"I'm not formed by things that are of myself alone"

This is the key quote (taken from Stoker) for this mix, which is also 'not formed by things of itself alone'. Every detail, every short sample, has its origin in another context, another musical composition, from which it is taken to find a new place in a completely different context.

"My ears hear what others cannot hear."

"Parallax" is the visual effect that, when you are moving yourself, objects closer to you seem to move by faster than objects in the distance, which slowly seem to move with you in the same direction.
In sound, drones seem to create a somewhat similar effect.
In some way that is what this mix is about: the background sound slowly moving along with you while some other fragments pass by so quick you cannot even focus.
Just don't try to focus.

"...Now I see things that were hidden from my eyes..."

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In the Shortlist sections, I will mention the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn't find the time (or the right words) for a "full" review for. Still, I definitely think they deserve your attention, with or without extra words! 

MY HOME, SINKING - MY HOME, SINKING
Enrico Coniglio often refers to Venice (Italy) in his music, which may explain the name of his new project. Released by Fluid Audio in a stunningly beautiful package (which is quickly selling out so don't hesitate) it marks the label's venture into new musical territory: ambient/experimental/improv crossover to rock/pop oriented music. This might have been risky 'cause when it failed it would have lost both audiences. But with this incredible set - and the help of people like Barbara De Dominicis, Laura Sheeran, Orla Wren and Katie English - Enrico Coniglio and Fluid Audio manage to define a completely new quality standard.

"The joined arsenal boasts acoustic instrumentation as well as synthesizer, manipulations and field recordings. Here guitar, cello, piano, harmonica, melodica, percussion and voice ring alongside Korg Monotron, Orla Wren’s processing, and Coniglio’s vinyls.Tracks range from glowing string examinations to humming whitewashes, from vocal reveries to textured pop allure."

MY HOME, SINKING - MORNING WALK

BLUHM - THE VALE OF TEARS
The newly-set Fluid Audio standard is immediately and easily met by the labels follow-up release by Bluhm, a collaboration of Tim ('Maps and Diagrams') Diagram and Macedonian singer Genoveva.
They present a sound more 'psychedelic', with washes of echoes and vocal dubs, but (as My Home, Sinking does) their new releases also clearly marks a new musical direction.

"The musical production side utilises Tim's trademark palette of drone, delay, reverb, discord, distortion, tape effects and granular synthesis. All consciously crafted with the light, ardour and purity that is always associated with his oeuvre. These primary melodies were presented to Genoveva, who then added her seraphic vocals."
"It’s an exploratory, elemental union that includes a significant, immersive and expressive vocal narrative. The overall theme of light and hope is perhaps not so apparent on the first few listens because the vocals are full of hidden mystery. However, its nascent sense of optimism does become apparent the more you listen to it, essentially it’s a journey of hope”

BLUHM - WHEN WE CRY

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Only short after the minimalistic generative soundscape presented on "The Endless Change of Colour", Marsen Jules displays a completely different musical approach with this album by the Marsen Jules Trio.

As the ...Trio indicates, this album presents Marsen Jules' atmospheric soundscapes with the addition of two other musicians: twin brothers Anwar Alam (piano) and Jan-Philipp Alam (violin), with whom Marsen Jules played tours and festivals across the USA, Canada and Europe.

"Présence Acousmatique" is a stunning synergy of ambient, avant-garde, modern classical and introspective jazz music. It is released on Jules' own Oktaf label, but stylistically it would have also fitted the ECM (new) series.

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In the Shortlist sections, I will mention the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn't find the time (or the right words) for a "full" review for. 
Still, I definitely think they deserve your attention, with or without extra words! 

CHRIS WEEKS - THE EBB AND THE FLOW
"Staring out to sea. The Ebb & Flow of the tide. Waves of sorrow wash over you; a deep melancholy. Comfortable, a self-aware sadness. Its motives: wistful, romantic, hopeful, not without purpose; absorbing, fuelling creativity, a source of inspiration."
Unfortunately, the limited edition CD (25 copies) is already sold out, but this EP of beautiful "guitar-only soundscapes" is definitely worth downloading.

LEONARDO ROSADO - WASHED AWAY MEMORIES
...The same is true for this release on Pure Wave Recordings, by Leonardo Rosado from Portugal. You may also know him as the curator of the FeedbackLoop Label and Heart and Soul.
This solo album is an introspective set of tracks about "memories, fragments imprinted that recur occasionally like a burst of nostalgia or like passionate fire explosions, and they might appear to the world as a smile or an irrational fear."
Rosado's music "exposes daily life happenings that are individual and at the same time universal: it has a strong sense of suggesting a pause to think about our actions and our surroundings."

Additionally - or as an appetizer if you wish - Leonardo Rosado also offers a FREE download album with remixes of the appropriately titled track "Fragments of an Abscent Summer" by Pascal Savy, Guy Birkin, Cinchel, Sun Hammer, Colab and Martin A. Smith.

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Compilation albums are a great - and often low budget - way to find new music and artists that you may possibly want to check out further.
And, of course, that is exactly why they are made.
Check out the compilations below for hours and hours of music exploring (about 10 hours, to be exact!):

SEQUENCE 6 [Free Download]
This Future Sequence compilation offers 4 (four!) hours of music - 40 tracks, which were chosen from over 160 (!) submissions. The fact that this is the sixth volume in this series of free compilations within two years demonstrates the ambient/experimental music scene is more alive than it ever was.
As with most compilation albums, not every track will probably be to your liking, but even if you leave these out there's enough left to go on for hours. As in all previous editions of the Sequence compilations, tracks from established artists are juxtaposed with those of emerging artists.
A short selections of artists you'll find here: Matthew Collings, Jffstnhs (Jeff Stonehouse), Radere, Hakobune, Simon Scott, Pleq, Maps and Diagrams, Linear Bells, Off Land, Darren Harper..
And these are only a few of the more familiar names....

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I am extremely honoured to present a guest mix for the Grounding Sounds series, which, "drawing inspiration from the famous Back To Mine compilations, showcases the music that captured experimental artists and labels".

But: I must warn you beforehand: this mix contains NO ambient music at all - with a possible exception of the opening track "Spider & I" by Brian Eno.
It is a rather eclectic selection of all kinds of unrelated genres, because I deliberately chose to stay away from ambient music for this 'classic mixtape-style' selection of some of my all-time favourites.

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Most of the time I try to review albums as if they were a debut release, without historical context about the artists involved, and presented without packaging.
It's arguable, I know, but this way I try to let the music do all the work and listen to it as unbiased as possible.

This is why I wish I had NOT seen the package images for this release of Lyndsie Alguire's "Clair Obscur" .
For now I somehow feel like the guy that keeps arguing he ónly reads Playboy Magazine because of its interviews...

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In its relatively short existence (almost 4 years), the Hibernate label has presented us with many beautiful releases and positioned themselves as one of the most important independent labels at the very centre of the 'ambient' music scene. Or - since it's increasingly difficult to use the word 'ambient' as a genre definition: music "both abstract and melodic but always with a hint of melancholy."

The Hibernate label kicked off in 2009 with a release that set a high standard immediately: "Wolfskin", by Ian Hawgood - well-known for his own music as well as from the labels he curates: Home Normal and Koen Music.

Hibernate and Koen Music (KoMu) now present a 2-CD set revisiting the original "Wolfskin" release, called "Wolven - A Modern Reinterpretation".

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His past catalogue and  (maybe even more) his live performances have shown that Greg Haines manages to combine artistic consistency with surprising changes of directions.

One never knows what to expect, but one can always rest assured it will be good..

On a first listen, "Where We Were", Haines' new release on Denovali Records, sounds surprisingly different from what he has done before.

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Lóng before I ever related the sounds to a musical context, I was fascinated by industrial environmental drone hums.
I clearly remember staying with my grandparents as a child during school holidays, fascinated by the steady hum of giant propeller ventilators from a nearby storage building.
This impression has never left me, and I fondly think back to these summer holidays as the fundament of a lifelong addiction to drones of industrial (as well as any other) nature.

Knowing this background, it's probably not hard to understand why a new release by Machinefabriek, called "Machine Rooms", released on the Keshhhh label (curated by Simon Scott, and mastered by Rafael Anton Irissari) got my immediate and full attention!

But that is simply not enough to introduce this incredible album.

These are not 'just' industrial drones - these are delicate homages to machines that are supporting our everyday life. And continue to do so, even when they are hidden away, put out of use and slowly deteriorating....

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In the Shortlist sections, I will mention the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn't find the time (or the right words) for a "full" review for.
Still, I definitely think they deserve your attention, with or without extra words! 

LINEAR BELLS - WINTER HAZE
So this is what happens when I'm way too much behind reviewing albums: currently we are preparing for summer and trying to forget about winter, ánd the limited physical CD edition is already sold out by the time you read this...
Still, no problem: another winter will arrive sooner than you think, and there's still the digital download version to enjoy!
”'Winter Haze' was composed and produced over a period of 6 months whereby it was practised over improvised sessions followed by processing all the materials with the use of guitars, organ and field recordings. The album is about loneliness, time passing, and frozen thoughts with the idea of keeping River Loire in mind."

CASS. - LOOPS & FAREWELL SKETCHES
Much to his own surprise, the CD-version of this self-released album by this 22 year old German "electronic ambient musician, dj and sound artist" sold out within 2 weeks. He has re-released it on vinyl and as a digital download release.
"All songs are the result of various late night recording sessions during the last month of 2012. The sound sources vary from old, sampled, pitched, modulated and destroyed records, a large field recording directory that has been created over years, multiple effected instrument- and synthloops layered on the top of each other, and different small acoustic instruments. All these elements of the album create a meditative looping bed of sound, which is in some parts framed by his own hazy voice. Much of this album is also the sound of microphones in the room, picking up the sound of moving around, or brushing the edge of an instrument."

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In the Shortlist sections, I will mention the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn't find the time (or the right words) for a "full" review for. 
Still, I definitely think they deserve your attention, with or without extra words!

JEREMY KEENAN - IMMATERIAL
"Created largely from recordings of two journeys by boat, on the River Lee Navigation in London and the North Sea ferry to the Netherlands, Immaterial explores the abstraction of emotional and perceptual traces in sound relating to journeys. The title track utilises sound garnered from the Institute of Making in London, with direct recordings of engineered materials exposing the raw process of extracting the composition from recorded sound.
A combination of harmonic drones, pulsing bass, and delicate high frequency flourishes, Immaterial unfurls sonic vistas of acoustic sound recordings rent into fantastical aural shapes and textures."

STEFAN FUNCK - SO FAR SO GOOD
From the incredibly deep, sub-level sounds this album starts with, to the sonic and somewhat disruptive bursts later on in this full hour track, this album is amazingly different from what can be considered 'mainstream' (meaning 'relatively popular') ambient or electronic music.
"Funck uses synthesizers and software to create slowly shifting layers of sound and combines them with all sorts of field recordings and found sounds. The impression is of travelling very slowly by boat on a canal and watching (in this case, listening to) the changes in the landscape going by.
If drone music is about flow, then this is a perfect example, but the real beauty of this work is in the way Funck balances the concrete and the abstract sides of ambient and found sounds."

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Two surprising new albums by Michel Banabila, both based on some of his earlier work yet remarkably different from most albums in his extensive catalogue.

47 VOICE LOOPS

The original basic track for "47 Voice Loops" can be found on the free (!) download album "In Other Words" (track called "MltVz8".)
In reaction to some listeners comments, Banabila decided to create longer versions of this track. The result is now available as a separate album which clearly demonstrates these listeners were right!

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Tessellate Recordings is a new label started by Harry Towell, well-known for curating tons of fine music for the Audio Gourmet netlabel, ánd of course for his own music as Spheruleus.

"Earthtones" is a massive compilation (26 tracks, over 2 hours) of well- and lesser known artists that all contributed a track to this album which is intended to raise funds for the next CD-releases.

Just picking a few names from the contributor list: Caught in the Wake Forever, Wil Bolton, Maps and Diagrams, Savaran, Ekca Liena, Bartosz Dziadosz (Pleq), James Murray, Damian Valles, Monolyth & Cobalt, Lauki, Offthesky, Radere, The Inventors of Aircraft. - I guess that's enough to get you interested....

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Shortly after reworking David Sylvian's "Blemish" on "Wandermüde", Stephan Mathieu presents another impressive work.

"Un Coeur Simple" ("A Simple Heart") is the soundtrack of a play based on Gustave Flaubert's novel, which was published in 1877 as the first of three tales.

In creating his personal soundscapes, Mathieu has always preferred using old source materials, things of the past, like wax-cylinders and 78 rpm records, as his source material...."a fascination for the past expressed through cutting-edge tools".

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Betacicadae is probably not a name you will easily remember.
It concatenates Beta ("obsolete magnetic tape, a second version, something lowly") with Cicada ("strange and humble insect that emanates beautiful sound").
And: it is the artist alias of Kevin Scott Davis.

"Mouna" - available on CD, clear white vinyl, or as a digital download - is not easy to describe, since it contains many different styles.
Still it manages to present a coherent, "narrative" sound. I found myself returning to it and playing it over and over again - which is ususally a sign of something special going on...

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When publishing the mixes for Ambientblog, I have always been looking for a way to 'visualise' the artist credits for the mix.

Most of the fragments and samples used in the mix-collages are almost indistinguishable, yet the interested listener might want to find out about the release details. 
This is why most mixes on ambientblog also feature a 'sequence scheme' image which shows the building blocks of that particular mix.

For my most recent mix, "Rust", I decided to try out a different feature: a video version, which is showing the track details at the very moment they are used in the mix.

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Marsen Jules is probably the best known alias of Martin Juhls from Dortmund, Germany, also operating as Falter, Krill.Minima (don't forget to check the recent "Sekundenschlaf"), or the marvelously named Wildach Sonnerkraut.
His different aliases allow him to experiment and expand in different directions. The previous (six) releases as Marsen Jules each feature somewhat different instrumentation but all share Juhls' personal trademark of intricate sounddesign.

Most tracks on the previous Marsen Jules albums are somewhere around the 4 - 6 minute length each.
But his latest album"The Endless Change of Colour" (released on 12k) is different in this respect: it only features one single uninterrupted track.

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In the Shortlist sections, I will mention some of the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn't find the time (or the right words) for a "full" review for. Still, I think they deserve your attention: use the links to find more info and hear previews.

LYKEN - THE TERRESTIAL SEA
"The result of a bio acoustic residency living and working with marine biologists from Aberdeen Universities Lighthouse Field Station in Cromarty, the Black Isle (Scotland). Gathering and utilizing their underwater acoustic research into how environment effects behaviour."
Four track album (iTunes only?), featuring three instrumentals, and one created from eerie and alienating vocal samples ('Scar History'). These tracks may fire your sub-aquatic imagination! My download copy also included an extra track ('Wetland (Hurrel Lyken Mix)') which isn't mentioned in the download tracklist but is definitely worth finding.

ANDREAS BICK - EOLO
[FREE DOWNLOAD]
"'Eolo' is the Italian name for Aeolus, the ruler of the wind in Greek mythology. On La Palma, trade winds carry a constant stream of clouds over the steep mountains and volcanos of the inland, forcing the clouds into erratic movements."
This Galaverna release has a somewhat unusual format: it consist of a short (4 minute) audio-track and its accompanying video, shot on La Palma, Canary Islands, in 2010. The field recording soundtrack and the time lapse images from the La Palma cloud movements are taken to a completely different dimension by the angelic vocals of Almut Kühne.

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The Ambientblog Android App has been completely redesigned and optimized in this major update!

If you have already installed the App, please upgrade to the latest version (if you haven't already).

If you use an Android Mobile Device and did not yet install the App, this may be a good moment to do so and try it out!
(It is completely free, of course, and ad-free too!)

Find the app here, or use the QR code in the right column.
You can also simply search for "Ambientblog" in the Google Play Store

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Jacob Kirkegaard is well-known for his unusual sonic concepts, "capturing and contextualizing hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments: a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself".

The sounds he presents are always extremely fascinating, even when heard without knowing about their actual context - but of course it does help knowing where the sounds originally come from.

Capturing the feedback sound from a deserted Chernobyl location may not be easy. This also applies to recording interactive sounds to make the listeners own inner ear play an active part in creating the sonic end result.

But can you imagine concepts like this being translated to a performance of a string ensemble?
I couldn't. 
Scenatet could.

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In the Shortlist sections, I will mention some of the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn't find the time (or the right words) for a "full" review for. Still, I think they deserve your attention: use the links to find more info and hear previews.

JFFSTNHS (JEFF STONEHOUSE) - BROKEN
A haunting and slowly intensifying drone created by Jeff Stonehouse, co-founder of Listening Mirror.On this 22 minute track (presented on a limited edition 3" CDR on the Cooper Cult label), Jeff Stonehouse visits "darker places than Listening Mirror dared to tread". The overall sound is dark, indeed, and feels like something is bound to happen soon - illustrated by the Franz Kafka quote (from "The Metamorphosis") accompanying the track, as well as by the cover image of the test pilot, who "looks sedate and calm, but there is the implication that he is about to do something extremely dangerous".

TERJE PAULSEN - SVART UNDER IS
Similar in length (20 minutes), and similar in atmosphere is this soundscape by Norwegian artist Terje Paulsen, released on Yugen-Art. While jffstnhs's release slowly builds up in tension, this mysteriously named track by Terje Paulsen starts heavily concentrated, but slowly unwinds and gives space to percussive, raindroplike sounds. So they're a perfect match when played together (in this sequence).
[FREE Download]

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Transits of Mercury is a solo project of Mike Abercrombie (from Toronto, Ontario) - who is also half of ambient electronic duo North Atlantic Drift (together with Brad Deschamps).

"Vostok" is a three-part project (2 parts are released now, part 3 will follow later this year), which is introduced with a modest "I'm not sure anyone has heard this material yet, aside from my wife and my cat, and maybe a poor roommate or two- tortured by my endless tape loops."

I really hope that is not really true. But if it is, this certainly has to change soon, because this music deserves to be heard by you, your cat, and your roommates, too!

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The title of this mix is taken from the beautiful soundtrack it heavily leans on: Alexandre Desplat's "Rust and Bone" ("De Rouille et D'Os").

"Rust" usually refers to 'decay', but in dutch "Rust" simply also means 'rest', ('tranquil - or 'repos' in french).

But - as we say in Holland: "Rust Roest"
- or: "Too much rest will make you rusty..."

In other words: don't expect just 'tranquil' sounds in this mix..
This is nót meant to be your average 'healing session ambient' soundtrack... so be prepared...

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** This post has been edited to add info about the "Kooh" remix version: read below **

Any album that is created using "microscopic particles that were developed by myriads of voices", and claims to include "many territories of ultra-high frequencies, marking over 20 kHz that human ears are incapable of catching" immediately gets my undivided attention.

Especially when "these ultra-high frequencies are often included in sounds of nature such as the flow of the river, the forest, the waterfalls, and the wind blowing through the trees. Most of these which we consider as comfortable nature sounds include these ultra-high frequencies, and it is also said that these ultra-high frequencies have the effect to make the human brain relaxed."

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