ambientsphere

Outer Space: Ambient

NASA

Depths #186

Ambient #134

A selection of "liked" tracks with an emphasis on the ambient/drone/experimental side of sound.

Ambiente También - Atmospheric | Deep | Electronic | Bleep | Drone

3 minute audio sample from the 80 minute nature sound album; "Sequoia", available for download from www.listeningearth.com/LE/product.php?id=119

This recording takes you to California's Sierra Nevada, to an ancient grove of Sequoias - the most massive trees on earth. 

Imagine walking around this peaceful place. It is difficult to grasp the size of the forest giants around you. They tower above, reaching for the sky with cinnamon-coloured trunks, often dotted with woodpecker holes. 

You pause to listen; small birds such as Nuthatches, Flycatchers, Brown Creepers, Kinglets, Warblers and Fox Sparrows sing from high in the canopy or among the low shrubs on the forest floor. The drumming of woodpeckers large and small resounds through the forest. This place is certainly heaven for Woodpeckers!

As you meander around the Sequoia grove, you hear other sounds: the piping of a Pygmy-Owl, a Mountain Quail, and the chatter of small mammals; Squirrel and Chipmunks. A party of Stellar's Jays move through, and the dark shape of a Raven swoops overhead on languid wingbeats.

As much as Giant Sequoias are a wonder to see, this grove is also a beautiful place to listen too.

Sequoia, An American Soundscape - Album Sample

C.J. Bolland* ‎– The 4th Sign
Label: R & S Records ‎– RS 92024, R & S Records ‎– RS 92024 LP
Format: 2 × Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Album 
Country: Belgium
Released: 1992
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno

Mantra

The Hardy Tree – Common Ground
Frances Castle is the illustrator/owner behind the Clay Pipe record label and The Hardy Tree is her on- going musical project. Common Grounds was started at the beginning of the 2019 pandemic - when time moved very slowly and travel away from home became impossible. 
“Like many others with extra time on my hands I walked the streets of my neighbourhood for exercise and well-being. I rambled like I might in the country side; stopping every now and then to take in the view, or notice something I’d missed before. I took to looking up local streets in historical newspapers, and read reports of murders and deaths and robberies that had happened in the past.  I researched the names of the people who had lived in my house before me, viewed old census returns from the surrounding area, and noted the birth places and livelihoods of past residents. I began to see the ghosts of these people on my walks, and notice the things that they had left behind; shapes of ancient tram tracks creeping under the tarmac, an old gas street light in an alley way, a tiny metal sign indicating a culverted  river.   I spent my evenings writing and recording the music on this LP and then the following day would listen to the rough mixes as I walked, the music began to soundtrack the walks, and the walks began influencing the type of music I was creating.”
Frances Castle 2022

01 A Garden Square In The Snow

Sustain Series returns for its third iteration, bringing together ever-more artists for another showcase of recycled music. Reworks and newfound collaborations make up this 27-piece album, demonstrating what can be achieved with ‘one’s trash and another’s treasure’.

 https://bit.ly/amb-sustain3

All Bandcamp proceeds of this album are to be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, to help continue their work sustaining important local environments, and providing jobs to those that restore and maintain them.

G. Strizzolo & Sebby Kowal - Flying Through My Thoughts

.VRIL - Animist - Delsin Records - (152DSR)

pre-order: http://vril.delsinrecords.ltd 

a1. Animist
a2. Love Rollout
b1. Zūkunftsstrāße
b2. Katharsis
c1. Terraformink
c2. Boom To The Moon
d1. Unwelt
d2. Kuru
e1. Anomal Beta
e2. Errorist
f1. Mortem Cellula
f2. Sohn

Channelling his own explorations in search of the soul inside the machine, VRIL draws from the deep well of his live performances to present his third LP for Delsin, Animist. Inside lie 12 pieces which seem to probe at the unknowable distance between tangible consciousness and the astral plane, imbuing even the most seemingly synthetic of materials with a living essence. Given his illustrious back catalogue, it’s no surprise to hear VRIL conjure explicitly electronic music with such loaded emotional impact and seemingly organic animus, but in the process he also toys with the idea of how far the technology’s spiritual potential can reach.

Artwork by Daniel M. Diaz.

Release 03/03/23

.VRIL - Animist - Delsin (152DSR) LP Snippet

Stump Valley - Caruso

A shadow. Spreading. Ancient relics clouding the world in a veil of darkness. Despair is omnipresent, the only constant in a world succumbing to ever growing chaos. And what is left is silence. Silence as they collect what is rightfully theirs.

This is "Dark Ascend". Enjoy!

Dark Ascend

"Bulbform",  Out Now. 

EP: http://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/products/sbr065-trust-bulbform
Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bulbform-single/id460139693?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Trust - Bulbform

christina vantzou 'homemade mountains'

‘The Eysenck Suite I – Melancholic’ is the first instalment of a four part experimental aural jigsaw puzzle from the enigmatic Russian Linesman, who has become a somewhat cult figure over the past eleven years, crossing paths with mavericks such as James Holden, Max Cooper, Nathan Fake, Ryan Davis, Applescal and Laurent Garnier, along the way, via his imaginative transmissions from his secretive studio lair in Nottingham.

A musical diarist who deeply values his chosen form of expression as art inspired by his physical and emotional travels through life, he has released numerous singles, EPs and two studio albums. For the uninitiated to gain an insight into the workings of the Russian Linesman’s mind, his last album (‘Nostalgia Story’ 2013) was a sprawling thirty-seven-song flood of inspiration that was recorded live in one take, whereas ‘The Eysenck Suite I-IV’ is the result of four solid years of dedicated writing and numerous re-records.

The catalyst for this latest, bold musical project was located in a tattered old Psychology book by Hans Eysenck, unearthed from his parents’ loft. It contained an analysis of temperament theory and its roots in the ancient ideas of Hippocrates and Galen. Exploring these concepts and endeavouring to recreate them has shaped the project’s music and how it is presented. Galen had named four temperamental categories as being “Melancholic”, “Choleric”, “Sanguine” and “Phlegmatic”, and the esoteric Linesman’s compositions communicate his interpretation of each classification of Eysenck’s resulting model and the emotions they encompass, ordered and structured and revealed across four EPs.

Part one focuses on the Melancholic temperament that tends towards sadness and feeling low, resulting in a somewhat pessimistic view of the world. The name has been adopted as a synonym for sorrow, but comes from the Greek words for black bile. This first EP is intended as a soundtrack for times of sorrow, reminiscence and regret. But also for moments of withdrawal from over thinking everything, reducing anxiety, reflecting and triggering memory traces of happier times.

“In the ideal personality, these complementary traits are intricately balanced, and so, within these recordings, I hope the listener can find comfort in acknowledging them, and in turn finding their own balance.” – Russian Linesman

Although he use's James Holden's favourite software - Jeskola Buzz - the Russian Linesman writes all his music on acoustic guitar and piano, harking back to a past spent touring as an acoustic singer/songwriter playing folk music. This ethos has evolved into recording with vocals as well, before everything is heavily edited and drowned in electronic sounds.

“I find this method of writing allows me to find more curious melodies and give the songs an organic spine. I use lots of found sounds too, with the intention of recreating feelings and settings for my stories. Some of the finished songs still contain snippets of the vocals, guitars or pianos, while others will be fully enclosed in a digital sarcophagus.” – Russian Linesman

The series of four EPs will be released at bi-monthly intervals throughout the year from 27th March 2017: 
The Eysenck Suite I Melancholic (loki010) 
The Eysenck Suite II Choleric (loki011) 
The Eysenck Suite III Sanguine (loki012) 
The Eysenck Suite IV Phlegmatic (loki013)

Available on all digital download stores and streaming sites.

Russian Linesman - If It's Not Too Much Trouble Just Get Me On The Plane

Russian Linesman - How Can The Sky Be So Beautiful When We Have Been So Bad?

Live iPad jam on a rainy day. Uncut video here: https://youtu.be/kUqGkci1iVo

Flowing

On 28 May 2014, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev rocketed into space in a Soyuz spacecraft. This was their voyage - in audio.

Strapped atop 274 tonnes of rocket propellants delivering 26 million horsepower, it took only six hours to reach their destination, the International Space Station ISS.

Soyuz ride into space

For your Halloween hangovers and regrets..
https://jazzyspoon.bandcamp.com/album/a-product-of-my-environment-remastered

A Product OF My Environment

donate

It's All In My Head

The second volume of 'Soundscapes' comes with tracks by Steve Pacheco, Tone Color, Hotel Neon, Shuta Yasukochi, SineRider, Hilyard, Slow Clinic, Gallery Six, Hakobune and SVLBRD.

Written and produced by Steve Pacheco, Tone Color, Hotel Neon, Shuta Yasukochi, SineRider, Hilyard, Slow Clinic, Gallery Six, Hakobune and SVLBRD. 
Mastering by Rob Small. 
Archives42 // ArchivesCD23 
Archives / 2017

Buy CD/Digital

Tone Color - I Knew It Then, And I Know It Now

Hilyard - Soma

Here is a lovely 6.5 minute soundscape that I just uncovered … two Wood Thrushes singing back-and-forth at dawn, recorded at Land Between the Lakes Kentucky way back in 1995, about the time I began gathering binaural soundscapes. I rather like it and think it’s a powerful reminder of things to come Yep, SPRING is just around the corner. Believe me!

It’s a busy dawn chorus for sure, but if played at a medium to low sound level, it’s fairly gentle on the ears. The recording also features the incessant singing of distant Whip-poor-wills, Barred Owls hooting, Mourning Doves cooing, a woodpecker drumming (probably a Hairy Woodpecker), and plenty more species for the discerning ear.

Wood Thrushes Countersinging

On the top of the mountain, the wind is howling in the old installation of the ski station of Chacaltaya, Bolivia. The station was the highest in the world, and stops a few years ago, because of the smelting of the ice (du to global warming). 
The teleski cable and tube is still there and the wind sing in it! :-)

Sound recorded by a MS setup Schoeps CCM41+CCM8 with a Cinela Zephyx Windscreen
Sound Devices 788T recorder with CL8
MS is encoded in STEREO Left-Right
recorded in february 2014 on the top of Chacaltaya Mountain, above La Paz, Bolivia.
Wave 96kHz 24bit
Sound Reference: @SAM140216

The video of the sound on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/89754394
Same sound on Freesound https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/447375/
Related sound on Bandcamp "Chaque Matin Du Monde" 
https://chaquematindumonde.bandcamp.com/track/tube-olien
Shorter sound from the same tube/place on SoundCloud here
https://soundcloud.com/felixblume/wind-singing

Wind singing in an old tube on the top of the mountain Chacaltaya

Erased Stills is the debut LP of the Russian composer Igor Dyachenko is an odyssey into the unconscious that lies at the intersection of meditative ambient and industrial IDM.
First thing you notice when you press play is the incredible cinematic landscape of the album and its narrative. Each composition can be read as a chapter of Joyce's “Ulysses”, where moving in space transforms the mental state of the hero evoking wiped memories, random allusions and suppressed associations. In Erased Stills the artist shares his experiences for the last five years, including musical ones.
The album opens with the composition Access Keys. The name refers to the term in psychotherapy, when through barely noticeable gestures, eye movements, posture and breathing, the therapist adjusts to the patient's rhythm trying to find the key to the gate of his unconscious.
In the general storyline, this is a 3am moment. A blank canvas, a stage without artists and scenery, a coordinate system not yet dissected by rays and dots. Soft piano chords, barely touching the listener, are hesitantly making their way through the rustling emptiness.
Tachyons and In Signals are the essence of laboratory experiments with modular synthesizers. It is still predawn twilight, when in silent moon shades you’re trying to guess the shapes and silhouettes carved into the sound.
Unlimited Trance is the most lyrical moment in the album. A touching, youthfully romantic composition with a quivering piano part and convincing strings reveals the spiritual essence of a person.
Mountain Stream continues the ambient line of the record, but melancholy gives way to the joy of awakening. It is as if you see dazzling arrows of the morning rays, beating with cosmic energy and overflowing of diamond light. This is one of the climaxes of the album, when with the awakening suddenly comes the moment of motion: dense, enveloping structures of the bass emerge through the bright cheerful vibrations, a drum machine starts up and from a state of solitary contemplation you seem to be transferred to the center of the earth. Energy, languishing in the unconscious, is converted into kinetic. Transitions from meditative ambient to rhythmic IDM are the common essence of the record.
After taking a short pause in Starfall, the artist leaves the listener again with an epic Space Translation. Bass, smelling like burning rubber, and carefully polished textures are layered on the sequences that are sparkling like a spike of pearl.
You hear even more wildness and gustiness in one of the album’s key tracks - Disintegration: the melodic ambient line dissolves in a saturated groove. The bass goes slowly, like space-time in Interstellar, distorting the rest of the soundscape with its gravity. The drama of the LP is revealed in this tension between hell and paradise: the plots, taken from memory, acquire new sounds and details, turning into an audiopanel and a screenplay.
The final track with atmospheric trance passages and an accelerated straight-line beat is a kind of sublimation of all the experience you lived through this album. Connection to the general flow of energy and dissolution in it.

Erased Stills

Mountain Stream

Place Language is an international non-profit compilation album project inspired by the themes found in Robert Macfarlane’s widely-acclaimed book ‘Landmarks’. In particular it focuses on the book’s extensive topographic glossaries, the “word-hoard” of depictive landscape terms gathered from 30 different languages, dialects and sub-dialects around Britain & Ireland and divided into sections by type of terrain (Flatlands, Uplands, Waterlands, Coastlands, Underlands, Northlands, Edgelands, Earthlands and Woodlands). Relying on these topograms, or “tiny place poems”, as creative prompts, Place Language seeks to both inspire a renewed interest in our surroundings and reinvigorate our appreciation for the audible textures & patterns that characterize a place in keeping with the book’s stated desire to “re-wild” our vocabulary.

The collection features the work of 28 different sound-artists, field recordists, and musicians from around the globe each of whom selected a Landmarks topogram and recorded an impression of it thus adding rich new aspects of dimensionality through the act of sonification. These selections cover all nine of the book’s glossaries along with place-words of new coinage as prompted by the blank one which Macfarlane leaves at the end of the book for readers to fill in from their own experience. The end result is a truly global and collaborative survey of place, language, and sound.

Due for release in September 2019 on Fluid Audio
Artwork by Gregory Euclide

Selvedge

TRACK PREMIERE : Kate Carr - Selvedge

track 3 from “Frozen Passages” by @poemme
Out now!
https://poemme.bandcamp.com/album/frozen-passages

Frozen Passages

a path between the clouds

poemme - a path between the clouds

Remix album for 'Strange Parentheses', released on October 2018.
Written and Produced by Pepo Galán
Remixes by r beny, Steve Pacheco, David Cordero, José Soberanes, Eyoko, Suero, Eduardo Briganty, Erissoma, Max Würden, Alberto Lucendo, Shuta Yasukochi and Warmth
Mastering by Ian Hawgood
Photography by Alexander Kopatz
www.go70north.com
Archives61 // ArchivesCD42
Archives / 2019

Pepo Galán - In A Straight Line (Warmth Remix)

Berlin based cellist and composer Anne Müller shares a second piece, 'Drifting Circles', ahead of her long awaited debut solo album 'Heliopause'.

'Heliopause' follows several Erased Tapes releases featuring Anne, including her celebrated collaboration with Nils Frahm titled 7fingers, appearances on Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm’s Collaborative Works, Nils Frahm’s All Melody and his acclaimed soundtrack for the film Victoria, Lubomyr Melnyk’s Fallen Trees, as well as the two bespoke solo pieces Walzer für Robert and Bel Tono for the label’s 5th and 10th anniversary box sets. In fact, a glance at Müller’s Discogs boasts credits on over 60 releases since she began recording in 2007.

Classically trained at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts under the renowned cellist and conductor Michael Sanderling, Anne Müller performed as a cellist in many of Berlin’s symphonies for some time before choosing a different path with her music and focussing on novel approaches to classical instrumentation. A profound believer in the power of artistic collaboration, Anne’s skilled cello playing and instinctive composition became extremely sought after.

Following her work with Nils Frahm, an enduring partnership with singer-songwriter-composer Agnes Obel ensued, touring for five years together and featuring on two albums (Philharmonics and Aventine) and most recently, working with multi-instrumentalist Markus Sieber (aka Aukai) on his 2019 album Reminiscence. In between all this, Müller also co-founded the progressive live project Solo Collective along with violinist/singer Alex Stolze and pianist/conceptual artist Sebastian Reynolds, releasing Solo Collective Part One in 2017.

A solo record in every sense of the word, Müller wrote, recorded, arranged and produced Heliopause. The album is named after the boundary where the sun’s wind ceases to have influence. It is ultimately, the border of our solar system. The name struck a chord with Müller since the two voyagers sent on an exploratory mission 42 years ago, recently crossed the Heliopause, entering into interstellar space and losing power from our own sun. Müller recognised herself in this moment, not only approaching the same age, but also breaking new ground; having relied on collaborating with so many other stars and now venturing into the unknown with her first solo statement; “Heliopause marks the end of a long journey but also the start of voyages to explore strange new worlds”

Both as the closing title track and album as a whole, Heliopause crosses these physical and invisible borders throughout, sending the cello as a typically classical instrument to exciting new and uncharted territory.

· pre-order 'Heliopause' on LP/CD/DL:  idol.lnk.to/Heliopause

Heliopause

Drifting Circles

Buy LP/CD/DL

Anne Müller - Drifting Circles

opening track from "Uncoded Winds" the debut album by Gri | Gutman | Mosconi. Release date 13.12.2019

Uncoded Winds

Gri | Gutman | Mosconi - Grecale

Jet Jaguar - Storm In Lisbon

Taken from the new album "Recording"

Out now: https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/recording

Released January 29, 2020 

Written and recorded by Michael Upton 
Mastered by RedRedPaw 
Photos by Michael Upton

Jet Jaguar - Storm In Lisbon

Cat #: DR-68
Format : CD / DL
Release page : https://dronarivm.lnk.to/StalkingtheElusive

This album was conceived in Moscow during the Spring of 2018, when Dmitry Vasilyev organized the concert of Enrico Coniglio and Giulio Aldinucci at дом - Dom Cultural Centre. The album reflects the feelings of some very intensive days made of exchanges of ideas with a multitude of people involved in music (including Dmitry Taldykin of Dronarivm) and moments spent in isolated places out of the metropolis, like a forest not far from an army shooting range.

In this album, the two musicians wave together memories of an immutable past and questions about the present, giving birth to a sort of a requiem overflowing with lyricism. This music enlighten the dawn of a future that now appears more uncertain than ever, with frozen intensity and dramatic strength. As a message entrusted to the stars, it leaves as wondering if we can still change the course of events.

Stalking the Elusive

Buy CD

With An Encrypted Travel Guide

Today sees one of London’s most exciting new talents, ABSOLUTE. (aka Anthony McGinley) announce his debut mixtape Wonderland, due for release on May 7th via Skint Records/BMG. Alongside the announcement, tickets for ABSOLUTE.’s headline show at London’s Islington Assembly Hall on Saturday 19th June are on sale now. 
 
Buy tickets for Islington Assembly Hall here: https://skint.lnk.to/AbsoluteLivePR  
 
Wonderland is a whirlwind ride through dance music as heard through ABSOLUTE.’s ears: emotive house, hard-edged techno, divine disco, and euphoric rave bring the party, while more cerebral downtempo and textural ambient tracks wind things down. It’s party music for a time without parties, all shot through with McGinley’s message of hope and equality for all.  
 
Speaking on the Mixtape, ABSOLUTE. explains: “Writing this album brought me back to life, I was writing music that helped me feel certain ways, freedom and connectedness to something I and many others were missing, longing hard to be around people, or needing a dose of raw euphoric rave energy which gave some release at the sheer desperation to dance and feel joy. Even if just for a short time, to feel transported to 90’s UK raves or New York’s underground gave me some life, and I hope it does for you too. Welcome to Wonderland…” 
 
The mixtape album came to fruition as a result of the recent lockdown where ABSOLUTE., and the rest of the world, was forced to a standstill. Anthony was determined to turn his frustration into art and participated in a creative workshop that helped open his mind to new ideas, taking his music in exciting directions. The title of the mixtape takes its name from Wonderland Arena, a now obsolete rave space in East London that played host to live performances from the likes of Frankie Knuckles, The Prodigy, and Carl Cox during the halcyon days of acid house and early rave, and that is now converted into apartments where Anthony currently lives and works. 
 
ABSOLUTE. Is a project that has steadily gained momentum over the last couple of years, deftly choosing the right path for long term success rather than quick gains. Coming from the vibrant LGBTQ+ club and rave space where he promoted influential events in London, Anthony wanted to make sure foundations were solid before making the break into the live arena with this incredible body of work. He’s DJed at a wide array of parties and festivals from Glastonbury and Creamfields to Fabric and Razzmatazz but performing live has always been the goal. As lockdown came into effect he was packing his equipment to go on the road supporting dance legends 808 State on a 10 date UK tour.  
 
Despite a total shutdown of the live sector during the pandemic, Anthony still managed to perform his debut live set for Radio 1’s virtual Ibiza weekend during the summer and has just announced a headline live show at Islington’s assembly for March next year in partnership with underground gatekeepers Percolate. 
 
Alongside his musical accomplishments, Anthony is a passionate activist for human rights and has a longstanding track record of work supporting issues including climate, race, and LGBTQ+ justice. After attending the first Extinction Rebellion action in London, McGinley wrote “Rave Against the Machine”, a track that sampled a speech by Greta Thunberg which resulted in XR later inviting him to programme the music line-up of their International Rebellion at Trafalgar Square, while at Glastonbury, he played at Greenpeace’s Rave Tree.

Can U Still Feel It?

Before You Wake

Million Sunflake Sparkles

Dogma of Sleep

The Sleep

Convergence

Somewhere In The Distance

Dutch independent label focused on contemporary ambient / modern classical music.