Hello everyone. I'm hoping you're all having a nice summer. Here I'm back again with another roundup of non-musical awesomeness for your eager ears.
As usual - if you like what you see/hear, please considering supporting these great artists & labels by buying their albums and following them on Bandcamp and/or social media.
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Andy Fray - Venue
(self-released, 2024)
Andy Fray is a Reductionist sound artist & field recordist who practises abstract minimalism. This is his debut album under his own name, although he has previously released some excellent abstract sound works under the moniker Vorval.
'Venue' is an album consisting of one 30-minute long track, simply comprised of two different room tones the artist recorded at a local venue, at night while it was empty of people and closed off to the public. Fray then went on to manipulate the sound to create something more atmospheric and abstract. To say that this is a work of stark minimalism is kind of an understatement. There is absolutely nothing going on during this piece apart from the soft atonal drones and subtle eerie ambience of these two rooms.
During the first half of the piece, you can hear the large high-ceilinged reverberation of what sounds like a central hall or gymnasium, along with the (very) faint, shimmering, singular tone of the electric lights. Other than that, it's a whole load of emptiness and environmental sound phenomena. The second half of the piece is just as bare. It seems like it was recorded in a smaller room or corridor, and I find it darker and creepier than the first half. You will hear strange, eerie, distant knocks, clicks and drones, all merging and mingling with each other in this desolate soundscape...making you feel like you're right there in the place, yet at the same time it remains vague and ambiguous.
'Venue' is an stark, empty and mysterious sound piece. An eerie and beautiful work of bare abstract minimalism. This is music (for lack of a better word) that seriously demands good quality speakers/earphones and a quiet surrounding environment to fully appreciate its desolate beauty and strange subtlety. A haunting and immersive listening experience, and a great debut album.
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Bosque Vacío - Cantera Oriente
(Flaming Pines, 2024)
Bosque Vacío is the collaborative duo of Leena Lee and Guillermo Guevara.
Leena Lee (Lena Ortega Atristain) is a researcher and designer who explores atmospheric relationships, body perception, affective topographies, harmonic and tonal research of field, light and voice recordings.
Guillermo Guevara is a musician, teacher and sound researcher. His interests are the meticulous exploration and deployment of sound / kinematic / minimalist textures - with tones that fluctuate in different intonation systems - and noise.
'Canter Oriente' is an album consisting of field recordings taken over 18 months of field work in an ecological reserve in the southern part of Mexico City, with its 21 million inhabitants. You can find more information at the Bandcamp link below...
The album begins with a quick series of Leena Lee's isolated vocalizations before the soundscape fills with the watery sounds of a rapidly flowing spring (possibly recorded in some kind of piping system?) which is caked in dark cavernous reverberations... soon accompanied by a rich shimmery vocal ambience, slowly emerging out of the background... along with the sweet chirping of birds. As the opening track progresses, the ambience and musicality becomes more prominent and lush sounding, before ending with a lonely trickle of water...
The second track begins with layers of small critter sounds and wildlife noises, along with swells of mechanical drones and subtle tonal dissonances. The atmosphere of this track is very barren and sparse, and wonderfully meditative... with all the lone sounds resonating and echoing through the empty environment, and ends with the sound of soft crunching footsteps...
Throughout the rest of the album you will hear beautiful vocal tones, slow pulsating drones, various bodies of flowing water, crackling fires, trickling rain, atonal noises, nature recordings and various weather-related sound phenomena...
'Canter Oriente' is a rich and evocative album full of lush field recordings, meditative ambience, rippling dronescapes and stunning vocalizations... a sonic love poem about a unique city, located in a unique part of the world... where nature finds its way to exist and thrive within such intricate urbanization. A beautiful, immersive and atmospheric listening experience.
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Viv Corringham - Soundwalkscapes
(Flaming Pines, 2024)
Viv Corringham is a British vocalist and sound artist, active since the late 1970s. Her work includes concerts, soundwalks, radio works and multi-channel installations. She is interested in exploring people's sense of place and the link with personal history and memory.
As the title suggests, 'Soundwalkscapes' is an album of soundscapes created from Soundwalks. According the the artist herself, on the first Monday of every month in 2023, she would take a walk and record it - wherever that was - and performing sung improvisations in response to the sounds and situation of her immediate surrounding environment.
The album begins with the sound of softly crunching footsteps and the surrounding environmental ambience of Sag Harbor, NY. Then you will start to hear the artist's rhythmic staccato hums, airy warbling tones, strangled squawks, plaintive murmurs, staggered breaths, animalistic yelps and echoed spoken word narration, while the harbor waters softly slosh about, and distant chirps of seabirds quietly perforate the stillness. Eventually, different vocal layers begin to mingle and interweave, and the soundscape fills with fleeting drones, ambiguous crunching, shuffling noises and a variety of both real and created animal vocalizations.
Throughout the rest of the album, you will hear spoken stories, deep vocal rumblings, ritualistic-style chants, stifled cries, erratic hisses, hushes whispers, primal squeals and bizarre vocalizations against a rich vibrant backdrop of urban street noises and environmental sound phenomena, such as passing vehicles, distant conversations, squawking hens, screaming children, yapping dogs, cooing pigeons, airy drones, construction works, eerie audio manipulations and surreal sonic abstractions. The album ends with the soothing and hypnotic lapping of the sea waves at Haven Beach.
'Soundwalkscapes' is a captivating album of wonderful field recordings, avant-garde vocal improv and immersive environmental ambience. It's a pure joy to follow Corringham around on this fascinating aural journey, while she guides us along the way with her spoken observations and historical facts about each chosen location. A strange, peaceful and meditative listening experience.
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Micaela Trombini - Hasher
(Spica Records, 2024)
Micaela Trombini is an Argentinian experimental sound artist, electronic musician and educator. She has extensive experience in live coding techniques and experimental algorithmic noises. She produces her own instruments and sound interfaces from codes, which gives her greater flexibility to improvise in her live performances. She also teaches workshops internationally on her biogenerative project, Biocode ~ plant music, developing interfaces that measure biochemical parameters in plants and other living beings, producing sounds using algorithmic composition software.
'Hasher' is her second full-length record, and is the result of two years of deep exploration of algorithmic noise, and manipulating and transforming this noise into art.
The album begins with a series of glitchy pulsations, fuzzy frequencies, crackling textures, erratic stutters and deep booming explosions of noise. Eventually these various sounds accumulate and start to form these techno-esque rhythmic patterns, while Trombini skillfully builds layer upon layer of fascinating noise on top of it.
Throughout the rest of the album you will hear richly-layered soundscapes of algorithmic chaos and mesmerizing atmospheres of harsh electronic tones and dissonant frequencies. You will also hear a variety of menacing drones, haunting atonal ambience and unpredictable percussive hits.
'Hasher' is a hypnotic and wonderfully demented album of menacing noisescapes, improvised sound art and wacky psychedelic electronica. Trombini's incredible talent for sound sculpting, surreal atmosphere building and free live improvisation makes for a hypnotic and trance-inducing listening experience.
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Lip Rouge - Tūndâr
(AmbientSoup, 2022)
Lip Rouge are an experimental music duo from Slovenia. Its members are Karmen Ponikvar and Eva Mulej. They explore sounds with analog synthesis, voice, recorder and different instruments. With creating soundscapes they form a music vocabulary of sonic frequencies and altered sounds.
'Tūndâr' is their debut album - released in 2022 by the label AmbientSoup, and consists of four sound compositions inspired by the Tundra landscape.
'Terre Mysterieux' begins with some spoken word poetry and lone desolate bass notes against a backdrop of cold whooshing wind-like ambience. Then you will start to hear a series of shimmering electronic tones, percussive echoes and weird wonky vibrations. These singular synth notes alternately ascend and descend in trippy fashion, while different kinds of gurgling sounds and crackling textures emerge and vanish from this strange barren audio environment. You will also hear subtle flourishes of guitar, flute and valiha (a stringed harp-like instrument) peppered throughout these compositions.
In the latter half of the album you will hear (what sounds like) synthetic crickets, electronic blippage, soft gurgles, lonely wavering frequencies, layers of warbling vocalizations, swells of distorted guitar, atmospheric pulsations, eerie dissonances, mystical drones and quiet minimalistic ambience...
'Tūndâr' is a slow and meditative album of minimalistic electronica, haunting dronescapes, ghostly ambience and surreal sound experimentation. Ponikvar and Mulej have an incredible ability to create these vibrant yet desolate sonic environments using such a minimalistic and subtle approach, never resting on their laurels. These four pieces are constantly evolving and fluctuating, like something that is alive and breathing. Wonderful sound design. A fascinating and mesmerizing listening experience.
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Fangyi Liu & 龢wo4 (Brian Chu) - Mui Wo
(presses précaires, 2024)
Fangyi Liu (a.k.a Chih-Ting Liu) is a Kaohsiung, Taiwan-based improviser and sound artist. He utilizes acoustic objects, electronics, field recordings, cassette tapes and his voice in his performances and compositions.
Brian Chu is an experimental musician that improvises with various percussion instruments, cassette feedback and found objects, and experiments with their sonorous properties.
'Mui Wo' is a new collaborative album between both artists, inspired by a village of the same name located on Lantau Island (Hong Kong) and the silver mines that run through it. The recordings that comprise this album were made in a now-demolished bicycle parking lot.
Side A (River Silver Garden) begins with squeaky object sounds and frictional seesaw noises against a backdrop of a low, rippling, sonorous drone. You will also hear a series of steel percussive hits in a variety of rhythmic patterns, squeaking balloon sounds, squalling feedback, bizarre vocalizations through a toy trumpet, the thrum of helicopters passing overhead, and different objects being knocked, rubbed and squeezed at various intervals.
During the second half you will start to hear some wooden percussive sounds emerging out of the mix, along with some shimmering bell-like noises, frantic vibrations, lonely rattles, high-pitched trumpet squeals, spinning coins, distant birdsong and soft ambient tape hiss.
Side B (Mui Wo Ferry Pier) starts with an outdoor field recording comprised of distant voices and airy environmental drones, which is soon accompanied by singular steel percussive sounds, bicycle bells, soft thuds and various objects being dragged, shuffled and knocked about.
Then you will hear quiet bursts of high-frequency feedback - alternately ascending and descending in tone, murmured voices, bleeping walkie-talkie noises, tortured trumpet squeaks and layers of soft atonal drones, bringing us to the end of the album...
'Mui Wo' is a strange and delicate album of hypnotic field recordings, found sounds, abstract improvisation and avant-garde audio experimentation. For such a short album, this duo manages to successfully captivate and intrigue with their liberal use of unconventional objects, site-specific field recordings and unique performance style. A baffling yet hypnotic listening experience.
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E. Jason Gibbs - Gate
(traced objects, 2024)
E Jason Gibbs is a guitar player and field recordist. His compositions are built from field recordings, and explore the relationship between the built and natural worlds and how humans impose themselves on environments.
'Gate' is an album consisting of three sound compositions that were built from field recordings that explore the interdependent relationship between natural and built spaces.
The album begins with a low slow tremulous drone that emerges out of a desolate environment, and is soon accompanied by layers of soft crackling noise and undulating ambience. As the piece progresses, you will hear the vibrant tones and intricate textures of intimate close-mic field recordings. Throughout the rest of the first track you will hear beautiful delicate rainfall, gurgling pools of water, twittering birdsong, murmured voices in a public setting, objects being shuffled about, ominous knocks, ambiguous vibrations, various environmental drones and a series of rattling/scraping sounds of (what I presume to be from the title) some kind of gate, while shimmering ambience haunts the background of the mix...which becomes more and more ghostly towards the end...
The second track is a much shorter piece than the first. It begins with some fluttering industrial drones and erratic vibrations from some unidentifiable object. Then you will begin to hear some haunting pulsations, strange clicks, soft bursts of squealing feedback and layers of rapid vibrations and puttering tones. There's some really intriguing and mesmerizing electronic manipulation going on in this track.
The third track is another longform piece which begins with a lone swelling high-frequency tone against a backdrop of atonal static. Then you will hear the gradual emerging of distant birdsong, watery field recordings, glitchy electronica and ominous constantly-fluctuating drones. Throughout the rest of the composition you will hear a series of puttering noises, trembling tones, gurgling liquid, mysterious wailing sirens, crackling textures and rich layers of airy environmental ambience.
'Gate' is a beautifully abstract and intriguing album of lush field recordings, ghostly drones, subtle ambience and environmental sound phenomena. In this album, Gibbs displays such a unique talent for atmospheric soundscaping and various electronic manipulation techniques. What he does with these field recordings is truly a work of art. An alluring and immersive listening experience.
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David Donohoe - Fen
(Dinzu Artefacts, 2023)
David Donohoe is a sound artist, musical composer, recordist, performer and improviser. His work operates at the intersection of instrumentation, synthesis, field-recording and processing and involves scored works, electroacoustic presentation and solo/collaborative improvisation.
'Fen' (meaning : a peat-accumulating wetland) is an album consisting of two longform sound compositions, comprised of field recordings of Grasshopper Warbler, Sedge Warbler (both Summer migrant breeders) and Snipe (resident breeder), alongside tuned percussion and synthesizer textures.
'Part I' begins with the sound of soft whistling winds rustling the fens of this particular location. This is soon accompanied by crunching footsteps, deep rumbling environmental drones and Donohoe's spoken word narration - introducing listeners to the project and describing his unique artistic vision behind it, against the backdrop of various chirps and calls of the birds he's describing. It makes you feel like you're experiencing a soothing wildlife documentary.
Throughout the rest of the piece you will hear a series of chirrups, squawks, tweets and trills of the various aforementioned bird species, along with ominous layers of atonal noise, eerie drones, shimmering bell-like tones, steel gong-like resonances, electronic manipulations and environmental ambience. The different tonal changes and frequency fluctuations creates a tense, suspenseful and unsettling atmosphere.
'Part II' begins with some dark rippling drones and quiet peaceful field recordings, before we start to hear the distinct warbler calls ringing through the air, ebbing and flowing with a strange intensity. As the track gradually progresses, you will hear subtle percussive shakes, ghostly vibrations, crackling textures, rumbling thunder (I think), incessant rainfall and whooshing wind-like noises, drifting and swirling through this natural soundscape, strangely blending the ordinary with the surreal.
The second half of this piece is filled with unnervingly dissonant drones and tingling steel chimes that create a huge crescendo of intense cinematic noise.
'Fen' is a captivating album of tranquil field recordings, haunting dronescapes, beautiful acoustic ecology and atmospheric sound experimentation - all to celebrate these wonderful birds. An equally peaceful and ominous listening experience.
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nd Dentico - Morrow's Invasion
(Hard Return, 2024)
nd dentico is an experimental artist based in East Montpelier, Vermont. His music tends to incorporate (and drift between) non-musical sound art, electro-acoustic drone and noisy ambient. He also runs the lo-fi experimental tape label Histamine Tapes.
'Morrow' is a sonic exploration of an invasive species of plant that has become a fixture on the artist's property in Vermont, and is split into two longform pieces, based on recordings of two particular shrub species.
'Alnus serrulata' begins with a series of intimate crunchy shuffling noises, which is soon accompanied by low repetitive bass drones, played in stuttering rhythmic patterns, in an almost mechanical-like way. The movements of the shrub are unpredictable and restless. You can almost physically feel the swaying and buckling of its branches above the persistent background pulsing of the bass tones, which altogether creates a kind of ominous ambience...
'Lonicera morrowii' follows with similar dynamics to the previous track, but in this piece the bass is way more prominent and pushed to the foreground. In this track, the bass has a more rattling effect, with some interesting atmospherics and harmonics occurring as a result... while the shrub continues to dance and sway in its own wild erratic fashion.
'Morrow's Invasion' is an intriguing album of minimalistic sound art, raw textured drones and wonky atonal ambience. A strangely soothing and wonderfully hypnotic listening experience.
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https://hardreturn.bandcamp.com/album/morrows-invasion
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Selfish Limbs - Symbols
(Adventurous Music, 2023)
Selfish Limbs is a one-man experimental artist & percussionist from Thessaloniki, Greece. He composes minimalistic electronic music using modified everyday sounds and unique field recordings. Originally from Greece, he currently resides in Finland.
'Symbols' is his latest release. It's an album that consists of five compositions, made from processed cymbal sounds of five cymbals by five different manufacturers. These modified cymbal sounds result in five ambient/drone sound-art pieces with a noisy attitude and symbolize a special meaning to their creator.
In these compositions you will hear wavering distortions of metallic noise, glistening swells of atonal ambience, shimmering squalls of feedback, constantly evolving drones, deep cavernous reverberations, industrial grinding, fuzzy tremulations and other heavily-processed cymbal sounds. I'm amazed at the range of sonic frequencies and ambience noise that the artist manages to conjure from such simple materials, and how emotive and expressive these layers of sound can be. They ebb and flow in such strange and unpredictable patterns, ranging from segments of quietly unsettling to intense bursts of ferocity...
'Symbols' is a bizarre and hypnotic album of steel cacophonies and abstract ambient noise. The artist's skilful use of electronic manipulation techniques and minimalistic avant-garde sound experimentation makes for a haunting and alluring listening experience.
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Pheobe riley Law - cove
(self-released, 2024)
Pheobe riley Law is an installation artist with a focus on sound, three dimensional art, and image. She takes a magpie approach which involves arranging and building relationships between different bodies, vessels or devices in order to create a dialogue.
'cove' is her latest release, consisting of two tracks created during an artist residency and a field recording trip in Scotland.
'cove' begins with a haunting muted wind-like drone and flutters of environmental sound, which is gradually accompanied by layers of soft trickling water and slightly ominous percussive knocks. Then you start to hear some ambient tones and dissonant frequencies, swirling dreamily through the soundscape. There are also some indistinguishable shuffling noises, eerie crackling textures and distant birdsong. Eventually you will hear some minimal melodies from a live recording of musical instruments that I can't really define, created a beautiful airy atmosphere...
'territory' is a 20-minute long sound composition that begins with sweet twittering birdsong and peaceful outdoor ambience, along with some quiet body movements. According to the blurb on Bandcamp - this track is essentially a field recording of two birds fighting to claim their territory above a skylight window. It's a very subtle sound piece, with such a tranquil atmosphere. You will hear all the various trills, screeches and squawks of birds, along with the rumbling whoosh of distant traffic, the buzzing of bees, lambs bleating and the soothing weather-related tones of the surrounding environment.
'cove' is a beautiful dreamy album of peaceful field recordings, airy drones, minimalistic ambience and exquisite sound sculpting. Such a meditative and intriguing listening experience.
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Patrick Corcoran - Eidola
(self-released, 2024)
Patrick Corcoran is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Limerick, Ireland, whose practice includes painting, sculpture, installation, photography, print, drawing, moving image, sound & the written word.
'Eidola' is his latest album. It consists of seven atmospheric compositions that deal with ''navigating and traversing unfamiliar terrain, both socially and emotionally and rising to meet the challenges of uncertainty and change.''
It begins in an eerily quiet fashion, with soft dark rippling drones emerging out of the vast emptiness of this ambiguous soundscape. Gradually the foreground starts to fill with howling layers of atonal ambience and ghostly moans.
Throughout the rest of the album, you will hear ominous rumbles, dissonant wailing tones, hypnotic whooshes, stuttering radio frequencies, metallic shimmers, sinister gurgles, eerie whistles, cavernous reverberations, vague scratching sounds, spectral howls and airy layers of mysterious noise. As dark and unsettling as Corcoran's sound design techniques can be - these compositions are also strangely meditative and dreamy, and a pure joy to let them play out in their entirety.
'Eidola' is a brooding album of discomforting atmospheres, bleak drones and stark ambience. The way Corcoran expertly manipulates field recordings and transmutes them into these haunting sound environments makes for such an unsettling yet captivating listening experience.
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