The Serein netlabel was founded in 2005 and released quite an impressing batch of quality ambient and electronic music. In 2007, Serein released it’s ‘flagship title’: the Nest EP.
Nest is the collaborative project of Otto Totland (Deaf Center; Type Records) and Huw Roberts (Serein Label owner).
The beauty of their music was quickly recognised, the blogosphere caught on and the EP was features in a lot of favourites-lists that year.
Then, early 2009, the Serein site closed down.
“Utsura-Utsura” is a japanese expression indicating the ‘fluctuation between alert wakefulness and a state of half-sleep’. Or at least: I was told that it means something like that…can anyone confirm this?
True or not, this is exactly what this hour-long mix is about: between being awake and half asleep. Sigur Rós, Arve Henriksen and Helios may be your grip to reality in this somewhat abstract, sometimes hallucinatory sound.
Like it’s companion mix (“Strange Birds“, published last week) this mix was also broadcast in April 2008.
It’s a further walk in the same landscape. Sometimes the tension may rise somewhat, but the view remains spectacular.
This mix is concluded by the Soccer Committee song ‘True’ that also gave this mix it’s title.
In her search for quietness, Mariska Baars (Soccer Committee) has proven that ‘ambient’ music does not necessarily involves ‘electronics’.
These artist names are probably familiar to everyone even remotely interested in ambient/electronic music.
Multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick (from Oregon, now living in Berlin) released quite a few impressive albums under his own name, and is currently touring as a member of Efterklang.
The number of albums Rutger “Machinefabriek” Zuydervelt (from Arnhem, now living in Rotterdam) has released can hardly be counted any more (quite some of them are featured on this weblog).
So when two such great artists start working together expectations are quite high!
The central thematic piece in this mix is Christina Kubisch‘ “Tea Time (Autumn Leaves Mix)“, from Gruenrecorder’s “Autumn Leaves” – male singers communicating as if they were birds, twittering words like “Who’s awake?“, “Me Too!” and “Who cooks for you?“.
This spring-like chatter evokes a strange and hypnotic landscape sometimes unnerving, sometimes comforting.
This mix was created february – march 2008, together with “True“. It was definitely an early spring that year!
The brand new Fluid Audio label kicks off with a promising start: a compilation album donating 50% of its profits to charity. (Toybox Charity foundation, supporting latin america’s street children).
One may wonder how much funds this may raise in times where ambient musicians hardly make enough money to break even on any physical CD release.
Just realising the fact that the ‘average Guatemalan street kid’ has an average life expectancy of four years should make you buy this album.
But the music included proves to be rewarding too – raising expectations fairly high for future releases on this label.
According to my dictionary, ‘Allegaar‘ translates to ‘Hotchenpotch‘ – but I can imagine there may be a better word for that!?
Just like the previous mix (“Leftover Mix“), this 2008 mix has no special theme, it’s just a collection of tracks mixed together fairly randomly. But in their new context the tracks seem to start to tell their own new story!
This could have been one of the shortest reviews of this weblog: I simply could state that this music induced some of the deepest sleeps I experienced when listening to ambient music. And please don’t doubt that that is meant as a true compliment!
Even the found environmental sounds included in the tracks could not disturb the peaceful quiet and the balanced harmonies of this music. And most of the real-time environmental sounds merging in from outside can’t either.
This fact alone makes this album one of the most impressive I heard this year.
Though the title may give the impression that this mix consists of ‘second choice music’, that is definitely nót the case!
These tracks did not find their way to a 2007 Folio radio show, but were too good to stay unnoticed. So I used them in this ‘2007 end-of-year’ mix. It serves these tasty ‘leftovers’ as one uninterrupted delicate stew.
