Tags: Ambient Dub

Review: The impeccable Lithuanian label Greyscale is a real leader when it comes to dub techno and already they are racing into 2024 in fine style with a first full-length of the year from label head Grad_U! The sublime and immersive Sustain has eight larges ambient soundscapes that are detailed with field recordings from another planet. Each one is alluringly empty and beautiful, intriguing and unsettling to make for an escapist trip to another dimension. The way the producer manages to conjure up what feel like familiar emotions in such a faraway world is second to none and will leave you wanting to do it all over again the second it ends.

Review: The Mysticisms label welcomes Coral D aka Duncan Stump for a debut outing here that marks the first new music to be part of the ongoing and most excellent Dubplate series. This artist has a long history of crafting "deep dub electronic swing" in his roles in Mock & Toof, FX Mchm and his 6000 Degrees project. This one finds him bringing some dub reggae influences as 'Dissolves' is built on a chugging rhythm with smeared chords. 'DR 55' is then a masterfully laidback digi-dub groove that warps space and time and so leaves you utterly hypnotised.

Review: Chocolate Hills is a duo made up of Paul Conboy and Alex Paterson, Orb founder and Orbscure Records boss. Their excellent Yarns From The Chocolate Triangle is one of those albums that is tailored made for listening to on good quality headphones, a lush and world class ambient soundscape with vivid designs and bright colours all in high definition. It draws on library music, exotica, kitsch, Balearic, downtempo, folk, spaced out pop and even d&b, all loosely based on an imagined nautical journey to the Bermuda triangle and back. All is calm at sea as you bob and drift on these roomy and magnificently realised sounds, mixing organic and electronic sources and taking a more gorgeosuly idiosyncratic route than the latest Orb album.

Review: Civilistjavel's most recent album, 2022's Janmatter, was a predictably atmospheric and out-there affair that blended suspenseful ambient moods and melodies with occasional IDM rhythms and plenty of experimental chops. Here two giants of leftfield electronic music and experimental techno give their interpretations of the album, crafting 'remixes' based on stems from a variety of different album tracks. Dave Huismans dons his familiar A MAde Up Sound alias on side A, re-imagining Civilistjavel's work as a hybrid deep techno/dub techno/ambient techno epic - all densely layered ambient textures, deep and distant beats, and waves of effects-laden synth sounds. Ossia takes a different approach on his 'Disconnected Dub', delivering an immersive sound design experience built around creepy, effects-laden ambient chords, unsettling rumbles and echoing bleeps.

Review: Pont Neuf approaches its quarter of a century of releases with Shore serving up a fresh blend of the old and the new on this Life Is A Blur EP. It kick off in laissez-faire fashion with some heavenly ambient, then 'Constant Motion' is a synth-drenched house kicker with jazzy leads. 'So Low' is more progressive and a little darker, while 'Thinking Out Loud' cuts loose and slows down from some sunset downtempo bliss. 'Ascent' rounds out with kaleidoscopic melodies that have you gazing off to the stars.

Review: If you've ever been luck enough to attend the Freerotation music festival than plenty about this remix package will make sense. Not least the interpretation by event co-founder and modular synth hero Steevio, here delivering a remix on vinyl for the first time. Bringing in elements of jazz, ambient, field recordings, dub, house music and - albeit barely audible - subtle shades of tech, it's a sophisticated package that fully buys into the theory of electronic sounds being a form of high art. Running the gamut from the stepping, poised but decidedly free spirited 'Lucid' and Deadbeat's tense, drone-y take on'Sam Gimignano', to the lush keys and white noise of Andrea Cicheki's redo of 'Siegfried 2.0' and Dr Nojoke's beautifully blissed out smoky house, it's as dense as it is accomplished.

Review: After four years of work fusing acoustic and electronic sound worlds, Rand finally unveiled the fruits of their labours with Peripherie. The duo of concert pianist Jan Gerdes and minimal techno producer Dr. Nojoke have cooked up urban and sensitive music for piano and electronics that was all recorded live with no overdubs back in 2019 at Berlin's Chez-Cherie Studios. It was made across three pianos with improvisation at the heart of the process. It's a great collision of worlds, from dark and intense pieces of pulsing techno to more light and hopeful and empty soundscapes that perfectly blur the edges between the different tools used. Fans of Nils Frahm, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto will enjoy digging into this one.

Review: Past Inside the Present's 'Pulse' series is an investigation into ambient tech and beat-driven ambient sounds. Who better for the job on this second edition than master craftsmen ASC and Joachim Spieth? ASC opens up with 'Tidal Disruption Event', an understated, underwater rhythm with jittery percussive patterns and bright shards of melodic light piercing through the mix as more coarse soundwaves break over the top. Spieth's 'Subtle' is just as artful and delicate a mix of persuasive rhythm and melodic beauty. A classy Nitechord remix closes out this fascinating EP.

Review: Trip-hop meets modern digital ambience on Gi Gi's latest for INDEX:Records. Nothing but the music meets the ear here, plunging us into ricochety sonic hotwirings from the jump. Allusions to dancehall ('Maiolica'), dub ('Palm Slick') and illbient ('Lilted Song') ring true here, while a vocal feature on the track 'Sinews' - from fellow mic-caresser and expert moniker-coiner Hysterical Love Project - yields a sound that recalls something like the combined sonics of HTRK and 3XL. A not-to-miss EP for anyone who loves it textural.

Review: Perko is one of those newer-school experimental artists whose fingers straddle many pies, but who nevertheless refuses to allow this inner tendency towards versatility to hold him back. The FELT label owner has welcomed artists as far-flung as Civilistjavel! to Moxie into his inner circle; and the fruits of this open-mindedness are more than translated into his latest EP for Glaswegian dance legends Numbers. 'Prang' errs on the side of playfulness, giving some hot seconds of pure danceable flavour. Huerco S lends his usually-texturally-rich addprod to the nominal A-sider, a rather impressive future-garage-acid cut that recalls some of Objekt's earlier stuff, while regular collaborator and mournful vocalist-producer Cucina Povera crops up on the ambient dub plunger-into-the-sound that is 'Sisu'.

Review: Craven Faults follows up a trio of sold-out EPs starting in 2020 with a second full-length album. It is another record that moves the artist's story onwards with fantastic analogue electronic sounds that take us across the north of Britain, all viewed through 100 years of popular music. Standers again finds him honing his craft across meticulous tracks that paint vivid pictures of everything from Norse influences to piano drones. It is bleak but beautiful experimental music with a storytelling narrative and absorbing undercurrent.

Review: Uwe Zahn might have been active under his real name more recently, but his longtime Arovane project has always remained steady apace. That being said, there's also a great impetus to reissue his music going at the minute: Lilies is the ambient musician's fourth album, and was originally released in 2004 by City Centre Offices, a label run between Berlin and Manchester. Inspired by a trip to Japan, there is an unmistakable eco-ambient undercurrent to this album. Out of print for almost two decades, Kepler do the good work of reissuing it now: Lilies is exquisite, with its laboured rhythmatics and lush synthetic plucks providing a blueprint for generations of Western ambient (techno) artists to come.