Manual: "Tourmaline"

Hello. I am Aethery Fields.

There are moments when time seems to stand still.

Instants when fog settles over a landscape and contours blur. "hello." is such a moment, captured in sound, preserved like a fading Polaroid whose edges are already dissolving.
After a distant time in the shadows, sailing the cinematic seas of Dark Ambient and Soundscape with my moniker "Logic Moon", I felt the need to give my brighter side more space. **Aethery Fields** was born, not as an escape, but as a complement. A place where light penetrates through the mist, where silence is not empty but filled with fleeting impressions.

"hello." is the counterpoint to my otherwise busy self. It is a still frame in a fog-veiled landscape, blurred, hazy, yet all the more haunting for it. Sometimes they are mere silhouettes drifting through the sound, vague intimations of melodies that emerge from the mist and vanish again. Then suddenly simple lines crystallize, clear and immediate, before fading back into the haze.

Process
Every track on this album emerged spontaneously, born from the moment itself. I sat down, pressed record, and let the things flow. No overthinking, no perfectionism, only the urge to capture the here and now before it slips away. What you hear is what happened in that instant. A texture, a melody appearing out of nowhere. Minimalist in form, yet rich in emotion. This music reveals my quiet side, that self which strives for deceleration, which dwells in the now and transforms impressions into sound as naturally as breathing. Each piece is an impulse made audible, a fleeting thought given form. It is a pause between breaths, a lingering in the moment before it dissolves.

Like a Polaroid capturing the essence of a vanishing moment, the diffuse light, the blurred atmosphere, the unrepeatable accident, "hello." reflects instants that can never be fully grasped or recreated. Still lifes in stillness, which despite their calm are permeated by countless sounds and impressions. It is the beauty of the imperfect, the transient, the barely visible, the unplanned.
"hello." is an invitation to pause, to lose yourself in the fog and to discover the essential in the blurred, to feel the aliveness within the stillness.

hello.

Song1

Interlude: Tenebris

The Approach Of Winter's Kiss

Alive

First track off the new Billow Observatory album, "III: Chroma/Contour", on CD/LP/digital on February 8th! Preorder from: https://azurevistarecords.bandcamp.com/merch

Info:

"III: Chroma/Contour is the third album from Billow Observatory, the collaborative project of Danish producer Jonas Munk (Manual, Ulrich Schnauss collaborator and more) and Michigan native Jason Kolb (Auburn Lull). The album's nine tracks eschew the pulse and rhythm that defined the duo's previous effort (II: Plains/Patterns) in favor of sparse melodic possibilities and a more abstract palette of sounds. Chroma/Contour suggests looking both 20 years forward and twenty years back, while forgetting the present altogether. 

Much of the album plays out as a study in minimalism: the texture and colour of each sound is being explored in miniscule detail, with enough space in the soundfield to allow each sonic constituent to breathe fully. There's a conceptual dimension to several tracks on the album, with guitars, analog synths and voices being mangled by samplers, computer software and a broken dictaphone into pure abstraction. But simultaneously there's a melodic undercurrent, revealing a deeply emotional aspect of the music. Tracks such as Color In The Six, Iris and Soft Logic convey a melancholic sense of awe, a profoundly calming glimpse of the sublime."

Billow Observatory: "Iris"

Second track off the new Billow Observatory album, entitled "III: Chroma/Contour", out on Azure Vista Records on February 8th! Preorder from: azurevistarecords.bandcamp.com

Album info:

III: Chroma/Contour is the third album from Billow Observatory, the collaborative project of Danish producer Jonas Munk (Manual, Ulrich Schnauss collaborator and more) and Michigan native Jason Kolb (Auburn Lull). The album's nine tracks eschew the pulse and rhythm that defined the duo's previous effort (II: Plains/Patterns) in favor of sparse melodic possibilities and a more abstract palette of sounds. Chroma/Contour suggests looking both 20 years forward and twenty years back, while forgetting the present altogether. Much of the album plays out as a study in minimalism: the texture and colour of each sound is being explored in miniscule detail, with enough space in the soundfield to allow each sonic constituent to breathe fully. There's a conceptual dimension to several tracks on the album, with guitars, analog synths and voices being mangled by samplers, computer software and a broken dictaphone into pure abstraction. But simultaneously there's a melodic undercurrent, revealing a deeply emotional aspect of the music. Tracks such as Color In The Six, Iris and Soft Logic convey a melancholic sense of awe, a profoundly calming glimpse of the sublime. 

As with the best ambient music, the power of these nine pieces lies in their open-endedness and suggestive potential. Rather than imposing on the listener and presenting a flawless, fullyformed aural landscape, the music creates an evocative space for the listener to explore and expand in.

Billow Observatory: "Bright Lands Rising"

Opening track from Ian Hawgood's Impermanence, released 18th April 2019 on Slowcraft Records.

www.slowcraft.info
Mailing list: eepurl.com/bIPyIH

Impermanence

Ian Hawgood - Fire

Jonas Munk: "Minimum Resistance" will be out on Azure Vista Records February 21st! Preorder here: https://jonasmunk.bandcamp.com/album/minimum-resistance

"Minimum Resistance is Jonas Munk's most abstract and minimalist album to date. Ten ambient pieces based on guitars – often processed into soft, slow billows of sound. There's a rare aesthetic clarity in these pieces, allowing each sonic component to breathe and resonate. Here Munk works with a restrained sonic palette and it's an album which demands patience from the listener. Yet, in its bold simplicity, it carries enough emotional weight to be deeply rewarding."

Jonas Munk: "Sabi"

EVEning

Starflowers

Azure Vista Records is an independently owned and operated label based in Odense, Denmark with a strong focus on blissed-out electronic sounds!