[Music] Johan Troch – Bring Out The Stars

May 25, 2020 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Mellow Sunday listening for your pleasure.

Belgian guitarist Johan Troch has released an elegant new album which strides somewhere between a Steve Roach-influenced ambient style, a sublime and relaxed Bill Frisell, and a warm, loungy vibe.

I really enjoy how relaxed this album is. Go through this track by track. It’s sumptuous.

[Music] Ataşehir – AVM

May 1, 2020May 1, 2020 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Ambient as a cool breeze meeting a calming shopping experience. Oxymoronic, I know, but humor me a bit.

This description fits this release from Ataşehir (an alias of the ever-wonderful project and friend to this blog, Sumatran Black). AVM in a Turkish acronym for alışveriş merkezi, which translates into supermarket or shopping mall, though I might be mistaken. There is a nearly vaporwave aesthetic to their music in this release. It’s ambient, of course, but spiced with a touch of 80s or 90s cheese, the sort you may have encountered wandering in a mall 30 or 40 years ago. Modern Muzak. The music of my youth spent in elevators, escalators and fast food courts. Very pleasant, indeed.

[Music] Yann Rouquet – The Silent North EP

April 26, 2020April 27, 2020 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Yann Rouquet is a composer out of Paris, France, who surprised me with a very short, but very relaxed, subdued and rather charming EP of ambient music with a cinematic bent. There seems to be a lot of it around, and I quite like that.

I look forward to hearing Yann develop these concepts further into longer albums.

[Music] BlankFor.ms – Side A Feelings

January 26, 2020 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Judging by the tags listed on this rather charming EP, I would have thought that this music is meant for the dance floor. It is, actually. It’s just the sort of thing you would want to listen to after a night of pounding noise and stomping around in your best shoes. With this release, BlankFor.ms lets you lilt gently into a relaxed phase, ending your evening on an exalted note. There is a cracked, crunchy beauty to this album. I look forward to exploring the band further.

[Music] Jack Hertz – The Wind Speaks to Branches on the Hill

June 17, 2019June 17, 2019 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Bedroom ambient musicians should be a dime a dozen, but if you actually delve into their back catalogs, you find that they have a tremendous amount of talent. I don’t know much about Jack Hertz, but I’ve come across his work while looking for other favorites like Cousin Silas, Martin Neuhold and the late Wolfgang Gsell (may his memory be ever eternal). The cover art reeled my in instantly, so, as is my habit before beginning my work day, I spent my free hour with headphones in tow and jumped right into this release.

The sound is spacious, ambient in the pure sense of the word, and rather engaging at times, with pulses of low tones and what seems to be rather interesting instrumentation filling in any potential voids. This is a beefy release for an ambient record.

As an aside, you may wish to consider heading over to his record label’s Bandcamp page. Aural Films are offering 239 releases for the unbelievably low sum of fifty cents. All I’ve perused have been interesting.

[Music] Kryshe – Hauch

May 30, 2019 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Experimental music can sound beautiful at times. Kryshe makes gentle, pensive music. This came as part of a package of free releases from Serein Records. From his Bandcamp page:

After the release of his album March Of The Mysterious for Serein in 2017, Kryshe (Christian Grothe) returns with Hauch – an album of eight nocturnal pieces that will ease you through the winter months ahead.

Hauch began life shortly after Christian had moved home. With all of the chaos that entails, Christian sought a means of maintaining a daily practice with his music. The goal was to create and record something new every day in the most economical way possible, so Christian turned to his iPad microphone and tape recorder.

Phrases and fragments of sound were recorded and looped on an iPad and built upon gradually with piano, voice, guitar and more. Output from the iPad was recorded directly to tape for the warmth and natural compression analogue tape brings. The result is an album of immediate allure, musicality and soul. Gently looping piano phrases emerge from blankets of hiss and granular textures, swaths of guitar and washes of low vibrations envelop and submerge the listener.

It’s impossible not to give in to the soporific effect of listening to Hauch, especially with the nights closing in ever faster – undoubtedly an album for open fires and woollen blankets. Just listen.

[Music] ElPeche – Rosas Bandidas EP

March 1, 2019 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Arthur Carneiro is ElPeche, a Brazilian-born, London-based DJ who managed to absorb the best of Brazilian music and let it flow through the filter of electronica. On this EP single, he collaborates Artéria FM for a series of remixes.

Deep grooves, and pleasant listening courtesy of Tropical Twista Records.

[Podcast] ‘Winter lends an me an ear’ by Klankschap

December 18, 2014 / Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

https://www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2FKlankschap%2Fwinter-lends-an-me-an-ear%2F&embed_uuid=3b6594bf-252f-4b4d-832a-24cefbca90ac&replace=0&hide_cover=1&embed_type=widget_standard&hide_tracklist=1

Winter lends an me an ear by Klankschap on Mixcloud

Christophe Ywaska, a rather good experimental musician, did me the kindness of turning me on to Klankschap’s most recent podcast. Well-balanced ambient music for a rather cool evening in Los Angeles.