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Dirk Serries, Microphonics I-V (Tonefloat)

When Dirk Serries announced in 2007 that his mission as ambient mesmerist Vidna Obmana was now complete, a huge collective sigh of regret was heaved by his community of listeners. Conceived in 1984, Vidna Obmana found his defining sound in the early 1990s with albums like ”Passage in Beauty” and... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 01:04, 06 Sep 2010

Dubkasm, Transformed in Dub (Sufferah´s Choice Recordings)

As if this Anglo-Brazilian duo´s debut album wasn´t impressive enough, its version arrives training a magnifying glass on the studio wizardry of Dubkasm. This dub is lean, stripping the original´s rich sound far down to the bone – ”Ta Gravando Agora` is empty streets and alleyways in which we catch... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 02:01, 05 Sep 2010

Various Artists, Advent (3" CD Parvoart)

Intended as a meditation on winter, Advent is also the world´s tiniest tribute album. It is dedicated to the memory of Dani Baquet-Long, one half of beloved ambient experimentalists Celer, who passed away last year far too young and quickly to make any sense. Parvoart has hitherto released nothing... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 06:07, 04 Sep 2010

Dolphins into the Future, The Music of Belief (Release the Bats)

The Music of Belief is Belgian artist Lievan Martens leaping out of the DIY cassette underground (or undersea) spraying giddy puzzlement on the uninitiated. What is he up to? He writes of his first ”interspecies contact” under the auspicies of the Cetation Nation in Hawaii (which is either an... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 00:44, 04 Sep 2010

K11, Metaphonic Portrait: 1230 A.D. (Actual Noise)

A fearful symmetry of the sacred and the scary. The as-yet slim discography of K11 – Italian sound artist Pietro Riparbelli – is rife with esoteric references to both Catholic and Satanist (Crowleyan) ritual and the Gematria, the Kabbalistic system of assigning numerical significance to the letters... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 02:50, 31 Aug 2010

Jeffrey Roden, Bridge to the Other Place (The Big Tree Music)

For Jeffrey Roden, playing the bass puts him in touch. He is on a self-imposed, unending quest to sharpen and focus his work to the most elemental, and in his case, elegantly fundamental. Bridge to the Other Place is a continuation of ”Seeds of Happiness” (2007). On both, he works so close to the... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 01:25, 31 Aug 2010

Valery Siver & Kirill Trepakov, Music from The Russian Pages (Electroshock Records)

It is clichéd to say that the Russian people have a special relationship with their literature. But while this truism certainly pertains to most any nation, there is still something to it, something which perhaps the outsider never can fully appreciate. Of course, Russian literature does have... [read]
Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 03:05, 30 Aug 2010