ZAKE Vinyl & CDs

Review: This is well known and much-loved ambient album amongst those who follow the genre closely, and after various vinyl formats before now, it finally arrives on CD courtesy of Past Inside the Present. The hugely prolific zake - who often releases several albums a year - and 36 really go deep on this one. It is a quietly epic and certainly adventurous journey into outer space where echoing sonic tones and drifting sound effects all melt into one another as electronic melodies arrive and disappear to soothing effect. There is an almost classical architecture to these grandiose tracks which makes it all the more of an absorbing and beautiful listen.

Review: "Sound Space Variations" is a delicate and restrained sound bath. A mix of atmospheric, suspenseful drone sounds and meditative aspects. It is an album made for those moments when we just are.

zake has managed to capture the moments that lie between sounds; the unagitated murmurs and atmospheric hisses. The artist connects this in-between-world and our earthly one with calm and sonorous scores, making us think about everything and nothing.

The six pieces on the record do not seem heavy-headed or overloaded but much more airy, wide and open for interpretations. They stimulate the imagination - in a wonderfully unbiased way. In the last track. James Bernhard mixed and mastered the album, written and produced by drone artist zake, at Ambient Mountain House Studio. zake himself provided the artwork and photos himself."

Review: Somewhat surprisingly, Beliefsystems marks the first musical collaboration between Past Inside The Present co-founders Zake and Isaac Helsen. It's undeniably an album worth waiting for though, with the three meditative, enveloping tracks offering a perfect blend of the Zake's droning, densely layered "drone-scapes" and Helsen's glistening and fluid processed guitar sounds. For proof, check 19-minute opener 'Northern Cross', where starry, slow-burn electronics, distant guitars and yearning, unfurling melodies gently ebb and flow across the sound space, and the becalmed, field recording-sporting haziness of 'Knowledge Rooms Parts I & II'. In a word: sublime..

Review: Past Inside The Present welcomes back accomplished and prolific ambient master zake, this time alongside Oss and Fax who released the original featured track, 'Polymorph' on Module. Here it gets revisited by a top contemporary team after the hazy and absorbing extended mix kicks things off. ASC then goes dark with his mood rework and Zake himself remixes with a more optimistic sense of crepuscular synth lushness. Aural Imbalance layers in some fizzing and malfunctioning electronic sounds, Ossa suspends you amongst his heavenly rays and Influx brings gently broken beats. Fax shuts down this varied offering with a more edgy ambient sound.