Mister Water Wet – Bought The Farm [OUEST095]

August 4, 2019August 2, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, experimental, jazz, mister water wet, west mineral ltd.Leave a comment

Huerco S’ West Mineral Ltd. return in 2019 to mine a rich seam of ambient jazz sampledelia by Mister Water Wet; a Puerto Rican artist with a gift for conveying in-between, gently altered states of mind and the logic of the natural world.‘Bought The Farm’ yields an elementally cool and breezy spirit guided by a first thought, best thought intuition through 55 minutes of crackly, hand-built music riddled with ephemeral soul. In terms of texture and structure, it’s a sound maybe best compared with Jan Jelinek at his most frayed and slompy, or even a pastoral inversion of Kelman Duran’s rugged chop ’n paste arrangements, essentially rendering a distinctive style that hovers between heavy-lidded, Afro-Latinate jazz, sampled indigenous instrumentation, and strains of gently bucolic, ambient introspection.

TV Victor – Back To The Moon [LFI015]

August 4, 2019August 2, 2019 hipodromeambient, experimental, lullabies for insomniacs, tv victorLeave a comment

TV Victor was one of the first artists of Tresor Records where he became legendary with several of his ambient and trance productions including Trance Garden 1-3 and Trancecology Chapter 1. In 1989, he launched his first solo project: Moondance – The Magic Sound of the Moon, where he lay foundations for later explorations with experimental sounds fused with pop elements and anticipated an ambient excursion to be had in the future. In the following decades TV Victor created impressive solo works that traversed between ambient and trance. Contrary to common mainstream tendencies he created a very unique interpretation of both genres. In recent years Victor has concentrated on creating experimental and abstract sonic spaces for escaping reality, spaces that live through the imagination of the listener. 30 years after the release of Moondance and 50 years after the first landing, Lullabies For Insomniacs revisit TV Victor’s musical roots with ‘Back To The Moon’.

Ron Morelli – Man Walks The Earth [CM007]

July 21, 2019July 19, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, collapsing market, ron morelliLeave a comment

L.I.E.S. Records founder Ron Morelli departs the club to investigate atavistic ambient themes in his
4th solo LP and debut for the Paris-based Collapsing Market. Morelli mostly mutes his drum track channels and allows his sounds to freely float in imagined air. In the process he crisply reveals a latent, introspective side to his music that’s been missing or occluded by noise in his clutch of grubby sores issued by Hospital Productions since 2013 – back when he changed his address from Brooklyn, NYC to the heart of the Parisian electronic music scene. As such the 8 bony diffusions of ‘Man Walks The Earth’ mark distance traveled from the gobs of 2013’s ‘Spit’, documenting a change of mindset from grizzled
and paranoid to a more soberly contemplative and drily poetic expression of self. Composed during 2015-2018, the 8 liminal zones of ‘Man Walks the Earth’ see Morelli switch out immediacy and brashness for a more considered longview of electronic music.

LVRIN – Aperitif de la Mort 009

July 14, 2019September 10, 2020 hipodromeambient, aperitif de la mort, electronics, experimental, jenya lavrinov, lvrin, podcast, post punk, synth waveLeave a comment

RA.683 Phuong Dan

July 7, 2019July 5, 2019 hipodromeambient, experimental, interview, phuong-dan, podcast, resident advisorLeave a comment

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Dimitris Petsetakis – On Shores [ITL011]

June 16, 2019June 13, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, dimitris petsetakis, experimental, into the light recordsLeave a comment

Into The Light Records has worked with the Greek composer Dimitris Petsetakis to compile a follow-up album that takes an even deeper dive into his archive of previously unreleased material. Like its predecessor, “On Shores” draws on music recorded in the 1980s and early ’90s. It contains just two previous released tracks, the humid ‘Clearance (Part 2)’ and poignant ‘On Endless Shores’, both of which first featured on Petsetakis’s cult 1991 album Missing Links. “On Shores” offers another unparalleled insight into the picturesque and atmospheric soundscapes created in the Piraeus-based composer’s basement studio using a mixture of electronic and acoustic instruments, a wide range of global influences and a keen interest in both minimalism and new age ambience. Listeners will encounter a range of stunningly beautiful and beguiling compositions, from the creepy, slow-burn exoticism of ‘Pythia’s Dance’ and rhythmic, otherworldly escapism of ‘Violated Asylum’, to the gentle bliss of ‘Like a Knife’ and sun-bright joy of ‘Nearxi (Minimal Marimba Edit)’.

Jason Letkiewicz – The Reflecting Pool [ITLINTL03]

June 2, 2019May 31, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, electro, experimental, into the light records, jason letkiewiczLeave a comment

Over the last decade, we’ve come accustomed to Jason Letkiewicz releasing material under a dizzying array of aliases, each utilized to explore a different side of his multi-faceted musical persona. Now, some 14 years after he made his recording debut, Letkiewicz has joined forces with Into The Light Records to release his first album under his real name. ‘The Reflecting Pool’ sees Letkiewicz exploring the uncomplicated and uncluttered in the pursuit of pure aural beauty. The album is stripped back, quiet, melodious is drawing more on Letkiewicz’s love of crystalline ambient, slow burn synthesizer soundscapes, early ’80s library music and the kind of obscure electronic new age music. The set’s 12 tracks gently ebb and flow, with Letkiewicz making great use of dusty old drum machines, effects units and a range of vintage analogue and digital synthesizers. With ‘The Reflecting Pool’, Letkiewicz has provided us with a much-needed dose of stress-free musical escapism, at the same time offering hope that in these troubling times, love may still save the day.

Rhythmic Theory – Mechanised Dreaming [CRLP14]

June 2, 2019July 8, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient, creme organization, drone, experimental, rhythmic theoryLeave a comment

Bristol based Rhythmic Theory, known for working the dark and mysterious edges of bass heavy techno and drum & bass, returns to Creme Organization. After his first work for the label in 2017 he now brings a fulsome nine track mini-LP ‘Mechanised Dreaming’, exploring the dark corners of ambient and synth based intrigue. Atmospheric sound design is at the fore here, with cinematic soundscapes crafted from broad synth smears and plenty of subtle little motifs. The music paints pictures of a metropolis during the dead of night, or a former industrial factory reduced to a hall of echoes and shadows. There is subtle tension built from sustained chords and plenty of suggestion of weird lifeforms in the icy ticks and scuttling footsteps of thew a-side. Side b is less dark and dank, with slightly brighter synths and wider horizons all explored. This is a truly immersive and emotive listen that always keeps you absorbed.

Kassel Jaeger – Le Lisse Et Le Strié [LTNC017]

June 2, 2019May 31, 2019 hipodromeambient, drone, experimental, françois j. bonnet, kassel jaeger, latency recordingsLeave a comment

Le Lisse et le Strié is a new work by french composer François J. Bonnet, released under his project name Kassel Jaeger. Based in Paris, Bonnet is the Director of INA GRM. He is also a writer and theoretician. Le Lisse et le Strié has been conceived as an exploration of the two antagonist concepts of “smooth” and “striated”, applied to the realm of electroacoustic sounds. If the “smooth” is linked to “nomos” as an open space of organic distribution, the “striated”, on the contrary, is associated to “logos”, as an enclosed space defined by a grid. Elaborating a dialogue between these aspects, Kassel Jaeger draws here an intermediary space where pulsations become textures and layers, and where rhythmic elements are found in the qualities and bodies of sounds instead of being functionnalised, pre-determined sound objects, abstracted and frozen onto a temporal grid. The concept of “striated” is made audible only through the sonic landscape it inhabits, like the stripes of the camouflage fur of wild animals only exist as such in the woods and long grass, disappearing into a potentially uselessness in a desert plain.

Avina Vishnu – Transforma [WEME313.19]

May 12, 2019May 9, 2019 hipodromeaina, album, ambient, avina vishnu, detroit, experimental, heinrich mueller, weme records, weme313Leave a comment

Advanced soundscapes from Avina Vishnu which is a project by Heinrich Mueller aka Gerald Donald and Aina. Their release Transforma is a conceptual project that is focusing on a unification between the natural world and the artificial space of electronic music. It attempts to immerse the listener within a three dimensional sound environment that is exploring the natural physics of music and yet create a contrast between these two worlds.

Karamika – 2.0 [OFFEN011]

April 20, 2019October 20, 2023 hipodromealbum, ambient, black merlin, electro, experimental, george thompson, gordon pohl, offen musicLeave a comment

Karamika is a studio creation from George Thompson (Black Merlin) and Gordon Pohl AKA Dussuldorf’s engineer supreme (Musiccargo / Kunstkopf / The Isolators…). This their second long player is a record full of mind games. Sounds leak from fractal-like holes, and are sedately trodden back into the cosmic fabric of the album. The noise of post cruise carpet.

VA – Cygnus Loop EP [NBL004]

April 20, 2019April 19, 2019 hipodromeambient, armec, cignol, edward sabine, electro, g-prod, nebulae records, sound synthesis, tim jackiw, trLeave a comment

New intergalactic trip delivered by Nebulae. 8 tracks covering a wide palette of dreamy and lushy textures, from melancholic idm to epic electro, all seasoned with a pinch of ambient.

Giraffe – Shine and Dark [MEA026]

March 10, 2019March 7, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, charly schöppner, experimental, giraffe, meakusma, sascha demandLeave a comment

“Dreams, as we all know, are very curious things: certain incidents in them are presented with quite uncanny vividness, each detail executed with the finishing touch of a jeweller, while others you leap across as though entirely unaware of, for instance, space and time. Dreams seem to be induced not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what clever tricks my reason has sometimes played on me in dreams!” says Fyodor Dostoevsky in his anti-hero novella “Notes from Underground” from 1864. Also, the three Hamburg based art lovers of the band Giraffe like to play on their dreams. Since 2017 the trio released their deeply collective reveries on one album called “June” and one EP called “Climate”. Both are featuring brief and epic sensitive shifting conversations between Charly Schppner on percussion, Sascha Demand on electric guitar and Jrgen Hall on synthesizers. “We compose and produce everything together. The ideas of each single member become better through the influences of the others.” they reveal about their meandering creative activity. The result is a sublime tension of itself: a psychoacoustic distillation of improvisation, composition and experiment in which clattering percussion, synthesized transcendence and dreamily electric guitar serialism transform into radical poetic journey music. For their new album “Shine & Dark” Giraffe built their music around acoustic drums, frame drums and electric percussions, that evoke spiritual jazz emotions and percussive ethnic vibes while dark synth layers and mesmerizing guitar microtonality dances around the rhythmic tension. Suspenseful wondrous story-telling, that opens a gate to an elaborated executed, multi-layered musical paradise, that is entirely induced by desire.

Audiosport 8 – De Diepe Wereld [NW018TAPE]

March 10, 2019March 7, 2019 hipodromeambient, animistic beliefs, audiosport 8, cassette, danny wolfers, electro, experimental, legowelt, linh luu, marvin lalihatu, nightwind records, tapeLeave a comment

This Animistic Beliefs & Legowelt collaboration tape started out as a scene in Anna Bogomolova’& Dammes Kieft’s upcoming full length ‘Stroboscopes & Smokemachines’ documentary – a film in which they research the Dutch West Coast electronic music landscape. The scene however soon morphed into its own mini film – documenting the entire process on how this tape was conceived. Packed with Animistic Beliefs & Twilight Moose style electro, amateur space jazz ambient with a touch of G-funk and a very intense trip-infused hypnotic techno track. Written and produced by Linh Luu, Marvin Lalihatu and Danny Wolfers at the North Sea Institute For The Overmind.

Bartosz Kruczynski & Poly Chain – Pulses [ITLINTL02]

March 2, 2019March 1, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, bartosz kruczynski, experimental, into the light records, poly chain, sasha zakrevskaLeave a comment

For the second instance in their international parallel series, Into The Light Records treat us with seven lush, rich and warm recordings by currently Warsaw-based producers Sasha Zakrevska (Poly Chain) and Bartosz Kruczynski. Soon after releasing their debut albums – Baltic Beat’ and ‘Music For Candy Shops’ – and realizing similar interests and traits in their solo music, Zakrevska and Kruczynski sketched out a plan for an album and live performance. The record is to a large extent fashioned after the show, with most of the tracks performed live and edited down. ’Pulses’ is a result of hours spent in studio with a minimal set-up of Prophet ’08, Moog Sub 37 and Korg Minilogue; The work present their mutual attraction to minimal synth, repetitive arpeggios and drone music. A perfect blend of poly-rhythmic patterns, ambient textures and beat-less acid moments by one of the most fresh and unique collaborations.

Klein Volk – Gulden Onversneden LP [KORTDAG001]

March 2, 2019March 3, 2019 hipodromealbum, ambient, experimental, klein volk, kort dagLeave a comment

‘Gulden Onversneden’ is the out-of-the-blue debut of Klein Volk, a cozy quatre-mains that used to brighten up birthdays and bedroom parties before it all got out of hand. The ten tracks of ‘Gulden Onversneden’ capture Klein Volk’s cherished naïveté during the drawling heatwave days of June 2018, when the world cup frenzy ravaged the streets, squares and minds of tiny Belgium – a brief window in time that diffracted everything unwaveringly into black, yellow and red.

VA – Cuneiform for Pumapunku [LSD027]

February 24, 2019December 17, 2019 hipodromeambient, brume, compilation, crepuscule, experimental, giancarlo toniutti, light sounds dark, macadam, poison dwarfs, psychic tv, terra della seraLeave a comment

Limited business from Light Sounds Dark. Very little info on this one, but quality ambient excursions from start to finish. Touching on post-punk textures and mildly orientalist tonalities

VA – Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990 [LITA167LP]

February 24, 2019December 12, 2019 hipodromeambient, compilation, experimental, haruomi hosono, hiroshi yoshimura, joe hisaishi, light in the attic, ryuichi sakamoto, satoshi ashikawa, yoshio ojimaLeave a comment

Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series continues with Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990, an unprecedented overview of the country’s vital minimal, ambient, avant-garde, and New Age music – what can collectively be described as Kankyō Ongaku, or environmental music. The collection features internationally acclaimed artists such as Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi, as well as other pioneers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Yoshio Ojima and Satoshi Ashikawa, who deserve a place alongside the indisputable giants of these genres.

Jonny Nash – Make A Wilderness [MFM037]

February 10, 2019October 22, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient, experimental, jonny nash, music from memoryLeave a comment

‘This album was created over the course of 2017-2018 and is heavily influenced by descriptions of landscape and environment in the work of authors Shusaku Endo, J.G. Ballard and Cormac McCarthy. Fragments from a land that is a largely silent place. An ancient place. A non-place. A wilderness.’

Not Waving – Futuro (Music For The Waldorf Project) [ELP040]

February 10, 2019December 8, 2019 hipodromealbum, alessio natalizia, ambient, ecstatic recordings, electronics, experimental, not wavingLeave a comment

‘Futuro’ is Not Waving’s sublime synth/ambient soundtrack to one of the world’s most intense art/theatre experiences: Sean Rogg’s radical immersive artwork ‘The Waldorf Project’ – fusing choreography, spatial design, music and performance into a cohesive experience.