Unerforschtes Gebiet is the seventh solo album from German ambient music producer, Thomas Köner. Originally released in 2001 only as a limited number picture disc LP (700 numbered copies; repressed in 2004, this time not individually numbered). Re-released on CD in 2003.
"Unerforschtes Gebiet" is German for "unexplored area".
Ben Frost's 2007 album Theory Of Machines caused quite a stir within the electronic music community, shattering genre conventions with its deft conflation of intensely dark metal, academic electroacoustics and blissful, drone-weaving modern classical touches. By The Throat takes these same principles and develops them into something altogether grander. This is an album of contradictions: during the opening piece 'Killshot', you'll be exposed to music that's both viscerally hard on the ears and achingly beautiful, combining gracefully cinematic dulcimer melodies and mesmeric swells of noise that swirl amid a sea of nerve-shredding electronics. The track segues into a dirge of howling wolves with 'The Carpathians', a piece of doom-laden menace that competes with the grimmest moments of SunnO))) or KTL in terms of intensity. We're only a couple of tracks in so far, but already this is shaping up to be pretty special. Despite opening with a tuneful flurry of string plucks, 'Hibakusja' soon reveals a darker side, collapsing into a horrifying mess of respiratory unpleasantness, as if soundtracking a drowning man trying to keep afloat - the field recordings of someone desperately drawing breath take on a creepily emotive timbre once immersed in serrated noise signals and melancholy string arpeggios. This is no easy ride, yet despite the disturbing undercurrents and horror soundtrack tactics this album never ceases to sound beautiful. Co-produced by Frost and the dependably excellent Valgeir Sigursson, By The Throat also owes some of its sonic prowess to contributions from Amiina, The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara and fellow Bedroom Community star Nico Muhly. This formidable and far-reaching body of work might be one of 2009's most singularly impressive listening experiences, and very likely the only record you'll hear this year whose repertoire consists of both luscious classical chamber compositions and the hunting calls of killer whales... A very high recommendation. - Boomkat
*THE LATEST IN A LONG LINE OF INCREDIBLE DARK AMBIENT ALBUMS RELEASED THIS YEAR - HARROWING TEXTURES AND GHOSTLY LOCATION RECORDINGS PLAYING TRICKS WITH YOUR PERCEPTION AND SLOWLY PULLING YOU INTO AN INCREDIBLY IMMERSIVE WORLD OF LAYERED SOUNDS* For his second album Jonathan Lee draws on two years of recording and performance - and it's not just his own material that's used for the record either. 'Abandoned In Sleep' features studio recordings, sample edits and collaborative work with artists including Xela, Jasper TX, Svarte Greiner, Stephen Vitiello and Gareth Davis among others. This album is all about dark, nocturnal ambience and combines a variety of half-dreamed soundscapes together for every track: Xela's falsetto murmurings clash with deep synth swells and scratchy, rhythmically organised field recordings on 'The Equal Of God', before distant footsteps and what sounds like a Doppler effected harmonica drape 'Contents Of A Black Box' in a kind of doomy, sub-bass buffeted blues feel. Chugging drones and low frequency bowed strings arise on 'Our Future Is A Debt', lacing the soundscape with rattling sonic detritus. Rumbling and layered bass exercises tend to be at the heart of this record, and there's none more haunting than 'Autumn Looming', an album highlight that plays to Anduin's greatest strengths - jostling rhythmic loops made from interrupted electronics and clattering incidental sounds merging into a sludgy dark ambience that punds irregularly with thunderous bass drum hits, making for one of the most sonically rich entries on the album. More haunting still is the Dag Rosenqvist-aided 'Labyrinthian Void', an all-encompassing turbine hum of low-end presence mixed in with shoots of distortion and squeaky door hinges. The CD edition comes with a further two bonus cuts: 'Filed Away' (an installation for Manchester's Startrunning) and 'Black River', a live performance with Svarte Greiner that closes the album with an immense nightmarish exchange of tones - like ships' horns sounding off through fog. A quietly epic, dense and harrowing sonic experience - do not miss. - Boomkat
This unbelievable album from Chicago's Zelienople evokes the spirit of some of the most treasured music we've come to know over the years, fusing in elements of Talk Talk at their most washed-out, early Bark Psychosis, and the narcotic sweeps of Slowdive fused in with the smoky menace of Bohren & Der Club of Gore, Angelo Badalamenti, and the darkest nightscapes of David Lynch. Album opener "Aging" shrouds a veil of mystery over dusted instrumentation that's somehow both evocative of vast abandoned landscapes and the most intangible and detailed abstractions brought on by incurable insomnia. It's that 'epic' evocation of intimacy that's so distinctive about the whole album, utilising that same sumptuous, slowly-evolving methodology that defined the seminal 'Scum' EP Bark Psychosis released almost 20 years ago. 'Can't Stop' introduces skittering percussion and even hazier arrangements, building from a quietly menacing drone to an almost hallucinatory tapestry of sounds, but it's "I Can Put All My Faith in Her" that crafts the formula to its most affecting, narrowing itself to a focused acoustic arrangement that's more conventionally song-like, with all those enveloping signatures cleverly and gradually submerging you deeper into its murky waters. There's something unspeakably magical about the way this band somehow alchemise familiar components into this deep, almost haunting mass of sound, making for an album that's virtually impossible to categorise but which will no doubt end up taking up one of those hallowed spots in your collection reserved for the most special, moving records you feel the rest of the world just couldn't possibly understand. Immense. - Boomkat
Design, layout and artwork by Stephen O'Malley of SunnO))) packaged in a custom made book bound gatefold CD and DLP case. The first 500 copies include the bonus album 'Abhijňâ'
Welcome to the Thunderdome. Troum’s bone-cracking reverberations respirate with such ferocity that all non-Troum molecules are blown away. Eald-Ge-Streon is a massive, rising beauty. It is a great becoming, and we are nothing but an ant in the afterbirth. Troum has set its controls beyond the heart of the Sunn. The pulsating inferno of these 7 drone concertos may require an insurance adjuster, but what a lovely way to burn. It is in your nature to do one thing correctly. Before Troum, you rightly tremble. But fear is not what you owe Troum. You owe Troum awe!
One of the most acclaimed releases of 2004. Beautifully packaged 4CD boxset (4 digipaks in a heavyduty-box, nearly all black packaging). Includes the Deathprod album Morals And Dogma, plus 3 box-exclusive albums - Reference Frequencies, Treetop Drive, Imaginary Songs From Tristan de Cunha, with a 32 page of liner notes, all eloquently designed by Kim Hiorthoy. The four CDs here document the period from 1991 to 2001. Treetop Drive from 95 and Imaginary Songs From Tristan Da Cunha from 94, both remastered and included here in full, were originally released in limited editions of 500 copies.
" I am the first to admit that the MP3 format is not the best way to enjoy
this music, but I have worked with the mastering quite hard to make the
files sound as good as possible, even though they are compressed.
Spread it as much as you want - seed, copy, burn etc... sharing is caring.
I will not go in to a long rant about free internet and piracy, but to sum
it up:
Support what is good and worth supporting (small independent labels are
always good and should be encouraged and supported).
Put pressure on the system to make it better.
PS
If you would like to give something back to the artist to show
appreciation, please go to www.nordvargr.com and find the contact info.
Paypal donations are welcome. "
Celer is a husband (Will) and wife (Danielle) duo from California that use a variety of strings as the basis for their sound. Cello, viola, violin and the sounds are mixed in with field recordings, choir. live theremin and then tape spliced and re-assembled in varying lengths to create a loop base. Those sounds are then sampled, layered and processed. The result is a shimmering orchestra. Periods of silence between the notes only enhance the sound. Though at times very haunting, it's brightly hazy ambient. Initially "Discourses..." was to be 1 full-length CD with a bonus CDR ("The Everything and the Nothing") to accompany the first 100 copies. When Celer presented the bonus material, with field recordings mixed in obtained by Danielle over several months in India, the quality of the material was so high that it was suggested and agreed to instead be a concurrent release of two full-length discs. Edition of 500.
This tape is dedicated to the never understandable ambiguity of life!
Limited edition of 149 numbered copies.
Limited to 150 hand numbered copies in a special wooden package.
An edition of 50 hand numbered copies also exists. It is packaged only in the laminated paper sleeve, and the '1' in '150' has been covered with black ink. It is unclear if this is a second edition or a promo edition.
"Peak Experience" was the very first widely available Maeror Tri cassette, it was released in 1989 in two versions: the first was released by the american cassette label Harsh Reality Music, the second appearead later on the german label Bestattungsinstitut.
All Sides pull a Two Gallants on this latest album, going for that smarter-than-thou James Joyce reference (the album draws its name from the Stephen Dedalus character of Ulysses). Although they might belong to the same book club, musically All Sides (aka Bremen's Nina Kernicke) could hardly be further removed from the Texan troubadours: this album is a distinctly dystopic application of technology and post-industrial electronics. Heck, album opener 'The Idea' sounds a bit like the theme music from The Terminator, while more beat-driven pieces like 'They Come By Night' and 'Icarus' sound like they might have been penned to soundtrack an episode of Spooks. Kernicke's production work is at its best on tracks like 'Luv' and 'Mistake', however, when it takes on a creepy ambience of Lustmord proportions. Lovely. ~ Boomkat
Deep underground, life moves slowly. Once teeming with insect and amphibian life, the great swamps of the Carboniferous era were buried under the weight of 300 million years, eventually returning to the surface as coal. In this new form they would be consumed in fires and furnaces for three thousand years before blackening the lungs of Empire and driving the Industrial Revolution. It was then that James Hutton, the first geologist, began to consider the depths beneath our feet and the unimaginable abyss of time that they represent. This is the world of The Stargazer's Assistant. This is the forge of the Earth. This is deep time.
The Other Side Of The Island is the soundtrack to the sculptural works collected under the same name, both being the work of David J Smith. In addition to his percussion duties with Guapo, Smith has spent the last two years bringing his visions to life; life that emerged slowly, painstakingly, out of wax, coal, copper and lead. In much the same way, the soundtrack itself slowly writhes organically before the listener: the groan of the motherlode, the shifting of tectonic plates, the song of the Earth's crust. In collaboration with longstanding musical cohort Daniel O'Sullivan (with whom Smith plays in Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses) and audio engineer Antti Uusumaki, Smith has created a strange work comprising of layered vocals, percussion, electronics and prepared strings.
The Stargazer's Assistant offer up the soundtrack of eternal, elemental labour. - Aurora Borealis
"Moss & Memory" is Chet W. Scott’s third full length work as Ruhr Hunter, one that has come a full decade since 1996 to this collection of telluric drones and cryptogamous soundscapes. In the face of modern humankind’s paring of nature, "Moss & Memory" evokes an atavism and reawakens the animism, which despite being overlooked by a technologically advanced society still pervades all essential beings but truly finds home where nature is unfettered. Gneissic mysticism, as layered as time is immemorial, "Moss & Memory" serves as postern to the wonder of the microcosm as it relates to the macrocosm, an embrasure through an isthmus of modernism and materialism.Tracklist:
The instruments subsumed into this album are too numerous to list here (though detailed in the liner notes of the album’s packaging), but range a gamut of acoustic instruments to organic samples of animals and the breathing of seasons, the oscillation of day and night. Susurrous drones shiver the undergrowth of the grove, eld and numinous, guitars meter languid melodies and dulcimer rills thread the boscage. With all bar one track pushing beyond ten minutes, there is a sense of changing landscape, of “journey”, as Chet W. Scott so enunciates on the very first track, signaling the cycle of life and death.
Terrene acoustics constantly drag the listener into fecund soil, hollowed animal horns and thunder chime together with throat singing shamanic observances as the forest endures, rain and congeries of birds and insects proscenium for ritual. Ruhr Hunter’s ambience is far from cathedrals of despair or the sealed caps of rotting cities, preferring to walk naked that chapel of life. - aural pressure
A three inch CDR that continues the experimental nature of the Cam Deas CDR. Fans of Dirty Demos and Blackest Rainbow will appreciate the long extended dark drifts, guitar and FX generated noise, vapours of tones and droning clouds of grey lustres. It's like a soundtrack to a film made somewhere in the former eastern block back when it had a reputation for all things totalitarian. On the other hand, it could be the soundtrack to a slow motion ballet, particularly the closing drawn-out finale. - Norman records
