solipsistic NATION No. 165: Geas features dark ambient music, industrial sounds and abstronica.

Tip: Make this your house’s soundtrack for Halloween and it will scare the kids away and you can keep all the candy.

You can preview the mix below.

Sunday Synth Jam: This abstronica jam captures what Richard Devine does when he’s not busy watching a lake form around his house.

The patch combines Tiction – an animated nodal music sequencer for Mac, Windows & Linux; monome; and the touch-screen JazzMutant Lemur controller.

Richard Devine’s “first little messy beat jam with the Monemur patch for the Lemur controlling MLR.”

Monemur is a Monome emulation for the JazzMutant Lemur.

Music by Sprutbass, Data moshing video by Nic Brown and David James.

God of Small Things, a short film by Chris Abbas and Sumit Seru. Music by múm.

via musicofsound

The music is a collection of solo acoustic guitar, enhanced with effects and computer processing. Helvacioglu plays an Ovation Legend, using a TC Electronic Fireworx multi effects processor, Behringer FCB1010 midi foot controller and Audiomulch, a Windows-based audio processor optimized for experimental performance work.

The sound of Altered Realities is an intriguing blend of abstronica and sparse guitar work. While the compositions are solidly grounded in the world of electroacoustic performance, there’s an emphasis and focus on Helvacioglu’s guitar, which gives the pieces an accessible sound and a sense of intimacy.

Helvacioglu processes the guitar in a wide variety of ways. At times, guitar notes are accompanied by an effected doppelganger, soundling like a ghostly mirror of the original. This expands Helvacioglu’s playing in many interesting ways, sometimes sounding like a delay effect, other times sounding like an alternate-world version of the acoustic performance. The double often moves the peformance into new territory, adding a mysterious echo or a glitchy accompaniment.

At other times, Helvacioglu’s processing creates a sort of background accompaniment. Guitar notes that would normally quickly die away are translated into pulsing background effects, or washes of reverberated sound.

At other times, the processing work takes the performace in multiple directions at once. Acoustic guitar may be mirrored by a sitar-like sound, while glitchy effects percolate in the background, and the guitar notes are also being translated into synth pad-like effects.

Though the guitar processing zings off on many tangents, the music is consistently grounded by the acoustic performance. There’s also a definite sense of cause and effect between Helvacioglu’s guitar playing and the effects and computer-generated accompaniment.

The combination of guitar, and the sense of immediacy it brings, with the more abstract sounds of Helvacioglu’s computer processing is quite effective. Throughout the recording, Altered Realities feels like a guitar performance in a mysterious or magical space.

While Helvacioglu’s technical approach is very different, his music brings to mind Harold Budd’s ambient piano work with Brian Eno and the work of Steve Tibbetts. Like Budd and Tibbetts, Helvacioglu’s music captures a sense of wonder, like he’s exploring what happens in a artificial acoustic space, reacting to what he hears and discovering new textures and sounds and their emotional effect.

Altered Realities is one of the most interesting experimental records we’ve heard this year. While it’s very experimental, it’s also relatively accessible. And, while it frequently has an ambient feel about it, it rewards focused listening because of the ingenuity of the processing and the way Helvacioglu plays against the processed sound.

Abstrakt Breaks 2 is the next installment of Soniccouture’s hi-tech drum loop series. Ideal for producers of Electronica, IDM, Glitch, D’n'B, Industrial and Film soundtracks.

Each of the 253 Loops is sorted into one of 47 grooves. Kicks, snares, percussion, hats, glitches – all are available as a separate loop allowing you to break down a loop within your track, or to mix and match different elements of different grooves to form original combinations.

Abstrakt Breaks2 has been fully processed into Rex Files and Apple Loops as well as WAV format, giving full drag and drop compatibility with all major sequencing packages and samplers.

Features:

• Formats: WAV, Rex, Apple Loops
• 253 24-bit 44.1 Loops
• 530 MB Library (all 3 formats 1.3 GB)
• Grooves spilt into ’stackable’ parts which can be mixed and matched to give huge numbers of original combinations
• Fully Produced and Mastered at 24-bit Resolution
• License-free loops

The collection is priced at GBP £30. Audio demos are available at the Sonic Couture site.

On Soft Lunch, Motzer creates improvised glitchtronica soundscapes. While Motzers’ sounds are often bitcrushed and abrasive, they are filtered through a wash of ambient reverberation, turning aggresive glitch sounds into more relaxing soundscapes.

Motzer creates a tension by placing the crunchy electronic sounds of glitch music in a huge reverberant acoustic space. As a result, the music moves almost imperceptibly from sounding grating to melodic to hauntingly beautiful. It’s an interesting combination, because it retains the quirkiness and edginess of experimental electronica while also embracing the warmth and depth of ambient effects.

Motzer’s Soft Lunch is not the type of ambient music that you’re likely to use as sonic perfume. It demands more of you as a listener – but if you enjoy more experimental electronic music, it also offers more rewards.

Tracks:

• Soft Lunch
• Blue Samari
• Embrace
• Gelid
• Chi Moto
• Zen Assembler
• Spellbound
• Shadow Guitar
• Sadness
• After They’ve Gone

Everest is establishing a reputation for fearless releases, and this is no exception. Expedition_2 ranges from IDM to bizarre experimental electronica.

If you’re into edgier, more experimental sounds, this compilation is a great introduction to a variety of artists that you’re not going to hear on the radio. On the other hand, if you’re into new age, this CD will be like a trip to the dentist to get your teeth drilled.

Expedition_2 is fill of interesting work and is guaranteed to clean out your ears properly. You can check out samples at the Everest site.

Tracks:

• alpha 5-04 | 4:52 | alphatronic
• la fin des usines | 4:57 | d’incise
• i should have fucked you | 4:52 | [sic]
• saint automatic | 3:24 | meienberg
• tölt | 5:17 | softland
• r”mm”ave | 4:15 | falls of mute
• d flat 9 | 3:51 | hopen
• 12_jo71 | 3:18 | jotta
• parallel universe | 4:34 | paral-lel
• qaqortoq akazehe | 3:35 | op rechts / matu
• qatw (vltkmx) | 5:37 | eakui
• senrei | 6:22 | tsuki
• schnitt (+.++) | 5:15 | steinbrüchel
• how to destroy a piano | 4:24 | uniform
• crosswinds | 3:01 | misel quitno

On The Beeps, Yoko Solo explores experimental loop-based abstronica that sometimes borders on the danceable, but more often goes into IDM territory. Rhythms and grooves here are a tool for catching your ear so that that it can be taken on a new tangent. Beats jump in and out of the picture, while Yoko Solo drops in spoken world samples, noises or ambient effects, creating an aural collage.

The music has a very unfinished, punk feel to it that is frustrating, because it sometimes seems to go nowhere, but it is very fresh, too, because you never know where the music will go next.

Yoko Solo is brave enough to risk not satisfying your expectations, which is always interesting.

Tracks:

• Kluge (?!)
• Pigbucket Blam Blam
• Don’t Fall Asleep I’m Warning You Don’t Fall Asleep
• Infinite Collapse Pt. One: I Blew It (Infinite Undo)
• Infinite Collapse Pt. Two: Sickly Assassin
• Infinite Collapse Pt. Three: Bang U Up Dummy
• Krak V.2 “I Rebuke Thee”
• No Party, Wind/Vomit
• These Are The Beeps
• The Alarm (9øøø)
• Covered In Feces…Stronger Than You, Rotten
• Partial Collapse / Useless Control Systems (I’ve Got No Rights)
• noWave
• Cosmonaut Tragedy