Akufen – My Way [MP3][320]

My Way
Label: Force Inc. Music Works
Format: CD
Country: Germany
Released: May 2002
Genre: Electronic
Style: House, Tech House, Minimal, Microhouse, Minimalist







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This is indeed an incredible album, make no mistake. Akufen (Marc Leclair) has a very distinctive aesthetic, and approach to piecing together coherent, even danceable tracks culled from snippets and snapshots of noise, voices, and other odd sounds. It seems though, that this line of musical development (and arguably one of the pivotal steps in "glitch" music) is one that could easily tire of itself. Even the more intriguing pieces (in my view) as Skidoos, Deck the House, and Late Night Munchies are structured by a much more traditional bassline element, and the samples hover somewhere between decorative texture and cut-n-paste melody. From this angle, the album is self -contained as a set of musical ideas. Hopefully, Akufen will prove me wrong by taking the glitch aesthetic to the next stage.

Review by bhbognar [http://www.discogs.com/user/bhbognar/]

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Nathan Fake – The Sky Was Pink [MP3][320]

The Sky Was Pink
Label: Border Community
Format: Vinyl, 12"
Country: UK
Released: Aug 2004
Genre: Electronic
Style: Leftfield, Progressive House, IDM, Downtempo, Minimal

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Of course, the remix of James Holden is absolutely self-dependent track on this release. With its help the world has got to know the name of N. Fake. Of course, if a moment of inspiration of J. Holden would have concurred with appearance of another track, not Fake’s, the world would have got similar masterpiece. In support of this – Holden’s Techno Tool Remix is based absolutely on Holden’s main remix. The Dancefloor has got a similar example – Timo Maas with his remix of Azzido Da Bass “Dooms Night” (have you ever heard the original version?).But it’s not fair not to keep in mind the Fake’s creation. It should be named here - Original Live Take and Icelandic Version. Beautiful (!) melodic progressive downtempo tracks with especial FX, catchy melodie, exclusive IDM-like production. Master’s at work!

Review by IntelliGiant [http://www.discogs.com/user/IntelliGiant/]

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Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92 [MP3][320]

Selected Ambient Works 85-92 

Label: Apollo

Format: CD

Country: Belgium

Released: Nov 1992

Genre: Electronic

Style: Techno, IDM, Ambient, Experimental

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Stop me if this gets sappy. And it might. Because Selected Ambient Works 85-92-- recently reissued by PIAS America-- was the very first electronic music I ever bought, and certainly the first I ever heard over and over again. Long ago, before I was old enough to drive, I would sit in a small, cluttered bedroom in my parents' suburban ranch house, absorbed for hours by the sounds contained on this disc. The creeping basslines, the constantly mutating drum patterns, the synth tones which moved with all the grace and fluidity of a professional dancer, the strange noises that I'd be unable to identify even if I tried. Back then, Aphex Twin was making music like nothing I'd ever heard before.

What's become apparent since is that I probably wasn't the only one affected. After last year's disappointing Drukqs, it's easy to forget that, back in the Warp Records heyday, Richard D. James was to this new breed of ambient and electronic music what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Sure, there were upstarts; \xB5-Ziq, Squarepusher and Autechre were all on the scene by the time this collection hit shelves. But James was still the posterboy, the presumed ringmaster, single-handedly defining a style of music in the minds of many. Now, as a new wave of mostly twenty-somethings step to the forefront of IDM, redefining electronic music for the third time in a decade, it becomes more and more obvious just how far reaching James' influence was.

There's nothing new about this re-release, aside from improved availability and decreased cost. But then, improving on this package would be near impossible. Sure, the music on Selected Ambient Works 85-92 may sound a bit dated (as does, to be fair, most electronic music more than a few years old), but there's no denying it was the defining statement of Warp's early years, and the foundation for the careers of bands like Boards of Canada and Plaid.

The songs here are not ambient in the same way as those on this disc's sequel. Technically, most fall into Brian Eno's broad definition of the style-- it can be appreciated in small segments just as much as in its entirety. The music develops slowly, unafraid to linger on a particularly effective sound for as long as necessary-- the creeping keyboard loop of "Schottkey 7th Path," for example, is continually modified throughout the course of the song, but never once eliminated from the mix-- but James would never be content as a mere follower in anyone's footsteps. His work here serves a model for what would come to be known as traditional IDM. A simpler version of the style we've grown accustomed to, certainly, but IDM nonetheless.

James' early work is heavily indebted to early dance music, filled with beats so eminently danceable as to confuse those who only know him from the spastic drum patterns that came later. There's little of that here, though. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is, rather, an album stretching back to the days before software allowed for heavy sampling or glitch technology. Drum machines serve as its backbone and synthesized bass and keyboard sounds provide the meat. Most of the songs follow a relatively basic formula as well. One element-- say, a synth melody-- is introduced and repeated, and as new elements are added with each go round, the song gradually builds to a dense, multi-layered swirl. This Ravel-esque approach flavors much of James' older material, and yet, despite the simplicity of his equipment and approach, the songs here are both interesting and varied, ranging from the dancefloor-friendly beats of "Pulsewidth" to the industrial clanks and whirs of "Green Calx."

Indeed, these early works do a fine job of showcasing James' ability to transform even the most seemingly mundane patterns into something unique and interesting. "Hedphelym," for instance, is built around a relentless headache-throb cliché of a house beat. But James surrounds the pulsation with an ethereal feedback that bleeds all over the track, leaving the percussion awash in a murky solution of synth tones, pairing dance music with ambience in ways the Orb never dreamed possible.

Slightly more structured (and equally enjoyable) is "We are the Music Makers," a track which follows a drumbeat and a bassline past a pair of intertwined synth loops and a repeated Willy Wonka vocal sample as simple keyboard melodies pour down from overhead. But the aforementioned "Green Calx" is the closest Selected Ambient Works 85-92 comes to the spastic trickery of which James would become such a pioneer. It matches pitchshifted tones and drum machines with a burbling bassline, assorted machine-gun synth interjections, the slightly effected tones of various pistons, motors, and machines, and even the occasional cartoon spring noise. Moments like these serve to foreshadow both James' later work, as well as the infinitely more complex twists and turns that IDM would make in the years that would follow.

They say next to no one heard the Velvet Underground's first album when it was released, but everyone who did went on to start a band. Listening to Selected Ambient Works 85-92, one can't help but imagine the seeds being planted in the imaginations of the lucky few who were there when it all began. Nestled in these simple, undeniably danceable tracks are the roots of contemporary IDM. And despite its somewhat primitive origins, the final product remains among the most interesting ever created with a keyboard and a computer.

Review by Pitchfork [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/223-selected-ambient-works-85-92/]

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Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. [320][MP3]

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. 

Label: Sub Pop Records
Format: CD, Album

Country: US

Released: Feb 2011

Genre: Rock

Style: Post Rock

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Mogwai never seemed like a particularly good bet to age well. They came out of the gate as a band that Meant Something to many people, namely fans of heavy guitar music and rock critics. They established a clear, identifiable, and exciting new sound, but their latest LP-- Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will-- doesn't change the pattern Mogwai have set for themselves on recent, often middling, releases: There are some anthemic guitar blasts, some prettily drifting comedowns, and one or two vocal tracks.

The band has regained none of its prior fierceness, but Hardcore is, importantly, the band's least self-conscious album in ages. There are no attempts to be really heavy, man. There are no stale electronics. The songs that wander out of the band's comfort zone-- most notably the Neu!-indebted "Mexican Grand Prix"-- are the types of genre exercises a veteran rock band of Mogwai's stature should probably undertake. Hardcore feels comfy and lived-in, backhanded compliments only to those who didn't slog through The Hawk Is Howling and Happy Songs For Happy People.

The price for all this hominess is basically any lingering sense of mystery. Mogwai can chime away pleasantly during "Death Rays"-- featuring the band's best guitar lick in years-- but it can't turn "Rano Pano" into "Stanley Kubrick". This is fine, as long as we're willing to admit that we get different things out of Mogwai albums these days. This is a record of savvy rock vets kicking at distortion pedals until something frothy emerges. I'm on board if the results are going to be as page-turning-ly melodic as "How to Be a Werewolf" or as playful as the pitch-shifted "George Square Thatcher Death Party". The mistakes are easy to forgive: "White Noise" is the band's most vanilla opening track ever. The slide-guitar panorama of "Letters to the Metro" will still your blood just as surely as "Like Herod" once boiled it, but it's merely the type of innocuous doodling the band has long padded its albums with.

Mogwai's prior output and general demeanor has made it difficult for them to be a group that fans simply enjoy. The band built its reputation on sonic extremes, and that purview has infected their reputation: deliver a masterpiece-- I don't think they have it in them-- or suffer indifference. On Hardcore Mogwai sound like they're enjoying being Mogwai again. I'm ready to enjoy them being Mogwai again too.

Review by Pitchfork [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15100-hardcore-will-never-die-but-you-will/]

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Biosphere - Substrata [320][MP3]

Substrata 

Label: All Saints

Format: CD, Album

Country: UK

Released: 1997

Genre: Electronic

Style: Ambient, Field Recording

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It rapidly turned into my favorite ambient music album, ever. I'm sad I didn't find this before. It's genius how this guy could transfer the ice, mountain and wind into music. Listen to it in your way back home and a simple walk will transform the place around you into a incredible, nature-driven scenery. A must have for all Ambient fans!

Ripped from pure FLAC.

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This small description will fit it. Everything I'd say about this album wont be enough to describe how genius it is. This album is responsible for the coined term "Ambient music". Nice, isn't it?

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Substrata by Biosphere is one of the all-time classic ambient albums, if not THE all-time classic album. Chilling atmospheric tones with ambient samples of ice, snow, forests, Twin Peaks-samples and Russian radio broadcasts… Substrata is difficult to describe in words alone. This is one album that every ambient fan needs to hear, if not own. For my own part the album is never far from my stereo. From the initial drone of an aircraft high overhead to the rambling monologues of later tracks every minute sends a chill down your spine. 

Biosphere’s work is often described as “dark ambient” but to me this sounds to negative as every piece of music Geir Jenssen composed expresses so much different feelings and his albums are not simply a couple of “drones” thrown together. Neither is Substrata 

Substrata is inhabited by the vast spaces spreading across the artic region, endless nights and midnight sun, sub-zero temperatures and northern lights.

Review by Moanerman [http://www.discogs.com/user/Moanerman]

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Brian Eno – Ambient 1: Music for Airports [MP3][320]

Ambient 1: Music for Airports 

Label: Polydor

Format: Vinyl, LP

Country: US

Released: March 1978

Genre: Electronic

Style: Ambient, Experimental

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This small description won't fit it. Everything I'd say about this album wont be enough to describe how genius it is. This album is responsible for the coined term "Ambient music". Nice, isn't it?

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From Wikipedia

Music for Airports was the first of four albums released in Eno's "Ambient" series, a term which he coined to differentiate his minimalistic approach to the album's material and "the products of the various purveyors of canned music".

Notice of similarly quiet, unobtrusive music had been given on albums such as Another Green World, Evening Star, Discreet Music, Music for Films and Harold Budd's The Pavilion of Dreams (which he produced), but in this album it was given precedence as a full-blown concept.

The music was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to diffuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno conceived this idea while being stuck at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in the mid-1970s. He had to spend several hours there and was extremely annoyed by the uninspired sound atmosphere.

It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

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Dolphins Into The Future – Canto Arquipélago [MP3][320]

Canto Arquipélago 

Label: Underwater Peoples Records

Format: Vinyl, LP

Country: US

Released: March 2012

Genre: Electronic, Non-Music

Style: Abstract, Field Recording, Experimental, Poetry

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This sound will take you out your bedroom for a small trip around windy mounts. I promise you.

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"There is something phenomenally enticing about a sequestered island chain, literally bounded by a vast and enveloping sea.Perhaps it’s the romance of discovery – the knowledge that here lies the safety of land within the great seclusion of nature. Perhaps it’s the raw beauty that is simply emerald speckled turquoise.Lieven Moana as Dolphins Into The Future dedicates his latest effort to the Azores, a remarkably beautiful volcanic archipelago that lacks very little by way of inspiration. The ambient conjurer weaves glorious tones and minimal percussion with brilliant and evocative field recording, having spent several weeks on the island cluster for this body of work. "Once an island gets born," Lieven articulates, "it’s a continuous struggle, a continuous dialogue, a learning, a BATTLE and cooperation of influences. The sea starts bashing on it’s shores. Erosion starts the complete demolition of the island. But at the same time, sun and sea give birth and food... Archipelagos have a heavy rhythm."

Quoted from http://underwaterpeoples.com/

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Some news

Hi.
I've updated the blog's layout to a darker one. It looks nicer to me.

I've added a Statistics page. I know it's not useful for you but I like to see them sometimes.
The link is here.

I got some free time, I'll be uploading albuns for you and for my later memory. The file sharing services are tumbling around, I hope my files will stay online. If you find any broken link send an email to dayv4n@gmail.com

Last thing, if you have any album sugestion you tell me on my e-mail too.


Thanks,
Dayv4n

Cocteau Twins - Victorialand [320][MP3]

Victorialand

Label: Virgin Schallplatten GmbH

Format: Vinyl, LP

Country: Europe

Released: 1986

Genre: Rock

Style: Ethereal, Ambient, Dream Pop

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The premise of Victorialand is really a good one, and a great one for this particular band. It's essentially a concept album, in the best sense since they aren't trying to tell a damned story but rather are making a collection of songs aimed at invoking a concept. The concept is a simple one (as concepts should be), they're making a whole album of songs meant to sound like Antarctica or other polar regions. It's right in the title of the songs and the album itself (Victoria Land is the name of a British portion of Antarctica).Every song here plays toward the theme without exception, and if you know anything about their delicate gorgeous sound you should definitely be nodding your head in agreement that this fits them well. And you know what? They do it pretty proud.

The songs are without exception extremely pretty, and all sound like perfect soundtracks to montages of glaciers and icebergs. It is basically a success. Unfortunately though..... it falls victim to one major issue. That everything more or less sounds exactly the same. Not sort of the same. Exactly the same. All the tracks pretty much could at best be different movements of the same symphony, you could make them fade into eachother with little issue. Sure they have a pretty well defined sound, but nothing about their sound means that the stuff has to be this similar. After all one of the major strengths of Treasure was that every gem on it had it's own personality even if they were basically cut from the same sort of cloth. "Ambient Snowscape Aria" could be the descriptor of damn well everything here.

There's much they could have done to avoid this honestly, namely they could have dared to add percussion? Yeah, there's next to no percussion on here at all. They stick to this very very rigidly. I don't really know why they did either, maybe they thought drums would break the concept?? Beats me. Drums on some of these tracks would have gone a long way toward making some stand out from others. Overall it's a huge shame because the songs are all so gorgeous, they didn't just forget all the genius on Treasure, this is definitely the same band that made that one. Except they've stuck to one note through and through, a really wonderful note, but one note nevertheless. This might be better suited to actually being a soundtrack, a perspective it seems 100% tailored toward. But as an album it can't really be considered great.

This review was made by Zephos [http://rateyourmusic.com/~Zephos]

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Four Tet - There Is Love in You [MP3][320]

There Is Love in You

Label: Domino

Format: CD

Country: UK

Released: 2010

Genre: Electronic

Style: IDM, Deep House, Glitch, Leftfield

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Kieran Hebden first came on the scene in the 1990s as a member of Fridge, a post-rock outfit that to me always looked better on paper than they sounded on record. Whatever you think of his first band, Hebden's subsequent career can be seen as the idea of post-rock done right. His appetite for music, on the evidence presented in his albums, singles, DJ sets, and collaborations, is voracious. But Hebden has a way of transforming and integrating influences rather than channeling them. So if his loose improvised collaborations with drummer Steve Reid captured something of the spirit of the classic late-60s free jazz records on Impulse!, they also managed to carve out a unique and identifiable aesthetic that sounds very much like today. When working with others, like the wooly free-folk unit Sunburned Hand of the Man or the dubstep producer Burial, Hebden knows when to lead and when to get out of the way. But all the while, whatever the context, he's absorbing. And when it comes to his own records as Four Tet, he has a knack for combining sounds from all over and making them his own.

Rounds is the one undisputed Four Tet classic, but all are at least good. It's not unusual for Four Tet records to have a few dull patches, but given Hebden's M.O., that's never a big problem. You expect him to explore a bit, so it's okay when once in a while something doesn't quite gel. Ringer, an intriguing EP from 2008 that throbbed with a minimal pulse and revealed a surprisingly austere side to his music, is a good example. It was the kind of record you wanted to inch closer to, because you had the sense there might be more going on beneath the surface than you'd initially realized. The follow-up album, There Is Love in You, is the glorious sound of those ideas being drawn into the light.

This is the most focused Four Tet album by a huge margin, and for some listeners that could be an issue. Hebden apparently refined this music over the course of a long stint as a resident DJ at the London club Plastic People. He'd play developing tracks in his sets, see how people responded, and return to them armed with this information. And while the result isn't dance music proper, There Is Love in You definitely functions on that plane. This isn't fist-pumping music that toys with the pleasure of pop music, like one of my favorite Four Tet tunes, "Smile Around the Face". And it's not an album that bowls you over with the density and intricacy of its textures. Instead, it's both heady and physical, subtle but powerful music for thinking and moving or ideally doing both at the same time: It's been a while since a brisk walk through the city sounded this good.

Very early in the 2000s, the corny word "folktronica" was sometimes applied to Four Tet's style. It never defined him, but the tag was applied because it described his fondness for samples of sounds that seem to be reverberating in a physical space. He sampled jazz cymbals, guitars, gamelan-style percussion, and voices, mixing them in with electronic squiggles and choppy breaks culled from hip-hop. Hebden's fondness for acoustic sounds caused his music to come over as unusually airy and bright. It made you think of daylight rather than the nocturnal crackle of sampled vinyl. Though Love is a very different album from those earlier records, remnants of the sound palette remain, imparting a similar sense of clarity, brightness, and warmth despite its late-night club-bound inspiration.

Visit [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13861-there-is-love-in-you/] for complete review.

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Grouper - A I A : Alien Observer [MP3][320]

A I A : Alien Observer

Label: Yellow Records

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album

Country: US

Released: April 2011

Genre: Rock

Style: Experimental, Drone, Ambient

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The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. These short LPs, released at the same time and that share an overall aesthetic, sound beamed in from another realm, and they also sound like they could have come from no one else.

Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. Particularly on Alien Observer, she layers her voice in a way that occasionally brings to mind Julianna Barwick, but Harris sounds comparatively distant and less immersive. Her voice haunts these songs instead of leading them; it's a presence and not a personality, and the voice and instruments are in balance, serving each other without any one element becoming more prominent.

The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era. David Pearce's music as Flying Saucer Attack, recorded mostly during the 1990s, was often referred to as "rural psychedelia," and that description would fit this pair of records. This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them. The sophistication comes from the care in presentation. This music doesn't sound like it was built from mistakes or thrown together, it seems precisely ordered and arranged even while it's often muffled and warbly and distorted. Every sound exists for a reason.

Full review and more please follow this link [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15332-a-i-a-alien-observer-a-i-a-dream-loss/].

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Various Artists - Drive [MP3][320]

Drive

Label: Lakeshore Records

Format: CD

Country: US

Released: Sep 2011

Genre: Most Electronic

Style: Movie Soundtrack

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Most of its ethereal electronic-pop score was composed by Cliff Martinez, past drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose ambient work on the Sex, Lies, and Videotape soundtrack Refn was a particular fan of. The score contains tracks with vintage keyboards and bluntly descriptive titles. Refn wanted electronic music for the film and to have the music occasionally be abstract so viewers can see things from The Driver's perspective. He gave composer Martinez a sampling of songs he liked and asked Martinez to emulate the sound, resulting in "a kind of retro, 80ish, synthesizer europop". Editor Matt Newman suggested Drive's opening credits song – "Nightcall" by French electronic musician Kavinsky.

Two modified songs from The Social Network soundtrack, written and produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are used in the movie. They are not credited in the movie and not included on the released soundtrack. One is a piano-less version of "Hand Covers Bruise". The other is "3:14 Every Night". Brian Eno's "Ascent (An Ending)" is also used periodically during scenes between Ryan Gosling and Carey Muligan.

As Winding Refn was going through mixer Johnny Jewel's catalog, he picked out "Under Your Spell" and "A Real Hero" because he thought of Drive being a fairytale. During Drive's climax, "A Real Hero"'s keynote melody, about becoming "a real human being, and a real hero", refrains because that is when The Driver changes into both those statuses'. At first, Jewel worried that the latter might be too literal but soon realized it is used in Drive "in the exact same way that I was feeling it when I wrote it. He definitely got the nuance of the song, and understood what it was supposed to mean, and he wanted to give that emotion to the viewer, that same feeling."

Thinking of music in terms of basic elements, Jewel would tell the director that for certain scenes, it should not have bass since, as an earth tone, it usually is used for a more emotional or ominous part. Jewel thought the music should be upper register and relaxing for the "dreamlike" scene. To help himself with the writing process and conjure up melodies, the mixer would perform a procedure where he highlighted many phrases from the novel, then printed those words in large font and hung them on his walls or drew pictures during viewings of Drive.

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