-set. He followed that up by establishing Fantasy Enhancing, debuting the fresh label with another Autumn Of Communion album. Everything old is new again!

Naturally, I had to get in on that action as soon as it was announced. Who knows how limited and rare these albums might become? Firsts of anything in these post Fax+ ambient techno circles always end up with ridiculous prices on the collector's market, and this particular outing from Lee and Mick looked to be a very spiffy first indeed. Why, they even went the DVD-sized package route for Fantasy Enhancing, making them something akin to a book on your music shelves. Boy, am I ever glad I sprung for it when it first came out. Shame I somehow, inexplicably lost it.

No, really, how does one lose a CD with packaging that big? It's not like there's a lot of space in my apartment for it to wander off to. Did the mice in the walls steal it? A nosy landlord nabbing it as a deposit for all the shelving holes I'm leaving? Will it miraculously appear when I finally move, unearthed from some impossibly deep couch cushion? Mysteries upon mysteries!

Okay, enough belly-moaning about my music collecting tribulations. Is Reservoir Of Video Souls any good? Sure things it is – it's not like Misters Norris and Chillage had taken a long break between this and Metal such that they'd lost their songcraft synergy. If anything, this album feels like something of a return to an older style, a simpler style, a 'not-quite-so-experimental-drone' style. A lot of Autumn Of Communion 4 feels, is what I'm saying, what with those spaced-out melodies and soft rhythms, conjuring long nights spent gazing upon stars slowly circling the heavens above.

Five tracks make up this album, each hovering in that sweet spot of twelve-to-twenty minutes of runtime. Plenty of room for the AoC lads to indulge in some freeform music making before striking upon a lead melody, and not so long that the plot gets lost along the way. Well, except opener Metacognition, so abruptly switching gears midway through, I keep thinking it's an entirely different track, and that Reservoir Of Video Souls is a continuously mixed album. It's the only track on here that does it though, making it an odd-man out.

And speaking of oddities, was I the only one that thought Reservoir Of Video Souls would end up being a DVD release? Something like BT's This Binary Universe, with little movies accompanying the music? It's right there in the title, plus the whole DVD packaging to go along with it. Heck, no lie, I assumed Fantasy Enhancing itself would feature such releases, taking the world of ambient techno into an untapped realm of modern audio-visual media. Alas, t'was not to be. Yet...

Various - Recycle Or Die (Electronic Mind Music)

Planet Earth Recordings: 1994

You couldn't be a techno-trance label of the early '90s without an offshoot of ambient-leaning downtime music. Warp Records had Artificial Intelligence. R & S Records had Apollo. Suck Me Plasma had Aural X-Perience. Even Fax+ had Seasons Greetings (wait, what?). Naturally, Eye-Q Music got in on that action, Recycle Or Die the print's contribution to the overstuffed spaced-out chill-out market. This would not be some mere ambient or pseudo New Age outlet though, oh no! Recycle Or Die would be a continuum of the German avante-garde, carrying on the legacies of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and so forth. Just, y'know, with artists from their own Eye-Q roster and all.

Which artists you ask? Oh, the usual suspects: Ralf 'Soul Of Eye-Q' Hildenbeutel; Oliver F'n Lieb, stalwart Stevie B-Zet, plus Dominc Woosey and Baked Beans. Definitely a strong opening salvo with that roster, but the sub-label's fortunes kinda' sizzled out after. Some more Baked Beans, a little more Ralf (with Gottfried Tollmann), obscurities in Solitaire and #9 Dream, plus... oh hey, MIR. I recall seeing MIR's Welcome Spacebrothers in shops way back when; that human figure on the cover at least.

Anyhow, despite the Recycle Or Die story being short-lived, you cannot deny its first act was one of the strongest for a trance-techno label jumping on the chill-room bandwagon. This particular compilation, released in America for a little cross-continental promotion, rounds up their contributions to the Recycle Or Die launch.

And you couldn't ask for a more perfect pair of opening tracks than two pieces from Mr. Hildenbeutel's debut album Looking Beyond. Follow Me is all meditative woodwinds, soothing pad work, and subtle bleepy electronics, properly steering things just out of the range of New Age into something space-aged (the Techno Age!), while Coming Back... Okay, this one dips its toes into world beat, so not really all up on that German avante-garde the Recycle Or Die manifesto claimed. Still a nice tune, just would fit more snugly rubbing shoulders with Enigma and Deep Forest, is all. Heck, at least those tracks are still immaculately produced for what they are, whereas #9 Dream's Summer Offering really does sound like the sort of thing found on New Age tapes in crystal shops. Is there anything on Recycle Or Die that hints at the techno-trance of its parent label?

You bet your chakra there is! Dominc Woosey's sixteen minute long Stray Dawn, First Light is straight from the big book of Berlin School synth minimalism, subtle arps and breathing synths slowly building to... Look, it's not about the destination with such music, just the journey, yo'. Meanwhile, Oliver Lieb's Spice Diving sounds like the Liebermeister having his own kick at Berlin School weirdness, but filled with all the sci-fi synth sounds anyone familiar with his Spicelab work will recognize (plus pitter-patter conga drumming). And finally, Be-Zet's Closed Eye View does the 'trance as ambient' thing quite common in Harthouse and Fax+ circles. Probably what folks diving into Recycle Or Die raw expected.

Raison D'être - Prospectus I (Redux)

Cold Meat Industry/Old Europa Cafe: 1993/2013

Here I am again with Peter Andersson, scoping out his main alias, raison d'être. I won't deny my first couple forays into his body of work were incidental, drawn in by cover art rather than recognition from 'dark ambient producers you MUST hear before you die cold and alone!' lists. This one though, I learned was a Very Important one in the raison d'être canon, being his first wide-release and all. For sure he had a couple tape albums in prior years, but with Prospectus I, Peter made his leap to a major label (well, major within dark ambient circles), getting a spiffy CD roll-out in the process. When Cold Meat Industry folded, the album got a redux double-LP re-issue on Old Europa Cafe, and even more recently, got the vinyl treatment with Cyclic Law. Gosh, Within The Depths Of Silence And Phormations didn't get that, so Prospectus I must be Very Important indeed, genre defining even.

I honestly don't know about that, but then dark ambient was still in its infant stage way back in 1993, finally emerging out of its original industrial influences into something truly its own. Indeed, those aforementioned early tapes as raison d'être were filled with all sorts of sound experiments and clanking noises more befitting of the power electronics scene. With Prospectus I, however, such sonic sadism is generally reduced and shuffled to the background, a heavier emphasis on such daft concepts like melodies and harmonies. In dark ambient? Why I never!

Okay, you could find such things in this music in the past, generally whenever it drew influences from the goth and ethereal scene rather than the industrial one. I guess you could say raison d'être is doing the same here, if you consider cathedral music within the same lane. Chants, church bells, choirs, all the things that have you throwing yourself into a religious frenzy. However, a lot of it sounds quite under-produced, especially some of the choices in kettledrums and choir samples, not much better than what you'd hear out of Super Nintendo. Again, I'm willing to overlook it based on the era in which it was made, but Prospectus I really does show its age, and no amount of remastered vinyl production can hide that.

The second CD in this Redux version includes a bunch of material from assorted compilations, plus the Lost Fragments demos album that was released nearly a decade after Prospectus I. I honestly find some of this stuff more interesting than the album-proper material, though more on an academic level than any sort of real enjoyment. There's only so much tinny, ominous church vibes I can take before it grows repetitive to my ears (d'at Decay I, tho'!).

Well bully for me, because the Bandcamp purchase I made for this release included even more tracks, basically a third CD's worth of unreleased early versions and alternates! Oh boy, I can't wait to hear more variations of Carnificaina, Dissection, Synopsis, and In Extremis! Prospectus I, for eternity!

Technical Itch - Progression Threat - Part One

Tech Itch Digital: 2013

A follow-up to Diagnostics. That's all we wanted. Relentless singles were nice an all, but another long-form outing from Technical Itch was what we craved. Even a consolidation of all those wayward EPs into a compilation would be dope. Just something longer than a two or three track release, feeding us those industrial-grade drums and basses. No, not those Digitally Ascended mini-albums, that's the wrong genre. Heck, the wrong scene, no matter how much d'n'b and dubstep were getting chummy. We was hungry for that darkstep dining, and wanted Technical Itch to keep feedin' us, and feedin' us, and feedin' us with full-course meals.

Ask (beg?), and you shall receive, Mark Caro giving us not one, not two, but three servings of Progression Threat. I wouldn't call these full-blown proper albums like Diagnostics, but at ten tracks each, is plenty 'nuff of the rough and rugged jungle business for folks that need their d'n'b fixes in larger than single-serving portions.

And yes, I'm not calling Progression Threat a proper-proper album roll-out on the same level as Diagnostics. If this were, in fact, a real-real album, there would have been a vinyl roll-out, maybe a box-set with CD option, the whole shebang. Yeah, yeah, the whole point of Tech Itch Digital was to release things primarily in a digital format, but even in ye' olde year of 2013, enough folks would divvy up dollars for hard copies, guaranteeing a return on a run of records. Anyhow...

I know Mr. Caro has flitted about other jungle styles over the years, but when opener Sun Eater, um, opens, I almost thought we'd be in for something on the atmospheric tip. Such a tranquil pad refrain, calm and floating, as though gazing upon Sol from afar. No, wait, here come some menacing overtones, a feral bassline, aggressive drums. Oh no! It's Unicron, come to eat the sun! I should have known better than to expect 'dolphin d'n'b' from an album with titles like Oblivion Survival, Soul Gritter, and Day Sleeper on it.

Jokes aside, this was definitely the Technical Itch, erm, itch that needed scratching after my dashed expectations following Digitally Ascended, Vol. 3. From there we get a nice variety of aggro thrashers (the aforementioned tunes; Code Weave), twitchy tech-steppers (Progress Trap, the titular cut), Led-heavy stompers (Someone Else), and... Gosh, is that a stab at Squarepusher jazz-fusion in My Being? Like, not quite so spastic cut-up as Jenkinson can go, and Mark does bring the beef later in the track, but still, a nice divergence from the norm.

And that's all there is to Progression Threat – Part One. Yeah, little need for deep analysis here. It's Mark Caro dropping nine tracks of what he does best, with one spicy outlier for flavour. Are the other Progression Threats the same? I don't know, I haven't heard them yet. For now, this was enough to sate my appetite. Besides, there's a full-course meal about to get served soon.

Dead Melodies - Primal Destination

Cryo Chamber: 2019

It's funny how circumstance can affect one's engagement with the music they consume. For sure we want suitable soundtracks to the events of our lives: rockin', high energy stuff for heading out on the town; chill, unobtrusive sounds for downtimes; smooth grooves for sexy shenanigans. When some feel glum and gloom, there's nothing like a little dark ambient to placate the mood. And four years ago, I was feelin' that dark ambient vibe indeed. Yeah, I'd been intrigued by the genre for a couple years prior, but after that happened... hoo boy. Possibly some of my most inspired prose was written during that period, regarding this particular style of music.

Yet things kinda' seem just a bit... better now? Not as good as they could or should be, oh no. Just... better. Makes me wonder whether dark ambient all-oppressive mood will be as relatable anymore, or will return to the 'conceptual escapism' status I previous held it as.

I haven't kept much tab on Dead Melodies since I last reviewed the project, but Tom Moore does remain active, especially in the year 2020. He's even gone a little noir with Zenjungle in Anthropocene, which I may pick up down the line, but for now, we're in high-concept territory in this album, Primal Destination.

In fact, we're getting in on a little sci-fi action here, if the miniscule spaceman in the cover art wasn't enough of an indication. I suppose the astrophysics patterns and and ancient stargate is a handy clue too. Or is this an inter-dimensional portal? This cover has me thinking space, but many of the track titles don't really suggest as such: Superdrone Descent, Pearlescent Dawn, Subterraformed, Glades. Gosh, now that I look at the figure on the cover harder, I wonder if that's even a spacesuit. Looks more like radiation garb, the sort of thing one might wear when traversing volcanic regions. No, don't go in there! Who knows what horrors you'll find! Dammit, why don't they listen when I'm screaming at them from my meatspace?

Primal Destination starts out relatively calm and tranquil in that cinematic drone sort of way, the first couple tracks lulling you into a sense of serenity. Third piece Pearlescent Dawn comes off more ominous though, as though your environment is growing more askew the further you travel. And while Glades may initially conjure images dewy, rolling hills of grass, there's nothing peaceful about Mr. Moore's use of field recordings here, the sort of sounds that will have you jumping at shadows from the periphery of your sight (damn you, Xtro!).

From there, it's the steady descent into, well, primal thoughts and instincts, your reptile brain getting all itchy and twitchy from the sounds Dead Melodies utilizes. Save some orchestral manipulations in Fields Of Sleep, it's not until final track The Wake Of Man does something resembling calm and rationality enter back into the discourse. Ah, the steadying breath of the wise man's brain in action.

The Higher Intelligence Agency - Preform

self-release: 2020

Bobby Bird's been a bit of a busy-body on Bandcamp this (b)last half-decade, slowly releasing his back-catalogue with upgraded fidelity. This has seen the availability of long out-of-print and rare items again, including his collaborations with Pete Namlook and Biosphere. There were a few, scattered HIA items from the project's earliest days that had yet to be re-issued though. I've covered some of these as they appeared on compilations, but others were exclusive to tapes of the original Oscillate shows. Basically a lot of very hard-to-get stuff for completists, unless one was willing to scour Discogs for them. I mean, it's not like these assorted early tracks were available on a tidy collection.

So Bobby gathered all these stray tunes into a tidy collection called Preform. Aw, now isn't that nice of him.

Three of the eight tracks included here, I already have: W.H.Y. (from Ambient Dub Vol. 2), Harmony Angel (from One A.D.), and Alphanex, which was the name of the short-lived pairing of Bird and Brian Duffy, for the one-off track Planet Hoskins on Ambient Dub, Vol. 1. Not sure why this change was made for this compilation, but whatever, it's great to have that in such spiffy remastered form. Seriously, d'at bass! HIA got its rep from being purveyors of bleepy dub, but back in the day, they squeezed some serious juice out of those low ends. Having a higher fidelity version of Why ain't such a bad thing either. Harmony Angel is fine, but was never one of my 'must hear' tracks on One A.D.

Two other 'compilation exclusive' tracks are on Preform, one of which any follower of the Artificial Intelligence series should know, Selenite. I... kinda' feel like I've heard variations on this track before. Then again, many of WHY's elements were re-purposed into the Colourform track Re-Echo, not to mention bits of Harmony Angel could be heard in Speedlearn. Hence this collection of tracks being called Preform, I guess.

Anyhow, the other compilation track is Genius Island, which appeared on one of those gargantuan charity-driven collections on Touched Music, a quite lovely, spaced-out slice of ambient techno dub (Spectral's chimes help). There's actually an earlier version that appeared on the tape Totally Ambient Groove Volume 2 – Live From Oscillate, but I assume this version was plucked instead since it already had a re-jiggering for a 2014 release.

Speaking of those tapes, the remaining three tracks on Preform all come those sessions, and yeah, these definitely sound like tunes intended for a live audience. Sub Oscillate 2 is little more than an acid techno workout with dub flourishes. Meanwhile, Alien Mind feeds of that ol' school HIA vibe of dancefloor efficiency while working all the pulpy, bleepy sci-fi sounds and samples you can indulge. Juju Love is sillier, though that twisting bleep noise sure harkens to the sort of leads weeaboo trap loves. Interesting curiosos for the HIA completist, but well removed from the minimalist electro-dub that'd mark Bird's later work.

Not The Revitalized Return I'd Hoped

Back to this year's monthly average, I guess.

Actually, I think I finally realized what's going on. Okay, I've known it for a while, sometimes even deadpanned about it, but for some reason, this month it became crystal clear just how much my ADHD is affecting me lately. I feel like I've always managed to balance all the little ideas and projects throughout my life reasonably well, such that one ongoing thing doesn't get side-tracked for some new flight of fancy. Not so much any more. If something snags my attention, I'll focus entirely on that, at least until something else snags my attention, and with *ALL THIS* going on in the year 2020, it's been all too easy to get continuously side-tracked.

And I really noticed it earlier in October, for a multitude of reasons I needn't get into here. Ultimately, I realized I didn't need to stress so much about not keeping up that writing pace I reconnected with back in the summer. It's okay to let some things sit fallow while other tasks take your time. It's... okay. It really, really is... okay. Or might it get worse as I grow older...?

I know there's drugs out there to help with ADHD and all, but I don't think this is at a crippling level yet. Sure, the apartment is messier than it should be, and pet projects take longer to complete. I still make it to work on time though, do all the things I must to carry on carrying. And who knows, maybe if this society we're living in can sort itself into some semblance of normalcy again, the mind won't feel like such a wayward wayfarer of constant distraction.

One can hope.

Skanfrom - Postcards

Suction Records: 2014

Do androids dream electric sheep? Well, I dunno about that, you'd have to ask hardcore Bladerunner fans for a definitive answer. Let's assume they do though. By that token, do androids dream of electric sheep out on British pastoral hillsides? Why would they dream of something so specific? Aren't dreams just weird, jumbled recollections of what we've done, with an added dash of what we want? Why would an android 'want' to do something so frivolous as take in the countryside, when all they're meant to do is all that they're meant to do? Could we even program an A.I. to do something like go on vacation? Not just create an itinerary and send it on its way, but to actually lollygag at the scenery, get side-tracked by random novelty, and distracted by whimsical flights of fancy.

I don't know if such notions were on Skanfrom's mind when creating this album, but Postcards sure feels like I'm watching some twee robot go on a euro road trip. It's all in that Kraftwerkian electro-pop vibe permeating throughout the album (shades of Autobahn and Europe Endless), sightseeing across quaint countrysides. Yet there's also something melancholic and lonesome here, as though this experimental automaton doesn't know what to make of its puzzling programming to wander about English lands. To say nothing of all the strange looks its receiving from the homo sapien crowds. Oh, to be back in the comforting confines of controlled labs, not out in the open, constantly bombarded by sensory stimuli, with no firm directive other than “to go forth”. Humanity is so puzzling.

I should touch upon who Skanfrom is. One Roger Semsroth (occasionally Stephan Metzger), the Skanfrom project started out in the late '90s as the sort of Rephlex-inspired electro-IDM you'd expect of a scene rediscovering electro. Mostly releasing stuff on his own A.D.S.R. print, a tidy retrospective was put out on Suction Records in their early years, after which Roger mothballed the name to pursue a lucrative venture into the realm of techno records. Okay, I don't know about 'lucrative', but as Sleeparchive, he had a pretty successful run making proper minimal techno (not that plink-plonk stuff), even getting a few items out on Tresor. Sleeparchive remains Mr. Semsroth's primary project, but on occasion he's dusted the mothballs off of Skanfrom for an EP or two. When Suction Records relaunched, ol' Rog' provided them with a fresh Skanfrom album as well, being this here Postcards. *whew* I think that's all caught up.

As said, this album is all about that sentimental electro-pop as performed on simple electronics. The 'pastoral English vacation' is heavily implied with track titles like Trains And Lines, Perseids Over Greenwich, British Cottages and Degrees Of Frost (chilly mornings on the moors, I wager), while others are reflective of supposed feelings of unfeeling entities (I Am Not Feeling Well, Lost And Lonesome, Are You Alone?). Scattered about are numerical tracks like Seven (track six), Six (track ten) and Aught (track five). Does... not... compute...

Lars Leonhard & Roman Ridder - Patterns In Nature

self-release: 2018

Hey now, don't give me that look. When I said Orange Dawn was the last of the Lars solo albums in my possession, I meant it! That did not include collaborative outings, but chronist to honest (?), this is the only one of such releases I have. Not that Mr. Leonhard has paired up often in the course of his career. There was Seasons – Les Quatre Saisons with Alvina Red on BineMusic, and the odd track here and there, but by and large, Lars does the bulk of his music making as a solo venture. So yes, no more loopholes for me to exploit in my original proclamation in covering Mr. Leonhard's output. Nope, none at all. What do you mean, you can smell clouds burning?

So the first thing I wondered over Patterns In Nature is what this Roman Ridder would add to the Leonhard stylee. Or would Mr. Ridder be the one leading the music charge with Lars in sonic support? What sort of music does Roman even make? I've never heard of him before, but there must be something in the cut of his jib if Lars was interested in working with him. Would I be able to pick out any songcraft traits? Gosh, I hope so! I've consumed so much of Lars' music that his sound is instantly recognizable to my ears. Any deviation from a contributing musician should stand out.

And there's definitely that in opener Prismatic. Like, holy cow, those sweeping pads! It's not like Lars has shied away from melody, but he's typically on a subtle tip when it comes to its deployment. Not so in this track, spacious spacey synths front and centre as they ride along a dubby techno groove. Simply lush. So is this the Roman Ridder stylee, big spacey ambient or prog-psy that wouldn't sound out of place on Altar Records? Let me check out some of his other stuff!

*checks out some of his other stuff*

Ah, hm, okay, apparently Mr. Ridder doesn't have much other stuff for me to check out, a handful of self-released albums and singles to his Discoggian name (ooh, is that an ode to The Planets I see?). And of what samples I hear, gosh does this ever sound like Lars. Maybe a little more melodic and upbeat, but generally in the same downtempo dub techno lane. I probably would have assumed it Mr. Leonhard's work with a blind test.

Going deeper into Patterns In Nature, the melding of minds is much less apparent, the two complementing quite well. There's still more overt melodic touches compared to the typical Lars release (Strange Attractor, Spherical Symmetry), while some tracks tread into pure ambient dub drone territory (Circadian Rhythm, Penta Plexity, Fractal), but that's the extent of it.

Still, Roman's extra melodic-dub touches do lend more warmth to the usual Leonhard fare. Patterns In Nature wouldn't sound out of place on Silent Season, is what I'm sayin'.

UNKLE - Psyence Fiction

Mo Wax: 1998

(a Patreon Request from Philoi)

Perhaps one of the most anticipated debut albums in the '90s trip-hop 'osphere. Heck, in all of 'electronica'? Okay, maybe not to that degree – I seem to recall endless hype for that long delayed Sasha album, but not so much this. That could just be my Canadian West Coast bias talking, only privy to the sort of hype that got imported my way. I feel, however, that while I knew plenty about DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Rob Dougan as the '90s wore on, I didn't know much about the label that supported them, much less the man behind it. Regardless of a teenaged Canuck's ignorance though, there had to be significant buzz surrounding James Lavelle's project.

Not just in seeing what the mind behind Mo' Wax could create. Lavelle had already released a couple UNKLE EPs earlier in the decade, so folks had an inkling of his production talents. Having cultivated such a roster though, plus creating so many high-profile connections within the music industry within that time, not to mention 'electronica' having enough crossover appeal that even the 'illustrious' rock world was taking an interest... Well, you can imagine Mr. Lavelle feeling just a tad over-whelmed by the pressure of producing nothing less than a magnum opus right out the gate. He almost got there too.

Psyence Fiction could have gone so very, terribly wrong, a potentially bloated album of over-stuffed musical ideas, all the while dependant on all-star collaborations in a show-off of Mr. Lavelle's super-awesome industry connections. Reading reviews from when this first dropped, that seems to be the impression too. And heck, had I heard this when it first came out, I'd probably also have thought as such. Thom Yorke? Jason Newsted of Metallica? The London Session Orchestra? Man, that just ain't propah underground t'ings, mate.

I didn't listen to this when it was new though. Heck, I've hadn't heard this album in full until now, for the purpose of review. There's been two decades worth of actual 'overblown industry records' in that time, many of which are of far less quality than what's offered on Psyence Fiction. Absolutely there remain a few instances of Lavelle doing more than was necessary – anything with the orchestra, really – but when these tracks slap, they slap hard!

We can thank DJ Shadow's contributions for keeping things level-headed, basically Lavelle's right-hand man in this project. Whatever wild idea James throws out, there's always a steady, rugged, scratch-happy rhythmic rudder holding it together. Rock freak outs (Nursery Rhyme / Breather)? No problem. Ol' school b-boy rappin' with Kool G Rap (Guns Blazing (Drums Of Death Part 1)) or Mike D (The Knock (Drums Of Death Part 2))? Right on! Cinematic electro (Celestial Annihilation)? Okay, getting a little opulent there, but cool. Desolate folk ditties (Chaos)? Straying kinda' far now, aren't we? Moody warbling with sluggish downtempo beats and psychedelic sampling (Bloodstain, Lonely Soul, Rabbit In Your Headlights)? What is this, a trip-hop album?