Mark Templeton - Inland

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Genre: Experimental, Drone, Neo Classical

Label: Anticipate

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The allure of Inland begins right away, as a twangy, reverb-ed electric guitar melody is bathed in cascading delays, creating a hypnotic pulse and textured sonic vistas. From there, this latest album by Canadian experimental artist Mark Templeton continues to document an insular yet inviting journey, the composer’s hands-on, collage-like methods producing enigmatic mood shifts and plenty of textural surprise.

Templeton’s approach seems obliquely rooted in both folk song and film soundtrack music: there’s often a wide -open -spaces, lonely camp-fire vibe to his layered acoustic and electric guitars, his casually plunked-out banjo melodies. But these humble beginnings lead to complex sonic manipulations: cavernous reverbs; pulsing echoes and regenerations; fuzz and distortion; broken-sounding electronics; severe jump-cut edits.

Within these transiting events, other sounds are sometimes heard: static and hiss, accordion chords, gongs and deep-toned drums. All of this seems to occur organically, within tracks that preserve the relatively short duration and, somehow, the familiar narrative-like arc of folk or pop song structure. And while each piece seems to create its own voiceprint, there’s also a seamless and mysteriously unified sense to to the way the record unfolds as a whole. This is decidedly not trance or drone music: moods and timbres shift and juxtapose quite quickly, sometimes cinematically.

Templeton’s wordless, often gently falsetto vocals appear suddenly in quite a few places, and the effect of this is powerfully intimate and anchoring. Within all that sonic ebb and flow, all those arching views, we come upon the sound of someone singing to himself; helping us to experience, perhaps, the strangely comforting sense of sharing in another’s engagingly hermetic creative world.

Review from Dusted Magazine

Federico Durand - El Extasis de Las Flores Pequeñas

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Genre: Ambient, Neo Classical

Label: Own Records

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After the superb La Siesta Del Ciprés released last year on Spekk, Buenos Aires-based Federico Durand returns with El éxtasis de las flores pequeñas, a 35-minutes subdued and beautiful evocation of time spent as a child with his grandparents to the woods in the Argentinean South. Using a reduced and evocative sound palette made of piano and acoustic guitar, augmented with field recordings collected in the gardens of Buenos Aires, Durand conjures memories of his lost grandparents’ home, in a delicate and poetic study of nostalgia and childhood.

As the rain pours outside, the gently reverberating piano notes of opener El pequeño huésped sigue dormidoslowly unfurl and are soon accompanied by a quiet acoustic guitar, suggesting a lonely day spent at home, flicking through a worn out photo-album of sepia-tinged pictures. Nothing mournful or sad, just vignettes of long-gone moments, resurfacing and transporting the listener to their own childhood. Subsequent numbers are somehow more oneirical – the melodic motifs being quite distant, suggesting fragments of memories that fold into each other, as in a super-8 film of past holidays. At other times like in Elin for example, the same piano phrase keeps looping, its meaning becoming all the clearer as the piece progresses, as if one could see at last why this particular memory had stuck for so long in our head, giving a sudden new insight into our own story.

Durand has taken great care when recording his instruments, conjuring a necessary distance that perfectly matches his intentions. The piano in La Casa De Los Abuelos is presented through a sonic veil that achingly underlines the nostalgic mood of the piece. In the title track, the guitar is processed through echo and delay-pedals in such a way it suggests faded-out memories, as seen in a shadowbox. Sounds of hands gliding between chord shapes on the guitar’s neck are isolated and amplified, and seems to remove themselves from the interwoven melodies.

Each track tells its story ever so slowly, like a poem being read out loud, progressing at its own unhurried pace. InAtardecer en las montañas, piano and guitar congeal into a droning mass of majestic beauty that drift ecstatically on the surface of a sunlit pond. The delicate touches of xylophone-like instruments add a very interesting contrast to the track that clearly stands out as the most blissful piece on the album. In the closing Kim, Durand’s reverberated guitar comes back in a simple and very evocative chord progression that loops atop processed field recording and gently saturated undulating drones, as a way of letting go of those long-gone memories of childhood, grateful that such moments ever existed.

El éxtasis de las flores pequeñas is a work of extreme sensibility that avoids unnecessary sentimentality or cliched evocations – Federico Durand unveiling its narrative through delicate strokes of unassuming beauty.

Review from Fluid-Radio.

Julia Kent - Green And Gray

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Genre: Ambient, Neo Classical, Experimental

Label: Important Records

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The solo work of cellist Julia Kent deals in different ways with concepts of borders and of spaces which are neither one thing nor the other. Her first solo record, Delay, was based on that most modern (and Eno-esque) of limbos, the airport. Having crossed the globe in a number of different ensembles, most famously as a member of Antony and the Johnsons, but also with a range of more leftfield acts such as Rasputina, Burnt Sugar, Angels Of Light and Stars Of The Lid, she found she was spending rather a lot of time trapped in those places, and elected to use them to her advantage. She made recordings in airports, and used them as the foundation for Delay, naming the resulting tracks after the airports in which they were recorded. The title of her second album for Important suggests she has found the way out, but only to another place betwixt and between: the place where the grey of the city meets the green of the countryside. And exactly how much of an escape that turns out to be is open to question.

Green And Grey opens and closes with cicadas, stridulating in the evening air, with Kent’s looped cello building upon the samples to create the compositions. In between, there are tracks named after trees (“Ailanthus”), water (“Acquario”), landscape features (“Overlook”) and constellations (“Pleiades”), but also in one case, a building (“Spire”). It seems at first listen that Kent is outside, recording the sounds of the natural world, in order to inspire her work. The natural rhythms of those insects, the gurgle of water, the patter of raindrops, all find a musical echo in the tracks which follow them. So in a number of ways, the modus operandi hasn’t changed from Delay, it is just the location (or rather the locations) which is different. What is most telling here, however, is just how unobtrusive the recordings are. They are but brief snatches of very quiet sounds, the merest hints of the ambience of the outside world.

Leaving aside Eno (whether she draws from him intentionally or not), you have an album which takes similar cues as the likes of Johann Johannsson and Max Richter, or perhaps Hildur Gudnadottir with her more diaphonous cello work Without Sinking: modern, melancholic, minimalist, classical. However, in a sense trying to pigeonhole her records goes against their very essence: they seem to be born of a desire to break out, to escape. The short, churning rhythmic loops which underpin so many of these pieces act like an anchor, these ostinati counteracting the melody line’s desire to take the piece into different landscapes.

The more you listen, the more it begins to feel like, despite first impressions, this is less a record about the physical border between the city and the country, and more one about a mental border. The sound of echoing footsteps in “Ailanthus” suggest we haven’t even left the building, while the water heard in “Acquario” may even be the sound of a fishtank, rather than a stream. The cicadas are just as likely to be heard through an open window; let’s face it, you aren’t going to be plugging in a looping pedal in the park. As the surge of those song-like melodies is once more halted in its tracks, you feel that on Green And Grey Kent is as trapped in the city as she ever was in the airport. With the urge to escape to nature being defeated time and time again by more mundane concerns, sometimes all a city dweller can do is dream of leaving.

Review taken from The Liminal.

Emanuele Errante - Time Elapsing Handheld

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Genre: Ambient, Electronic

Label: Karaoke Kalk

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A new offering from Italian artist Emanuele Errante sees him continuing his characteristic approach to musical texture – the pairing of electronics and acoustic instruments to achieve a consolidated whole. As simple on the surface this is, often the discrepancy in timbre, or perhaps the clashing connotations the instruments conjure up can make for an awkward or irritating listening experience. Fortunately for Errante, his release history displays ause of this technique that has shaped a largely successful outing this time around.

Errante’s music, first introduced to me through Apegenine‘s Migrations (2007), and then Somnia‘s Humus (2008), stands to be in its own sub-category of minimal ambient and experimental modern classical compositions. Lo-fi noises, scratching on the strings of a gently weeping guitar, clicking field recordings, and cascading ambient atmospheres, penetrate through the walls and carpet, raising dust and killing mites (perhaps I should lower the volume a bit). Whether consumed as a sonic installation or an abstract piece of sound art, Time Elapsing Handheld captures the moment with its seven titles, creating a path which is “Leaving The Nowhere”through the “Memoirs”, a bit “Counterclockwise”, sometimes “Later, Earlier”, and always “Inner”.

Lush soundscapes loop and breathe through organic piano tones, guitar strums, and harp plucks, drowning in a generous sweep of synthetic strings, sampled noise, and dripping effects. Centered around the theme of passing time (as the album’s title suggests), the music hypnotizes the listener, bringing him a little closer into the notion of now, and then subsides, letting him simply float among the sounds of rewinding moments. Be still… and feel that… that’s right… 

The digital version of this release contains two more tracks, “Egostatsy” and“Hidden Sun”. Oh, and in case this review was not sufficient in piquing your interest, it is worth mentioning that Simon Scott appears on the album, collaborating with Errante on a track, “Made To Give”. Highly recommended for fans of Marsen Jules, Deaf Center, Rudi Arapahoe, and Rafael Anton Irisarri.

Dustin O'Halloran - Lumiere

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Genre: Neo Classical

Label: Fat Cat

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Cinematic, you see, is an adjective that lends itself to O'Halloran's mode - even when divorced from the big screen - and it's a manner he's keen to flesh out having acquired the services of an assembly that includes the likes of Adam Wiltzie, mixer Jóhann Jóhannsson and sometime Grizzly Bear, Max Richter and Owen Pallet collaborators ACME Ensemble.

Lumiere, however, is no self-congratulating indulgence: from the very earliest strains of A Great Divide - a six-minute smoulder in which delicate piano flourishes contrast against ethereal drones and the most mournful of strings - there is an air of patience abound, an understanding that high order composition speaks for itself, and that the rich, layered qualities of ensemble neo-classicism are not mutually exclusive with O'Halloran's established less-is-more philosophy.

Opus 44, indeed, takes up the strand in solo fashion; O'Halloran, his touch light on the ivory keys, embarks on a gentle cascade that bears timeless qualities despite its brief stay.

But it is compositions like We Move Lightly that more fully encapsulate Lumiere's beauty. It is, in essence, a rather simple, swift and repeated piano melody, but one that resonates immeasurably further with the presence of the subtlest of string swells; a texture that replaces the measured silence of the soloist.

Similar interplay lends warmth to Quartet No 2, a movement whose minor key might otherwise court detachedness, while Fragile No 4 crescendos elegantly from youthful simplicity to the sound of world-weary grace. Each track seems to yearn to score a scene not as yet willed into existence.

Which is not to suggest that O'Halloran is simply playing John Barry to make-believe movies: there is exquisite technicality beneath the hood, with the album's axis pairing - Opus 43 and Quintette No 1 - indicating a willingness to introduce new patterns and sub-themes well after the establishment of initial melodies strong enough to see out the longest of passages. Such tinkering is tempered - no Gonzales-style missiles from leftfield here - but sufficiently pronounced as to prevent wholesale shifts into ambient mood music.

Still, such gorgeous-if-melancholic chamber music does not lend itself particularly well to out-of-sync listening, and one is not recommended to just dip into Lumiere: bereft of an implicit aural narrative, a number of the album's constituent parts lose identity. Snow And Light, for instance, becomes uneventful background music rather than the serene conclusion to a cohesive whole. Such gripes, though, matter not for O'Halloran, who in Lumiere has surely fashioned a classic of the genre and the finest of testaments to his considerable talents.

The North Sea - Never Stop It

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Genre: Drone, Experimental

Label: Hooker Vision

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Brad Rose's output as The North Sea launches at quite a prolific pace. Whether a cassette of his will contain calm transmissions or piercing walls of feedback, it's somewhat difficult to infer what a release will sound like without the aid of an audio sample. Rest assured, though, that Rose's latest tape on the Georgia imprint Hooker Vision would be of the latter persuasion. Side A's "Destroy Her Blue Eyes" manages to keep a 20-minute manipulation of a single tone engrossing throughout; at times, it peaks at a shrill frequency and at others, it rumbles like a seismic abuse.

On the flip side, "Quiet Underneath," Rose's titles really seem to disconcert the listener, because it resembles death-- not the band, I'm just referring to dying; slowly being crushed by the largest boulder conceivable, and screaming for a hero that will never arrive. Physically, it's an awful experience-- but aurally, the saturation is pure ecstasy. Easily, it stands as Never Stop It's most climactic passage, and piques my interest to the point where I feel puzzled as to why I don't own more of Brad Rose's material. Though not as demanding as your average HNW recording, the uncompromising aura brings just as much unease to the senses.

Balago - Extractes D’un Diari

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Genre: Ambient, Experimental

Label: Foehn Records

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If we look up a concept like “urban melancholy” in the dictionary, we probably won’t find what we are looking for. In reality, there’s no likely definition or category in which to place it, but everyone more or less knows what we’re talking about when we say that. There are artists, groups, composers, and producers who appear to have been born expressly to give voice, image, and sound to this idea.Burial, Fennezs after “Endless Summer”, the more ambient Brian Eno, Stars Of The Lid, and a long list of figures capture this explosion of intimate, interiorised emotion in their creations—almost in slow motion, unfocused—and they manage to integrate in into the context of a big city and all of the sentimental, personal issues characterised there. They have the gift of creating images, sensations, and moments of loneliness, tiredness, uncertainty, and sadness in the context of the immensity of granite and asphalt; they, and some others, are the real creators of the soundtrack of the present day, the ones who best know how to put sound and audio to our time.

The Catalan band Balago belongs, without a shadow of a doubt, to this line of solitary names—curiously all influences recognised by the band’s leader, David Crespo—who strike out on their own and, without even trying to, put music to interminable bus rides down long avenues, tense, uneasy walks down dark streets, sunrises seen through the front window of a taxi, required stops at 24-hour petrol stations or convenience stores, or angry bouts of late-night jogging. Contrary to what logic tells us, for getting powerful, danceable hits to increase your effort and motivation, few experiences this year can equal that of going out to burn shoe rubber on a dark night with “Extractes d’un Diari” on your iPod. Let’s mix bubbling endorphins, cold, knackered pedestrians on their way home from work, an acceptable rhythm per kilometre, and the modest ambient symphony suggested by this group from La Garriga in their comeback, and we will get one of those moments to keep in your musical memory, like the first time that you heard “Untrue” on the way home after an infernal working day, or the first time that you thought to put the soundtrack to “Solaris” by Cliff Martinez on to isolate yourself from the surrounding drunken hubbub of an underground car on any given Friday night.

In “Extractes d’un Diari”, Balago recover the support of some beats, inject more melodic weight into the songs, play more emphatically with synthesisers, and end up transmitting more life, body, and muscle to their discourse. And all of this without leaving that circle of ambient-soundtrack where they are so at home, ever since the best passages of “El Segon Pis”, a second album whose wake is taken up again here, insisting on the idea of establishing a linear plot from flashes and sparks lasting one to two minutes, totally contrary to the long tracks on “D’Aquii”. It doesn’t seek to be one, nor is it in reality, but in a sense the album works as a summary and compendium of the sound personality of David Crespo over the course of a decade. The meticulous mastery of drone and the ambient of “D’Aquii”, the capacity for emotive condensation of “El Segon Pis”, the intelligent use of melodies of “erm”, and the cinematographic, evocative, visual ambition—seemingly satisfied, by the way—of his soundtracks for films and plays. There are also some new things added to the mix: cosmic flirtations in some fragments, without stridency, but with a great deal of intention and a good nose for sound; the surprising rhythmic charge of some songs; or occasional dabbling in psychedelics give his formula colour and new possibilities, inviting one to think very well of the group’s future.

If someone had asked me a few months ago how I thought that Balago would sound in 2010, I couldn’t have come up with a better explanation than this album. And this is something that has happened, personally, with each one of the four albums that make up the band’s career. “Extractes d’un Diari” is ambient that is exciting, alive, moving, and relatively easy, accessible, just what we were asking for or what we needed at this exact moment. The (near) achievement of a sound ideal that continues to stand entirely alone within the context of Spanish music, and which in a fair world would have to have a British, American, or German passport in order to receive the international recognition and applause that it really deserves. A blessed anomaly