abasio

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is great! If you don't mind comedic sci fi (well written and not just lol funny) then you should check out the 5 part trilogy

I am in the middle of reading all the foundation books. On Foundation and Earth now...I am at this point wondering whether I should go on to Asimov's prequels or the other Authors who continued the timeline and then go back in time & read the prequels

as he looks into the silence, he hears the life that has passed by unnoticed

I was listening to Krill.Minima - Nautica as I took these

Shulamn - In Search of a Meaningful Moment

Well, go on then Shamelessly bashing crapolla

I'm open to everything but have my favourite genres in which I think I like more than I do with other genres. For me average ambient is better than average rock but great rock is still great, you know?

I'd have loved to but I am just really busy at the moment My own site has so few reviews this year

Yagya - Rigning (Sending Orbs) Kliment - The Perpetual Ritual (Electrik Dream Records) Solar Fields - Movements (Ultimae) V/A - Imaginary Friends (Ultimae) V/A - Hope (Fluid Audio) Principles Of Flight - Chaos Opera (Timecode Records)

Bookmarked

Downloading now

:wub: :wub: Can't wait

Artist: Various Title: Hope Label: Fluid Audio Released: 8th June 2009 Style: IDM, Downtempo, Ambient Tracklist 1 Ishq – Forever 10:41 2 Snakestyle – Hopeful 6:28 3 Field Rotation – Regenzeit 8:18 4 James Murray – Fingersand 7:10 5 Iambic – Turn The Seasons 2:17 6 Bersarin Quartett – Was Uns Bleibt 4:45 7 Playb – Acoustics Of The Piano (Plucked) 6:33 8 Halogen – Sunriser 5:21 9 Ben Beiny – Start Again 5:00 10 Iambic – Flags 4:10 11 Digitonal – We Three 4:56 12 Hol Baumann – Time To Change 5:01 13 Ben Beiny – A Part Of You (Digipak Bonus) 2:42 Fluid Audio is a new record label and they say that they will be focusing on limited edition and varied format releases from a growing roster of artists, composers, and producers. That every release from the label will be focusing on selected themes with the emphasis on pushing the artists to their creative limits, raising the standards in electro-acoustic sounds. They also say the will be creating new diverse styles, never standing still, and making sure that the listener is given access to frequencies that push boundaries within the creative process of electro-acoustic manipulation. Quite a boast from a new untested record label and it could be something that is difficult to live up to. There debut release Hope though goes a long way in my opinion to back up this audacious claim. Hope’s theme is, as you might have already guessed, Hope! The notes in the booklet tucked into sleeve of the digipak tells us about the Toybox charity and there mission to bring hope to disadvantaged children, outlines their vision and informs of the fact that there are millions of children living on the street with short life expectancies. Also 50% of the sales (not profits) will go to the Toybox charity. This is all stirring stuff but there have been many compilations out in the past that have been for a good cause but have been utter garbage. That is not the case here however. Here is a compilation that I would want to buy even if the MO was to take all the money for themselves and buy big expensive cars to crash into walls with. Looking at the tracklist I saw many artists I love and many unknown to me. The artist I knew already didn’t let me down & the new-to-me artists surprised me in a good way. The music here is just top notch, brilliantly produced and serenely played. It is soft and glitchy at times, ambient and beaty at others. It goes through genres like natural ambient, downbeat, IDM and post rock. There is nothing clichéd here, no preachy samples or cheesy messages in the music. The whole charity message is left in the booklet and promo speech leaving the music to speak for itself and it speaks very well. The CD starts off with Ishq – Forever and this track is worth the money alone. This is one of the best Ishq tracks I have ever heard despite a slightly rocky start. It is soft and beautiful with floating and haunting melodies. The vocal makes me feel very nostalgic but I can’t quite put my finger on what it reminds me off. It puts me in mind of some fantasy epic with some older than the Earth goddess talking to me in my hour of need. A great track to start the compilation, something very special indeed. Starting with such an epic track can be risky if the succeeding tracks are not up to par with it. Have no fear though because although Forever remains my favourite track on the CD the tracks that follow it are still amazing and the fact that they are so diverse yet so in keeping with each other makes it feel even better. The next three tracks sound like some very high quality Ultimae style ambient. Regenzeit by Field Rotation was an excellent surprise. I had never heard much from Field Rotation before but after this beautifully haunting melancholic track I will definitely be on the look out for more Field Rotation stuff. James Murray – Fingersand also has great melancholic melodies equal to the tracks on his album Where Edges Meet. After this we hit a more post rock kind of stage, a short track Turn The Seasons by Iambic sounds has great soulful piano melodies and Was Uns Bleibt by Bersarin Quartet has heavy but slow and spaced out rock beats. This is not usually the sort of music I’d rush out and buy but hearing it hear I wonder why I am in that point of view. I feel like my musical horizons are too narrow and that I might be missing out on a lot of good music. Then I realise that it would be impossible to keep up with all the music I might think is amazing and I must just hope that great stuff like this will find its way to me more in the future. Acoustics of the piano (plucked) by Playb has no piano in it which is surprising but it does however have great melodies played on instruments I can’t quite figure out what they are. They sound like a magical harp made of gold & played by some enchanted elf queen alone in a tower in a kingdom run by trolls, it sounds very fairy tale like, in a Grimm way. Keeping in a similar feel but an altogether different style is Halogen – Sunriser really nice warm melodies and glitchy beats create a happy ending feel for our lonely queen locked in a tower. Start Again by Ben Beiny is a return to the Piano melodies and another stand out track for me. A simple sad piano melody is played with some dark urban textures in the background. Some nice shuffling beats come in with a slight post rock feel to it which is continued with Iambic’s second offering Flags which is longer than the previous track and has an advert type feel to it. We Three by Diagonal & Time To Change by Hol Baumann round off the compilation in fine style. They are all nice bassy numbers with soft recurring melodies and cool atmospheres. We Three has some great strings in it while Time To Change sounds like all the tracks on Baumann’s album. A Part Of You by Ben Beiny feels more like an epilogue to the compilation. It feels like a ray of acoustic hope in the melancholy of the preceding tracks. So a damn fine compilation, not just a bunch of tracks thrown together for a good cause, something that has been thought about and lovingly compiled. Fans of downtempo electronica should check this out, it’s a great compilation and it’s for a good cause. I am very happy I bought it, one of the albums of the year for me. www.fluidaudio.co.uk www.toyboxcharity.org.uk

Artist: Aes Dana Title: Leylines Label: Ultimae Records Released: 3rd June 2009 Tracklist 1 Alignments (7:57) 2 Bam (Album Edit) (7:58) 3 Oxyd (8:37) 4 Heights (6:59) 5 Adonaï (9:01) 6 Leylines (9:11) 7 Lysistrata (Album Edit) (9:23) 8 Signs (6:44) 9 Inter (6:04) 10 Blossom (6:06) Aes Dana, Vince Villuis one of the Co-founders of Ultimae Records (which is still one of my favourite labels around), is out with his 4th album Leylines. Vince’s ambient style of soft floating melodies and subtle beats being broken up by big thumping beats is a style that has enthralled me in the past. His first 3 albums, Season 5, Aftermath & Memory Shell were incredibly fine works of art. They are the kind of albums that whilst listening to in your living room with the distraction of your partner/kids/pet/work/etc never sound that interesting but take it into a relaxed space without any distractions and his music opens up for you. The level of sonic structures and the melancholic feeling that seems to be the calling card of many Ultimae artists, flows over you and I for one never get tired of hearing it. With this right place, right time and right frame of mind style it can be easy to buy the album not connect and put it on your shelf. This I have done with about half of all Ultimae albums I have bought but I have come back to all of them and in the end I have ended up loving them. Leylines has it all, it has some purely soft ambient tracks like the opening Alignments as well as other tracks that are a mix of soft ambience then some pounding ketamine trance then back to ambient like Lysistrata. Both have a very urban night time feel to them and are very visual allowing my mind to create all kinds of urban scenes for me to watch as I am listening. For the totally ambient tracks it is easy to float away, I feel like I am rising high through the city, up and over rooftops and looking down at the limited night time activity in the streets below. I really get a feeling of that orange street light that bathes everything in a warm glow that can make you feel toasty even on a winter’s night. With the soft trippy beats that massage my mind I can float on in peace dreaming up different situations, a woman silently shouting at her boyfriend in the middle of a street, a man walking home after finishing very late a work, a dog running or even a homeless man trying to stay warm. All of these urban scenes are bathed in that warm ethereal glow and played out silently as if completely detached from my own reality. The tracks with more of an upbeat feeling allow for a more active role in the events that unfold in the mind. Instead of floating above everything I am in the thick of it. In the middle of a dance floor at a warehouse party, operating the machines in a factory making something that nobody know what it actually is or walking in the street as a Chinese carnival procession snakes its way through you. These are of course just some examples but every time I listen to the album I see different scenes unfolding. For me this album is the aural equivalent of people watching. I think the perfect time & place to listen to this would be with good headphones sitting next to the window of a second storey coffee shop overlooking a busy street and watching everyone as they go passed, see how they interact with each other and with the world. Stand outs include Oxyd a very soft track that always has me feeling like it is going to kick off into something much harder but never actually does. It has my heart pushed right to edge of a cliff & I can see the huge fall down to the bottom & I have the feeling like I could fall but I never actually do. The melody in this track is really nice. It is dreamy and it feels like it never tries to make you like it; it is natural and never rushes anything giving the track a lovely feeling of going at your own pace. The title track, Leylines as it is a perfect example of simple ketamine trance. The beat is steady and plodding the whole way through. The melodies are simple and infectious and the background has a lot of dreamy ethereal synth drones going on. It has breakdowns and build-ups just like regular trance but at a much slower pace. It’s like really good progressive being played through a dense fog. Magic stuff. The best on the album is Lysistrata which was also on Opus Iridium last year but even after a year it is still a masterpiece. I have played it in my sets time and time again and it always goes down well. The real beauty of this track though is the vocal/melody. I’m not sure what it is, some kind of synth but it puts me in mind of lost souls desperately crying out to the intruder that has stepped into the ocean of lost souls & trying desperately to scramble up & escape the tedium of the nether world that tortures them eternally. It’s beautiful in a really depressing way. This has such emotion that can only be got from electronic music of the highest order. Signs is simply a haunting ambient track with a synth drone like a light howling wind and a vocal that sounds like it is coming out of a church in a dark religious horror flick. This album is another winner from Aes Dana. I had my doubts when I first got it as I thought I had the perfect place (my very own music room, just for listening to music) but my head was not in the right place. My mind was too cluttered and I didn’t focus well enough, always thinking of a distraction. Problems at work kept filtering in as well as domestic problems. But once I relaxed and was easily able to empty my mind, this album emptied its contents into my head. I really love it now and I think it is not just a time & place album but a time, place and state of mind. Some albums help me relax, no matter what’s happening in my life I can put them on and my troubles float away. This is not one of them; I need to be relaxed already before I put this on to fully enjoy it. The CD comes in a deluxe digipak with a 16 page booklet. The pictures are as usual very beautiful and match the album’s music very well. I love the feeling of cartography on the inside of the digipak although I am not falling in love with the front cover, something about the hands that I just don’t like. The booklet again is filled with great shots, my favourites being the bud on the inside of the front page and the tribute to Season 5 on the inside of the back cover with the ladybird. My least favourite is unfortunately the picture of the man himself, it’s just so out of place.

Sweet! Will be looking forward to that

Forever I saw a copy in Yokohama, I never bought it as I have it but next time I am there (I moved away ) I will see if it's still there!

Did you remember the names of any other sites? I couldn't remember the name of psyshop but it wasn't from being poor, just from not using that particular disservice

You can buy it then

Bluetech - The Divine Invasion

I love it when you've been listening to a set and an old track comes in, it brings a nice nostalgic feel to it As to why DJs don't do it I don't know but I think they should more. Maybe they are trying to keep modern artists happy, maybe they are jusst boring?