Marty Hicks - Olreilion

Marty Hicks - Olreilion

This album is came out little bit over a year ago. Though I couldn't resist to write about. I came across it with discovery of White Paddy Mountain - Japanese label that focused on meditative ambient and neo-classical music.

Orleilion grabbed mi with it's unbelievable liveliness of performance. It clear for me that Marty Hicks, Australian composer who is based in Tokyo, invested strong emotional charge into his splatted piano compositions that feels even more alive with subtle tuning shift, pedals and hammers sounds that adding organically to the deep dreamy pads with slight tape or vinyl texture as I perceive it. Piano composition very minimalistic but you can defensibly can tell that it came out of high professionalism in composition and performance. I believe that this album along with his other works perfectly suits with creative process. it could give a great charge to painting or writing thanks to its poetic mood.

Marty Hicks graduated jazz improvisation course at The University of Melbourne and currently  lectures in the Music Design faculty at Senzoku Gakuen School of Music.

https://chiheihatakeyama.bandcamp.com/album/olreilion
http://www.martyhicks.com

Black Brunswicker - Wilder Paths

Black Brunswicker - Wilder Paths

This morning started for me with a feeling of stillness. Trees outside the window was immobilized under dull overcast light. Very unusual silence for Monday morning.

I went searching for appropriate soundtrack for that moment and after passed over mail about new stereoscenic release I rejoiced to see a new album from Black Brunswicker. I recalled him imitatively because of his past album In the Age of Aristocracy which, first of all, rooted in my memory because of its outstanding cover art. I remember listening it last year and liking it, so it was a safe choice for my morning routine.

Wilder Paths have indeed very contemplative character that removes excessive worries of upcoming day and drawing attention towards observation of current environment like a painting in gallery, especially the view from the window. In the note for this album Ethan express his state of miss in isolation over his home in Evanston, Illinois and this is defiantly transmitted trough his compositions of slow guitar riffs accompanied by gentle bow movements sounding somewhat from faraway. His music in this way unobtrusively adding to existing sound ambiance and sounds of crows and rarely passing cars on wet asphalt just pertinently complement to listening experience.

Available as NYP dowload over:
https://blackbrunswicker.bandcamp.com/album/wilder-paths



released on https://stereoscenic.com mastered by Andrew Klimek

https://www.facebook.com/Blackbrxnswicker
https://www.instagram.com/black_brxnswicker
https://www.instagram.com/stereoscenic

Alaskan Tapes - Sleeping Since Last Year

Alaskan Tapes - Sleeping Since Last Year

This album bringing me right back to the place where I left this blog 8 years ago. At that times i was heavily searching for elecroacustical ambient and instrumental electronica. Now it's quite a rare genre, most of it left and forgotten over small net-labels and cdr imprints around internet, but his releases is rare example of that style that continue to living with personalities like Brady Kendall - man behind Alaskan Tapes.

According to his Bandcamp page, Brady are based of Toronto and started to release under this moniker around 2015. His early released exploring piano and instruments and it seams for me, that with the time he proceed his instruments and composing skills to the further level with additional focus towards texturing and experimental approaches to his material. "Sleeping Since Last Year" have very thick depth and many layers of slight and gradual ambiance. It feels warm and open. All of five tracks on this album is not alike, you can able hear different instruments - guitar, piano, strings along with synth pads and elements of field recording and singing gives it an extra calm atmosphere. This kind of music I prefer to listen to on slow and sunny Saturday mornings.

Available on CD and Cassette editions separately and in bundle.
bandcamp: https://alaskantapes.bandcamp.com/album/sleeping-since-last-year

https://alaskantapes.com/

Blear Moon - Expanding lands

Blear Moon - Expanding lands

My new album released via secret press on March 15th 2020.
It was in the work for over a year. First improvisations for that was recorded during my stay in Taiwan in 2018. At that time I was trying our morning routine of Nils Frahm where he doing piano improvisations every morning before having breakfast and record them on tape machine. For  digital improvisation it's a different story because as soon as I manage to create any kind of set up or find a satisfying sound for trying out - all the sleep is long time gone and I am fully awake. Never the less, this consistency give me much material to store for later use. 

Later in February of 2020 I went to Russia to my parent house to renew my European permits and prepare some document that I would need later I got in to situation of lock-down. Borders closed, my friends, fiancee and studio now was thousands kilometers away and I stuck with some of my equipment at my room, where I lived first 18 years of my life before moving to Czech Republic almost ten years ago. 
So... a perfect time to get back to music. I've started to look trough my sketches and samples in my library that grew big for all this time. Most of the melodies I haven't listened since originally recorded and haven't even remembering its existence. I've noticed, how those melodies are similar to entries from dream-journal: at first, it's reminds of nothing, but couple notes later memories and feeling flush back like a big wave, bringing back a full picture of who I was at that moment in past, what I was going through in life, how I felt and what i was wishing for. A collection of abstract sound texture and synth melodies that tell personal stories only I could read.

I chose number of them that sound more pleasant for me and than I jam on top of them, texturing, pitching, cutting, editing and manipulated with them in many ways. I've recorded them on different tapes, played guitar on top of them, combined it with samples and noises from my library and added layers of synth lines with bunch of filters and effects. In this way it was like a jamming with past-self. 

The title Expanding lands represent for me this combinations of different life periods as landscapes, that is evolving and combining with matter of life. Experiences and stories adding one to another and pierced together with a continuous thread of time.

Available for free download with limited hand-made CDr and Cassette tape editions.
https://secretpress.bandcamp.com/album/expanding-lands



Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6FBG5d9WOYRFVpBge4sT0b?si=PqeyjYnaRZinfFZH2ZzfxA