Category: RECOMMENDATIONS

Bjarni Gunnarsson – Safn

Recently, someone told me that it’s virtually impossible to get an ambient music album released, while on the other hand labels fall over each other in their enthousiasm to release a new noise title. 
(Note we’re talking about physical releases here, not about netlabels!)

To be honest, I can’t say I’m much of a noise addict. There’s hardly any good opportunity to play it at home (without tough family protests),  and I was not particularly enjoying most ‘noise-for-noise sake’ live performances I’ve seen.

But on this recent release, Bjarni Gunnarsson (born 1980, in Iceland as you can probably guess by his name), explores both ambient and noise music at the same time – crossing the borders with a stunning result.

Parks – [hidden]

Though most of the ambient music albums (unsurprisingly) will appeal to ambient music devotees only, every now and then an album appears that transcends the genre border and also appeals to a more ‘pop’ oriented public – without explicitly becoming pop music. Parks’ new album “Hidden”, is such an album. 
Parks is Igor Bystrov from St. Petersburg, Russia. He has been creating music since 1990 as ‘Project Parks’, releasing seven titles until now of which “Umber” (2001) is best known since it has been re-released by Infraction records in 2007. Before starting Parks he studied music, playing the trombone (and) participating in a jazz orchestra. 
“Hidden” shows all details of an ambient classic. Bystrow is not only building his atmospheres from layered sounds, but adds some very strong melodies to them, and some sparse rhythms. With the exceptions of September.Koivisto (5’54”), all tracks on Hidden are all between 8 – 10 minutes long, and take their time to develop. The ‘pop ambient’ feel is even stronger on the three tracks containing vocals (apparently female, but since there’s no reference to the singer in the liner notes I would not be very surprised is it turned out to be Igor’s own voice). 
Opinions may differ about the vocals, however, depending on your taste. The whispering vocal parts add a melancholic dimension, but personally I find the vocal parts a bit too unstable to be impressive. That’s why I definitely prefer the instrumental tracks. 
From his somewhat enigmatig biographical notes on myspace, http://www.myspace.com/parksproject, I learn that Igor is looking for the sound he heard in his dreams, the sounds “that sounded always around when it was possible to catch silence”. With its dreamy atmosphere, ‘Hidden’ clearly succeeds in catching this atmosphere. So it is especially fitting that the album finally concludes with the longest track, called “Perfect Silence”.
Hidden is released by Infraction records (INFX048)
http://www.infractionrecords.com/shop.html

Parks [hidden]

Though most of the ambient music albums (unsurprisingly) will appeal to ambient music devotees only, every now and then an album appears that transcends the genre borders and also appeals to a more ‘pop’ oriented public – without explicitly becoming ‘pop music’.
Parks‘ new album, called “[hidden]“, is one of those albums. 

Parks is Igor Bystrov from St. Petersburg, Russia. He has been creating music since 1990 as ‘Project Parks’, releasing seven titles until now, of which “Umber” (2001) is relatively well-known since it has been re-released by Infraction Records in 2007.

“[hidden]” shows all signs of becoming an ambient classic. That is, if it can become wider known of course.

Gaston Arevalo – Marea

Once again: good news for ambient freebie hunters!
While traditional distribution for ambient music gets more difficult than ever, the artistic quality of netlabel releases only seems to increase. Here’s one of the latest proofs of that.

Peter Broderick’s Flickr Album

Peter Broderick is not afraid to try out some new directions. With his music (ranging from minimal electronics via minimalism to new-folk), as well as with the ways to distribute them.
Some of his records were released on fairly wellknown labels as Type and Kning, or on lesser known labels as Slaapwel Records and Fang Bomb. But also on cassettes, freely available mixtapes, and now even using Flickr (the  web 2.0 photo sharing site).

As far as I know, he’s the very first artist creating a ‘Flickr Album‘ this way.

Porzellan – The Fourth Level of Comprehension

The Hibernate Sampler did a fine job: I was so impressed by the quality of the music that I ordered a batch of albums from the label. All of them were interesting enough to be reviewed here (and maybe I will).

But as much I enjoyed them, Porzellan‘s The Fourth Level of Comprehension was the one I played most repeatedly.

Porzellan is Francis Cazal. Classically trained composer and baroque violinist. The latter may be a bit confusing, since none of the music is very ‘baroque-as-we-know-it’.
But, firmly rooted in classical composition techniques, Cazal obviously knows how to create a compelling composition.

No Accident in Paradise

Contemporary electronic music is firmly rooted in Germany – I guess no one will argue that.
 
So is No Accident in Paradise, a four person “Live Ambient System”, or freeform ambient music project. 

No Accident in Paradise combines live electronics and keyboards with sampled electronic music recordings and rather stunning visuals by Robert Seidel. They perform at unusual locations that perfectly fit their music: check the video of the Therme Bad Schandau performance (below) for a good impression!

Charles Spearin – The Happiness Project


http://www.happiness-project.ca/about.php

It’s not ambient, and it’s only remotely electronic.
Still, when I discovered this album last week (it was released in march this year), it left me completely speechless and utterly fascinated.  
 
The Happiness Project is a concept created by Charles Spearin from Toronto, known by some for his contributions to Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene.

For this project he has been interviewing some of his neighbours in downtown Toronto, and used their recorded voice to create the musical track.
In these sample-laden times that in itself  does not sound very spectacular, but Spearin focussed on the melody of the voice and doubled it with a musical instrument fitting the voice. The pitch of the voice is never changed, but rhythmic and melodic patterns are created by repeating some of the phrases. Thus resulting in a sparkling and engaging kind of experimental jazz music.