KALTE – COVALENCIES
Kalte is the abstract ambient project of Deane Hughes and Rik MacLean. According to their discography, Covalencies is their fifth full album, ‘inspired by Kubrickian geometry, abstract forces and cold fusion’. (As Sub Zero Arts the duo also creates interactive multi-media installations).
The duo uses natural sources that are digitally altered and reassembled. Their interest in ‘chemistry and mathematics and scary sounds designed to give you chills’ is clear from the four tracks on this album: the overall sound is ‘cold’ and somewhat industrial (or arctic, or isolationist – as you please) but a very fascinating deep listen.
After titles like Isomerization, Periglacial Zones and Electronegativities the closing track title sounds a bit odd – but Framheim Station was the name of Roald Amundsen’s base in Antarctica during his quest for the South Pole in 1911/1912.
So yes – definitely ‘arctic’.
JAKE MUIR – LADY’S MANTLE 
From the arctic cold to the warm beaches of the American West Coast: you probably won’t recognise it it if you don’t know it, but it definitely does determine the atmosphere: Jake Muir took many samples from an (uncredited) American pop group and rendered them into impressionist ‘abstract half-heard surf rock melodies’.
Merging these samples, stretched and manipulated into unrecognizabilty, with aqueous field recordings from all over the world, he creates a unique sound bearing subliminal marks of the West Coast sound (which Muir knows all too well since he’s from Los Angeles himself).
The result has little in common with the original 60’s surf pop anthems, but it ‘loosely limns a wide sense of space and place with its fading harmonic auroras.’
Lady’s Mantle is available as a digital download as well as a transparent vinyl edition. It is Muir‘s second album under his own name (follow-up of last year’s Acclimation).
Before that, he has also released under the Monadh alias.