Starting out with a beautiful and moving ambient texture, the Colonial Spa EP weaves a sonic tapestry of aural textures backed with subtle well timed beats. It’s a 25 minute walk down a road less traveled, with an occasional stop to visit an old friend along the way.
Category Archives: Music
Internet Archive: Free Download: Milhaven – Milhaven [12rec.061]
Milhaven is back with a rocking new record. Having departed from their old label, 12rec, they’ve graciously allowed their new release to be downloaded for free from the 12rec website. A little fresher, a little more grown up, they’ve honed their sound and distilled it into a purer form that rocks all the harder.
Eight tracks that run for almost fifty minutes, there are plenty of droning builds and smooth transitions from clean guitar to slamming melt-your-face-off electric guitar; quiet moments that induce a feeling of elation; slow intros leading up to loud and rowdy guitar themes. Milhaven does it just right. Do not miss this – if you’re a fan of post-rock then this release is a must have.
Internet Archive: Free Download: Milhaven – Milhaven [12rec.061].
Sleepmakeswaves / Tangled Thoughts of Leaving Split EP
You may remember sleepmakeswaves last release. If not, this is a perfect introduction to the band. From the excellent netlabel Lost Children, sleepmakeswaves teams up with fellow label-mates Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving to offer us this five track, 37 minute EP of post-rock at it’s finest.
Chris Tenz – Forlorn Memories
A deeply touching release, that induces a feeling of quiet reflectiveness. At 36 minutes, Forlorn Memories combines ambient synths, deep bass sounds, minimal piano parts and acoustic guitar melodies to paint an audio picture of those despondent, melancholy times in our lives that for some reason we hold so dear and meditate on from time to time.
Casimirs Blake – Ejecta Nebula
The Kahvi Collective has, for quite a number of years now, and each of their releases has a unique sound and style that can only be described as ‘Kahvi Music’. Casimirs Blake created Kahvi’s latest release, Ejecta Nebula, and it doesn’t disappoint. With the typical relaxed, Kahvi attitude inherent in each track, Blake presents a galactic soundscape that is part ambient and part breakbeat, upbeat space music infused with subtle percussion and flowing atmospheres that will melt away reality for a while and bring you back to it refreshed and recharged.
Robert Pieculewicz – Fly Free
Robert Pieculwicz is a guitar virtuoso, like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai. He has several albums for download on Jamendo, but the one that stood out to me is Fly Free – it takes me back to the days of Surfing With The Alien or Flying In A Blue Dream. This is the finest instrumental guitar rock to come from Poland that I’ve heard of – as my friend Walter from somewhere in Poland that is impossible for me to spell would say – Jej skaÅ‚y.
Deto & Gleam – Kisses & Tears EP
Only two tracks, but a total of almost thirty four minutes of music. The first track, Kisses, clocks in at 9:25 and the second super-long track will occupy over 23 minutes of your own personal history. The music is basic techno, and sets a nice mood to back your daily tasks around the house or as a soundtrack to your party. Great for listening to in any situation.
In Chains – Dead Heart Bloom
I guess you would call this folk, but it has a dreamy, ethereal quality about it that transcends genres. It’s just good, relaxing music that will make you fell a bit better about the world. The third track, Halfway Gone, really reminds me of a song by the Beatles, but I can’t put my finger on which song. They’ve somehow invented what can only be called ‘ambient funk’. At any rate, all five tracks on the EP rock. This is definitely one of the best finds so far this year (even though we’re only one month in).
Wixel – Clouds
Wixel dreamed up a project in which he would record an album a month; he followed through, bringing to life twelve albums of music (not all of which I’ve checked out at this point). His album from February 2009 stands out to me, with five tracks at just under thirty minutes. Each track is reminiscent of a certain aspect of atmospheric water vapor grouping; for instance, the first track, Cloud Formation, is a rambling and haunting ten-minute build that puts the evaporative process in sonic form. The second track, Rising Clouds, is a slow paced, smooth yet grating discord of sound that makes you feel as though your floating upwards into the sky. Track three is a disonant mish mash of ambient acoustic guitars backed with meandering sounds that tie it all together. Track four, In Clouds, is a fuzzy bit of static that drones on giving the impression that you’ve arrived in the middle of the cloud layer, about to break through into the sunlight at any moment. And when that moment comes, 3:26 later, you’re in a Fog Rainbow, a melancholic soundscape of cloud-like sounds with an atmospheric vibe.
Farbo – Far Beyond
Farbo is an artist through and through. His paintings and digital designs are colorful and psychedelic, and this carries over into his music as well. Starting out with a delightfully ethereal and haunting track called Insanity Arise, the release picks up the pace with the second track and takes you on a psychedelic electro journey that gets your heart pumping, but then slows you back down on the final track to let you off easy. I classify this release as progressive-electro.