JOACHIM SPIETH & WARMTH – FRAGMENTS
The music of Joachim Spieth has a characteristic ‘widescreen’ production and sounds deep, comforting, and warm. So it’s only fitting that he collaborates with Spanish ambient producer Agustin ‘Warmth’ Mena on this album. Both have extensive experience creating music: Spieth released nine albums since 2000, and Warmth presented no less than 29 albums since 2014 under this alias alone (not counting the releases from his side project SVLBRD).
Apart from sharing their ‘affinity for expansive, imaginary soundscapes and atmospheric compositions’, they also run their own ambient music labels: Archives and Faint (Mena) and Affin (Spieth).
After working together on mutual remix projects, Spieth and Mena decided to create an album together. On seven tracks around the 5-7 minute mark (so less ‘fragmented’ than one might expect from the title), the duo ‘takes the listener on a walk through organic textures and places of longing’.
If you wrap yourself in their music, you will probably lose all sense of space and time – at least for the 42 minutes this album lasts.
Fragments is available on CD and as a digital download.
DAVID CORDERO – MELODÍAS SUSURRADAS / POSTALES
Melodías Susurradas (‘Whispered Melodies’) has been lying on my to-do stack for too long: it was already released in September 2024. So chances are you’re already familiar with this album by Spanish musician David Cordero. But if you are not: it’s never too late.
David Cordero has released music since 2012, appearing on various labels like Home Normal, Dronarivm, Lontano Series, Polar Seas Recordings, Past Inside The Present, etc. Melodías Susurradas, however, is a self-released album, available on CD and as a download.
The music on this album was inspired by Cordero walking the Carrascón trail – an ornithological route in the Bay of Cadiz (Spain). The field recordings he made of the numerous birds ‘such as the bar-tailed godwit, the grey plover, the pied avocet, or the flamingo’, can at moments be heard in the background, but this is not primarily a field recording album. It is music radiating stillness ad tranquility – softly whispering. Or, as I believe they say in Spanish: ‘sussurrando suavemente’.
A few months after the release of Melodías Susurradas, the Dronarivm label released another David Cordero album celebrating Spain’s most beautiful landscapes. Each of the 11 titles on Postales (‘Postcards’) refers to a specific place in Spain: ‘I’ve tried to reflect the beauty of the Irati Forest in Navarra, the Flysh of Zumaia in Gipuzkoa, the Albufera of Valencia, the Gorafe desert in Granada or the Somiedo natural park in Asturias, among other amazing places.’
If you look up these names, you’ll find that this time, it’s not about a walking trail: the locations are spread out all over Spain. These tracks are intended as musical postcards (hence the album title). Quite literally, too: the special edition CD version comes with a set of eleven postcards. (This edition is limited to 40 and will probably be sold out by the time you read this.) Standard CD versions and downloads are also available.
The music is quiet and peaceful. Ánd bright: there are no dark undertones here. And – remarkably perhaps – no field recordings either. Combine the music with the postcard views, and it gets tempting to start thinking about a holiday in Spain this year.