Music Reviews

[Music] This Place to Be, by Steve Roach

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How can you go wrong with Steve Roach? His music gives such bliss.

gabulmer's avatarAmbient Landscape

A free (Name Your Own Price) for now download from Mr. Roach

This Place To Be centers in on a sweet spot of serenity with a sense of perfect weightlessness and contentment, nowhere else to be but here.
CD with download and name your price for the a few days on the digital version.

After the run of concerts and the wide range of dynamic releases over the past few years, I am feeling deeply drawn towards a return to home and to my soul tone zone of pure immersion, deep atmospherics and textural healing. That is the best way to describe this work and the place I need to be.

Steve – May 27, 2016

Released May 27, 2016

So . . . sitting around in #QuaratineLife I downloaded this – and then began to tinker with it. I took 2 long sections of the composition, stretched them x…

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[Music] Philippe Simon – Android

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This is something of a revelation to me.  Until the good folks at Kalamine Records (run by Zumaia) told me about him, he was off my radar.  This I count as a loss, because Philippe Simon brings a vibrant, updated sound to the Berlin School of electronic music which peaked with artists like Klaus Schulze, Mario Schönwälder and others during the 1980s.  Simon’s sound is a fresh, even better-produced continuation of that tradition.

He has made 200 albums.  I have some exploring to do.

[Music] Virus (Italy) – Eudaimonia

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This was a very pleasant surprise.  Virus is, perhaps, not the best choice of band name only because there are so many great bands (including a legendary Austrian one I whose album I was listening to today) who share the monicker, but because it is about as far away from the music as possible.

The music claims to be influenced by bands like Sigur Rós, but I hear elements of New Order, some 80’s funk and pop, and a nearly shoegaze-meets-Gospel music feel.

Quite good!

[Music] Christopher Bissonnette – The Wine Dark Sea — music won’t save you

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Italy’s finest post-rock and ambient music blog brings us an album I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. Read the review of Christopher Bissonnette’s new opus below:

CHRISTOPHER BISSONNETTE – The Wine Dark Sea (Dronarivm, 2020) Il quinto lavoro sulla lunga distanza di Christopher Bissonnette, che giunge a cinque anni di distanza dal precedente “Pitch, Paper & Foil”, ne prosegue l’evoluzione del profilo in quello di compositore ambientale a tutto tondo. Sfumando ulteriormente le residue irregolarità che ne caratterizzavano l’espressione originaria, l’artista […]

via — music won’t save you

[Music] Web Web – Worshippers

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Compost Records released an album by Web Web a few days ago which hit a sweet spot for me. The album is a magical combination of free improv (without the racket), kosmische musik, soul and fusion, laced with elements of trip-hop, hip-hop, and any other -hop which comes to mind.

Joy Denalane’s voice is sumptuous. She is at ease telling a soulful story as she is using her voice as a improvisational instrument. Roberto Di Gioia, Tony Lakato and Stefan Pintey add a lush background for the three to play in.

This album will be my go-to disc for 3 a.m. listening for the foreseeable future. It is that good.

[Music] Saulius Petreikis – Negirdėta Lietuva

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Saulius Petreikis is the lynchpin of the Lithuanian ethno-folk music scene.  This is a good survey of ethnic music preserved and reinterpreted from the villages of the country.  For Saulius’ Bandcamp site:

Unheard Lithuania – is a collection of musical sounds that were heard long before we were born and will exist long after we are gone. It gathers hundred-years-old stories about our ancestors and the forests and fields they used to live in. Acquaintance with this music began one spring morning in Barstyčiai, Lithuania. I was still a little boy (four years old or so), when my grandfather made me my first flute. Its’ sound still haunts me to this day.

Unheard Lithuania is the melodies and stories rooted deep into our very being. It is young shepherds playing molinukai and skudučiai flutes. It is a child with a jaw harp between his lips and an old man in the field, mourning for his loved one. It is the sound of a horn at the edge of a forest announcing the arrival of the herd. It is a little girl talking to the birds with her lumzdelis flute.

Special website with videos (in english and lithuanian languages) – www.ltinstrumentai.lt

[Music] The Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble – The Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble

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If you are patient, you will indeed run into a charmingly freaky (or freakishly charming) release on Bandcamp.  Today, I want to introduce you to The Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble.  They hail from North Korea, of all places, and they have a catalog of at least 85 CDs available.  This compilation, release by the Manchester-based Maybles Labels, put a lot of care into curating these tracks.  From their Bandcamp website:

Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble – 보천보전자악단 is North Korea’s best known musical group. The group has been active for over 25 years and has released close to 200 albums. It is a household name in North Korea and also enjoys recognition in Japan and China. The ensemble’s recognition in Japan was celebrated with a tour in 1991.

The ensemble is famous for its’ inspired use of electronic instruments including bass, guitar, synthesizer and drums. Additional electronic effects are often created and edited in a sound studio following live recordings in order to achieve the hallmark synth-pop sounds.

The ensemble has written and performed marches, polkas, waltzes, bossanova, cha-cha and ballad pieces during its long history. It has also interpreted countless traditional and revolutionary folk songs from Korea and China as well as several Russian and European tunes.

P.E.E’s music is frequently on the themes of love of ones’ country, ideology and loyalty towards the political leadership of North Korea. Friendship, love and the beauty of nature are other common themes.

Former members of the ensemble have included iconic Korean singers such as Hyon Song‑wol, Ri Kyong Suk, Jon Hye Yong and Comrade Ri Sol-ju, wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

It’s best known melody outside of North Korea is “Whistle’ from 1990, which was covered and released in South Korea by Kim Yeon-ja, to great acclaim and success.

Totalitarian countries have a good reason to release nothing but happy music. If their people actually figured out that their situation wasn’t normal, there would be a lot of officials whose heads would be mounted on pikes, so the need to appease the masses is of critical importance.