Catching The Waves

Numerous Shades of Grey

Clouds Under the Bridges by Winterberg is a consistent album both in structure and execution: of its seven ambient tracks none are under five minutes long, none over seven, and all are worth hearing. Hailing from Dresden, Winterberg is a member of Sitar Beat, a world music group, but his solo project prefers tickling the ear to wobbling the head. His album is less a cloud under the bridge than a troll: stop to peer into the gloom and it instantly drags you into its dark and mysterious world. According to Phonocake netlabel's blurb, he likes to make live recordings with analogue instruments in large spaces such as churches rather than be tucked up in a cosy studio with a warm laptop whilst drinking cocoa, clutching a teddy bear and watching the snow fall outside his double-glazed window. I may have altered Phonocake's blurb a tad.

Despite its optimistic title, the opener, Auf der Helle I, opens a crack in the floor and lets out an underlay of white noise, the sound of far-off manhole covers being dragged who knows where, gentle filter sweeps, and slow sine-wave-ish notes that punctuate the boundless gloom in which something breathes heavily. It's not a dance number. By the end, the synths have lengthened slightly to become bell-like and hypnotic. Believe it or not, it's quite a warm, relaxing track. This is fortunate because Auf der Helle II is more of the same, although its bass digs deeper and there's also a gently descending scratchy synth to signal the end of the proceedings.

The third track, Abend, ignores the usual studio production rules by placing alternating bass pulses to the far left and right of the aural field and leaving the centre to a high-pitched drone. These unprepossessing elements are joined by a noise that is akin to one of the world's most unpopular sounds: the squealing of train wheels as they navigate a sharp curve or even... a bend. (Yes! Pun of the week.) However, the constant panning of this sound and its placement in a cavernous reverb transforms it into a spooky presence that slides from ear to ear. There's no development as such but that doesn't mean it's not an enthralling listen.

Now, here's something that will irritiate music geeks who like to keep their mp3 collection immaculate: a track entitled ...und der Mond scheint in der Finsternis. That ellipsis is going to drive tag editors insane. The tuneful slabs of pinkish noise, which a fanciful ear might imagine to be robots having a friendly chat, remind me of the previously reviewed Machinarium soundtrack. The slow, deep, bass throbs could further convince that over-imaginative ear that it was hearing a sentient fog-horn. Ambient: the musical equivalent of absinthe.

All of which brings me to declare that despite the lack of human involvement (voices, traditional instruments, etc.), Clouds Under the Bridges is a strangely warm and intimate album. The tracks hit that ambient sweet spot: not so long as to outstay their welcome, but long enough to transport the listener to another world.

Not only that, the fifth track, Septembre, will be clutched to the breast of all those who like Vangelis. A track summary: a keening synth fires long notes off into the distance where they slowly descend or rise into a background of bubbling white noise that sounds like electronic rain. A track suggestion: play it over the opening scene of Bladerunner. Have a listen and see if it brings out your inner Decker:

Winterberg - Septembre

There's also a video for Septembre that's less exciting than my sci-fi dystopian Los Angeles video idea, but at least this one will prompt you to clean your computer's screen:

 

Next up is Sonntag, whose chief component is a martial rhythm played on a hollow-sounding synth preset, backed by an organ drone. By rights, the foreboding atmosphere should build into a traditional climax but instead does the opposite when Winterberg suddenly drops the reverb so that the sounds come close to the ear, a clever and unsettling effect that provides a crest of sorts.

Things come to an end with Im Schatten von etwas. Its gritty drone, oscillating synths, haunting pad and sudden pitch changes might prove harsh fare on its own if the previous six tracks had not attuned the listener to Winterberg's soundscape.

If you enjoy this album, please think about sending a thank you email, tweet, IM, poke, pile of high-denomination notes wrapped in brown paper to the talented Winterberg and/or the routinely lovely Phonocake netlabel. There's not much money to be had in the world of Creative Commons music, but a complimentary message left in an inbox could brighten a grey day.

Winterberg - Clouds Under the Bridges (link to individual files and zipped album)

Winterberg

Phonocake netlabel

Not So Mild

 

The music in Meek, the new album from Bitbasic, is rather like the font used on the album cover: attractive but puzzling at first, and requiring a little bit of work from the audience, after which all becomes clear. Under the guise of Bitbasic, Simon Haycock plays games with the listener. Nearly every track toys with genre, appearing as IDM, perhaps glitch or ambient or even drone: ultimately it's safest to describe the album itself as experimental. What's more, despite the prevalence of digital manipulation, Meek feels organic; there's a looseness to the tempo and sometimes the pitch.

The first track, Superb Owl, begins with a minute of ambient drone (come back, reader, it gets better) supplemented by a ponderous kick/snare rhythm (it improves, I promise) and a few harsh synth explosions (no, really it does get better, honest) before ducking into a quiet, hi-hat free and therefore Radiohead-reminiscent groove (see, I told you). BitBasic then soaks the aural field with full-bodied synthy noises, and a track that looked like being a cool, jazzy groove finally becomes, well, an ambient drone.

Fantasy Pretzel is an IDM workout that refuses to lets its stately guitar hook settle, preferring to break up proceedings with skittish percussion and noises off. Stealth Elk takes an innocent folky mandolin(?) loop, chivvies it along with a pulsing bass, shoves it into a sampler and ravishes it with chops and edits while twirling its moustache. Next up is It Shtill Worksh, which sounds like a 8-bit game soundtrack designer having a bad day with his keyboard's pitch wheel. In other words, this album is all over the place.

Remember that I mentioned that Meek feels surprisingly organic for an electronica album? (I have to ask because the internet has probably shattered your attention span.) Anyway, the album was made as part of the RPM Challenge wherein participants create 35 minutes or 10 tracks of original material in just 28 days. Bitbasic streamlined the process somewhat, eschewing 27 of those days. As he explains on REC 72's release page:

I was not allowed to commit anything to a timeline, and had to play the whole album by triggering clips in Ableton using my monome, playing live keyboard, and applying midi automation on the fly with sliders. This gives the album much more of a live feel, and was refreshing to get away from the typical DAW timeline.

I bet we're thinking the same thing. An album made in one day should be awful. Let's test that theory:

Bitbasic - Alpha Dromayo

Theory disproved. As my previous reviews of his work (Grating Rainbows, Leonard and Pixel Mixel) make clear, Bitbasic has jazz-funk in his veins, and Alpha Dromayo's twisted guitar-ish riff, hefty bass boom and understated jerky percussion continues in one of those same veins. However, he also likes to lean on a synth's filter until it overwhelms all in its path, and by the end of this track you'll wonder if you've been tricked into listening to funky ambient drone, a previously unknown music genre. In fact, the whole of Meek is subject to genre spasms. Listening to it is rather like taking a ride in a plush taxi whose onboard computer keeps interrupting the journey with sundry warning noises, whilst the driver periodically bumps along the verge just for the hell of it.

Moving on, Halfway Hut sounds like twenty seconds from a bootleg recording of Led Zeppelin III. The next track, (Have A) Nice Time, will please confirmed Bitbasic fans who need a fix of staccato synths and jiggered-about jazz guitar. Staying distinctly organic and "real", the last note of the guitar melody is so flat it sounds as though the instrument's machine head has had enough and simply can't be bothered to make the effort. Somehow it works and the result is rather soothing. Trust me. You don't? Oh, go on then:

Bitbasic - (Have A) Nice Time

Ah, that feels better. Now, I could waffle on about the remaining four tracks but by now you're either going to take Meek home for an epic tantric sex session or give it a fake telephone number. If you do wake up the next day feeling spent yet satisfied, please think about sending a cigarette or a thank you email or tweet to Bitbasic and/or the excellent Rec72 netlabel.

Bitbasic - Meek (link to individual mp3s and zipped album)

Bitbasic's home page and @Bitbasic.

Rec72 netlabel

Spring Clean 3: Robots in Disguise

 

In their more spiteful moments, people who hate folk music dream of the day when nasal-voiced troubadours do a Hendrix and set fire to their mandolins. With Burn, the second track of his unpredictable UV EP, Matthew Stenning almost grants a few wishes by deciding that the perfect percussive accompaniment to a lilting guitar riff is... a box of matches and a lighter. Ah, electronica: musical pyromaniacs sneer at all other genres.

The very nicely handled percussion is soon joined by a phasing pad, another stringed instrument, lashings of reverb, a reversed tape effect, an engaged telephone tone, a Moogish synth, a bit of looping and a complete non-sequitur of an ending: a ringing telephone. All this should sound like a dog's breakfast (by the way, has anyone ever heard a dog's breakfast?) but Mr Stenning, a UK-based producer, knits it together with aplomb. (Has anyone ever seen a plomb?)

Anyway, I hope the first appearance at CTW of Typepad's ugly, life-draining media player doesn't spoil your enjoyment of this lovely example of folky electronica:

02 UV - Burn

If you liked it, good news: the Creative Commons music world knows full well that there are six more imaginative tracks to be heard on the UV EP, hosted at the excellent, sadly expired but joyfully ransackable Plainaudio netlabel. Now you know too.

UV - The UV EP (link to individual tracks and zipped album)

Plainaudio netlabel (may it Rest in Peace)

 

Aurora Australis

Life's hard, I can tell. Money is tight. Tinned spaghetti is starting to look good. You're selling your cat's kittens on eBay. You can keep flipping your underwear inside-out and back again for only so long. The pressure is telling. You need something cool and soothing to mop your fevered brow. Look no further than the free Grey-Purple EP by Fiji (the musician, not the idyllic South Pacific nation) and its eight tracks of ambient-tinged trip-hop.

But before you gleefully throw away your "Arse-crack available for bicycle stand" sign, please note the following. In an attempt to make the claps pop and the kicks thump, Fiji, who comes straight outta Orenberg, has overdone it slightly. Consequently, follow Uncle CTW's advice and adjust your media player's preset to "Agnostic" or something equally neutral that will stop your car's sub-woofers from blowing its doors across the street. 

Today's recommended track is Hour of Glances and Kisses (feat. Kammerton). The plucked guitar and sultry, breathy female vocal that start the track are subject to a familiar production trick, apeing a lo-fi AM broadcast by cutting the low & high frequencies and keeping the stereo stream narrow. Fiji then simultaneously hits the listener with the full audio spectrum and widens the sonic field to a warm, chorus-y, your-ears-are-bathing-in-chocolate scrumptiousness. It never fails to work, both aurally and emotionally. The track then indulges in some very slow synth arpeggios that will remind those with receding hairlines of Apollo 440, and a raucous, rising synth tone that eventually dissipates under the weight of the fluffy pads and vocals.

But guess what? You can't listen to the whole track unless you download the entire album.

(IDIOTIC EDIT: Hour of Glances and Kisses is available from Fiji's own Soundcloud profile. Thankyou to @Lukelibrarian for the help. He's a lot better than Jacasta Nu. Now, listen to Jedi's Fiji's deft handling of filtered vocals:

FiJi & Kammerton - Hour Of Glances and Kisses by FiJi

END OF IDIOTIC EDIT)

Granted, there is a sampler for the EP, and it's enlightening to read the comments on the Soundcloud player, but I'm always surprised at the ingenious tactics that otherwise excellent netlabels (such as the fantastic and thoroughly recommended Siberian/Muscovite Electronica) will adopt to prevent listeners from hearing their music as easily as possible. There is no need for Tal-like complexity or Petrosianesque obfuscation.

Мой русский вентиляторы теперь, глядя на что последнее предложение, и думал: мы желаем вам, как пишет Филидор играли в шахматы, вы идиот. И наш лидер борется тигров в то время как твой имеет лицо, как дно ребенка.

Anyway, here's the sampler - I think you'll enjoy it. Props to the comment, "Veryyyy beauty!"

Fiji - Grey-Purple EP (Sampler) by Electronica

If you've simply pressed "Play" and slumped back onto your crisp-infested and beer-stained sofa, the first thing you'll hear (after a Slav Barry White intoning, "Elyectrrronicah") is Copy Paste Feelings, a pleasant blend of filter-swept doo-wop vocals and easy-paced trip-hop. The same formula is used for much of Grey-Purple, the album, and Grey-Purple (feat. Long Arm), the title track of said album, so expect to hear plenty of white noise and dollops of piano, rhodes piano, subtle pads, drones and the occasional trip-hop stutter.

The third track, Faked Imaginary Freedom, is slightly more funky. The claps are rather intrusive but the gorgeous sampled/chopped pads make up for them. Fiji beds the rhythms in a hypnotic swathe of synths and pianos; when the beats disappear, as in the latter stages of the trumpet-flecked Ocean In My Head, one feels as though the music is even better for it.

Frustratingly, the pseudo-DJ-Shadow On 17th Floor has drool-worthy sustained piano chords, but would be much better without the half-hearted breakbeat-and-clap accompaniment.

Next up is Smiles Before Bedtime (smiles during bedtime are better), which essays a lovely descending piano line in tandem with some crunchy white noise and marvellously delicate synth chirrups. Again, not too sure about the kick and clap - but bear in mind that I listen to all my music on an iTincan - so adjust to taste.

Night of White Flies - not the most enticing of titles - contains a snippet of a classical recording that I trust is old enough to be out of copyright. Mind you, Fiji may have recorded it himself and aged it in the studio. Music software can do almost anything nowadays, bar curing Country & Western. You'll like it if you like crunchiness, guitars, scratches, violin solos and Mom-and-Pop vocals.

Grey-Purple is a rare thing in the world of electronica/trip-hop; it's so warm and fluffy that it encourages one to cuddle the nearest thing to the listener, whether that be a spouse, teddy bear or the biscuit barrel. Personally, I think it's just a sneaky Russian trick to save on heating bills.

If you like the album, please drop a "thank you" email in Electronica or Fiji's inbox and/or empty your glass and throw it in your fireplace.

Fiji - Grey-Purple EP (link to sampler & zipped album)

Fiji (Eugene Litke) on MySpace

Electronica netlabel (Excellent in so many ways. Trawl their back catalogue and enjoy.)

Patchwork

It's a mystery to me how Luxus-Arctica netlabel managed to take this photo of CTW's reception suite. The guards tell me that the CCTV footage went offline at a crucial moment. The only physical evidence of their break-in was the hundreds of dead starlings in the street below. Strange.

It won't have escaped your attention that computer wizardry is rampaging through electronica, IDM, minimal and hip-hop, where it's common for percussion one-shots and layered synths to be sampled and chopped to death, but I remain surprised by how relatively few artists delight in mangling acoustic instruments and "found" sounds. There's a delicious, malicious joy to be had in hearing a familiar and/or traditional sound getting kicked up the backside by music software.

I imagine that Erik Nilsson must wear a virtual pair of hobnailed boots as he stomps around Stockholm, because the eight marvellous tracks that constitute his restrained, gentle and ingenious Recollage are an acoustic mangler's delight; he makes the old-fashioned sound delightfully modern. Peruse the back cover of his album and you'll find the following:

Recollage is a development of simple musical elements and ideas towards greater complexity and richness of detail using real and sampled instruments, assorted acoustic sounds, and synthesizers & audio manipulation techniques.

Honestly, I don't know why I bother. How am I supposed to waffle on at (very great) length about records if the musicians have already written a cogent summary of said album and, what's more, in better English than yours truly can muster? What a cheek.

The opener, Into Motion, uses a sneaky compositional trick - one used to great effect by Trentemøller on Take Me Into Your Skin - whereby various elements are added one by one to create a wall of sound that, at the crescendo, drops away completely to be replaced by a quiet, fast-paced rhythm. The unexpected dynamics will tug at your ears. The track is an enticing blend of upbeat, sparkling guitar, somnolent piano/harpsichord and some ambient excursions. Its cheerful and gentle soundscape will perhaps remind readers of another Luxus-Arctica album, Global by The Lights Galaxia, reviewed here.

Timepiece features a grandfather clock's two-note chime up front and centre (and slightly too loud, methinks). I doubt whether the clockmaker would approve of how Mr Nilsson makes it repeat, stutter and pan all over the place, but I approve of the mangling, especially when it's accompanied by a gently picked acoustic guitar, a cut-and-paste harmonica and ambient crackles.

The first thirty seconds of Rumore del Roma explain why this album is such a treat for the ears: you'll hear a ghostly piano; the distant wailing of guitar feedback; a chopped and reversed bit of sound; cheerful guitar strumming; the dusty pops and grumbling of old vinyl; and the creaking of an unoiled door hinge that slurs and slows down into a snare drum roll that kicks off some semi-distorted, mandolin-backed trip-hop. There's also a violin stuffed in there somewhere, courtesy of Sofie Louzou. Phew. Then, after a couple of minutes of pleasurable head-nodding, most of the sounds fade away until only the ghostly, plaintive piano can be faintly heard on the right-hand side of the stereo field. A few bars later, it's joined by a toy-like xylophone, only this can be heard up close and on the left. It's the thoughtful treatment of such ostensibly simple elements that make the album a pleasure to hear. Try it yourself:

Erik Nilsson - Rumore del Roma

No, wait. You can't. Luxus-Arctica is like America's Liberty Bell: an inspiring symbol of independence that can't make a sound because it's cracked. L-A will give you the whole album free of charge but won't supply links to individual tracks. *bites knuckles, screams* Gentlemen, please rethink your policy. 

Allow CTW to flex its mighty muscles. *thump* *yell* *bash* Got it. God, I'm good. Let's try again:

Rumore del Roma by apan music

15 Minutes of Boredom might be retitled as 2 Minutes, 15 Seconds of Bewilderment. I can't explain how such diverse elements as movie dialogue, a repitched, reversed and disrespected guitar riff, heavy breathing, a high-passed filter sweep (and the occasional interjection of Fred Astaire's name) can in any shape or form constitute music; but they do. Hands up who would like to see Erik Nilsson's workflow. Yes, me too. Ableton or Logic or Cubase and an MPC, do you think? Knowing my luck, it's probably done with witchcraft, beer and Lego.

I rather like the compressed story that can be inferred from a song called Old Piano/Bad Back. What's even more likeable are the ticking clock intro, the fluttering flute, various ominous thumps and scrapes, a thoroughly unsettling vocalised noise and, best of all, the appearance of a slide guitar redolent of Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas. (A quick aside - we Creative Commons music fans, though fans of electronica, minimal, etc., are starved of guitar music. Please, riffers of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your mullets.) It's a slow, solemn, piece of ambient electronica until someone whispers "Let's go!" in your left ear, and the guitars get up off their porch seats to welcome the arrival of a kick drum. All of a sudden, the piece transmutes into neo-Hillbilly and threatens to get epic. Disappointingly, it goes back into its shell soon afterwards, but it's still a terrific track.

There's a similar flirtation with grandiosity in the title track, Recollage. It starts with manipulated kitchenware samples (I'm fond of how the sharpening of a knife doubles as a very lazy hi-hat), a fuzzy bass, inoffensive guitar doodlings, and a door opening and closing; it continues with a beautifully apt Moog-like synth, an upright piano and a not-so-happily-mixed snare drum; and it threatens to break out into a sweeping piece of Kate Bushness before fading to an ambient burble.

To my mind, the ghosts of Kate Bush (consider the gentle tempo, the mandolin and the sample of a cocking rifle in her Army Dreamers) and Pink Floyd flit in and out of some of these tracks. I get a Floydian tang from the mournful, descending guitar and bass lines to Tail Lights; as the tempo picks up and morphs into light rock, one half expects some Roger Waters kill-yourself-now-because-life-is-a-cosmic-joke lyrics and a searing guitar solo from Dave Gilmour. Instead, the track shies away from the bombastic and stays true to the album's intimate milieu with some subdued glitching.

Finally, imagine you're ten years old and have just got your hands on your first guitar. It's a clapped-out acoustic, half the strings are missing and those that remain are tired, saggy and barely in tune. Then imagine that you've just learned to play a riff that reminds you of Marc Bolan's T-Rex and, pleased with yourself, you play it repeatedly. Your pre-pubertal friends form a rhythm section by slapping cardboard boxes and bending rulers on table edges. Welcome to the first half of the pertinently-named Little Demon. Spent, you stop playing only to hear music floating across the road from that creepy house with the drawn curtains. It's barely audible but it's definitely someone playing a spooky motif on an ambient pad preset over and over again. Welcome to the coda of Little Demon.

Surprisingly, this album reminds me of, would you believe it, the ghost stories of M.R. James, which often tease their overly logical Edwardian protagonists by suggesting that there is something disturbing lurking over the brow of the next hill - if only they care to look. Thanks to his harnessing of modern techniques to long-familiar sounds, and the inclusion of the odd gasp, wheeze, scrape and scratch, Mr Nilsson's work shares the same ambivalent qualities. Indeed, I hope I'm not doing him a disservice by suggesting that parts of his album would do very well as soundtracks to James's tales.

If you fall in love with Recollage, please remember to send a "thank you" email/cash/eye of newt and toe of frog to the talented Erik Nilsson and the estimable, double-barrelled Luxus-Arctica netlabel.

Erik Nilsson - Recollage (link to zipped album - no single mp3s for some unfathomable reason)

Erik Nilsson [also known as Apan Music] (link to individual tracks via Soundcloud)

Luxus-Arctica netlabel

Soap Opera

Listening to the various tracks from a newly-discovered good album is like seeing familiar numbers pop up in the first few seconds of a national lottery draw. The first appearance is pleasing and so is the second; the third gives you a sense of satisfaction and achievement; two more good ones appear and you jump on your chair; one more pops up and you scream at the TV/stereo/neighbourhood that you'll devote your life to living in a huge chateau others less fortunate than you if the last two numbers are the ones you want. If you're like me, you'll end up with a lingering sense of the futility of life and a muddy sofa. But fear not - at least CTW has some free CC music for you to hear after you've stopped shaking your fists at fickle Fate.

Your post-lottery placebo takes the form of Bu-Bu-Bubbles by Foam, an English musician about whom I know little, for which I blame Wikileaks. If only he'd insulted a potenate or two.

There aren't many traditional musical elements (melody, harmony, development) herein. The eight tracks might best be described as beatless minimal and melodic ambient; parts of it are certainly experimental. Foam has a habit of combining featherlight tics and swirls with knocks and bangs that push up hard against loudspeaker cones. The good news is that his productions skills make his EP a palatable listen.

I'll start with the album's seventh track, Widget, because I'm a hip-swinging mo-fo who can't count. The first thirty seconds of Widget are nigh-on silent; the next minute consists of a metallic sound (the widget?) carrying out Chinese water torture (not quite the same as American waterboarding, my pedantic and politically correct chums) on the listener's frontal lobes before an answering beep pans back and forth. The only other element is a lo-fi organ sound that plays a couple of chords before the track (and the listener's lust for life) peters out. I've decided via a process of elimination that it's an experimental meditative piece - because you certainly can't whistle it, sing it or dance to it. (And I'm running out of brackets.)

Next up is a new piece of technology that will augment the planet's already over-intrusive surveillance systems. Gum is full of synths that are pitched so high and, towards the end of the track, become so shrill that only people under forty will be able to hear them. If you can't hear them, you're too old or a Motorhead fan or you play banging techno in your tarted-up hatchback. Or all three. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.

That's got the two most challenging tracks out of the way. You'll have noticed, particularly with Gum, that the sound quality is superb. So it is with the first track on the album, Day-To-Day, where the toy-like sound of a looping nine-note melody forms a musical backbone, around which is wrapped Geiger Counter-ish glitches, and percussive one-shots that sound like out-takes from Wall-E. It's a happy track.

Crab Attack is not a musical description of a naval doctor's waiting room on a Monday morning.  Instead, you'll be faced with low-passed, bubbling sine waves, noises reminiscent of a fridge that's been left open, and some glitchy percussion that Riverdances right up against your eardrums.

The two minutes of Trouble remind me of the relentless music used to brainwash Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Play it while switching your kitchen lights on and off and the reverberating, ambient washes will have you under the KGB's thumb in no time. By the way, Caine + 1960s + John Barry are widely acknowledged as a very good thing indeed. Resistance is futile: you're now under Jeff Bezos's thumb.

Bumbleebee is the type of track that's starting to pop up on the soundtracks of indie puzzle games: a half-formed melody from an inoffensive synth with lots of glitches and bells popping up now and then to keep you awake. Like many such tracks, they will burble away in the background so that you can concentrate on other matters - but if you sit down and listen to them, they will mesmerise.

I've left Offthesky's remix of Madness until last to reward your perseverance. It improves on the well-built but bland original (think Jane Russell) by blending minimal with ambient to become something more enticing (think Sophia Loren). Your clapped-out Nokia/it-looked-ok-in-the-catalogue Panasonic/of-course-I-didn't-mortgage-the-house Bang & Olufsen will enjoy it.

Foam - Madness (offthesky reinterpretation)

I must explain to the trendier of my listeners that Archipel netlabel released Bu-Bu-Bubbles when wing collars and monocles were the height of fashion. My apologies to the label (and its enlightened policy of making their commercial albums available for free after a few months on sale) for taking so long to leave the Sea of Despond, crawl onto the beach, walk upright and develop ears.

I've tagged the album as "experimental" because CTW doesn't have a paradoxical category. There aren't many albums that could be described as "easy to listen to" but not "easy listening". Foam has a spiritual, transcendent quality. If you're looking for a non-theological musical path to spirituality/nirvana/chocolate/becoming a hipster emo, you could do a lot worse than listen to Bu-Bu-Bubbles, contemplate the ineluctable modalities of life and wonder whether it might help to use a different set of lottery numbers next week. Or you could send a thank-you email to Archipel or - the horror! the horror! - buy one of their commercial albums.

Foam - Bu-Bu-Bubbles (link to individual files & zipped album)

Archipel netlabel

 

Two Reviews In One Week

 

Regular readers of dusty old CTW know what to expect: (ir)regular reviews of free CC/netlabel albums, leavened with poor jokes and even worse grammar. It's rare that your humble scribe deigns to describe anything so ephemeral, so lightweight, so throw-a-bag-of-kittens-in-the-canal as a single track. But I do do it occasionally.

Today's internet eructation was prompted by my stumbling across a video made by Eirik Solheim, a project manager for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), who is very enthusiastic about technology, photography, and, in the most entertaining and truthful phrase that I've read this week, "stuff that I find important."

Anyway, he has made One Year In Two Minutes, which could be described as a nigh-on perfect ambient video, the ne plus ultra of everyday sights and sounds, or even the cappuccino venti of coffees if you're into using corporate drinks-vending metaphors. Mr Solheim visited the English Park in Oslo weekly for a year, snapped some photos and then compiled them ingeniously with Photoshop and Final Cut Express to produce a seamless and bladder-looseningly beautiful two-minute film of nature getting up for work and coming home to bed. The lovely visuals are accompanied by a truly ambient soundtrack recorded in situ; it's a hymn to rustling leaves, birds, rain and thunder. Be sure to select the "full screen" option by clicking on the little arrowed box in the lower right-hand corner of the video.

What's more, the video is free for you to share and remix. To quote Mr Solheim: "All the images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. In other words: Use them non commercially as long as you give me credit and as long as you share the work you do under the same license."

Which is nice of an award-winning, rather talented media maven, don't you think? I wonder if there are any musicians out there who would like to adapt the visuals or simply plonk their own music over the video? At this point, I must confess that CTW has been a little lax in discovering these films. They appeared two *cough* ago. What? I said, two *mutter* ago. All right, if you insist, the films were published two years ago. I can't be mega-trendy all the time, you know; I have toenails to grow. But wait, there's more goodness to come. How about another video on the same subject, but this time with people ghosting by in the background?

 

Lovely, mmm? And for the attention-deficit sufferers out there, here's a 24-carat ambient-minimalist jewel: One Year In 40 Seconds. I think it's the prettiest  of all of Mr Solheim's work. It would make an ideal desktop video or screensaver.

 

If you have enjoyed these films, please think about sending Mr Solheim an appreciative email. If you haven't, send me an abusive one and I will endeavour to return to reviewing free albums and combing my hair in new and vaguely disturbing ways. Until then, please remember that free, CC-licensed stuff isn't evil; it's fun. And sometimes it can be beautiful.

Erik Solheim's home page (eirikso.com)

Change at Charing Cross for the Bakerloo Line

To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any Broque netlabel album cover painted any colour you want so long as it is black and white. This, the latest in an unbroquen line of drab album covers, does its best to dissuade listeners from exploring Applause Phenomena, a classy minimal EP by Dennis Korsunski (A.K.A. Clapan, otherwise known as Information Ghetto), but Catching The Waves is made of stupid stern stuff. Advanced electronic rhythms from the Russian Black Sea coast via a Bavarian netlabel? Pah. It's all in a day's work for CTW. Chancellor Merkel, put your fat ankles up on a cushion and enjoy some multikulti.

The opener, About Chords, begins with skipping, scratching percussion that forms a spiky bed for the titular synth chords, which are either cold and distant, slathered in reverb and high-pitched delay, or upfront and cuddly. The contrast makes for an enjoyable listen. Yes, a driving hi-hat appears halfway through the track, as agreed in UN Resolution 1998 (Minimal Tropes Being For The Benefit Of Dancefloors), but that's merely there to keep your head nodding: the real interest lies in the off-stage noises and clever use of reverb and echoing pads that tar-and-feather the basic rhythm.

At eight minutes long, today's recommended track is a flagrant violation of CTW's renowned First Law of Dance Music (in short, two's company; three's a crowd), but I forgive it in the same spirit in which I forgive @stephenfry for jawing on and on: to quibble in the face of such good-natured entertainment would be churlish.

Applause Phenomena contains a number of Good Things: beautifully fashioned granular ticks and flecks; a rolling but polite kick drum; a splashy snare; groovy, good-natured vocal phrases; a bass line that sounds like an ogre turning over in his sleep; bursts of applause that are more like white-noise interjections than the usual hackneyed attempt to inject atmosphere; gentle pads and spooky lead synths that almost imperceptibly guide the ear through the plethora of sounds that tease the eardrum from left and right, near and far; and the dawning realisation that the track is unerringly getting groovier and yet more profound while at the same time kicking out like a potato-faced English footballer confronted by a wily continental.

Let me catch my breath for a minute. I'm not used to writing paragraphs. *puff* Right, onwards.

At its best, minimal/techno/dance/insert-suitable-genre-name-here transcends its repetitive origins to become electronica or fast-paced ambient; something that has depth. It's not just about endlessly repeating a four-bar loop and hoping that listeners will dance around a pile of handbags and manbags on a nightclub floor. Enough of my pseudery. Press the little love triangle below and draw your own conclusions:

Information Ghetto - Applause Phenomena (feat. Modul)

You're allowed to dislike it. But you'll have to return my spare snuggie and we can no longer be friends.

After that comes the "Less Softbeat" remix of the same track. It relies heavily on the goodwill engendered by the appearance of familiar elements. Sad to say, it's a competent but rather anonymous track that would have benefited from more melodic or percussive variety.

The "support" in Old Cool Support refers, I think, to the Amen Break-type rhythm underpinning the crunchy and distorted pads and stabs that ready you for a dance-floor banger. However, the appearance of a simple and slow three-note bassline confounds expectations, as does the appearance of a wildly panning and repitching pseudo-harpsichord. Once another synth pops in with a rhythmic hook and is joined by a shower of clicks and high-pitched pops and crackles, the track veers between funky profundity and profound funkiness. It came a very close second to today's recommended selection and is still hoping that drug tests will reveal that it was cheated of glory.

The last track, Snow Report, threatens to disappoint with its extremely unoriginal four-to-the-floor kick intro until superb, machine-tooled incidental noises flesh out the rhythm and warm synths float in from on high to reassure you that time spent listening to this album is time well spent. I'm fond of the brief stop-start breaks made from diamond-hard percussive elements that are dropped in a sea of reverb and then high-passed and panned out to the extreme edge of the stereo field.

Speaking of which, the whole album is a testament to Dennis Korsunki's production wizardry; in places he has squeezed the proverbial quart into a stereo pint pot, relying heavily on the fact that you've probably got two ears. (A mono recording wouldn't be nearly as impressive.) Imagine you're back at your schooldesk and enjoying (ha!) a maths lesson. Forget your pimples and your crush on the teacher, and concentrate on the protractor spread out in front of you. Now imagine a click, pop, burble, snap, drum, synth and bass placed on each line of the 180 degree arch. Each element has its own niche. Imagine further that each sound sits comfortably in its own spatial reverb and has had all its superfluous frequencies cut away. Suddenly, your ears can make sense of the dozens of sounds thrown at you. You can solve quadratic equations. You will go to Harvard and bang as many students with superb teeth as possible. Life is good, all thanks to free CC-licensed music supplied by a hard-working netlabel and a maverick Russkie.

Write 100 times: I must send a thank-you email to Broque netlabel. And comb your hair.

Information Ghetto - Applause Phenomena EP (link to zipped album & individual files)

Broque netlabel (Ich danke Ihnen, meine Kameraden Bayerischen. Bitte können wir etwas Farbe? )

Point and Nick

There's a story behind this interruption of my intensely relaxed posting schedule. Recently, I've wasted a fair amount of time on listening to, selecting and then writing about albums that I've subsequently realised contained copyrighted samples, and have been forced to toss the half-finished review in the bin and move on. What galls me is that the albums in question came from reputable netlabels who proudly display a Creative Commons licence on their website.

The whole point of a CC licence is that the holder has already given permission for the user to download and share: there's no need to ask. But if that same album contains samples that are still owned by someone else and who has not given permission for their work to be disseminated, then the whole process is rendered meaningless, irrespective of whether those samples come from an old, obscure song or album. Either an album is Creative Commons or it's not; bending the rules plays right into the hands of those who criticise the CC paradigm and accuse everyone who enjoys a legal sharing culture to be thieves. One of the reasons CTW is not the fastest draw in the West is because of delays caused by the above. I'm not a musical encyclopaedia and can't check every piece of music used in a song, so I rely on musicians and netlabels not to abuse the Creative Commons licence.

On a related note, and to explain my modus operandi to new readers of Catching The Waves, I usually recommend a free album and then remind readers that it's often possible to send a donation or buy more of the artist's output. Today, I'll recommend an album that is not Creative Commons-licensed and not free at all, but which is actually a commercial album that is technically and regrettably "free" despite the best and entirely honourable intentions of the artists involved. And it's not the one pictured above. It's this one:

Machinarium is an award-winning point-and-click game set in a mechanical world that looks like a cross between Sesame Street and Bladerunner. The Czech makers, Amanita, thoughtfully released the game without Digital Rights Management (DRM), which meant three things:

1. Buyers wouldn't have to enter tiresome sixteen-digit serial codes to enjoy what was now their property;
2. Equally, there would be no awkward online authentication;
3. Anyone could copy the game from a torrent site.

Sad to say, Amanita reported last week that "only 5-15% of Machinarium players actually paid for the game". However, they also announced a "pirate amnesty" in which everyone could buy the game plus its superb official soundtrack and a free bonus EP for just $5 instead of the usual $20, an offer that prompted geek extrordinaire Wil Wheaton to encourage gamers to "do the right thing." Consequently, Amanita sold over 17,000 copies of Machinarium in a week and has extended its amnesty until 16th August.

We deduce from this that a tweet from @wilw to his 1.67m followers...

*flutters eyelashes*

...is rather more effective than Amanita's $1000 publicity budget, and that people will pay for content that is available for free elsewhere if the content is desirable enough; if the money goes direct to the game developers; if they're brainwashed by celebrities advised by people they trust, and if they want to help the artist to produce more of that desirable work.

In the interests of balance, many of the people who have bought the game recently have done so because the publicity has led them to the game for the first time, or because they felt the price was previously too high to justify a purchase. Not everyone on the internet flies the skull-and-crossbones.

However, what sets the game's teasing puzzles, quirky humour and dusty, gently rusting cityscapes off to a tee is Tomáš Dvořák's playful ambient-electronica soundtrack. Dvořák has been called an "electro-instrumentalist" and is a graduate of the Prague Academy of Visual Arts. In Machinarium, he has cleverly spliced elderly analogue synths, smooth sweeps of radio interference/white noise and barely audible, distorted vocals (from an old Apple speech synthesiser) with traditional acoustic instruments. The latter are often filtered through a granular effect, resulting in a clanging, grimy soundscape that suggests Eastern European jazz and post-Cold War industrial decline to my susceptible and over-imaginative ears.

Rarely has such an eclectic,  old-fashioned collection of instruments (piano, clarinet, kalimba, metallophones, accordion, melodica, double bass and cello) sounded so 21st century. The result is oxymoronic: melodic ambient. I'll illustrate just how melodic and just how ambient the official soundtrack is by showcasing a track from the other, free album. (Logic, I laugh in your AND/NOT gate.)

Tomáš Dvořák - Machinarium Bonus EP: By The Wall

Impressive how the piano floats on top of the pads, background vocals and distorted noise, isn't it? By The Wall really blossoms if you wear headphones. The clarinet intro is better than a shot of whisky with a morphine chaser.

Here, Dvořák conveys the whimsical and enticing atmosphere of the game with a jolly bass line, reverberating percussion and, mid-track, a delicately tuneful blast of radio interference:

Tomáš Dvořák - Machinarium Bonus EP: Defusing The Bomb

Please note, those tracks are from the free five-track EP. There are 14 more dreamy examples of sublimity on the official soundtrack, which can be bought separately - but it makes more sense to get both albums simply by buying the game. Do so, and you get the remastered soundtrack, the bonus EP and a gentle, amusing, mesmerising game that is suitable for grandchildren, grandparents and all those who contribute to the global economy. "Buy one, get two free" is a pretty good deal. Speaking of which, I'd like to see Aminita continue its amnesty until the end of the month, when people are more likely to have cash to spare.

If you do get the official soundtrack, look out for the lightly menacing The Black Cap Brotherhood Theme, the turn-your-woofer-down Clockwise Operetta, the café-jazz of The End (Prague Radio) and The Glasshouse With Butterfly, which is one of the best crackling, echoing atmospheric pieces of ambient it has been my privilege to hear.

Failing all that, simply download the free Free Machinarium Bonus EP and keep your money in your pocket. After all, this is where you come to get good, legally free music, isn't it? I won't tell anyone that you have short arms and long pockets. But I do have a song for you:

Tomáš Dvořák - Pirate Amnesty

A reminder, me hearties: you have until 16th August to take advantage of Amanita's pirate amnesty.

Tomáš Dvořák - Free Machinarium Bonus EP

Amanita Design - Machinarium the Game

No Doubting Thomas

Regular readers will know that it's my long-term ambition to make CTW redundant, superfluous and generally as irrelevant as BP's PR department. To that end, I sometimes add similar websites to my "General Netlabel Sites" category, an honour so highly regarded in the Creative Commons music world that it reacts as though a new star had ascended to the heavens. (Yeah, right.) And lo, it came to pass that yours truly looked upon the works of one Thomas Rauskamp and was well pleased.

Thomas is the editor of Germany's Beat magazine (it's similar to the UK's Computer Music Magazine), the only Hauptstraße periodical I know of that devotes time and space (reviews, interviews and roundtables) to the Creative Commons netlabel scene. Germany's position, Cologne's in particular, as Netlabel Zentraal makes me wonder, in a chicken-meets-egg analogy, if Beat spurred on the CC music movement there or vice versa. It's rare for a commercial publication to take the free music scene so seriously, but Beat does so because it realises that it's fun, refreshing and reflects the changes that the internet has wrought upon popular culture.

Thomas's enthusiasm for the scene is so great that he has forsaken all notions of propriety and started blogging reviews of CC albums, an idea which, as we all know, is monumentally stupid. More to the point, he reviews frequently and with great insight, and invariably explains various aspects of the netlabel scene while doing so. As such, I urge you to turn your traitorous backs on CTW and slake your thirst for good, legally free music by visiting Thomas' Posterous as soon as you can. If you do, you'll wonder why you ever turned to heroin and crack to obliterate the yawning mental chasms that opened while you waited...and waited...for the next CTW post. No, don't thank me, meine leiblinge, thank Thomas: he's the one doing all the heavy lifting.

What's that? You don't believe that there are much better free music sites than this one? Are you telling me that you are...

*digs deep into my vault of puns*

...doubting Thomas? (Sorry, sorry. That was a particularly egregious joke, a low blow in the fight for Creative Commons credibility. I won't do it again.) If you visit his website, you'll find lots of lovely netlabels to explore, and you'll have found a great new resource for squeezing enjoyment out of this magical online world we call Duhweb, or Dasveb, as my German friends refer to it. Look, trust me. I should know all about these things, having been reviewing free music for a few years. After all, I've been at it for so long, I'm preposterous.

*rimshot*

Suck it, bitches.

Thomas' Posterous

International Trust

One of the many things that music fans & musicians love about the interwebutron is its demoticism: any fool can stick a microphone out of their window, record the sounds, upload them to a website and, voila, they've made a field recording and have preserved a moment in time for ever.* Further, give that same recording a suitably opaque name such as Plangent Undertunes (Airport) IV, and yet another ambient album is placed before a horrified delighted world. It's as though everyone who loves sound for sound's sake is currently enjoying an electronic group hug.

Well, stuff all that. Let me show you a better class of field recording. The National Trust, a British charity that, since 1895, has preserved culturally and historically significant landscapes (pastoral and industrial), architecture and art - in short, some of the most beautiful bits and pieces of the sceptered isle - has released thirteen tracks recorded at some of its many lip-quiveringly gorgeous properties. The album is free but, alas, does not yet bear a Creative Commons licence. The sounds are timeless, though if you listen to the tracks while studying a photo of the relevant property it's easy to imagine that you are raising an ear-trumpet to another age.

To be even more galumphing than usual, it tickles me that a charity that has preserved many an estate and art collection owned formerly by the aristocracy, gentry and other beneficiaries of privilege and unbridled capitalism should decide to release a completely free album and ask Jarvis Cocker, former frontman of Pulp (best known for the song Common People) to produce it. Not only is it a spankingly good idea (as is the NT itself), it's also deliciously moreish of them.

*brushes crumpet crumbs from smoking jacket lapel*

By giving you a rundown of the track titles I will endeavour to impress upon you that Mr Cocker, the Paris-residing scamp that he is, has done Britain proud by producing a baker's dozen of field recordings that will float up your ear canal like a sugar-coated barge. Please keep up with the tour guide and don't let your children duck under the ropes: Walking on Gravel & Birds (though not literally, one hopes), Birdsong, Waves Lapping Along The Shore, Footsteps Through The House, Creaking Staircase, The Billiards Room, Death by Chainsaw & Acid-Bath, Old Music Box, Murmurs of Children in School House, Birds in Water Garden, Gardening, Strap Press, Clocks Ticking & Chiming and Clock Tower. One of those titles might not actually exist. The rest, however, luxuriate in a warm and spacious mix and remind me that this planet is a wondrous instrument that plays the music of the spheres.

To illustrate, allow me to transport you, Dr Who-like, to County Antrim in Northern Ireland, where the workings of Patterson's Spade Mill fade away to be replaced by the timepieces of Blickling Hall in Norfolk:

Blickling Hall - Clocks Ticking & Chiming

Or enjoy a walk around a country estate and pretend that you are Elizabeth Bennett/Charles Ryder/the taxman:

Belton House - Walking on Gravel & Birds

Actually, this review is misleading. There is some music on Time To Think:

Lanhydrock - Old Music Box

Charming, isn't it? Which reminds me, I must thank the very nice people at the NT's press office (I have a vision of an iPad with a gingham border and tassels) who responded to my whinge about the postage stamp-sized image that comes with Time To Think by sending me the man-sized photo that adorns this review. Unfortunately, I'm given them a headache by also asking if the NT could slap a CC licence on it PDQ or, at the very least, ASAP. Yes, TTT is free - and a glorious gesture it is, too - but it is also at the mercy of everyone on the internet and so will be chopped up and used/remixed by webheads without delay. A CC licence would legitimise and encourage such use, and help to publicise the National Trust's ethos around the world. After all, the National Trust isn't just for Brits scuttling to stately tea-rooms to avoid the rain; it's for everyone for all time. They've got to shift those souvenir tea-towels somehow.

If you're feeling charitable, please make the charity feel better by sending a "thank you" email, and/or a donation, and/or become a member or do all three and ask if there's honey still for tea.

[/Merchant Ivory]

National Trust: The Album - Time To Think (link to individual files & zipped album)

*or until a solar flare fries the planet. Sleep well.

Priceless Music

It's official: Catching The Waves is the world's first zombie Creative Commons music blog. Yes, I've killed it, buried it and sowed the grave with lime, but here it is, ready to rake its filthy, jagged fingernails across the ears throat of anyone it meets. Honestly, it's not my fault.  I've finished with the damned thing but something I did in December has just raised its ugly head (out of the grave, as it were) and needs hitting with a sharp-edged spade. Besides, I know you're keening with grief at the demise of CTW, and this post will recommend a place where you can find free tunes aplenty. I'm so lovely.

Let me take you to a board meeting circa 2006. Around the polished oak table are heavies from WFMU, an American free-form non-commercial radio station that has been broadasting from New Jersey since 1958, and legal beagles from the Office of the New York State Attorney General. Think ceiling fans, drawn blinds and cigar smoke.

The chief lawyer twangs his red braces and announces that WFMU is to make contemporary music of all genres available to everyone across the state and compile a podsafe online music library.

"What am I, chopped liver?" asks a sweating radio luminary who has seen too many Woody Allen movies. "Who's going to pay for this smorgasbord?" he adds, hoping to sound sophisticated.

"Fugeddabout it," responds the lawyer, doing his best Chazz Palminteri impression. "Da Noo Yawk State Music Fund...

*CTW ignores the "You are offending millions of people" pop-up warning*

...is gonna ante up the dough. Da big record companies have been running a payola racket and we're giving youse somma da court settlements."

Hands are shaken and brows are mopped. But what to call this new archive of free music, this music archive that is free? Cigars are chomped, generic Italian dishes digested (as is one Chinese take-away, ordered by a newbie lawyer who hasn't yet been hazed at the local Masonic lodge), and legal pads filled with possible titles. At 3am, they have it: the Free Music Archive.

Bada-bing bada-boom.

In April 2009, the website went live under the joint management of WFMU and some non-profit community radio stations and venues. Go there and you'll find a constantly growing library of free music that you can listen to and download. There are also short artist biographies and links to the musicians' websites should you wish to investigate further. If you're a little overwhelmed by the volume of music and not sure where to start, investigate the curators' recommendations or take a look at the FMA's constantly updated charts. I'll let the site itself take over:

Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist page will have a bio and links to the artists’ home page for users to learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s).  Users can also “tip” an artist if they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’ PayPal account.  Artist profiles include tourdates, encouraging users to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live music.

Legally free music is still in for a bumpy ride, in my opinion, especially if it becomes truly popular. It remains to be seen whether the Creative Commons approach and the similar format adopted by the FMA can withstand the rigours of the internet. It's early days for the FMA (which will be refined as it grows in popularity), but it clearly has the potential to be a superb asset for fans of legally free music. Fingers crossed, everyone.

Anyone can visit and use the site, although music and editorial content is posted on an invitational basis - which brings me to the December stuff I mentioned.

*switches on megaphone*

AND NOW, AT LAST, SOME MUSIC. BUT FIRST, WITH THANKS TO ENGADGET, A JAPANESE ROBOT WILL PERFORM AN INTERPRETATIVE BREAK-DANCE SEQUENCE TO CONVEY MY JOY AT FINALLY KILLING CTW. TAKE IT AWAY, MANOI GO:

Yeah, baby.

The FMA were idiotic kind enough to invite me to put together a compilation cum playlist of tracks. They'll be familiar to regular visitors to CTW, but I hope they will serve as a good antidote to the "All free music is rubbish" argument. To whit: some free music is superb. I am most grateful to Cameron Perkins, the Culture Program Assistant at creativecommons.org, and Jason Sigal, FMA Managing Director, who were very patient with me.

To give you a taste: Karaoke Mouse - Shanghai Reggae (DJ Side's alternate take)

The Catching The Waves FMA "Mix" (I'll make you go via the Creative Commons so you can bask in the glory of the CTW logo, which is made of plasticine and a lot of swearing.)

The Free Music Archive

Ice - Salt = Absenteeism

I'm rather annoyed. The day after I decide to drown this blog in the kitchen sink, an album emerges from my hard drive and demands a review.* Will you lot out there stop releasing good CC albums so I can finally throw CTW in the wood-chipper?

*retrieves CV from waste-paper basket*

Right, let's get on with it. "Werken" is a nom de plume of Tilman Ehrhorn, a Berlin-based music producer, composer, saxophone/reed player and sound designer. I don't have time for this. I am a busy  man and I want a macchiato and some cake.  He's a vastly experienced jazz musician, having collaborated with the likes of Wayne Shorter (I am not worthy, I am not worthy), Hamburg Sinfoniker, L'Atelier d'Orchestre, and has appeared on many jazz and electronica recordings and been involved in numerous German TV and theatre productions. I have a novel to write and languages to learn. Please let me go.  He's also worked with Native Instruments, having designed presets for their highly regarded Massive, Absynth and FM8 softsynths, and helped to develop Kore 2, NI's software controller.

So, let's take a look at that CV...modern jazz, electronica, composer, professional sound designer. Hmm. If only someone with those talents decided to release an album. Or decided not to, allowing me to crochet my nose-hairs and spend more time feeling guilty about not attending the gym. Cake, I need cake.  Wouldn't you know it, Mr Ehrhorn has done just that. In Sum, you'll find 11 tracks of dubby, crackly ambient that will delight fans of the terrific Urlaub Auf Balkonien, the Qwartz-winning album from Krill.Minima. Its stately, granular milieu will be the perfect fit for your brand new and not-at-all-blindingly-expensive Google Nexus One as you trudge through snow-laden streets.

Sum is about as hand-tooled as electronica gets. Werken has made nearly every sound on the album himself, using a modular synth to build the percussive elements and the lovely stabs of crackly goodness that permeate the surprisingly light reverb. I keep expecting a run-of-the-mill kick/snare/hi-hat combo to start up, but it never does. Instead, Werken stays true to his love of jazz improvisation, preferring to search for an overall structure derived from a combination of many elements rather than conform to something more overtly rigid. It's less "tsss tsss tsss tsss" and more "zzzt kssk domp fffn ussh". I may have used different halves of my brain to write those last two sentences.

This release from Zymogen netlabel (a very strokeable Italian netlabel that gets everything right apart from...*deep sigh*...making it tricky for amateurish CC blogs to preview or host their albums) won't make you tap your feet or nod your head, but it will tickle your fancy. My recommended track is C&P, but the link isn't working [EDIT: it is now. Thank you, Zymogen], so instead I'll proffer Surrender, four minutes of chopped-up white noise dub that will convince you that Tilman Ehrhorn is a talented musician who is adept at manipulating electronic sounds.

Werken - Surrender

I'm sure he'd love to get a few emails thanking him for his free CC album. After all, his EP is greater than the Sum of its parts. Ouch. Clunk. Apologies for not reviewing Sum in more detail. If I do ever write another review, I'll concentrate on the music and stop penning such godawful puns. Anything else would be punishing to read. Heh.

*A complete coincidence, I assure you.

Werken - Sum (link to zipped mp3 and FLAC album)

Tilman Ehrhorn website

Zymogen netlabel

Eurotunnel! Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

Last month, 1.2 million Norwegians sat down and watched Bergensbanen, a documentary showing ...wait for it...seven and a half hours of the beautiful snow-laden, mountainous train journey from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, to Oslo, spiritual hometown of Earth's leggy blondes.

The NRK, the state-owned broadcasting company, has released the entire documentary under a 3.0 CC licence, meaning anyone can download, copy, remix and transmit the result, as long as they  provide full attribution. (Please refer to the site for relevant details.)

Ambient artists across the world are now flipping out. But the video is not just for cuddly, tea-drinking, sandal-wearing ocarina players. Meat-eaters are allowed to slice and dice Bergensbanen. Please do so.

What, not interested? Are you trying to tell me that nearly eight hours of a train journey might be less interesting than navel fluff? Shame on you. Here's a snippet of the journey through Finse, which doubled as the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Look, if George Lucas decided that the place was exciting, that's good enough for me.

*thinks about the prequel Star Wars trilogy*

It's still worth watching. Three cheers for imaginative Scandinavian state-run broadcasting systems and national rail networks!

*thinks about last sentence*

I need to get out more.

Found via Wired. I'm so cheap.

A Nice Bit Of Crackling

...is a rather quaint way of expressing admiration for the female form. It can also be applied to an appreciation of dusty, ambient-tinged trip-hop, such as you'll find in Beats for the Subverted by London turntablist Dustmotes.

The album's liner notes for the ten tracks claim DJ Shadow, Unkle and Portishead as influences. I'm not sure about the last two artists, but the similarity to the soundscape of DJ Shadow's influential Endtroducing is undeniable, particularly in Annica. There are no songs as such: Beats is a mood album, so look elsewhere for dramatic changes of key or tempo. The recurring compositional motif is a slow drum loop backed by an echoing electric/acoustic piano chord. A hissing, crackling sparseness (otherwise known as trip-hop cat-nip) is to the fore so much that sometimes, as in Attrition #2, there's more ambience than actual trip-hop, lending the album depth as well as groove. The white noise, hiss, reverb and vinyl static of the final track, Outro, is something that would more often be found filed under "drone" than "trip-hop".

However, as befits a turntablist's opus, Beats for the Subverted is a platter of relaxing grooves formed mostly of vinyl-based samples caked with overdubbed bass and percussion. In fact, it would be a late-night album par excellence, were it not for the extracts from famous political speeches littered between the mellow breaks, blended piano chords and ever-present vinyl crackles. The vocalists include such young up-and-comers as Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Your MC for my recommended track, Les Main Sales, is none other than Malcolm X. Oh, go on then, have another smooooth track, Animals, complete with a less than cheerful quote from George Orwell's Animal Farm and a surprise guest appearance from SoundCloud's increasingly ubiquitous media player. [Also via CTW's media player. I can multi-task with the best of them.] So, have a crack at Les Mains Sales and Animals and see what you think:

Who knew political subversion could be so cool? Don't tell Fox News about Dustmotes A.K.A. Paul Croker or we'll all be for the high jump.

Ferdowsi features reversed sounds (a favourite technique of Dustmotes, according to the notes), a mystical, Middle Eastern atmosphere and a very American quotation from none other than Ulysses S. Grant. Told you this was subversive. Trust me, if you like Ferdowsi, you'll be in need of more free exotic trip-hop in the form of 1000 Sounds Lotus by The Orientalist.

The chief strength of Dustmotes' album is its atmosphere. Some albums feel artificial and cold; this feels analogue, warm and cosy. For instance, Forewarned's bass plumps pillows rather than pinches posteriors, and its jazz trumpet barely raises more than a mournful wail - yet they're substantial enough to complement the chopped guitar chords and another professional drum beat. You're welcome to explore the remaining tracks and ignore my laziness at not mentioning them.

My thanks to Dustmotes and Public Spaces netlabel for their efforts, but it's time for a caveat. For some unfathomable reason, the tracks on Beats for the Subverted are not available as mp3s. Yes, that's right; you can't get it in the world's most popular audio format. Now, having downloaded and listened to rather a lot of free albums over the years...

*calls therapist on speed dial*

...I'm still amazed at the lengths to which netlabels will go in order to make it awkward for would-be listeners to get hold of, er, you know, the free music. Audiophiles will love the Wav and FLAC options - and normally I'd give a round of applause for such forethought - but most people just want to download and press play, thus making mp3s a necessity. Could PublicSpaces Lab add another download option? Pwetty pweez? The more people who hear the album, the better.

Stop the press! Although PublicSpaces inexplicably don't provide a link, individual mp3 files are available from archive.org here. I'll add the mp3 stream for Les Mains Sales and Animals to my review. Many thanks to @lukelibrarian for living up to his name.

Dustmotes - Beats for the Subverted

@dustmotes - please send him a "thank you" tweet if you liked his scrumptious album.

Public Spaces Lab netlabel

Comfort Blanket

I don't know about you, but the arrival of autumn gives CTW the chance to drink hot chocolate, kick clouds of fiery leaves into the air and don a snug duffel coat made of free ambient-ish electronica.

Hailing from Spokane in Washington state, USA, Joseph Snodgrass, otherwise known (and who can blame him?)* as The Lights Galaxia, is an ambient/electronic musician who has capered onto the CC front lawn with Global, a collection of four tracks that's more comforting than a mug of liquid caramel topped with marshmallows. Carl Sagan's ghost has helped fluff the pillows and smooth out the sounds. No, really.

We begin with Forever Arriving - any jokes about my review schedule will see your Internet Membership revoked - wherein the ambient voices and clattering of everyday life underpin drifting piano and synth chords that refuse to resolve until the final moments. By the end, there's nothing left to listen to but people in the street, time having come to a standstill. You won't be raving/head-banging/having it large/enjoying your banker's bonus to this record.

After that, it's - TA-DAH! - my recommended track, which is an adult lullaby that should appeal to fans of (Danish music astronaut) Trentemøller and (Oxfordshire studio rats) Radiohead. In While She Sleeps (Morning Edit), you'll hear gossamer-thin, intimate synths meld with other fluffy, pulsing synths, the flapping of butterfly wings, and pixies drumming on acorn shells. In other words, it's a very clever collection of layered pads combined with lightly percussive synths and just plain percussion that's panned across the stereo spectrum so as not to clog up the mix. How to describe it further? It's like bunnies kissing.

The Lights Galaxia - While She Sleeps (Morning Edit)

Tokyo Metro takes two full minutes of chewy, crackly, ambient strap-hanging to get underway under the power of a brooding, surprisingly funky bassline and reverberating guitar accompaniment; it ends with an ambient tail that's long enough to return the mood of the track back to the original platform. Good stuff. The soundscape reminds me of DJ Side's low-passed, reverberating Bittersweet Love EP - which is more good stuff.

The final stop on the global tour (Mr S, you can have that dreadful pun free of charge for your promotional T-shirts) is The Last Lights In The City. The central motif is the oh-so-soulful epiano blues/jazz chords that swap so slowly that there's time for separate notes of each chord to pan from one ear to the other and back again. The steady diet is leavened with more Trentemøller-ish synth murmurings. If you're in doubt: it's gorgeous. You'll have to listen to it in the shower because if you hear it whilst having a bath you will undergo a short coma and wake up with your big toe stuck up a tap.

Global is intended to be a preview of a full concept album about the increasing urbanisation of the Earth, The Cities Global, to be released in 2010; I suggest that it wets the whistle most effectively. Please keep an eye out for the album, or at least let Joseph know you enjoyed it.

The Lights Galaxia - Global EP (Zipped album - individual files are here.)

Luxus-Artica Records International (1st release!)

Hang on. Sit down. I'm not finished. As luck would have it, just as my dinosaur-like cerebral cortex was deciding to write about Global, I discovered that one of my favourite music blogs had already written about it. Hurrah, said I, for I'd been looking for an excuse to mention this music bolthole for ages:

Travis Noble's Hiddenplace Music is a calm, soothing blog that, unlike the mongrel Catching The Waves, specialises in reviewing ambient and downtempo music. Reasons to drop by: interesting, high-quality selections; authoritative, judicious reviews; a "blog news box" that collates CC releases, thus providing the curious visitor with hours of exploratory fun, and a restrained blog design courtesy of Travis's secret identity as a graphic designer. Oh, and there are six mixes of netlabel music to explore. I must mention the excellent Solipsistic Nation podcast that Travis put together in January, highlighting his pick of the best netlabel releases of 2008. I've listened to it quite a few times over the last year; its blend of chat and dreamy ambient music is so beguiling. Yes, 2008. Yes, I am that out of date. You should see my haircut.

Hiddenplace Music (gets a spot in *gasp* CTW's General Netlabel Sites category)

*I'm so naughty. Sorry, Joseph.

Time Off For Good Behaviour

Some CTW readers might have been frustrated recently by reading my reviews of the fabulous Professor Kliq here and here only to find that they can't listen to the praiseworthy music. To cut a long story short, Patrick Haour, the very nice if tremendously hirsute Head of Music at Jamendo, suggested to the Prof that it might be a good idea to withdraw his albums because they contained a few samples taken from commercial works and therefore contravened the original artists' copyright agreements. The Prof duly complied, and hence I had to leave notes on the relevant reviews apologising for the absence of top-notch funky, ambientish Big Beat.

However, the recidivist has returned and is ready to pay his debt to society. The Prof has reworked some of the tracks from his albums and compiled them into a completely fluffy, legal and non-litigious collection of tracks entitled Community Service 2005-2009. As a certain shame-faced muso admits at the end of Apt 808, the first track on the album: "I, er, got an email from Patrick and, er, [nervous chuckle] yeah, looks like we got some cleaning up to do." Cue the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Heh.

A minor quibble: the album's mastering level seems a little high compared with Le Kliq's previous records, and occasionally there is a preponderance of high frequencies that are a tad harsh on my battered ears. This might be a consequence of the tracks' remodelling or, more likely, my impending decrepitude but worry not; overall, they're still a pleasure for the eardrums.

Having spent no little time on reviewing his previous criminal records - look, there's no way I was going to resist that pun, so deal with it - I'm not going to bore you further with my opinion of the Prof's retooling of old works. All I will say, apart from the fact that Der Kliqster must be the love-child of James Brown and FatBoy Slim, is that you should kliq (Ach, CTW, you kill me viz dis ting you call “hughmer”) the list in the Jamendo player and play Bust This, Bust That and The Most Beautiful Day. (RSS subscribers, you'll just have to don rubber gloves and strip-search Catching The Waves if you want to hear the music.) After that, thank the heavens for the wonderful world of Creative Commons, download Community Service (2005-2009), and share it with your friends, families and parole officers. You might also consider leaving a small donation at Professor Kliq's Jamendo page to help him with his rehabilitation into society.

Remember, play these tracks first (click on the album's title and you'll get a pop-up list): Bust This, Bust That = big beat/electronica nirvana, and The Most Beautiful Day = big beat/superb downtempo funk/nutty voiceover. If you don't play them before the other tracks - well, I know a guy called Otis who's feeling a little lonely now the Prof is free to walk the streets.

Professor Kliq - Community Service 2005-2009

Professor Kliq website

Jamendo

Enjoy It While It Lasts

You'll see from the title of his quirky album that QuarterBIT, a talented cove from sultry Barcelona, has loosed his floe of ambient on the icy waters of the internet without so much as a glance at his spell-checker. Ah me. You should know by now that free music can't afford sub-editors. Besides, this is the internet; anyone can make a tipo typo.

There's not much point in listening to this on your daily commute unless you have high-quality noise-cancelling headphones. The Antartica Files is a pure ambient album, by which I mean that it's all field recordings, so it'll get bullied by extraneous real-life ambient sounds like planes, trains and automobiles. And other John Hughes films.

Hey, where do you think you're going? Come back here, buster. Listen up. I know it's ambient. I know it won't make your rump do the rumba. Nevertheless, if you're feeling a bit jaded about music or you love sounds for their own sake, try one track - then I'll let you go. As you'll hear, there are few more beautiful sounds in this world than church bells, especially the deep, round, full chimes that appear towards the end of Church. Lovely.

QuarterBIT - Church

Just about the only track here that sounds overtly manipulated is Harbor Harmonic, where seagulls compete to see whose mournful screams sound most like a mellow Eddie Van Halen. It's either a marvellous layering of different recordings, some tasteful pitch automation, or Hitchcock was right and the birds are up to something.

QuarterBIT - Harbor Harmonic

This being ambient, there's an obligatory inclusion of crashing waves. Most ambient beach recordings tend to concentrate on the higher frequencies; not so in Antarctica Surf (correct spelling!), where you'll feel the weight of hundreds of tons of ice-cold water pound a pebbly shore.

Parade features some jolly car horns and a trad jazz band that will go in your right ear and out your left like a hot knife through ICan'tBelieveMyGreyMatterIsSoPliable Butter.

A female relative of mine (who has dropped a couple of ankle-biters) says this type of album is good for someone who is with child. Perhaps she's right. Mind you, I think she was listening to something a bit more vigorous a few months earlier.

There are so many details here that will tickle the tired ear: a motorboat that sounds like a wallowing warthog; a droning fly; snatches of conversation; footfalls; querulous sheep, a clanking gate (a nice way to end the track Sheep); and water, water, everywhere, be it running water (At The Glacier), lapping waves & bubbling streams (The Ice Island) or churning, frothy pools (The Waterfall).

I hope the above verbiage gives you an idea of what to expect. I suggest you find a quiet corner, press “play” and let the magic of audio transport you to everyday but wondrous places around the world. If you need more of the same, stick your head out of a window and listen anew.

There will be some strange people out there who insist that music should include esoteric things like instruments, notes, melodies and rhythms. Yeah, I know; weird. Still, CTW is a fat broad church so I've done something startling and included a second album for your delectation.

This classy compilation of burgeoning ambient artists is the most recent product from the same label, PublicSpaces Lab, that released The Antartica Files. As this is not a proper album review, it's fitting that the album is named Ceci n'est pas une pipe. The sound quality is excellent throughout, there are some winning tracks lodged between the plethora of ambient sounds and drones, and four dimensions (time & space) and the truth (laziness) are forcing me to cut this review far too short.

Somio has pulled a flanker with San Feliz, a track inspired by numerous sojourns to northern Spain. It's far too upbeat, cheery and hip to be described as ambient. But we won't complain, will we?

Somio - San Feliz

And despite lettering that's driving my Anglo-Saxon keyboard round the bend, Løser's Núr is definitely worth a listen. The unimportant stuff: drones, trip-hop, ethereal vocals, camera noises. The important stuff: it's good. If you like ambient-ish downtempo grooves with a dash of electronica, this'll be your pint of porter.

Løser - Núr

Not bad, hmm? Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe also comes with an excellent booklet that gives lots of information about the contributing artists, including one QuarterBIT. And that's it. C'est tout. Run along, gang. You might get some music next time.

QuarterBIT – The Antartica Files (link to zipped album)

QuarterBIT on MySpace

Various Artists – Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe (link to zipped album)

PublicSpaces Lab netlabel

Trail Mix

Raised in Bogotá, Colombia and of Japanese descent, Nobara Hayakawa is trained in jazz singing, holds degrees in Graphic Design and Fine Arts from Universidad Nacional de Columbia and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and is currently a lecturer at two Colombian universities. But I won't hold that against her; CTW accepts anyone, no matter how clever.

In the first track out of six, Trail, Ms Hayakawa sings in Japanese and wordless vocals; the latter are used for most of the album (with a splash of English), so all you monoglots out there can relax. It's about "the love/hate pendular movements that one experiences under the effects of a caprice” and there is indeed a little tension in the stunning wash of vocal harmonies that dominate this song. The luxuriant vocals are panned either side of the insistent, tinny percussion that nags away as though someone was tapping on the computer screen to get your attention.

Nobara Hayakawa - Trail

Now you know that Ms Hayakawa can hold a note or three, you might expect some decent singing in the next track. Clever you; you're right on the nose. In fact, there are some lovely swooping vocal phrases that are strongly reminiscent of Kate Bush. What you might not expect is a hoover, even though the track is named Hoover Love. Take your mind out of the gutter. It's surreal to listen to this charming song's tick-tock percussion and piano and then hear a vacuum cleaner start up in the background, begin to roar like a jet engine and then, for a few enchanting seconds, match the song's pitch before slowly fading away. If nothing else, it'll change your opinion of carpets.

Alas is a gentle vocal workout with a soothing piano accompaniment and synth embellishments. Towards the end of the track, a bass pad underlines the wistful atmosphere. Nobara responds by exploring her lower vocal register.

To Desalejar, where the listener will enjoy some crusty distorted vocals, a memorable synth melody and another lovely bed of vocals. Again, her swooping lines, overt emotionalism and willingness to incorporate unusual ambient sounds into her songs lead me to think that Ms Hayakawa is a Kate Bush fan – and that's before I mention the steam whistle coda. Of course, I might be wrong. We all know that I'm an idiot.

The hums and ambient noises at the start of Fuzzy Lady are interrupted by an amplified, reverberating slow drag down a guitar string - it's the nastiest sound you'll have heard since your least favourite teacher last scraped chalk down a blackboard. It's followed by a piano, the obligatory enchanting vocals and - to continue the earlier household cleaning theme - a washing machine. There's also a voiceover from an ancient detergent advert, jazzy piano chords, cooing vocals, sleepy guitars and a drum machine that sneakily ups and drops the tempo as the mood takes it. Would you expect anything less? I didn't like Fuzzy Lady at first, but subsequent listens have revealed it to be a beautiful piece of ambient-ish, atmospheric electronica.

Finally, the first minute of Homelessness, consisting as it does of lacklustre synths and distorted rumbling, is rather disappointing, but its second is fortunately hijacked by a very low-fi drum beat and an ear-meltingly gorgeous melody – sung in English, no less. It was written "after reading too much Paul Auster and crying too much for the same ghost". Artistic hangovers are evidently more spiritual and productive than my cheap and nasty alcoholic ones.

There's no Donate button on the album's release page at Intervall-audio, but the netlabel does have a shop dedicated to German & Japanese electronica, mainly from Düsseldorf & Tokyo, so feel free to let your wallet run amok. Nobara Hayakawa's website is similarly absent of shiny money buttons, but I'm sure she'd be delighted to receive a few emails saying how her album has made the world a better place. She's also on the lookout for musical collaborations, so don't be shy.

My thanks to Phlow, Free Albums Galore and everyone else who has already commented on Trail. I have never claimed to be original - just handsome.

Nobara Hayakawa - Trail EP (zipped album and preview mp3s on netlabel release page)

Nobara Hayakawa - Trail EP (zipped album and full individual mp3s, baby, at archive.org)

Nobara Hayakawa home page

Intervall-audio netlabel

Never Mind The Width; Feel The Quality

The astute blurb on the release page at IDMf netlabel for Halogen - Length and Brecht (Remixed) compares it to a classical composition. Uncannily, the EP, consisting as it is does of one track by Halogen, a Brighton-based artist, and three remixes by other musos, feels as though it's the work of one person bent on producing a four-movement composition; there isn't the usual jarring, though often enjoyable, scramble of disparate sounds one associates with remixes essayed by musicians eager to parade their own production's fireworks.

Halogen's original track features a langorous descending piano motif in an abyssal acoustic that is so big it allows for the hammering of the top notes, whose fortississimo is made bearable by the cushioning reverb. A ghostly female vocal joins in and wraps your ears in swaddling clothes while a cello adds to the warmth. Remove 60 seconds from the five-minute running time and you have a contender for the chill-out track of the year. The combination of a cavernous reverb and a leisurely theme reminds me, scandalously you might think, of Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, composed specifically to take advantage of Gloucester Cathedral's superb acoustics. It's a wafer-thin connection, to be sure, but the ethos - if not the execution - is similar.

Strangely enough, the third track, the Field Rotation remix, is a gnat's todger longer than Halogen's original, but feels shorter even though the pace is funereal. A feather-light percussive rhythm, bass booms and swirling vocals blend into the mix to make something that should not be listened to while operating heavy machinery. Play it on a good stereo and alert the coast guard for beached whales. /badtaste

The tempo ups with the appearance of the Woodnote remix, whose synths and crunchy, granular goodness are the fibre in Halogen's musical muesli. It forms an impressive ending to "/Remixed/" as we must call it.

Today's recommended track, Synaecide's remix, (track two) could be described as the allegro of the four movements. Its snippets of the album's overriding piano motif and heart-stoppingly beautiful grainy vocals will give listeners a taste of what to expect elsewhere in the EP. However, Synaecide has also pressed the big red button marked (wears nose-peg in distaste) “IDM” and given us a whirlwind of glitches and clicks that provide an outlet for the suppressed emotion in the other three tracks. It becomes an electro romp with a gnarly bass line punctuated by a brief mid-riff "skip" in tempo; a compositional flourish that I'm sure RWV would have enjoyed. If Woodnote adds fibre, Halogen - Length and Brecht (Synaecide Remix) adds roughage.

Free music is rather scrumptious, isn't it?

I'm now going to undermine completely my pretentious burblings about over-arching compositional structures, etc., by advising listeners to rearrange the tracks' order so that Halogen's effort is followed by Woodnote's and then Synaecide's. That way, your ears build towards a climax (I apologise for that mental image) and then get a rubdown from Field Rotation's chill-out track: when the piano motif resurfaces, it feels like an old friend has returned. I've listened to /Remixed/ a lot and the track order is the only minor quibble I have, even though I've wibbled on about the importance of structural unity. Me = idiot. The album is a treat however you want to listen to it.

I dust memove by - sorry, I must remove my nose-peg to admit that I have nothing against IDM per se apart from the term itself, which I think is nonsensical and divisive. I especially have nothing against IDMf netlabel, which should be proud of itself for releasing such marvellous collections, and the IDM Forum, which should be proud of itself for keeping its shy and retiring members safe and secure in their little padded cells. Please keep the wardens on their toes by sending the netlabel lots of congratulatory emails and a promise of a gold watch - if a Paypal icon ever appears on their site. ;)

Halogen - Length and Brecht (Remixed) (link to zipped album & individual files)

Halogen's blog and MySpace

IDMf netlabel