egg08cd: Shoeb Ahmad: "Sonar Love Songs" (cdr)

Another lovely release from Shoeb Ahmad - guitar textures delayed / reverbed to the nth degree drifting towards the horizon, sometimes sounding like a guitar, with elongated notes extending ever outwards and sometimes like a ghostly shadow of the sound. Gorgeous. (Boa Melody Bar)

File under: experimental folk songwriting.

Reviews:

Foxy Digitalis: "Greg Pardew, the man behind the Soon Clyde appellation, is a purveyor of genteel, guitar-driven folk-pop. "Solace," his inaugural release, puts Pardew's many talents on display – elegant songcraft, clever guitar playing, and a truly mellifluous voice. At times traditional and at times slightly skewed, Soon Clyde's carefully wrought madrigals are predominantly lush and pleasing. His guitar literally drips honey from its strings, and is sometimes accompanied – not encumbered – by delicate touches of other instrumentation. Most of the seven tracks on "Solace" follow a relatively linear path, one key exception being the maniacal yet magical "Let's go to the Woods," which finds Pardew leading us on a mud-caked adventure into a forest that probably exists only in his mind.
Released on France's magical Cook an Egg label, "Solace" is indeed a comforting respite; the spirit-lifting atmosphere created by this Baltimore troubadour's warm melodies is sure to brighten the bleakest of moods. If you're depressed by what you read in the news, maybe a dose of "Solace" will be the perfect antidote." 8/10 Bryon Hayes (7 August, 2007) 

egg03cd: Zelienople: "Bachelor's Grove" (cdr – reissue) Recorded during one afternoon in Spring 2004, this cdr marks the moment when Zelienople decided to take their music through the looking-glass once and for all. Entirely instrumental and full of rich, warm textures, there are a few scattered folk elements here and there and a decisively more ambient/drone-based approach overall – from the suspended electric guitar lines to the subtle jazz-like set of percussions. Yet, it's the poetics of their sound which uses the natural reverberation of the room to produce highly dreamlike soundscapes that make Zelienople truly unique.

Reviews :

Foxy Digitalis: "Zelienople have been operating as a band for a good many years; their Discog.com page stretches back to 2002 but band interviews point much further back, around 1997 if I'm reading right. Yet, I've only began listening to their music in the previous year. Given that, the time between my discovery and apotheosis of their recorded output were mere months apart. Their recent releases have drawn my haze-loving ears deep into the billowing clouds of drone-layered madness with my sanity eased through moments of calm, reflective beauty. With my newfound love, I'm glad to be getting my hands on "Bachelor's Grove". The CDR is an improvised document recorded one rather fruitful spring day way back in 2004 (the Ice Age, really.) For Zelienople fans out there who, like me, grew to love this amazing unit through their amazing, widely available catalogue, the latest "His/Her" or last year's masterpiece "Stone Academy", then this CDR reissue on Cook An Egg helps round out our viewpoint of their different recording techniques. That is not to say the sound of "Bachelor's Grove" is a wild departure from there more well-distributed titles. The basic elements that define Zelienople's sound – namely, heavily reverb on the guitars with long electronically-invoked drones wrapped in dark beauty – are definitely here in full glory. The most notable absence on first listen are those plaintive moans and depressing lyrical content that helped to solidify the dark, personal sound under which they operate. Also, because these tracks were all improvised over the course of the day, the layered sound I found most intriguing in their more polished efforts is absent. But this document reassures me that the "Zelienople sound" is not a mere creature of studio polish, but an intrinsic, natural part of this bands style of playing.

Though the album flows very smoothly, making it hard to write about on a track-by-track basis, there does seem to be some structure in the arrangement. Several short tracks intersperse the longer improvisations. The short tracks are generally the dreamiest; motionless notes hum and dissipate in the fragile air. Each of these near minuets of ambient sound is imbued with a light touch that's reminiscent of more ethereal ambient masters of generations past. The longer improvisations find the band reaching a bit further, using volume and atonalities to drive their droning style beyond complete stasis. The second track tears through the gate with an assault on the cymbals, a torrential wave that punctuates the track at key moments, burying a deft rolling drum beneath its foam. Drums definitely play a large part in the success of this album and can be found most prominently in these long form improvisations. The final track greets us with an eardrum-scraping, high-pitched woodwind that is kind of an eye-opener after such a hazed-out moment that is track 5. This track reminds me of how I love that there is a "Zelienople sound," yet each Zelienople album never quite settles on a particular mode to achieve such ends. When the techniques are shaken up, as on this final track, the new ideas still remain cohesive to the package as a whole. This assurance and uncertainty seems to be what make this crew so intriguing album after album. Much love to Francois for providing the 'nople heads with the kind of quality reissue of which I'll be expecting more, from band and label. A solid entry for this young private press and a necessary document of these Chicago drone troubadours. Most recommended, indeed." 8/10 -- Kenneth Zubiate (22 August, 2007).

egg05cd: Pefkin: "Lie On The Ground and Breathe" (3" cdr)

Yet another slab of pure magic from Gayle Brogan. After her acclaimed releases on Foxglove, PseudoArcana and Students of Decay, Gayle delivers one 20-minute track which begins with a few scattered improvisations on the dulcimer before shifting into one of the most blissed-out ambient folk reveries to date. It all ends on a particularly intimate note as Gayle's highly delicate soundworld is able to suspend time in one breath. Should appeals to fans of Christina Carter and My Cat Is An Alien alike.

egg01cd: Oh, Birds!: "…Of Grief and Satellites" (3"cdr) Blending sparse field recordings with eerie, otherworldly sounds, the music of Oh, Birds! carves out a series of internal landscapes that are as much discreet as they remain troubled and slightly out of reach. Tackling the lines between sound and silence, there's a subdued musicality there that should appeal to fans of Coelacanth, Steve Roden and Olivia Block. Oh, Birds! is a sound-artist from Clichy, France and this 3" cdr is his debut mini-album.

File under: minimal sound art w/ field recordings

Reviews :

Foxy Digitalis: "The first release from this already blossoming French label is the curious and slightly disturbing sound-scape by "Oh, Birds!". Nestling comfortably on a three-inch cd-r, this two track sonic nightmare fills up a good fifteen minutes, and does it in eerie style.
Beginning with the Lynch-ian titled "wrappedinplastic", the album opens with the sound of distant thunder, and slowly builds into a bonfire of crackling plastic and slow motion singing bowls… Warning, don't listen to this record while alone or during a power outage, it will freak you the fuck out.
The second track, twice the length of the first, is a little more complex, and definitely requires a few listens before the clouds part. It is a vibrational affair and rings far more positive than the ominous opening track, giving this release a nice uplifting closing… if you happen to think that Birchville Cat Motel's work is uplifting. It's like the sound of bugs coming to eat the body of the deceased first track.
Fifteen minutes of both ominous and promising sounds, this 3" cdr is hopefully still available from these curators of beautiful sound… Go forth and paypal some Euros to these guys and get back a slab of plastic that will get under your skin." 8/10 -- Grant Capes (30 April, 2007).

The Wire (issue 282, August 2007): "Recorded by a sound artist based in Clichy, France, this starts with a heavy tribute to the official fanzine of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, "Wrapped In Plastic". The track leaks big puffs of onimous atmosphere across a bewildered landscape, evoking sawmills, dead parrots and railway carriage carnage. It's a whole heck of a lot busier than many such efforts, which tend to unwind in ways that have more holes than cheese, but the composition - created of percussive metal sounds, bent into odd forms - is evocative of dizzier times." -- Edwin Pouncey

egg06cd: Horse Palace: "s/t" (cdr)

The music of Montreal-based artist Horse Palace doesn't fit anywhere on the current musical map. Yet, its emotional colours may recall the ambient drone works of artists like Tim Hecker or Seht. Thick, organic ambient textures shrouded in mist give way to some particularly hypnotic melodies that wouldn't have sound out of place on a Boards of Canada album (minus the beats). As each track leads into another, with an ever-present vinyl surface noise uniting the whole thing, one feels taken away by a myriad of conflicting emotions, from the sonic sparkles of the first track to the darker and mysterious alleys of the album's main core to the unreleased tensions that can be heard on "76". This cdr debut of Horse Palace is a masterful piece of ambient drone music that is truly one of the biggest musical surprises of this season.

egg04cd: Quilts: "Future Exorcist Horizons" (cdr)

Say Quilts: "This is probably our most minimal and abstract work yet... lots of hypnotic swirling chirps and burps swimming in warm/cool synthscapes and keyboard drones that are briefly interrupted by soothing amateur vocal croons and looped tribal beats over wave crashing tape loops washed ashore carrying a barge of scattered electronics and future music experimentation followed by a beautifully repetitive ending."

Reviews :

Foxy Digitalis: "Quilts working method on this record is unsettling one. This is an ambient album, but one where soothing new age clichés are undermined by all manner of synthesized chirps, beeps and saw-waves.

The album begins falteringly, from the moment those wobbly synthesized pan-pipes (well that's what it sounds like to me anyways) ooze their way into your earhole it should be clear that something is very wrong, yet also quite right in it's own way.

"Amethyst" lives up to the cheapo crystal promise of its title as it traverses the kind of woozy subterranean landscapes previously travelled by the likes of Lamborghini Crystal and Blues Control (without the guitar).

"Celestial Sphere" lasts around 30 minutes, but in a way it feels like longer, it's mood is consistent, light and electronic in the Eno sense of the word. Ideal music for gazing at a starry midnight sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of an old Russian satellite burning up in the atmosphere.

This disc serves as both an entertaining subversion of ambient music and a genuinely enveloping soundscape. It's cheesy as hell, but when it's over you'll definitely have that "where am I, what was I doing again?" feeling.

I'll be damned if this Quilts joint aint a nice enough place park your chakras for a while." 7/10 -- Cola Nitida (22 August, 2007).