STYLE
Deeply chilled ambient electronic soundscapes. This latest compilation from the excellent Aleph Zero label pulls together some of the most cutting edge sounds in the world of drifting, glitch infested downtempo currently advancing over the horizon. The music ranges from intensely beautiful and dreamy to somewhat disconcerting and alien. Ovnimoon contribute a gorgeous track called Cajita De Sorpresas where buoyant hazy pads support a lustrous, fluid lead against an insectile, intricate beat. An interesting collaboration from Omnimotion and I Awake entitled Rebooting Daisy maintains the blissful, hypnotic floatational approach with a slightly dislocated groove lumbering aside sensuous female vocal layers and some delicately sparse melodic touches. Vataff Project's Owl is an example of the more disconcerting nature of darkness - a scratchy percussive track with a sequence of uneasy drones and sci-fi mechanisms. The album winds down with Shulman's One Step Closer; here remixed by Eitan Reiter and DJ Shahar. Maintaining the spacey vibe of the previous piece, this broad composition introduces a reverberating sax that luxuriates in the groove driven expanse before dropping away into a beatless pool of shifting synthetic currents. The concluding track is from Minilogue Feat. Inid Imman: a ponderous, gently thudding form with guitar manipulations and ample surface damage - light whispers and minimal melody - mesmerising light-headeness - heartbeat pump - fade to black.

MOOD
Dark Room Beats is an album full of brooding low-light atmosphere where periodic surges of warmth course through the night shadows and luminous colours twinkle and glow. The name is well chosen - this is certainly one for enjoying with a good sound system in a darkened room - or maybe for creating your own relaxing, dusky mindscape elsewhere during your day. Full of feeling, with an unhurried approach and ample room given over to building up mood and ambience.

ARTWORK
In keeping with the theme, artwork for Dark Room Beats is resolutely black across every panel. The front cover holds a simple image of a glowing lamp, yellow-orange and warm upon an infinite darkness. Flipping over, a tracklist is on the rear, set alongside a duplicate of the lamp. Turning to the insert, this opens out into three panels with a second tracklist on the outer first, simple logo on the central. Inside there is a section given over to thanks, a second with a more graphic representation of the familiar lamp form, contact details below, the third section presents an expanded tracklist, this time with writing credits and some additional performance information.

OVERALL
Aleph Zero compilations are always something of a delight. This one took three years of meticulous work to "design the room's sonic surroundings". The label is clearly intent on setting the standard for others to follow with this collection, Shahar and Shulman having selected thirteen pieces of visionary ambient glitch-chill that are of amazing quality and gratifying consonance. A number of Aleph Zero favourites are of course here: Shulman, Hibernation, Omnimotion, Vataff Project and Krusseldorf. Label head DJ Shahar brings his talent to bear in sharing with Eitan Reiter to remix the Shulman track One Step Closer. Other artists include Altair, Phasephour, Ovnimoon, I Awake, Good Rester, Alexander Daf, Aligning Minds and Minilogue Feat. Inid Imman. Robert Rich provides another highlight with Moth Wings: a lush, coruscating piece of sonic chiaroscuro featuring a meandering, sonorous flute.
Promotional material suggests "Come relaxed and open minded, turn off the lights, and let us take you somewhere else without ever leaving your room." Why not explore the eflier and see if you'd like to take up the invitation.


WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
Dark Room Beats will appeal to downtempo fans that enjoy the more ambient side of the genre. This is a high quality release that the more discerning listener will appreciate. Aleph Zero and Ultimae seem to excel in this type of lush, glitchy chillout.

SOLAR CAMEL - TRAIN IN A RAINBOW (REISSUE)

STYLE
Warm, inviting new-age electronica with strong emphasis on melody and thematic development. Many compositions here, such as Sailing and Solemnis are formed around carefully constructed lead lines where the melodic arrangements take centre stage, whereas tracks like Hunting, for example, are more rhythmic at heart, allowing layered phrases and sequencial patterns to drive the music.With percussive content often to the fore, Train in a Rainbow sees each track unfold to a different programmed beat, most of which are bright, lively synthetic affairs of mid to uptempo pace. Sometimes, as with The Lake, grooves are accompanied by percolating arpeggios, other pieces feature fusion rhythms with ethnic percussion.

MOOD
Train In A Rainbow has a positive, light mood for the most part, combining the warmth and overt passion of new-age music with the electronic mechanism of much Berlin school electronica. There are some dramatic pieces with orchestral or string sections, whilst at the other end of the spectrum there are some dance tracks with something of an 80s synth pop feel. The liquid clarity of the sonic palette and the uncluttered nature of the arrangements give the album a rather high-tech sound with a peaceful, lucid quality.

ARTWORK
The updated album arrives in a jewelcase with single sheet insert. The front cover image features a colourful graphic locomotive apparently travelling along a twisting rainbow. This same image is repeated on the rear cover only here it is faded away into ghostly pallor with track titles overlaid. At the foot of this back panel can be found website details and an email contact address.

OVERALL
Agostino Mascarello's solo project Solar Camel released the Train in a Rainbow album (previously reviewed at Morpheus Music) in 2009. The disc has since been given an overhaul with attention paid to providing a more consistent track list focussing on electronic sounds. The classical side of Agostino's personality can be experienced through the Roots and Wings album also reviewed recently at Morpheus. Once again Agostino's digital piano/synth/vocals are accompanied by the voice of Brazilian born Déia. The new disc consists of no less than eighteen tracks and can be found at CD Baby or alternately you can sample some tracks and keep up with new developments at the Solar Camel Myspace page.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
Train in a Rainbow is an album for lovers of synthesiser music with a new-age pop sensibility. Working a similar territory to Zer0 0ne, Vitaly and Mythos - this music might well be appreciatd by listeners enjoying gently energetic modern sounds with electro-groove beats. If you're wondering whether this is one for you - why not sample each of the tracks at CD Baby?

JAZZ COMPUTER.ORG - LIFE UNFOLDING

STYLE
Ambient synthetic instrumentals with jazzy influences. Life - Unfolding is a suite of six compositions that flow together into a unified whole. Spacey synths are central to the sound of this album - smooth, silken layers of tone that are used to establish an expanse, to suggest gentle undulating motion, to build entrancing harmonious drone beds and shifting sound clouds. Passages of beatless, floatation are set amongst sections of lazy, peaceful beats. Strongly effected lead guitar at times provides dreamy chord forms embellished by lustrous chimes such as Concealing Brightness. Air and Water Laps, on the other hand finds a far more dynamic lead style driving over a burbling synth sequence that seems to build almost imperceptibly from the atmosphere. In these more active moments Yves' appreciation of 70's prog rock can be noticed among the jazz based structures. The artist's own promotional material explains: "With intensive use of synths (and no samples or loops, except for the percussions which are sampled instruments), the jazz elements of this music are to be found in the harmonics and chords used, and the way guitar improvisations are played."!

MOOD
Life - Unfolding is a very restful album - whether drifting weightlessly on airy electronic wafts and currents or flowing with the greater urgency of the rhythmic portions of the music, the emphasis is primarily one of pleasant tranquillity. The music also has something of a sense of wonder - often a dreamy, natural optimism. There is a constant warmth that runs throughout the album imbuing the pieces with a glowing serenity that nicely enhances the relaxing nature of the harmonies.

ARTWORK
The cover art to Life - Unfolding is a rather beautiful artificial landscape. Here a craggy mound juts out into a still body of deep blue water burnished with subtle ripples. The eye is drawn among the stark forms of the rocks to an elegant purple leaved tree at the crest of the crag. This unusual life form is lit by a bright shaft of sunlight that sets the clouds into chiaroscuro and bathes the central portion of the scene with a radiant glow. Complementary text picks up the hue of the foliage completing the prime design.

OVERALL
Jazz Computer.org is the work of Yves Potin a lover of progressive rock in the 1970s and later a great fan of jazz and jazz fusion. Yves is an accomplished jazz guitar player, having played since his childhood. He has also enjoyed working with computer based music since the early days of the Atari ST. Jazz Computer.org presents albums for free download via the artist's website, where currently you can discover six releases dating back to the debut album of 2006. Life - Unfolding sees the artists exploring a more deeply ambient soundscape than previously, wherein deft guitar improvisations play in concrete juxtaposition. The six pieces here owe a debt of inspiration to ambient master Thom Brennan that can be noted in the delicate softness of the multi-layered pads and drones.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
Life - Unfolding is an album that straddles spacey ambient and jazz guitar genres, with a somewhat new-age relaxational vibe to it. This is music for listeners that enjoy the warm softness of layered synth drones with the additional interest value of electric guitar improvisation. Why not visit the official website and listen to the samples at www.jazzcomputer.org .

YUBABA - PARADISO

STYLE
Downtempo songs and instrumentals with a Brazilian flavour. Yubaba take a fairly freestyle approach to their music drawing on a variety of genres from dub and reggae to house and electro. Brass flourishes and trumpet playing from guest Dan Covan, guitars and a real drum sound give the band something of a 'live' sound which is further enhanced by the frequent lyrical content. Singers both male and female contribute vocal performances in different languages: collaborators Thailan, Blacklight, and Nathalia Faria providing the human touch. Bouncing bass lines and squelching synth-work intertwine acoustic guitars, sax phrases and well placed crunchy effects.

MOOD
Yubaba's sound is a crisp 'real' sound that relies less on programmed arpeggiation and digital mechanism than much current downbeat music. The collaborating musicians and singers do much to give the album a soulful, concert feel. There is also an underlying tropical atmosphere to the whole album, a relaxed exuberance and warmth that justifies the title.

ARTWORK
Paradiso arrives in a jewelcase with a two-panel fold-out insert. The front cover features a female figure against a bright beach scene. Sharp graphic curlicues and floral twists overlay the broad brown border and main image and scroll around the titles. The rear cover contains another beach photograph in a slim upright frame allowing space for track titles to run alongside to the right. Within, along with further seashore imagery is a second tracklist with credits, a generous section of thanks and brief recording details.

OVERALL
Yubaba deliver their debut album following a number of compilation album appearances and international live performances. Paradiso is released via Cyberset Records and can be found in CD format at such standard outlets as Juno, Arabesque, Psyshop e SaikoSounds. Brazil-based duo Pedro Gomide and Frederico Drummond combine their broad minded musical talents on this smooth eleven track release. Promotional material from Cyberset explains: "They joined their skills in this project where mixing influences from their roots, they touch the listeners recreating the eclectic and open minded mood you could only find in Brasil. Yubaba evolves from dub into lounge with a trip hop feeling and an electro taste.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
If you enjoy chilled music with a concert atmosphere and plenty of real performance elements this is an album for you. You listen to the album at the band's website: http://yubaba.info/

Fredrik Ohr - Falling Through The Earth

STYLE
Dreamy, glitchy ambient chillout. Fredrik Öhr has created one of the most individual sounding electronic albums that I have heard in a long time. Clearly carried somehow by the tides of current downtempo and psychill, Falling Through The Earth benefits from cutting edge digital sophistication, blissful glitchy beats and global interconnection - yet at the same time this music is delightfully different and idiosyncratic with beautifully beguiling atmospheres, brittle textures and unaffected honesty. Rich, heady flutes waft in contrast to the flicker and flutter of glitch-breaks; plaintive piano and Middle-Eastern pipes interplay over bright crackle on the beautiful, beautiful A Day For Great Deeds; jazzy sounds and forms arise alongside international song in subtle flavours such as the doped double bass and muted wails of Morning Ritualism - dappled synthetic lights playing behind. Vocal content is frequent, yet rarely dominant - poetic phrases in a wistful gated female voice, sampled chants from around the world, Fredrik's own singing, vocoder musings and the spoken word. Not an album of arpeggios and sequencer forms, not an album of overt melodic themes (although some sweetly delicate melodies are certainly present), Falling Through The Earth is the music of shifting textures, deft layering and beguiling beats.

MOOD
The dominant mood of Falling Through The Earth is one of enchanting, exotic serenity. Crisp, lustrous soundscapes of playful, abstract forms that at times are so light and airy as to almost float away. There is often the sense of relaxing somewhere hot and dry, not anywhere special, somewhere personal yet far off - contradictory mindscapes arising and morphing constantly - a testament to the evocative power of Öhr's music. The gorgeous water movements and tropical environmental elements of Return that are echoed in the subsequent bubbling electro/tabla-beat and idle vocalisations leave the listener floating far from shore on warm waters under a euphoric sun.

ARTWORK
As unusual as the music - Falling Through The Earth is fronted by a drawing of tightly crowded figures, clustered in the lower half of the panel. They could have started out as fingerprints - this little knot of faces has a primitive, tribal quality to it - full of aboriginal style patterns, short lines and dots. As the three panel insert is removed from the package these peculiar persons now hang from the upper half of the next panel as if gathered now at the opposite end of the earth. Behind the CD itself a darkened close-up of the same faces here fills the whole tray. The rear of the package presents a tracklist and a discussion of the project that introduces Fredrik Öhr himself and his music. Further sections of the insert carry instrumental credits, poetic sources and production details. Here too are website and email addresses along with a generous listing of thanks.

OVERALL
Stockholm based musician and producer Fredrik Öhr releases his debut album Falling through the Earth through the much respected Aleph-Zero label. Pursuing the label's interest in high-quality international electro-acoustic downtempo; this new album could hardly suit Aleph-Zero better. Fredrik Öhr both fits in like something eminently familiar, in keeping with the 'house sound' and simultaneously breaks mold, sounding fresh and unexpected. The fourteen tracks of the album have a pleasing, confident unity about them yet follow no obvious formula - each piece taking the drift of the album off in a new direction, a meandering journey of discovery that is constantly turning up new surprises. Collaborating artists bring soprano saxophone, acoustic guitar, quena, bamboo flute, double bass and percussion as well as vocal content to the mix. Promotional material describes the music as "a wonderful dreamy and fresh combination of North European atmospheres and textures interlaced with Asian influences, all dipped in 70s psychedelic delicate feel" - yes yes yes! I strongly suggest you explore the E-flier for this release wherein you can read information on the album and the artist whilst sampling every track.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
If you enjoy quirky downtempo with an international leaning - this could be one for you. Falling Through The Earth will especially enchant you if you aren't looking for a steady downtempo-trance beat; the rhythms here are delicate and fragile, not regular and thumping. Listen to the E-flier.

STYLE
Rhythmic and ambient electronica. Chikatetsu is a subtle album of constantly shifting emphasis - opening with a pattern of high pitched delicate notes and steady drone, the album gets under way with a sense of unhurried class. Building into a restfully throbbing bass groove this initial track features the kind of tuneful, freeform harmony and artfully layered human-artificial structures that dominate the album. Barely discernable station voices and subway sounds occasionally inhabit the somewhat abstract musical forms that run in narrative flow. Some passages have a strongly mechanical rhythm suggestive of fleeting motion - rolling sequencer forms driving light melodic phrases. Other sections reveal a jazz influence, with lustrous vibes and muted chimes dancing among the synth voices. The music features Tim Gerwing on keyboards, guitars, bass, electronics, vocals and drum programming with musicians Besart Hysniu delivering keyboards, programming, remixing, electronics, David Picking ride cymbals and Terry O'Brien guitar, guitar synths. There is often a mesmerising sense of detachment about the music as if the listener were a lonely observer among busy meandering crowds - at rest among the currents of urban activity.

ARTWORK
Chikatetsu comes in a sharp card wallet (these really are so much nicer than jewelcases) of saturated colour. The front image is a motion blurred train caught momentarily passing through a station - broad black borders making the night-time hues appear to positively glow. The reverse holds a tube map layered upon a carriage interior - here are a series of evocative, descriptive terms that might help the potential listener to imagine something of the nature of the music. Within, the two panel sleeve holds track details on the left and additional information on the right. Instrumental and technical credits along with thanks and download details.

OVERALL
Born and based currently in Canada Tim Gerwing has been interested in music since early childhood. Having studied classical piano, Tim branched out to explore jazz, electronic, new age, progressive rock/pop, and Middle and Far Eastern styles. He has been releasing music as a solo artist since 2002 when his debut Being To Being was released under his own record label. This current disc contains thirteen tracks that that work around the theme of Japanese subway travel and experience. Promotional material explains Chikatetsu as 'the “underground iron”, the subway system that is the heart of public transportation in the large cities of Japan'. Further wording suggests "ambient textures -> electronic musical maps -> hyper-cultural leitmotifs -> fractal audio perspectives -> psycho-emotional sonic imagery. The beautifully designed website contains sound samples and further information if you'd like to check it out at http://www.lascaux21.com/chikatetsu/

FIELD ROTATION - LICHT UND SCHATTEN

STYLE
Beautiful electronic glitchscapes with various acoustic elements. Field Rotation is a project with a rare sense of elegant beauty. The subtle classical threads that twine through these digital arrangements imbue the music with a dignity and grace that immediately lifts Licht und Schatten above the norm. The melodic content is relatively minimal, yet these sparse soundtracks are highly emotive, heavy with atmosphere and most inviting. Melancholy acoustic guitar hangs over heaving synthetic pads in melodic calm, whilst in other passages tense string swells ebb and flow in dramatic shadow. Plaintive piano and transmission fragments alternate with string snatches upon a bed of sonic breeze, the crunch of footfalls rises and falls behind days-end glow, faint arpeggios morph across rhythmic electronica. Once the understated beats roll in, the music almost sighs at times with a restrained serenity. Click-ridden scratchy rhythms and soft crackle adorn the more regular beats that drive some of the recordings, some pieces have no beat for the most part or none at all.

MOOD
Licht und Schatten has an otherworldly quality about it, a sublime soft focus warmth. Most pieces have a gentle solemnity, a wistful nature - that beautiful sadness that tugs at the heart. This sense of quietude, however, is not all pervasive - dark moments, ominous regions have their places. Tiefflug has something of a sci-fi theme - bubbling bassline cycling beneath acidic synth motifs.

ARTWORK Fluid Audio have excelled with the packaging of this special edition EP. The disc comes in a four panel tray presented in a hand stitched fabric sleeve. A full colour poster, badge and an additional surprise (I won't spoil it) are all included in the set. A paper slip enwraps the sleeve bearing the title of the album - everything tasteful and with that feel of something special. This might all be a bit suspect if it weren't for the quality of the music - Fluid are not trying to sucker listeners in by means of package overkill - rather this is a fantastic limited edition item that feels special through and through.


OVERALL Violinist, pianist, composer and producer Christoph Berg s based in Kiel, Germany and began the Field Rotation project in 2008. This limited edition EP of only 100 signed and numbered copies is the stepping stone for Field Rotation to make the leap from compilation appearances to full length album. The Fluid Audio label anticipates a complete album sometime in 2010 - meanwhile this release whets the appetite for a project that seems set to sit among the front runners of the genre. The digital version of Licht und Schatten holds only four of the seven pieces found on the CD so don't wait - get in quickly and experience the whole thing. You can hear the music on the Fluid Audio website as well as getting a chance to see the presentation of the limited edition if you need to.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
This is a quality EP that will appeal to fans of both the electro-neo-classic and minimalist chillout genres. Fans of Deaf Centre, Ultimae, Bersarin Quartett and the likes will love Licht und Schatten.