Oh how the gloryness continues! Mat Zo soldiers on into 2011 with some fresh new delights – here there and everywhere, but we take a most prolific look back on 2010 briefly in his most celebrated moment in the form of the ‘The Lost’ / ‘The Found’ release. A 100% perfect production – within!
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Imagine Pink Floyd, Jean Michael Jarre and Anoraak stuck on the London Underground for eight lengthy hours, three Mac computers between them, and an infinite supply of laptop replacement batteries … then welcome your ears & thrills to Embryonik’s remixed version of Alta Toscana’s ‘Stellar’ as that may well be their collective finished idea in progress.
Play dream moments aside, Embryonik has surely come out of his comfort zone and excites all forms of spacey steam to the boil with perfect sweat-on-the-brow timings.
Also included is another modern classic in the making, reinterpreting Jordan F’s ‘SoBe’ to magnificent catwalk rankings.
Devine, treasured and magically uplifting for a Sunday afternoon.. there can be no further addition to a favoured playlist then Cut Copy’s ‘Need You Now’ remixes. Goodness sure does come in two’s + three’s …
CUT COPY – Need You Now (Gavin Russom Remix)
‘Saturnalia’ is without question, atmospheric magic, imparted with unique talent and futuristic gifts. Only Steve Moore from Pittsburgh, PA would know how to deliver those rather exception sounds more consistently with tact and respect, rather unlike the odd London Underground, Liverpool Street ‘Customer Service Assistant’ who has more people skills than a tramp who has just had its trolley full of empty bottles/cans stolen.
Empty Space Orchestra certainly knows how to fill a room. The Bend, OR quintet of impeccable musicians crafts a symphonic, melodic sound that seamlessly weaves together elements of space rock, prog-metal, noir jazz, post-rock and afro-punk all in one massive blast of energy. Having built up a substantial following in the Pacific Northwest, the band has released their self-titled debut album May 10th and brought their genre-defying sound nationwide.
Their 9-song, 50-minute self-titled debut album is a hook-laden marriage of heft and harmony that veers far away from the navel-gazing jamming often associated with music of such explorative origins. Elements of The Mars Volta’s most frenetic moments merge with soaring post-rock of Russian Circles, as well as hints of Deftones, Dub Trio and lilting chamber pop all colliding in brilliant synergy from one song to the next.
The group of classically-trained musicians is anchored by the stunning power and precision of drummer Lindsey Elias — clearly a musician soon to hold rank amongst her most celebrated male counterparts. Guitarist Shane Thomas and bassist Patrick Pearsall provide a balance of head-bobbing riffs interspersed with tasteful and inventive lines that weave like musical narrative throughout. Meanwhile, multi-instrumentalists Keith O’Dell (keyboards, piano, lap steel) and Graham Jacobs (saxophone, flute, synths) add myriad melodic layers and cinematic moods that often deftly counterbalance heavy riffs with glissando piano melodies and swaggering horns.
The disc was recorded at the popular The Hanger Studios in Sacramento, CA with engineer Robert Cheek (RX Bandits, Deftones, Tera Melos) and mixed by Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Pearl Jam, ISIS) at Red Room Studios in Seattle, WA. Since the band’s inception in late 2007, ESO has built a devoted and rapidly growing fan base in the Northwest exclusively on the weight of their highly memorable live performances. While the album perfectly showcases the band’s musical precision, it must be noted that ESO is an extremely loud band — quite possibly the loudest band you will ever see with a saxophone on stage.
“I was spending a lot of time thinking about what Miles Davis used to say; ‘It’s not about the space you play, but the space you leave,’” explains Thomas. “That’s where the ‘Empty Space’ came from… ironically we don’t leave much space in our music.” Nonetheless, the sum of Empty Space Orchestra’s myriad parts never seem bloated, overblown or obtrusive.
Empty Space Orchestra’s self-titled debut album will be available everywhere on CD/Digital May 10th.
EMPTY SPACE ORCHESTRA LIVE:
04/20 Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern
04/21 Bellingham, WA @ Jinx Art Space
04/22 Portland, OR @ Portland State University campus (free)
04/22 Portland, OR @ Ash Street Saloon
05/11 Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios (album release show)
05/12 Eugene, OR @ Sam Bond’s Garage
05/13 Corvallis, OR @ Bomb’s Away
05/19 Bend, OR @ Century Theater
Empty Space Orchestra – Brainjar
Empty Space Orchestra – El Viento
The band is.. This Is Head. Their label is.. Adrian Recordings. Their world.. is kraut disco meets indie rock from the beautiful depths of Malmö …
With an endless seam of up n’ coming diary dates till the end of July from their hometown Sweden – to the celebrated homeland of the ever thrilling Germany.. This Is Head are continuing with their record store to clothes store to various party venue performance-work-ethic fantastically, and are making all the right headwaves to those who care for their enriched & alternative band based sound.
Making your ears come alive like a little puppy who’s noticed that there is a steamy, freshly cooked steak nearby, This Is Head and their unique entitlement of listing their tracks as numbers instead of phrases is as astonishing & unique as The Editors, Pink Floyd and Metallica coming together and deciding to make an original 12″ electronic dance record.
Their album entitled “0001” has set itself up to be an vocal-airy like album in its few quarters, but mainly with This Is Head setting their bearings high and making a whole new fresh & guitar/drum lead sound theirs with (a sometimes) fast paced moment for the avid seasons ahead.
Major ghost like hauntings of Pink Floyd’s spookage can be heard over ‘0012,’ whilst ‘0008’ & ‘0007’ sound like U2’s & LCD Soundsystem’s secret romantic weekend away on the Island of Barbados.
The three tracks to sample from below, conclude to us what is sure to be a fresh & consistent outlook for this band and their own This Is Head sound for the near & foreseeable future. With the four wise men of Adam, Björn, Henric and Tom at the helm, then the additional help of Daniel Lissvik and Kasper Bjørke have side-routed a tremendous path of track-reshaping into two very balearic, and wholesome floor moving numbers.
This in INDEED, head of the pile.
It’s amazing what a nudge in the right direction can do.. and finding out about I AM XCI is by no means, no exception.
Remaining true to the statement, “Less Is More,” this man of very few words in I AM XCI (which means “I am 91” in Roman numerals) is setting his own humble musical project up in a seminal and highly unique countdown fashion through his own website and social networking page-centres.
All that I can gather in writing this article to date is that I AM XCI is from the United States, and that his countdown clock (on his webpage) will cease to zero come Tuesday 28th June 2011, with something else being intriguingly planned for Tuesday 23rd August 2011 (via the above video) also.
Sounding like a cross pollinated version of the ambient side of Aphex Twin and a early Nathan Fake, I AM XCI’s partial Moby-esque vocal has put himself on the highest of high jump bars and drawn a line in the sand to all long standing ambient/alternative fans and said, “right.. who’s with me?”
Conveying an imagination and a sound with captures all sorts of subtle and underlying depth, I AM XCI’s music thus far, is meaningful, epic and approachable. Each and every one is a personal jewel in its own right, however, the track called ‘You’ has those all special track-ahead-nudges and sprinter like photo-finishes emanating all over it.
This is one for the future classics.
Creating more floating noise in the air than overhearing an highly stressed out next door neighbour screaming loudly at her kid continually, Rhythm Scholar re-injects an already modern day classic in the projection of Daft Punk’s seminal Tron Legacy diamond called ‘Derezzed.’
Heavily electronic and relentlessly stagey, Rhythm Scholar captures a whole new essence and dimension quite perfectly. More academic awards await him soon – no doubt …
The spiritual blue skies of the 1980’s supernatural-essence, is amongst us once more and presented by the skills of a non trainspotter type anorak – in Anoraak himself.
Crafting a shaman-like melody, Anoraak reigns through as one of those extra ordinary producers who loves this type of sound and flourishes with every Ableton, Reason and Logic Pro step.
With a range of textural and moody sounds to beat, this unfound concept from out of Seattle in the United States is best consumed via headphones and a willingness to drift. Failing that precedence, a period of time within a day where you can let this coast on by without any high-octane troubles or overly-stupidly high BPM beats.
Strikingly crafted with a screenplay quality to it, “TransIterate” gradually begins to put all of your plights away whilst equally putting its concept up there amongst the elite and up n’ coming best.
Brian Ackley brings his YellowLine Music concept to fruition in 2011, and gives Aerial Noise and all of our readers an insight into his own personal brand of ambient and electronic-rock. Thirst quenching in every last drop, this 10 track debut album releases odes and nods to his favourite heroes in Future Sound Of London, Kinski and Curve. Here are a few YellowLine Music samples to savour…
This is picturesque.
YellowLine Music – Puppet Wrangler
YellowLine Music – Sage Notion
Everett James from 735 Music sends us through a very abstract sounding analogue track which immediately wouldn’t trouble the high end speakers of an old skool Massive Attack party. Featuring the slight delicate whispers of an MC getting warmed up for his next freestyle, ‘Peace’ dips and bobs its head in a dream like state and makes an even more powerful delivery with its constant poignant drums and its fantasy-inspired phasers.
“Peace” as it is here, is another example of how splendid a track can sound like without too many vocal parts added to it.
Good things come to those who wait, but in some cases, wonderful things happen when you least expect them to. Inspired by the actual birth name of one of Germany’s most famous poets in Friedrich Schiller, the initial production partnership of Mirko von Schlieffen and Christopher von Deylen gave birth to some timeless and most memorable dance floor wonders in the shape of ‘Das Glockenspiel’ throughout 1998 to 2000, and ‘Ruhe’ between 1999 and 2000.
Wonderful remixes from those two tracks in question in no doubt helped DJ Tiësto, Humate, Tom Middleton, Trisco and Sumsonic onto Ministry of Sound’s Data Records path of production-greatness and remix-folklore. But alongside the numerous-own Schiller projects and fertile promotion that these two men worked through, this duo always found time to maintain the attention of Zeitgeist/Island Records who in turn released their debut LP entitled “Zeitgiest.”
The “Weltreise” (Voyage) LP soon followed in 2001 and then the “Leben” (Life) LP in 2003. Somewhere between then, Christopher and Mirko experienced the age old hurdle of creative & artistic differences. And despite being really unfortunate to iron out those divergences naturally, Mirko decided to depart and Christopher picked up the ball to continue in the world we now as Schiller come today.
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Without alienating music fans in the mother-language in which Schiller’s LP’s have been published, the continuation of releasing the album’s title’s and track names in German and then into English, remains a constant revealing flow. Throughout the whole of the Noughties, in conjunction with Christopher’s own stadium-like-inner-drive, the Echo & OPUS music awards closely preceded and his collaborations with all several, outstanding female artists soon following in suite.
Thirteen studio-based and concept-branded albums have followed since 2003 (with two more following in 2010 & 2011). But before then, we land on gently towards the 14th Schiller album (or 6th depending on who you talk to), which exuberates monumental, perfect ambience, of the very same entitled name.
The “Breathless” LP has an ongoing heartiness to it which makes the worldly feelings of sluggishness and exhaustion absolutely redundant. After spending a month on the oceanographic research ship known as the Polarstern in Germany, a nineteen track voyage of tender and infinite-whisked melodies were inspired onto the hills of the Schiller fortress once again. The pearls of aural wisdom in which these gates were opened to were among the Princesses and Prince’s known as Lenka, Nadia Ali, Midge Ure (lead man of Ultravox), Mia Bergstrom, Anggun and many more to add to favour.
Within their strength also, they helped glide, traverse and energise “Breathless” into a universe of unmitigated tranquilly and abundant, idyllic peacefulness. Together with “Breathless” (also known as Atemlos) featuring a quintessential number in the form of the song called ‘Try,’ the United States version of this album will be accompanied with the “Sehnsucht” (Desire) LP which originally came out in 2008.
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Re-releasing the dazzling reminder of the single called ‘Breathe’ with vocalist September (and further exhibits from Despina Vandi, Kim Sanders, Xavier Naidoo and Jette Von Roth), “Desire” in its equal self retains a crisp bodied finish with an outlook on all things ambient and unanimously spirited.
The roads in which have been made and laid down for Schiller to continue on have not been sought after without a reflection to the past and an identical eye on the future, so with the enthused knowledge of Kraftwerk, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Tangerine Dream to contemplate over, Mike Oldfield fans alike are in no doubt to be content and humbled by that mystical and heart penetrating sound that moves and captures us all from Christopher “Schiller.”
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Bookmarking the calendar for his epic nineteen date tour in December later on this year, will indeed hypnotise and spell bound all sorts of fraternities from chill out to trance to ambient to Balearic and back again. So in the words of a true composer, musician and producer.. “My Name Is Christopher Von Deylen… and I am Schiller.”
Long may his vision live on.
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Schiller feat. Lenka – Sunrise
Schiller feat. Kate Havnevik – Don’t Go
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From inside one of the most authentic of realms called Raw Material, Raw Material HQ sends us a wickedly chirpy birdie signal illuminating a significant journey of eighteen, wonderfully new Chris Grabiec shapes, and an endless glistening platter of electronic dance music arrangements.
Stemming from a humble history which has seen this artist lay the foundations of his EDM affections via the means of working in a renowned record shop known as Slammin Vinyl; to having the opportunity to showcase and hone his DJing craft through various clubs/underground rave parties and the various wonderments of Iberian culture, Chris Grabiec has been able to redirect his self owned inner passion that has remained dormant for the last few years and has resurrected his gifted mindset back to the forefront which originally brought him those previous fruits of labour through his First Contact & 21st Century Recordings record labels.
In 2010, Chris Grabiec calls on the talents of Pride And Honour’s other co-producer, Nat Clarkson (also pictured above), who helps shape-shift, blend and manoeuvre a tempo haven of electronic dance beats, vocal surprises and knock-out-instrumentals which revolutionize the soul and refresh the mind completely.
The aptly entitled “Pride And Honour” LP, alongside the airy radio edit of ‘Protected’ featuring Christina Nicola, signifies a range of speeds and textures from Chris Grabiec that will positively fury the subtle euphoria amongst our hearts and smooth over any intense-tranquillities that lie dormant within our unique silent depths.
So to bookmark an audio-stop-check of features such as ‘Salvation,’ ‘Open Doors,’ ‘The World Behind The World,’ ‘The Victory Within’ and future hits: awaiting in the enclosure as ‘Man On A Mission’ and ‘We Danced All Night..’ this “Pride And Honour” LP is in no hurry to slow down its long-awaited journey, or to pick up any hitchhikers in distraction that may look like your next photographic line-up on BBC’s Crimewatch.
Released on the 4th April 2011, this collection of transitional and spirited tracks shows no sign of being “dated” anytime soon.
CHRIS GRABIEC – Protected (Radio Edit)
Just gorgeous.
Picture, gentle guitar playing with symbols and tambourine tapping… Endless, spacey and far out sounds laundered over with a near-like “twilight zone” or “the outer limits” element to it… and a true alternative and folk music coating (sprinkled with never ending love over the top…)
No, the Aerial Noise writers haven’t gone soft….
You have the title track to this album, ‘The Waves Of The Random Sea.’
Moulded from a mind that is engrossed with deeply powerful ambience and an East Asian/European impression to it, “Waves Of The Random Sea,” carries on in setting an aural environment which could be used as a background theme for a non silent – dramatic dance routine or enjoyed over the mindset in knowing that space, time and love are all part of the same thing.
Hugely ambient in its full intake, this album should fulfil in strengthening any/all of those needs.
Blissfulness, tranquillity and serenity – are all surroundings which do not sum up the Katie Price (aka Jordan) household at all. But for this album in question – it sure heck does!
With ‘Shift’ being my upmost fave here; any of your moods that may need the attention of a certain balearic or chill-out record to ease that ongoing unquenched feeling – then do not hesitate to feed this one on play and trust in Aerial Noise to stretch your souls and minds back into total relaxation.
M-Seven, I am your newest fan!
