Back catalogue: Classical

Review: Using a variety of tape stocks, Black Swan creates a haunting atmosphere that evokes the sensation of uncovering long-lost, sacred recordings hidden in time on his ninth album, Ghost. The New York-based artist reveals that he was inspired by musique concrete and ambient while making the record, which is made up of 20 pieces that all form a continuous suite. Each track varies in length and complexity from short and sweet sketches to more elongated studies and that are made from intense layering and harmonic surges using an array of tape stocks. The result is a haunting, unearthly atmosphere that sounds perfect in this cassette format.

Review: Clouds Without Water is a project that came about after the chance meeting of two ambient experimentalists. They were both in attendance to perform at the same electronic music festival but came together over their shared love of Bristol Sound. Working over long distances and through the isolation of the pandemic, they sent tracks to each other "without plans or discussion, only wordless questions buried in the music." What resulted was this album, which evokes celestial dreams, moon-lit otherworldly landscapes and plenty of deep introspection. It is space music for spacing out to.

Review: Healing Sound Propagandist releases Julien Demoulin's Ephemeral Maps, a beautifully fitting follow-up to Dreams In Digital Dust. This album continues the journey through the same lush soundscapes that captivated listeners on Demoulin's previous work, but this time subverts them to produce a, well, less dusty, more aerial take. The LP, released on cassette and digital only, sounds like it took a long time to make, and as though its drones were being overturned through and out of ancient soils. From the jump of 'Land Before Memory', we're thrust into what sounds like a contradictorily landed but birds-eye-view of an epochal realm, with an atonal drone heard pocketed below a set of slow-release rustlings and leaven fadings-away. Some moments, like 'Through The Drowned City', revel in high pitch and clarity, while chromaticism and tension thrive elsewhere on moments such as '27th Day (Challenger Deep)'. Intended as a challenge to the idea of the anthropocene, this is somewhat abstracting, depersonalising ambient record, so it's not for the faint of heart, but it doesn't come without a deep reserve of human sentiment either.

Review: Marc Ertel's Live At Black Circle on Past Inside The Present US arrives on limited edition cassette and is another sublime ambient entry into this now legendary label's impressive offerings. He has served up similar here before alongside the likes of boss man zake and this time goes deeper than ever into slowly shifting soundscapes that are pregnant with emotion, grey in scale but with a real sense of melancholic beauty. As his tones and timbres evolve, the moods slowly shift and you get ever more subsumed into his sonic universe.

Review: Danzig and Misfits mastermind Glenn Danzig stepped out solo for this superb cassette release that has had fans fawning. It's a suitably spectacular sequel to the first part of the Black Aria series that was originally released in 2006 and is seen as one of his most audacious ever works. It finds Danzig extends his band's already ambitious, classically-themed project with this time the infamous Lilith, the first wife of Adam, as the main theme. The cover is a super one that features an illustration by the well known Marvel comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz. All in all, a vital reissue of a metal classic.

Review: Following fast on the scorched heels of his most recent record Kosmische Pitch, Jan Jelinek now releases a fresh one for Faitiche: a recorded issuance of his 2022 performance, The Carpenters. Held at Uferstudio 1 in Berlin on July 20, 2022, two pieces transform an irrecognisable Carpenters' sample (the original song name is asterisked for perhaps obvious reasons) into salivatory stretch-scape. The original source is slowly unveiled near the end of the first half, almost of a moment of awakening from hypnosis. Then in the second half, Jelinek re-blurs the material, as if to descend the trough of a sinusoid wave. The Faitiche edition series houses such captivations exclusively on cassette, whose deprecatory format matches the exclusivity of the performance (though tape deck owners can also request a free digital download code).

Review: Meg Mulhearn and Belly Full of Stars come together for this split release on which the former takes care of the first four tunes and the latter the other five. For her part, Mulhearn harnesses the power of fire and ice, sunshine and torrential rain in tracks that are occasionally gentle and sometimes harsh. The textures are fuzzy and grainy but synths and strings bring light and hope. Kim Rueger's Belly Full of Stars alias finds her going deep into subterranean worlds of cavernous sound detailed with the finest of wispy melodies on' Ebon Flow' while 'Perihelia' has a more organic and summery feel desire being so pressurised and tense. These are enchanting sounds for sure.

Review: One Million Eyes, previously known as Templehof, return with a new album of balearic ambient, previously heard on two excellent releases for A Strangely Isolated Place. This time appearing on legendary cassette label Constellation Tatsu as part of their fall combo, anyone familiar with their previous work will know what to expect. Dreamy, sun hazed analogue synth lines mix with deep fourth world soundscapes that wouldn't sound out of place on 90s labels such as Pete Namlook's Fax or Instinct Ambient. The first half of Signal begins slowly, eyes wide shut, with 'Nickel', a slow pulsating jam of chilled out psychedelia. 'Marea' blends organic instrumentation with distant, processed voices. 'Koala', the deepest cut on the album, leads to a mood shift in 'Opalescent' that will sound eerily familiar to any Gaussian Curve fans. 'Polaris', 'Solstice' and highlight 'Landscape' close out the album in style. For fans of anyone from Music From Memory, Jonathan Fitoussi & Ishq, there are few better ways to relive your memories of later summer.

Review: Will Samson returns with a new album Harp Swells after more than ten years of crafting delicate sounds that are often led by his own tender voice. Now back on Taylor Deupree's experimental label, he fully immerses himself in the ambient world he previously considered only a side project. Thse record is a real meditation that sees him move away from the melancholy of his past and towards more bright and optimistic melodies. His aim is to heal himself through music and this record has six movements, each of which is based around his use of a 70s portable reel-to-reel tape recorder known as the UHER 4200. It makes for a widescreen and mesmeric work that stretches out in all directions around you with glistening melodies and slowly shifting energies that truly uplift.