Cloudscape # 61: April 2016
April mix, feat. glou glou , Clouwbeck, Agitated Radio Pilot, The Straw Bear Band, Rezo Glonti, Cyril Secq & Orla Wren, Allseits, Ben Houge, Virginia Astley, Musk Ox, A Broken Consort, and Dibson T. Hoffweiler.
Reviews
Previewing Wyrding
Wyrding serves up funeral doom, but the warm, light, ethereal kind. An exclusive preview.
Lost in the noise
On Environs 1, by Home Planet. A promo I dug up after six years turns out to bear some quality space drones.
Branded by Constellations
Colohan / Moult team up with an organic dark ambient tribute to nautical lives, waves, and the Atlantic.
In the cities of your eyes
A benefit compilation for refugees in camps on Greek islands, collecting 23 tracks in the experimental folk, ambient, and drone realm.
Dream Realms
When the world you're in feels alien, even the ambient state of your environment is a torrent of noise. Your brain isn't attuned to what impulses to filter out. The only way to quiet it down is to move back to your own world. And sometimes, you open your dreaming eye, you start travelling, and go on forever.
In Search Of Calm
When I'm looking for a calm moment, some lo-fi guitar and ambient ramblings are definitely my thing. The recent Nin-o-Van by Cedar AV led me to look up some older work by Songs of Green Pheasant as well, and I ended up with Gyllyng Street. Both albums are well worth looking up.
July 2015 Short Reviews (Dirk Serries & Rutger ...
July 2015 short reviews: Dirk Serries & Rutger Zuydervelt - Buoyant (2015, Consouling Sounds); Richard Moult - Last Night I Dreamt of Hibrihteselle (2015, Wild Silence); Andrew Weathers Ensemble - Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything (2015, Full Spectrum).
Review: Raising Holy Sparks - A Mendicant Hymnal
A mendicant is a travelling monk — one who begs for subsistence, accepting what people and to world have to offer, in humility. The music on this double album could be a distillation of the world experienced in such a way: a flowing by of landscapes and visions, an endless sequence of steps carrying one to some unknown destination. This is the final act of begging and acceptance: to see where the journey leads you, always deferring to decisions made outside of the self; offering up the self. Raising Holy Sparks is the project that rose from the ashes of Agitated Radio Pilot and saw David Colohan shifting from lo-fi and singer/songwriter releases to something more instrumental, raw, and abstract. The division is far from clear-cut: Agitated Radio Pilot had its share of lush ambient improvisations, and the occasional harsh guitar solo, while Raising Holy Sparks has had plenty of songs interspersed on its earlier releases. All the same, there is a tangible contrast between the two projects.