Today, the Petcord label announced a new release by Giorgos Stefanou from Greece called Internal Sonic Pathway. It is a compilation of two earlier works of the Greek composer and explores the terrains between Musique Concrète and sparsely arranged electro-acoustic music. It may not be easy listening to everyone, but has its charme and there are moments where the great Iannis Xenakis seems to watch over his shoulders from time to time. Whether you like the music too? See for yourself…

After a rather underwhelming premiere with d’incise, I was particularly curious about the direction iod would head to with their second release. Much to my surprise it was worth the wait and Offthesky aka Jason Corder present us evolute of an ion apple, a sound construction that is characterised by warmth and harmony without being too obstrusive. Positively mentioned should be the artwork with its tension between verticals and horizontal bars on the right and the curved bands of a halo phenomenom on the left.

If we look at the presumable genealogy, then evolute of an ion apple is an interesting crossing between the 90ies school of glitch and crackles a la Mille Plateaux and continious ninth chord progressions outlined by a deep sinus bass similar to the later Autechre. The construction also carries some of the ideas of the Minimalist school, in that patterns are gradually mutating and spining off arbitrary sound combinations. Jason Corder not only captures a scenery here, but an entire moment in life and despite the prevailing harmony the track does not lose its attraction throughout its gradual mutations.

I admit this presentation may not be terrifically innovative, perhaps even oldfashioned to elite sound designers, but Offthesky do know their stuff and make it happen with a certainty and a fine sense for arrangements that puts a lot of overhyped laptop stars into shame. In my opinion evolute of an ion apple is a fantastic work and I am confident that by the end of the year it will be found in some individual “best of” lists for 2008. Highly recommended for downloading, without any restrictions.

For its latest release the Testtube netlabel has a go at buzzword bingo and introduces Bård Farbu as sound designer of his Zink EP. Whilst design implies finding a suitable form to make a product memorable and attractive to a potential customer base, the cover art cannot quite hold up the expectations: Especially the back cover looks rather dull and awkward as a result of it ignoring basic (visual) design principles. This has been a fundamental problem of Test Tube from the start, as musicians have little incluence on the label’s “corporate design” and should not be taken into the review’s account.

The Zink EP consists of five rather short and sparsely arranged pieces of minimalist ambient sound events. A lot of reverb and dub-like delay was added and the sonic construction as such remains consistent throughout the EP, perhaps lacking actual culmination points with its regularily shaped earcandy approach. One has to keep in mind that these tracks are thought as functional music in the first place, as a supplement to other points of attraction in front of a listener and thus cannot entirely draw the attention to itself in order to leave room for the remaining elements of the multimedia presentation. Despite this restriction, Bård Farbu’s sound constructions reveal enough variability to remain interesting: For example Uaktsom Stillhet and Flau Fure even explore the area of dark ambient and do not shy away from utilising piercing feedback as stylistic means.

Other tracks from this EP show some similarity to the latest productions of ec4 and David Velez, but this may be accidental and a result of common influences. Occasionally passages wind up as juxtapositions without worked out relationships and interconnection between single sound components and leave the impression of cold and sterile music. But, as already mentioned, by creating absolute music that distracts the listener from other stimuli, the “sound design” would lose its principal functionality as supplement, therefore these limitations may as well be technical necessities. By and large, Bård Farbu’s Zink EP is a decent production without any significant weaknesses to me and even works out well as standalone music to a certain degree. Thus I feel very comfortable to recommend it as download to my regular readers.

The final curtain call was made and Kikapu left the field with VXXII by Mikronesia. As the cover art suggests, a departure means also a new beginning. In this case the production is opened by a dampened piano and unconnected stutter samples. A deep bass regularily accentuates the first quater note. Tight 4/4th structure. The music is indecisive whether to stick with the melodic similarity to J-pop ballad kitsch or to fall apart in fragmented sonic events, which are more compliant to a typical electro acoustic production. And and therefore noisy samples remain desintegrated ornaments and interfere with the mellow piano line.

Fortunately the remainder of Mikronesia’s VXVII is much more focussed and consistent, where all components work as a whole and contain melodic lines that serve as binding element between the glitchy chord snippets and layers of noise. Moments where Mikronesia unfold their musical potential with soundscapes of iridescent beauty. Hibersea is another strange orchid in the morning sun, with confusing bitonality, distant hallucinatory female voices and pentatonic theme progressions. Mikronesia also undertake forays into Minimalist music, with subtiles changes in modulation and micro details or explore the noisy distortion of the later Oval. Gate could even run as digital Psychedelia with hammond organ emulations and resonant feedback vibrations that come close to the sound of a sitar.

Apart from the opening track, the remainder of the release turns out as a well thought, contrastive and a joy to listen to. Mikronesia’s VXVII is a worthy final chapter of Kikapu’s history and a recommended download in my opinion.

After a promising start with completing two compositions within a few days (a rare occurance) it looks like I am stuck with themes that somehow do not really cut it. Four unfinished tunes are now lying around, probably doomed to remain fragments forever, as there does not seem to be a way to complete them. In general I am able to spin a composition further, once a counter motive springs up naturally and enables me to derive a solid stack of themes. On few occasions an idea can be salvaged by experiments until by chance something useful comes into being. In most cases, however, nothing will happen and the idea is lost, because it did not really deserve to exist for itself.

Still I preferred a more productive phase. Pressure perhaps, to have a new release for my vanity netlabel. Two finished tracks in one month is a rather meagre yield. A blank stare on an empty screen, putting together tones that do not necessarily disturb each other, but somehow lack a “soul”. “Soul” should be described as a property, that makes the course of a tune appear natural and consistent. These fragments I produced are a far cry away from that: Plastic fantastic, solid arrangements made of uninspired themes. My stock of sonic sources does not really cut it either at the moment. I cannot really say I am happy with my current achievements, but I still hope I can finish the new release by the end of the month.

Die Minimalistin aka Tanja Dovens from Berlin, Germany is not quite like any other netlabel artist, as she is one of the few, that actually have a classic background. Her latest release on Enough Records, called “end-welt” (German for “final world”), however, explores gloomy, black veiled territories, somewhere between dark ambient, digitalised goth and industrial. Both the black and white cover art and the track titles are sometimes a bit too ostentatious, but maybe that is a principal problem with artists that try hard to comply to the rules of people they like to be associated with.

From a musical perspective Tanja Dovens’ music – as one could expect from someone who claims to be influenced by minimalist music – is rather repetitive, as it tries to capture single moments and describe them from different angles. Quite striking to me was how “die minimalistin” avoids abrasive, chaotic outbursts that would give the subjects of her desperate sceneries more authenticity. This contradiction is most obvious in “die kälte” (German for “the chill”), where a poem describes a state of mind that should be hard to bear and result in yells of anxiety. Instead, the lyrics are presented in a calm, almost unaffected voice, not unlike a scenery description of Grantchester Meadows at spring time. This emotional indifference may be unintended, but it leaves the dull impression of a fin de siecle emulation of what is supposed to be a psychotic momentum in life.

“end-welt” is perhaps the most daring track, with glassy dissonances hovering over steaming water inside of a caldera. Unfortunately the promising beginning is spoilt by overly hard limiting which completely eliminates any dynamics. Additionally, as result of the gated reverbaration, the sound becomes rather flat and mushy and amplifies structural weaknesses in this track’s arrangement. More focussed was die minimalistin’s work on the follow up tune “tausendschön” (not really translatable, perhaps something like “a thousand beautiful”) which creates an ambiguous atmosphere of weird bleeping analogue synthesizer lines recorded in a narrow metal tank, something like a hybrid between Detroit sound a la Drexciya without rhythm section and dark ambient textures with interfering chromatic overlays.

Drawing a final conclusion is not easy here:
The arrangements in “end-welt” are most convincing where die Minimalistin can keep the mood and tension at bay and totally glide off her hands once the thematic progession makes escalation, clarity and sharp contrasts necessary. An interesting work, perhaps most appealing to a goth audience who may feel comfortable with the created “instant depression” scenery, but I have a hard time with entirely recommending it to people who care more about music than superficial posturing.

One disappears without a trace whilst another prefers a graceful departure. Kikapu chose the latter and closed their shop after several months of inactivity with a final release. This of course is rather sad given the interesting back catalogue they had, but on the other hand one should know when it is time to leave and move on with new things. As their past releases remain available via archive.org, the music will survive, which is principally a good thing. In any case thanks for the music and all the best to the former Kikapu team.

The Japanese On-Li netlabel appears to have closed its shop as only a Sakura advertisement for server plans will show up where the label’s site used to be located and none of the links are working any longer. This is rather sad news, as I liked their most recent release by Daenn. Yet a favourable review about an unavailable download is not really to anyone’s benefit. Therefore I shall wait a few days to see whether the page will resurrect from the death and if not I shall modify the download link to a location on my server, so those who want to have the release can download it, even if the label is no more.

Update: The label is back again and and so are all the releases.

In one of my reviews I mentioned Instellar Overdrive and Syd’s zippo in action. Of course this was a reference to a film sequence I had in mind, but which is probably not really widely known. However thanks to YouTube, there is the complete 16 raving minutes recording of Pink Floyd’s Instellar Overdrive available, which was part of the film Tonite let’s all make love in London. If you watch closely around 11′ 30”, you can see Syd Barrett finding an alternative usage for his zippo lighter :-).

Entia Non aka James Mcdougall has already published quite a few releases on various labels before. His latest work called sub routine was released yesterday on Resting Bell, a label whose previously reviewed release earned rather devastating criticism by me. With that in mind, two questions were interesting: Will Entia Non surprise the world with his release? Will Resting Bell be able to restore its reputation as one of the better netlabels? The answer, so it seems, is a happy-end like “yes” in both cases. Now that we took away the tension and incentive to continue reading for our readers, let us get into more details about what can be expected:

There were some subtile changes in Entia Non’s vocabulary, as the latter has become somewhat rougher, grainier. Clicks and crackles enrich the rather static sceneries and non-sequiturs break up longer passages into smaller pieces. On the other hand there are still trademarks of ambient in it, like dense patches of mellow synthesizer tones and the endeavour of avoiding “off notes” that could cause too much unrest. Even in macro rhetoric, the most daring of the four tracks with its gloomy beginning (almost like the kind of music we usually find on Darkwinter), James seems to shy away from being too adventurous and gradually adds some minor chords to restore tonality again. Sometimes the length of the tracks does not quite keep up with the number of components a track contains, which limits the music’s degree of variation and makes its course quite predictable.

But as a whole, this is quite a decent work and despite its rather tame and handsome characteristics still interesting enough to make it a successful blend of both mainstream and more unconventional sounds and an attractive listening experience. Thus, apart from my usual quibbling about minor details, I can recommend this release for downloading and its use as background music for creative work.