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.

Subversion Guest Mix

Not long ago, Muttley’s “Isolate” mix was published on Ambientblog as a guest mix.
Muttley’s own Subversion weblog hosts a lot of his mixes, as well as the 15 Minutes of Fame series. 

The SubVersion 15 Minutes of Fame format dictates that any mix should contain no more than 10 tracks and last no longer than 40 minutes. That’s an average of 4 minutes per track.
So, when asked to do a guest mix for this weblog, I had to change my usual approach.

In the ‘collage’ mix format I mostly use, 4 minutes is about the maximum time any included sample gets played – usually far more tracks overlay at any single instance.
So I had to restrict myself in that matter, to create a ‘mixtape’ mix format for this particular issue.

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.

Sonic Acts XIII – The Poetics of Space


SAXIII

If you’re in or maybe even anywhere near Holland (Amsterdam) between february 25 and 28, you definitely should not miss Sonic Acts  XII – “Spatial Explorations in Art, Science, Music and Technology.

This bi-annual festival must be one of Holland’s most important event in experimental electronic music. But not ‘just’ music: the multimedia event also presents expositions, installations, conferences, sound walks, and of course a lot of other immersive aural experiences.

Isolate (Mix)


Muttley profile picture

Isolate is the first mix published on ambientblog.net created by a guest.

Muttley (Michael Buckingham) is actively maintaining the Subvert Central weblog (hosting 60+ mixes now!), and also contributed some mixes to the Low Light Mixes weblog that I’m sure you are all familiar with.

Isolate is a continuous mixtape focussing on drone tracks. It’s a great mix to listen to at night (and falling asleep to).

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.