VARIOUS AMBIENT 2008

Een half dozijn vrij recente en indrukwekkende ambient elektronica-albums. The future is now. Essentiële soundtracks voor de eerste zes maanden van 2008.

januari: thomas fehlmann - honigpumpe

'There's something incredibly distinctive about Fehlmann's production style - from 'Stralensatz's opening, its bottom-heavy warmth sucks you into a real ear massage of an album. There's a clarity and crispness to the production that ushers in a certain sense of comfort, knowing that you're in the hands of a man so thoroughly on top of his game.'

februari: alva noto - xerrox vol. 1

'Rather this is the most haunting and intricately realised work that Nicolai has produced to date, re-contextualising his token 'glitches and bass' sound into long, organic and sometimes almost orchestral pieces of work. The digital elements are beaten into a submissive static whine leaving only traces of radio static and white noise, and underpinning this is the sampled theme - building and falling graciously.'

maart: oren ambarchi - grapes from the estate

'For his third outing on Touch, Ambarchi's immense achievement is through his sense of timing, pace and definition - slowly building pieces up to warm, glowing echoes that use dronelike beginings and head into sumptuous soundscaped vistas.'

april: murmur - undertone

'Murmur are possibly the most self restrained and least derivative operators in dub techno right now, and over the course of a handful of scarce twelves they've slowly gestated a frayed hybrid of minimal construction and fathomless BASS that has less in common with the hallowed Basic Channel axis then the work of most of their contemporaries.'

mei: ontayso - selected works from the 24 hour box vol.1

'Each disc in the original series condenses an entire day's worth of location and environmental recordings into a kind of processed abstract music. The music takes various forms, ranging from barely touched concrète elements right through to rhythmic, dub-influenced Orb-like material.'

juni: loscil - plume

'What you get are extraordinarily minimal, ethereal compositions which exert a narcotic pull on the listener's consciousness. Not much happens in Loscil's music; the drama is in the sounds' essence, in the shape and texture of distinct tones, in the myriad microscopic variations which take place in the course of each hypnotic piece.'