Tag: compilation

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Various Artists – Sleep Mode

Relaxed Machinery: it’s a brilliant name for a netlabel presenting “organic ambient and techno music from scratch with only the purest of ingredients”.

John Koch-Northrup, label curator/coördinator, prefers to call it an ‘artist collective’, with a different business model: the artists ‘self-release’ their album, all profit is theirs, but the collective opens up distribution channels that are normally quite difficult to reach for a DIY-release: such as digital distribution via all major channels (by CD Baby), and CDR distribution by Hypnos.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Various Artists – "Hidden Landscapes"


Hidden Landscapes

The Audio Gourmet netlabel, run by Harry Towell – a.k.a.Spheruleus- quickly became one of the major netlabels on the ambient music scene.  At time of writing, their impressive catalogue presents about 30 releases, most of them E.P.’s, around 15 minutes long, and thus created to fit your daily coffee/tea break perfectly. 

Though Audio Gourmet have a clear policy about what they want and what they don’t want (no beats!), the musical horizon broadens with every release. For example, the forthcoming release by Paper Relics  (Harry and Stuart Towell), ‘Recovered Artefact’, would be better described as ‘improv folk guitar’ than ambient music.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Various Artists – Underwater Noises

Apart from creating his own fascinating music (like the beautiful ‘Poor Henriette Marie’  EP, released on Hibernate), Nigel Samways also runs the Ephre Imprint label, releasing electro-acoustic drone, ambient and experimental music. 

“Underwater Noises“ is Ephre Imprint‘s latest compilation, a joint release with the Lost Children netlabel:

“The theme running through all tracks of this work is ‘water’ (and its numerous concerns risen around the globe). Each artist was prompted to submit a track inspired somehow by the notion of water, according to their individual angle. The upshot is a multilayered work, giving voice to the umpteen facets of a theme which has always created a particularly deep and serious attraction for musicians working in the drone/ambient scene.”

At the first glance on the tracklist of this compilation I knew that there was a complete new world for me to discover, since all of the artists included were unknown to me…!

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Ian Hawgood – Slow Films in Low Light

Headphone Commute recently published a beautiful mix created entirely of tracks published on the Home Normal label. Although all tracks in the mix are interesting enhough to check out the full CD’s, I had to restrain myself when visiting the label website. 

So I decided to start by ordering the latest release by Ian Hawgood (also Home Normal’s label owner): “Slow Films in Low Light“.

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Various Artists – Hope

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.