Becquerel 2 70×10 11 Ci [Synthesizer Soundscape]

This is an “epic synthesizer soundscape”, recorded at the Hilltree studio Netherlands.

Synths used include: Waldorf microwave/Pulse/ GEM S3/Roland SH32/ Clavia Nord/DX7/Korg MS2000/fb-01/Elka synth

via hilltree:

“My secret weapons for this track ….. A good reverb…..a big delay/chorus….and a deep harmonizer.

Soundscapes is an audiovisual sound collage by Ace Norton.

Credits:

• Directed by Ace Norton
• Produced by Charles Spano
• Editing by Isaac Hagy
• Cinematography by Hiro Murai
• Sound recording and track by T.K. Broderick
• Partizan Berlin

Descriptions:

Primal Drums features a collection of powerful and evocative rhythm beds, contained in 50 construction kits (over 700 loops). The kits range in style from massive cinematic drum scores to exotic worldbeat, ambient, and eclectic street beats.

An essential tool for producers and composers, Primal Drums also includes a useful selection of accompanying drones, pads, and atmospheres designed to add even greater impact to your sonic creations. Primal Drums is ideal for recording and scoring projects, from TV to films, games, re-mixes, multi-media, and more.

Contents:

• 50 Construction Kits
• Powerful and evocative drum and rhythm beds

Format: AIFF/Apple Loops/REX/WAV
Retail: $99.95
Primal Drums Demo

Slo’ Motion: Tokyo Soundscapes

A 7 Gigabyte Soundtrack Library: 2 DVD-ROMS Jam-packed with thousands of cinematic, soulful, ambient, chill-out loops and samples. 1995 24 Bit Loops & Samples in 3 formats; WAV, REX2 & a huge 2 Gb Reason ReFill.

WAV SECTION (24 Bit) 1995 Loops & Samples in 60, 65 & 70 Bpm. Endless Looping Soundscapes with Bladerunning Rhodes & Eno Land Piano, Synth & Guitar Tones/Chords. Deep Sleep & Dub Style Bass Loops and Dark City Tokyo Sound FX, Hazy Bird& Nature FX. Hypnotic Kalimba & Gamelan Anklung Loops with Discrete Traffic Style Percussion.

Mystical Fragmented Drum & Percussion Loops with Dirty Valve Driven Organ Beat Box Loops & Samples. REX 2 (24-bit) 876 24-bit Rex2 loops, discrete traffic style percussion, African thumb piano, Balinese anklung loopds, cinematic Tokyo sound fx, treated bird & nature loops. Slow motion looping soundtrack chords with cinematic synth, mellotron & guitar loops.

ReFill (Reason 3.0) 2608 24-bit Rex2, WAV samples & Reason patches. Hypnotic sondscape loops, chill-out chords with Enoesque synth & guitar tones, deep dubby bass loops, Tokyo night life sound fx, Organic bird & nature fx loops, African thumb piano & Balinese Gamelan loops, smooth traffic style percussion loops. Ambient drum & percussion loops, amped vintage organ beat box samples together with over 700 combinator, NN-19 & Redrum patches.

Contents:

• 1995 loops & samples in the WAV format
• 876 Rex2 loops
• 2 Gb Reason Refill (Reason 3.0)

Format: REX/Refill/WAV
Retail: $199.95
Slo’ Motion: Tokyo Soundscapes Demo

A forum member sent me info about an upcoming performance by ambient space music master Steve Roach, being held at at Grace Cathedral: Mystic Chords and Deep Immersions.

Roach plans to present an evening of pure, expansive soundscapes. His atmospheric works should be a perfect match for the reverberant acoustics and sacred space of the Cathedral.

Lynn Augstein (Cobalt Sun) is handling lighting and video art.

Sounds like it will be a great concert. Here are the details:

Grace Cathedral
1100 California Street (at Taylor, atop Nob Hill)
San Francisco, California
(415) 749-6300

Friday, June 29, 2007
8pm (doors open at 7pm)
E-tickets $25 (NO tickets will be mailed; show your photo ID at the door.)
There will be tickets at the door.

You can find out about future Steve Roach concerts at his site.

Note to Steve – it’s time to perform a concert somewhere in the Midwest….

When a album is truly original, it’s often hard to fit it into a set category or niche. This is certainly the case with No Time For Silence. The label, 1k Recordings, describes the CD as “Epic compositions, potent improvisations, and amazing wordplay from a world collective of poets, artists, and musicians.” The music moves from ambient to downtempo to cinematic, all in the first track, with a dash of David Lynch and Eno Ambient 4 weirdness thrown in, for good measure.

The CD is very atmospheric and experimental, and frequently has an improvisational feel. Motzer uses a wide range of instruments and collaborators, in addition to synths, guitars, loops and effects. Many of the tracks include environmental sound effects, such as the sounds of summer crickets. Other musicians include Jeremy Carlstedt on drumkit, Gloria Justen on violin, Barry Meehan on bass and loops, Enrico Marani on electronics, and Elliott Levin on saxophones, flutes, and voice.

Many of the tracks create dark cinematic backdrops for spoken poetry in several languages, delivered by Ursula Rucker, Rich Medina, Elliott Levin, Kalaf Angelo, and Adriano Englebrech. While much of the album is laid-back ambient music, it’s not going to lull you to sleep. The tracks all have a bit of an uneasy or mysterious feel to them, and the fact that the spoken poetry is often difficult to make out just adds to this feeling.

You definitely won’t fall asleep during To Be Perfectly?.Frank, Deja Vu Dued All Over Again, or Displaced By The Blink Of A Third Eye. These tracks feature Elliot Levin’s ranting beat poetry and avant-jazz sax riffs, over drones and layers of filtered versions of Levin’s poetry.

Highlights of the CD include What Can They Do? and I Am That Little Girl Again. Each features clear, powerful poetry readings over evocative backgrounds. The texts paint oblique character portraits, and the tracks flow together, blurring where one ends and another begins. The music is part jazz kit, part ambient drones and part chamber music.

Secret Voices’ No Time For Silence is one of the most original releases we’ve heard this year. It’s challenging music that demands your attention.

You can preview the CD at the Secret Voices MySpace page.

Tracks:

• The Chain Chant
• Tristan Fragment
• Finally Without Chains
• To Be Perfectly…Frank
• Deja Vu Dued All Over Again
• Displaced By The Blink Of A Third Eye
• A Silence Invades Me
• What Can They Do?
• I Am That Little Girl Again

In conversation with Rich, he mentioned that he is fascinated by weather. His journal entries from his 2003 tour make reference to the intense weather he experienced, and the impressions it made on him. This is reflected in the packaging for his CD, which seems to document a shamanic ritual to the sky and its results.

The CD captures 8 improvisations, ranging in length from five minutes to over twenty. Rich varies the instrumentation from track to track, demonstrating his skill and subtlety on guitar, flute, & synths. He also uses sampled or taped environmental sounds. The tracks range from ambient in style to mournful instrumentals. On some of the tracks, it’s clear that Rich is using alternate tunings.

Rich seems less interested in the unpredictability and power of weather, and more in the sense of mystery and awe it can inspire.

Erasing Traces starts the CD off. On this track, Rich solos with electric guitar over synth drones. His guitar work is meditative and has more of an Indian feel to it rather than blues inflections. Rich’s unique approach doesn’t provide many reference points, but Terje Rypdal’s playing comes to mind.

With the next track, Overhead, the focus is on slowly evolving synth textures. Vertigo and Supplication combine nature sounds with shifting synth textures, and muted sequences. Rich closes the CD with one of the most haunting tracks, Recognition. This track again feature Rich’s electric guitar work, which gives the album a sense of return or closure at the end.

The CD as a whole provides a relaxing collection of tracks that make an attractive ambient soundtrack. Rich fills the music with enough detail, variety and tension, though, that the music is rewarding with any level of focus.

Tracks:

• Erasing Traces 13:17
• Overhead 5:34
• Vertigo 21:34
• Supplication 7:23
• Borealis 6:01
• Lost Landmarks 6:25
• Adrift 4:56
• Recognition 8:50

Total Time 74:02

InTRO

Sanfilippo claims the like of Wendy Carlos, Vangelis and Mike Oldfield as influences. The music of Intro, though, is more reflective and ambient than these influences would suggest.

Sanfilippo describes the tracks on InTRO as soundscapes. Sanfilippo masterfully combines synthesizers, keyboard, environmental sounds and a variety of acoustic instruments to create music that brings to mind the environmental soundscapes of Steve Roach and the dark ambient music of Brian Eno.

The CD collects seven tracks. Each track’s name starts with InTRO and then is completed by a word or phrase that seems to relate to the track. InTROworld, for example, has a world music feel to it, layering pulsing synths with percussion and exotic string melodies. InTROpiano, on the other hand, is solo processed piano, with synth and electronic effects accompaniment.

From the start, InTRO sets a relaxing, reflective mood. While each track on the CD has a very unique feel to it, Sanfilippo maintains a consistent mood, which means the CD makes an ideal sountrack for relaxing and thinking.

Eno has suggested that ambient music must be listenable as well as ignorable, supporting various levels of attention, and the tracks on InTRO are excellent examples of this idea. While the music on InTRO is often beautiful, it doesn’t have the glossy surface charm of some new age music, but a deeper, mysterious attraction.

Highlights of the CD include InTROpiano, which recalls Vangelis Memories of Green and the Brian Eno/Harold Budd classic, The Pearl; and InTROvoices, which uses wordless voice sounds to create a choral and even orchestral texture.

Bruno Sanfilippo’s InTRO is one of the finest ambient releases we’ve heard this year. It’s not widely distributed, unfortunately, but is available via the AD21 Music site, where streaming previews are also available.

Tracks:

• InTROworld
• InTROmental
• InTROsacro
• InTROpiano
• InTROvoices
• InTROvisions
• InTROpassion

This massive four-CD set is one of the most important ambient music releases in years. The set represents Roach’s music at its most ambient. The tracks leave behind the traditions of Western music – harmony, melody, regular rhythm and standard forms. While these elements are present, the focus of the music is abstract soundscapes.

Roach has explored this ambiguous territory to different extents on other albums. Structures from Silence, World’s Edge and many other of Roach’s releases focus on subtleties within soundscapes.

In most of his work, though, there is an element of the familiar, be it the beat of a drum machine or a sequenced melody. In Mystic Chords, these elements of familiarity are gone, and Roach’s drifting soundscapes become the foreground.

Like other ambient music, it can be listened to as a sonic background. On first listen, the music wafts past your ears and floats in and out of your consciousness. The 4 CDs collect a variety of tracks that feature similar qualities, so they can be listened to as one massive ambient soundscape.

The music rewards closer listening, too, though. Each of the tracks vary in emphasis and the sounds they explore.

The cover of the Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces CDs features a beautiful illustration of what looks like a nautilus shell. The shell’s spirals seem to recede into infinity, so no matter how closely you look, you realize that there is more to see.

This imagery seems to capture the spirit of these CDs. The closer you listen to them, the more you details you hear. By encouraging you to listen for subtleties in the sounds, Roach seems to be trying to reveal an infinity of detail.

This music is challenging, in many ways. Roach has dispensed with the standard building blocks of music, such as clear rhythms or melodies. It’s also a massive work, like a Wagnerian Ring Cycle of ambient music. Some listeners may be put off by this and yearn for the reassurance of a melody or a beat.

It’s probably safe to say, too, that this music may be difficult to understand, for listeners used to the familiar rhythms of pop music or the standard forms of classical music. Roach’s work here explores a completely different world of musical expression. The tracks on these CDs are continuous soundscapes, and often explore dark and dissonant territory.

Listeners that yield to the subtlety of Roach’s ambient textures, though, will find the pieces rich and rewarding. Roach has created an extended work, avoiding traditional western musical techniques, that succeeds in exploring the beauty and mystery of pure sound.

The music challenges the listener to hear sound and music with fresh ears. Roach combines synthetic sounds with organic movement, giving electronic sounds the sensuality of flowing water or the wind. It also challenges the listener to slow down and become aware of the music’s details.

Active listeners may find themselves finding connections and distinctions between the pieces that Roach consciously or unconsciously incorporated into the work.

The music also has a spiritual quality, as suggested by the title. This spiritual quality captures the sense of mystery and awe that vast landscapes or massive interiors can inspire.

Finally, Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces seems to be a challenge to skeptics that may think that ambient music can’t encompass a huge range of human emotion and experiences.

This release is available as a four CD set, or as two double CDs.

On Disc 1, Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces, Roach explores drone-based soundscapes. Roach treats digital reverb almost as another instrument, so that the echo of a sound is as important as the sound itself. The music on this disc is restful, but has a mysterious quality resulting from the way Roach plays with ambiguous tonalities.

Disc 2, Labyrinth, has a darker, more mysterious feel to it. This CD has ten tracks that take the listener into even less familiar territory. Roach’s titles capture the mood of these tracks perfectly: The Otherworld, Slowly Dissolve, Womb of Night, Wordless and Nameless.

The disc starts with Wren and Raven, which includes what sounds like sampled bird calls. This is combined with dark synth drones. The result is a landscape that seems not quite familiar, almost as if you’re leaving the world you know behind. The rest of the tracks on CD 2 explore soundscapes that seem more dissonant than Disc 1. While the first CD has a sense of awe and mystery, Labyrinth mixes in hints of loneliness and fear of the unknown.

The third disc, Recent Future, explores a wide range of moods and sounds. This CD starts with Open Heart, a track that combines synth soundscapes and quiet percussion work. This transitions into Turn Into Light. It’s built around a continuously shifting drone, combining the comfort of repetition with the wonder of newness.

Left Perfectly Alone is a short gem. A chord sequence repeats itself exquisitely slowly, just audible through the deep reverberant sound space. Another highlight is Turning Back, which seems to explore the idea that repetition is a form of change. A sequence of chords repeats through the piece as an ambient wall of sound builds and builds. By the middle of the piece, the background ambience almost overwhelms the sequenced chords before it fades away again.

Disc 4, Piece of Infinity, is probably the most subtle of the tracks on all of Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces. It is one long track, built on slow repetition of musical material that changes slightly over time. This track seems close in construction and mood to some of Brian Eno’s ambient work, where sound events have varying cycles that combine with the infinite variety of nature.

It’s tranquil, meditative music, and it is full of the eerie wonder that permeates the whole four-cd work.

With Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces, Steve Roach has created a subtle work of great beauty. It’s a massive work that rewards whatever depth of attention a listener brings to it. The music challenges the listener to leave behind traditional ideas of music, and listen to the soundscapes with virgin ears.

The release is unique among Roach’s work, and reveals an audacity, confidence and freedom that Roach has earned.

Highly recommended!

The full four-cd set is available via Steve Roach’s web site.

Disc 1: Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces

1. Palace of Nectar
2. Oracle
3. Within the Mystic
4. Presence
5. Vortex Ring

Disc 2: Labyrinth

1. Wren and Raven
2. The Otherworld
3. Wonderworld
4. Threshold
5. Dream Body
6. Slowly Dissolve
7. Womb of Night
8. Soulwave
9. Wordless
10. Nameless

Disc 3: Recent Future

1. Open Heart
2. Turn to Light
3. Shift the Dimension
4. This Moment is a Memory
5. This Moment is Another Memory
6. Slightly Below
7. Essence of Phaedra
8. Left Perfectly Alone
9. A Subtle Body Current
10. Personal Nature
11. Grounding Place
12. Turning Back
13. The Spiral of Time’s Fire Burns On

Disc 4: Piece of Infinity

1. Piece of Infinity

Alpha Wave Movement’s CDs explore classic synth music genres, but make them sound fresh and new, and Drifted Into Deeper Lands is no exception.

The CD starts out with Drifted into Deeper Lands. The track is a hypnotic space music voyage that begins with a wash of ambient synth strings, evolves into a sequence-driven middle section, and then returns to the synth strings of the beginning. It’s a simple form, but Kyryluk makes it memorable with his great ear for synth sounds, balanced orchestration and pacing. It’s a killer track – some of the finest ambient space music we’ve heard.

Silent Promise is a delicate ambient piece that explores airy timbres. It’s a little reminiscent of some of Michael Stearns early work. Evolving synth string textures create a bed for drifting wind-blown bottle sounds. With Silent Promise, Kyryluk reminds us that it’s OK for synth music to sound beautiful.

With Awakening the Sand Spirits & Another Time…Another Place, Kyryluk is joined by Jeff Pearce, who contributes “ambient guitar atmospherics”. These pieces have a feel similar to Steve Roach’s Western Space era work. On tracks like this, you can hear Kyryluk’s influences. Nevertheless, his tracks have their own character and are expertly executed.

Kyryluk wraps things up with the lovely Suspended in Hanging Gardens. The track contrasts chime-like synth timbres over synth string sounds with very slow attacks.

Overall, this is a lovely CD. The first track, Drifted into Deeper Lands, is the most compelling. If the CD has a fault, it’s that it peaks at the beginning. It’s a strong enough track, though, that it would have been hard to top.

Drifted into Deeper Lands is a great CD of ambient space music. You’ll have to search this CD out, but it’s well worth looking for via the Alpha Wave Movement site.

Steve Roach

Working at this rapid pace results in some music that doesn’t fit neatly into a preconceived album concept. To get this music heard, Roach has released several collections of “lost pieces”, bringing together works that are not parts of complete works, but are nevertheless complete themselves.

Places Beyond is the fourth release in this series. It would be easy to be sceptical about a release like this. By the fourth one, how good can these “extras” be?

Surprisingly good, actually. Places Beyond doesn’t provide the coherent listening experience of CDs like Mystic Chords or World’s Edge. On the other hand, the pieces are woven together in more subtle ways through the sounds choices and approaches that make up Roach’s style.

The pieces on Places Beyond are from 1997 to 2004, and listeners may hear echoes of some of his recent CDs. The result is an interesting record that provides both an introduction to the many flavors of his recent music, and a collection of great tracks for hardcore Roach fans.

Distant Signals starts the CD off. It’s a drifting ambient piece that explores washes of sound in ambient space. While Roach often explores darker ambient space, Distant Signals has a blissful feel to it, without using any cliches to sound upbeat.

Trancefusion & Serpents Birth are rhythmic collaborations with synthesist/percussionist Vir Unis. The tracks have a darker feel, but also have a real drive to them because of the way they combine sequences and looped and live percussion.

Resolution Point seems to mix many facets of Roach’s work. Roach frequently uses sounds that evolve and change very slowly over time, and these are prominent here. Shamanic percussion sounds and even ambient guitar are woven in, too. Towards the end, the track moves into the abstract drone soundscapes that Roach has explored more frequently in recent years.

Calm Before the Storm is another collaboration, this time with Vidna Obmana. Obmana and Roach work with evolving synth strings, percussion and natural sounds, creating a ambient soundscape that may immerse some listeners in another world, and attune other listeners to the sounds around them.

Slow Rapture & Light of Day return listeners to the territory Roach created on Mystic Chords or The Magnificent Void. Roach’s music in this style can leave reviewers tongue-tied, because it pushes the limits of what many people would consider music. The tracks are free of any clear harmonic progression, melody and rhythms, making discussing them a little bit like dancing about architecture. To these ears, Roach is echoing the rise and fall of sounds in natural landscapes. These electronic soundscapes explore constantly shifting textures within set palette of sounds, similar to the constant change of the natural sounds of the wind or insect drones.

In his liner notes, Roach says that Contained..Sustained combines two impressions of the desert, from different time periods. There’s no explicit “desert” sounds here, but it echoes his desert-themed music going back as far as his Western Spaces release.

Steve Roach’s Places Beyond CD is an interesting collection of ambient/space music that would be a good introduction to his recent work for anyone unfamiliar with his releases of the last few years. Even though ambient music has almost become a mainstream genre, there are still very few artists doing any thoughtful work in this area. Roach is one of them, and on Distant Signal he showcases his unique ear for creating landscapes of sound.

Careful listeners will hear echoes of many the peoples of the West. Some of the vocal work sounds like Native American singing. Roach’s harmonica seems like it could be coming from a ghostly cowboy. King’s guitar work captures the sounds of blues players, Spanish guitarists, and cowboys.

The instrumentation is not the only thing unusual for a Steve Roach album. Dust to Dust is very descriptive music; it evokes very definite images. Most of Roach’s music is absolute music, music that has more of an abstract meaning. At times, the tracks on Dust to Dust almost sound like the soundtrack to a western movie.

King’s guitar work is excellent, and brings a great deal to the music. It gives the music definite tonal roots, and even occasionally sounds song-like. Roach steps back a little, and gives King plenty of room. The music of Dust to Dust puts the sound of guitar into a new context, much like Brian Eno did with Apollo. By doing this, Roach and King retain some of the history that the guitar evokes, while creating something new.

Roach’s synth washes are much less prominent than on much of his music, giving King’s guitar work room to breathe. On this CD, Roach uses synthesizers, samplers, and beer bottles primarily to create ambient effects. He creates soundscapes full of blowing winds, droning insects, rattlesnakes, creaks, thunder and the occasional howl.

The CD package describes Dust to Dust as “the soundtrack of lingering ghosts, to the lost and not-so-forgotten dreams of restless souls who were driven to ‘Go West, by God!’” The music successfully captures the sounds and moods of the West, evoking images of its past and present.

The tracks on Cellosphere are serene dronescapes, falling somewhere between the tape-loop canons of Fripp and Eno and the abstract soundscapes of electronic artists like Steve Roach. The effect of the pieces on Cellosphere is that of evolving, pulsing soundscapes. Ayres’s processing blurs the source of the instrument, taking one cello and making it sound like an orchestra, or turning a bow scrape or a harmonic into a primary sound element.

Sounds recur throughout the pieces, not unlike the tape-loop guitar of Fripp and Eno’s 70’s early ambient pieces. Here, the layered sounds create an otherworldy, abstracted orchestral texture.

There are four pieces on Cellosphere. The first track has a languid canonic feel to it, with sounds recurring and layering to create a complex soundscape. The Cellosphere title seems apt, because it is almost as if Ayres is creating an entire soundworld from the cello.

Harmonic is a short piece, but one of the most interesting on the CD. Listening to it, it would be difficult to identify any obvious cello or violin. The most prominent sounds are low drones and a pulsing noise. Listeners familiar with Steve Roach’s recent work may hear similarities in the way Ayres explores sounds at a micro-level. It’s almost as if this whole piece is developed out of one sound, at times emphasizing various harmonics, at other times exploring noise within the sound, and at other times the fundamental.

Jeannie is a lovely drone piece. Ayres manages to evoke an orchestral palette from his cello, violin and effects. Overlapping string lines create a shifting string backdrop, and Ayres uses harmonics to create an effect that’s almost choral. David Hyke’s Harmonic Choir came to mind while listening to this. By mixing the layers of sound as the piece evolves, Ayres gives the music form and creates a wide range of textures from a limited set of source materials.

The final track Sensory, again brings to mind the early ambient tape canons of Fripp and Eno. On Sensory, Ayres creates a rich orchestral texture out of overlapping Cello and violin lines. The string sounds are presented relatively unaffected, bringing the lyrical quality of the cello to the foreground. Sensory is listed as a bonus track on the CD, but its combination of drone effects, orchestral string textures, and lyrical string lines suggests an entire world of possibilities for electro-acoustic music.

Ayres Cellosphere is highly recommended for fans of electro-acoustic and ambient music. The music is highly creative and crosses-over between the worlds of classical music, electro-acoustic and ambient sounds.

Alpha Wave Movement is one of the recording guises of Gregory Kyryluk, who also records as ambient/world music as Open Canvas, and as part of the synth group Thought Guild. Alpha Wave Movement represents his more ambient/space music side.

Kyryluk revisits the worlds of early space music, using the unique capabilities of analog synths to create sonic portraits of the mysteries of space. Fans of traditional analog sound will love the CD, because it’s absolutely packed with great synth work. A Distant Land is an impressive collection, with beautiful packaging, evocative titles and lovely music.

The CD begins with Mapping the Heavens, a lush opener that explores slowly evolving synth timbres. The track includes spoken-word samples wondering about life on other worlds. The second track, Distant Signals, continues in this vein. In the middle section of the track, Kyryluk adds a percolating sequence and subtle percussive effects, before returning to the drifting synth pads of the beginning.

Liquid Cosmos is a subtle, beautiful track. It begins with a sparse sequence and expands with strange underwater burbles and deep synth strings. Kyryluk builds the piece to a slow groove before gently returning to where it began.

A Place of Piece is built with a similar form, starting with an ambient section, building with sequences, and then returning to the ambient textures. An understated synth solo, beginning about halfway through the track, adds interest.

Outward Bound has combines drum machine rhythms and sequences with evolving pads. This gives the track more of a sense of movement. Centauri Memories is a short ambient track with the same drifting feel of Eno’s classic Apollo soundtrack. At 2:47, this track left us wanting more.

Requiem for C.S. is a space music hymn to the memory of astronomer Carl Sagan. Many synth music fans got an introduction to space music with the soundtrack to Sagan’s television series Cosmos. The track is a lovely piece and a suitable tribute to Sagan’s memory.

Portal Full of Stars is a highlight of the album. It starts with airy synth pads that drift in and out of silence. Kyryluk combines this with sequenced backing and some piano improvisation that creates a focal point, but never detracts from the basic ambient feel of the music.

Plasm Cloud is an ambient piece that explores shifting harmonics within drones. This is followed with one of the more melodic tracks on the CD, No Mans Land. On this cut, Kyryluk modulates a sequence through several keys, overlaying the sequence with synth strings and a solo. This is similar to some of Klaus Schulze’s tracks, but Kyryluk’s approach is less static and more melodic.

The CD ends with Lunar Sunrise, a brief piece that brings the CD to a tranquil end.

A Distant Signal is a great album, full of well-crafted space music. If you can’t get enough of classic early synth music, A Distant Signal is a treat you won’t want to miss.

Highly recommended!

For purchase information, check the Alpha Wave Movement site.

Tracks:

• MAPPING THE HEAVENS
• DISTANT SIGNAL
• LIQUID COSMOS
• A PLACE OF PEACE
• OUTWARD BOUND
• CENTAURI MEMORIES
• REQUIEM FOR C.S.
• PORTAL FULL OF STARS
• PLASMA CLOUD
• NO MANS LAND
• LUNAR SUNRISE

Ultimate Sound Bank

X-treme FX is also a great compositional tool that will inspire original ideas for soundtracks, or even remixes, with sounds that can best be described as inventive, cinematic and otherwordly.

X-treme FX makes a wealth of creative sound effects available: It provides over 5,000 presets, from bizarre to beautiful, from cyber machines to morning breezes. X-treme FX is exceptionally versatile, and it is much faster and more affordable than using conventional sound effect libraries. Included categories are: Atmospheres, Scenes, Surreal, Science Fiction, Sub & Drones, Natural, Urban, Foleys and Musical.

Scenes are provided: One preset loads up an ensemble of related sounds, perfect for live mixing or creating a virtual soundscape. Throughout the library musicians and sound designers will find sounds that are off the beaten path, original and expressive.

A wealth of sounds doesn’t mean long search times. Thanks to its thoughtful organization, users are just seconds away from the sound they need. X-treme FX also features very responsive load times: Access to the sounds is almost instantaneous, even for complex scenes. To tailor the sound, all sound shaping controls are in a single window. The interface offers premium quality sound-design tools allowing users to twist and reshape each sound to fit their project.

X-treme FX delivers professional sound effects and a fresh new approach to virtual instruments. It’s the perfect tool to create effects for video, CD-ROM, games, music, and broadcast programs.

X-treme FX retails for $399 and is available for Mac (VST, MAS, Audio Units, RTAS) and Windows (VST, RTAS, DXi).

More information is available at the Ultimate Sound Bank site.

Originally from Iran, he is now based in Germany. He has released over 28 solo CDs, collaborations with other artists and several film scores.

He began composing music in 1980. While still in school, he was the founder and keyboard player of a band called Red Fly. Later, he played keyboards and percussion in The Pygmies, a free jazz band.

More recently, he has been composing for many different mediums.  His work includes orchestral soundtracks and sonic transformations for feature films, commercials and documentaries. He augments his energetic electronica compositions with ancient fractal grooves and exotic soundscapes.

Currently, he is working with several well-known musicians on multiple productions, and creating ambient soundscapes (abstract, noise, minimal experimental, dark and tribal, etc). He works in his own studio, the Bluebox, where he produces and engineers other musicians and projects, in addition to his own music.

His web site, http://www.amirbaghiri.de, features news about his work, free downloads of his music, and an online shop. A current discography, including samples of some of his work, is also available at his site.

Selected Discography

• 2003 Yalda (CD) CD for Vivo Recordings
• 2002 Dreamresources (CD) CD with the Neuronium – Spain
• 2002 Private Archive 2002 (5CD Box) Italy Arya-Amplexus (only limited available)
• 2001 Rooms (3CD Box) Inner Rooms – Real Rooms – Spaces in Between (Italy Arya-Amplexus)
• 2000 Bluebox Collection (4CD Box) City – Live – Night – Sleep (Italy Arya-Amplexus)
• 1999 Winterscape (CD) Spain – NO-CD Rekkord
• 1998 Autumn (CD) Italy Arya-Amplexus
• 1997 Time (CD) Italy Arya-Amplexus
• 1996 Cages (CD) Span – NO-CD Rekkord
• 1987 Silent Red Planet (LP) Iran Sazo, Avaz Music (Only available in Iran)
• 1985 Quite Desert (LP) Iran Sazo, Avaz Music (Only available in Iran, Copyright Sazo, Avaz)
• 1984 Colours Of The Caspian Sea (LP) Iran P.I. Communication Services (Only available in Iran)
• 1983 Visions Of The Night (MC) Iran P.I. Communication (Only available in Iran)
• 1981 Slow Motion (MC) Iran Nedaye oumgh (Only available in Iran)

Collaborations & Compilations

• 2003 Chilling You Out Sampler from Neuronium Records (Available worldwide)
• 2001 Laudanum (Mini CD) with Rüdiger Gleisberg (Italy Amplexus)
• 2001 Schwingungen Auf CD No. 3+4
• 2001 Schwingungen Auf CD No. 44
• 2000 Estrada Studio Magazine for electronic music (CD with Amir Baghiri’s story and interview) (not longer available)
• 2000 Between Sun & Moon Various Artists, Amplexus-Soleilmoon)
• 2000 Groove Unlimited Sampler No. 5 Various Artists
• 1999 Schwingungen Auf CD No 23
• 1999 Cosmo Live concert at the WDR5 Radio Station (Germany)
• 1999 Upuaut Day three of Italien concert in October 1999
• 1998 True North (CD) With Matthias Grassow, Italy Arya-Amplexus
• 1997 Lanzarote Spirit (CD) With Matthias Grassow, Spain – Syntorama
• 1997 Nocturnes (CD) With Solitaire, Italy Arya-Amplexus
• 1997 Arcanum (CD) With Matthias Grassow and Rüdiger Gleisberg, Italy Arya-Amplexus
• 1996 Soundscape Gallery 2 (CD) Compilation, Usa Lectronic Soundscapes
• 1996 Awakening (CD) On “Fife Years of Eye-Q Music” (2xCD) – Eye Q Records Germany
• 1995 Fearless (CD) (Awakening) with Solitaire, Recycle Or Die (Eye Q Records) Germany
• 1987 Ugographity Pygmies
• 1986 Ouruj With Pygmies
• 1985 Graphieh 2 With Pygmies
• 1985 Graphieh With Pygmies
• 1982 Rubartan With Redfly on live recorded tapes
• 1981 Dakhmeh With Redfly on double LP album
• 1981 Red Fly Collaboration with the Redfly on the debut LP Redfly

Inner Landscapes was recorded live at one of Rich’s long improvised concerts. This concert was about three-hours long, but others have run much longer.

The music highlights Rich’s skill as an improviser. However, don’t expect any be-bop licks. Rich improvises on a variety of instruments, and his programming and playing is tailored to his style of music. Over the course of the album, Rich plays bamboo flutes, steel guitar, a custom modular synthesizer, and Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and Six Trak synthesizers.

Though he uses a variety of electronic and acoustic instruments, the way he plays and the way he treats the sounds with reverberation tend to extend and blend the sounds, lending them an otherworldly quality, and making them less identifiable.

The music begins with what sounds like insect noises. These chirping noises continue throughout the various sections, so that they fade into the background, but still help tie the pieces together. The insect noises and the dark textures that Rich uses create alien landscapes, much like Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land.

Rich’s reverb-drenched flute is also reminiscent of some of Paul Horn’s work. The pieces that feature his flute playing create some of the more intense sections of the music. The flute sounds, combined with the deep reverberation, resonate so that the sound evolves and grows. Rich makes the flute emerge from nothing and grow to be loud, so that the flute sound seems to surround you.

This album is a treat for fans of space music and dark ambient music. It’s beautiful and haunting, and can be listened to with many different levels of attention. It gives one a taste of what one of Rich’s long concerts is like, but doesn’t betray itself as being a live performance.

The cover of World’s Edge shows lightning striking behind some massive stone. The effect is of some primordial landscape far away from civilization, possibly far away in time. On World’s Edge, Roach’s music conveys a similar effect through sound.

World’s Edge seems to represent a turning point in Roach’s output. Roach had long been inspired by the vastness of Western Spaces. His music often incorporated acoustic treatments that gave the effect of the music living within cavernous spaces. He was also using noise elements more prominently, and the sounds he used were becoming more and more clangourous, with complex cymbal-like sonorities becoming prominent.

World’s Edge was the first solo CD that Roach released after moving into the Tucson desert. In this setting, his studio looks out onto a wild natural landscape, and his music seems inspired by his new location. He lets go of the tonal sequences that propelled his early music, and instead emphasizes windlike washes of sound. “Undershadow” has the synth string washes that have been part of his style for years, but they sound less tonal. On several of the tracks, Roach uses sampled vocals that sound a little like harmonic singing.

The first CD is a collection of shorter pieces, ranging from about three to ten minutes. The second CD is one long track, “To The Threshold Of Silence.” The overall sound of World’s Edge is dark ambient, in the line of Eno’s Ambient 4: on Land. Roach uses sounds more for their ambient sound than for harmony or melody. Many of the sounds are eerie, and add an edge to the music.

The first CD is like an introduction to Roach’s mature ambient style. It contrasts dark ambient pieces with more rhythmic pieces with an ethnic influence. On tracks like “The Call”, he puts an emphasis on traditional ethnic percussion. Roach, along with guest musicians Guy Thouin and Robin Horn, give the many of the tracks rhythmic percussive drive, playing didjeridu, dumbek and tablas.

The second CD is one hour long dark ambient track, “To The Threshold Of Silence”. If you compare it to something like Structures from Silence from ten years earlier, the differences are striking. His music is still quiet and subtle, but it has become much more complex. He makes significant use of metal non-pitched percussion, and electronic sounds with similar complex sounds. These tend to blur the tonal center of music that is otherwise based on sequenced drones.

Of the music on “World’s Edge”, Roach writes:

“I’ve always enjoyed the metaphor of coming to the edge of an abyss and jumping off…While working on this music, I was also thinking a lot about the disappearance of aborignal cultures, a tragedy on many levels…I wanted to find and convey a primordial voice through all this modern technology, go to the edge in a shamanic sense and bring back sounds that carry inspiration and power.”

On World’s Edge, Steve Roach succeeds in creating music with primitive dark ambience that conveys a sense of mystery and wonder.

Western Spaces opens with a Roach track, “The Breathing Stone”. This track is a rhythmic sequenced track; it combines drum machine, sequenced synth bells, and synth strings. Roach treats his drum machine in unique ways, adding deep reverberation to give the effect of drums being played in a cavernous space. The piece is relatively static; the drums and sequencer repeat through most of the piece, while the synths play washes of strings.

“Desert Walkabout” is a Braheny track, and emphasizes more of an acoustic texture. The track begins with ambient electronic sounds that are a little like the sound of wind. Braheny plays pan pipes and kalimba, along with the Steiner Electronic Woodwind Instrument that is a standard part of his sound. Braneny uses the EWI effectively, breathing life into the synthesized sound so that it has the expressiveness of a well-played violin. Braheny’s tracks tend to be more melodic, and have more of an orchestral feel than the Roach tracks.

“Desert Prayer” is a joint composition between Roach and Braheny. On this track, Roach provides synth string pad support for the solo improvisations of Braheny on the Steiner EWI and on electric piano.

“In the Heat of Venus” is one of the darkest pieces on the CD. This is a Steve Roach piece with Thom Brennan. It combines synth string washes with eerie electronic ambient noises and several interlocking sequences. This ambient trance music is hypnotic and beautiful.

The final track, “Western Spaces” sums up the album. It’s dark ambient music that has a very slow, breath-like pulse. The synths shimmer evoking the refraction of light through heat on the desert. This sounds primarily like a Roach track, but Braheny adds some subtle EWI melodies.

This CD was originally released on Innovative Communications, and included compositions of Richard Burmer. Burmer’s tracks have a luminous quality and more of a serene feel, and contrast nicely with the darker Roach and Braheny pieces. Note that the new release removes those compositions and replaces them with “New Moon at Forbidden Mesa”, and “Slow Turning”. This change may disappoint some fans of the original CD, but makes the CD a nice match for a companion release, Desert Solitaire.

Western Spaces is a classic ambient space release, and one of the early highlights of Roach’s career.

This self-produced CD displays a stylistic boldness and confidence that is unusual for first releases. SourceCodeX makes no concessions to popular tastes. The music is devoid of melody and rhythm, and many listeners would question whether or not many of the tracks on Codex Hypnos are even music.

For fans of dark ambient music, though, Codex Hypnos is a refreshing breath of dank air. The music is languorous, murky, and hypnotic. Comparisons could be made to some of the music of Giles Reaves, Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Robert Rich or even the soundtrack to Eraserhead, but SourceCodeX creates its own style.

SourceCodeX is a recording pseudonym of John W. Patterson. Patterson has been a guitarist since 1967, but only recently began to create music purely electronically. According to Patterson, he began working with various software-based synths and sound editing programs in 2002. “CodeX Hypnos is the results of decades of listening and a few months of learning the right software. No external hardware was used! This music’s origin is 99% from the silicon cities of a very basic, outdated, personal computer.”

Their are eight tracks on the CD. The tracks range in length from about four minutes to over sixteen, making a total running time of over seventy-five minutes. Patterson uses this time to let each track unfold slowly. While each tracks uses different ideas and sounds, the pieces flow together effectively and create a sense of traveling through various ambient spaces.

The CD starts off with “Sleep Til…”, which introduces the musical territory that Patterson wants to explore. The track is similar in style to some of the work of Steve Roach, made up of continuously evolving drones. Roach calls his works soundscapes, and that seems like an appropriate categorization for this cut.

The next cut “HALsleep” uses multiple drones that vary in pitch. The effect is somewhere between muted sirens and the sound of a windstorm. The sounds have a metallic edge that lends an eerie feel to the music.

“DreamingHyperSleepDawn” is reminiscent of some of the early work of Giles Reaves. It combines dense synth pad sounds with noise effects. The effect is lush and beautiful, giving the track a soundtrack quality. This is one of the strongest cuts on the CD.

According to Patterson’s site, the next track, “Dark Star Voids”, reflects the immensity of the Cosmos. The track definitely has an ambient space feel to it, similar to some of Steve Roach’s work, and Michael Stearns’ early modular synth pieces. Throughout “Dark Star Voids”, noise sounds fade into complex pad sounds, and then fade into chaos. It’s evocative music, and effectively captures the mysterious spaces of the title.

“Arrival and Fly-by” draws on some of the same techniques that Patterson uses on the earlier cuts, including the chaotic drones and pad sounds that vary in pitch. Some of the sounds seem like they could come from huge machines. The way that Patterson varies some of the pitches result in a Doppler-like effect, like something massive is moving by. 

“ForbiddenAmbientPlanet” is pure dark ambient music. The track seems to descend from the style of music that Brian Eno created on Ambient 4: On Land. Halfway through the track, the sound of a clock ticking is heard for a few moments, but the rest of the cut is made up of unidentifiable sounds. “ForbiddenAmbientPlanet” sounds like it could be an environmental recording from a science-fiction world. This is ambient music at its darkest.

“Nazgul Caves” is probably the most haunting track on the CD. Patterson says that it was created after seeing the final movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He says that “This is a very dark piece and almost was too creepy to be kept in this release.” It does have a very scary feel to it – the track includes sounds that seem like otherworldly animals.

The Final track, “InnerWorldStopTime”, recapitulates many of the ideas of the album. It also includes samples drawn from some of Patterson’s favorite movies. Patterson has great taste in movies, but the samples seem to put too concrete connotations on the track, where all the other tracks have a more abstract feel.

Codex Hypnos is a very interesting release. It’s beautiful in spots, haunting in others, and occasionally disturbing. Patterson’s work as SourceCodeX won’t be for everybody, but will be a treat for fans of the dark side of ambient music.

Information and free MP3 samples for Codex Hypnos are available at Soundclick.

The CD falls into the ambient space style, but is unmistakeably Rich and Roach. Roach plays a variety of analog and digital synthesizers, sequencers, and samplers, while Rich adds his take on synthesizers and samplers, steel guitar, percussion, and flutes. Both musicians contribute glurp, which can’t really be described, but accurately descripes some of the submerged sounds they make.

On Strata, the two ambient space artists create ten tracks. Some sound distinctively like Roach; others more like Rich, and some like a weird blend of their styles. “Iguana” is one of the tracks that mixes their two individual styles especially well. Roach plays the slowly evolving string washes common to many of his albums. Rich contributes synthesizer solo using a non-tempered tuning.

“Magma” and “Persistence of Memory” are ambient soundscapes that reflect more of Roach’s influence. The sounds are a combination of “musical” sounds, like Roach’s string washes, and various noises treated with echoes and reverbs.

“Rememberance” is the closest thing to a tune on the album. On this track, Rich uses steel guitar to create submerged sounds. The tune is short, but melodic in a quiet way.

Strata is great work from both Rich and Roach. Their styles blend well together to create a CD of quiet, reflective ambient music. The CD is paced well, too. There are no tracks that seem out of place, and you can listen to it straight through without feeling jarred by any of the tracks.

Robert Rich and Steve Roach unique styles combine to make Strata a classic album of ambient space music.