Review Corner

Category: Ambient

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    Flevans: A Short Distance To Fall

    Flevans is a multi-instrumentalist, DJ and, according to his Bandcamp, with an “accessible style” that straddles funk, breaks, soul and electronica. That really saves writing any review, because that’s about what it is. Still, we get paid by the word so … It’s a really good album, nudging in as our contender for album of…

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    Wylderness: Big Plans For A Blue World

    This is a nice little album for fans of dreamy indie rock and shoegaze (mostly without the volume), with elements of folk. You could turn to Swedish post-rock band Logh (pronounced Log) as a soundalike, or then again Martin John Henry, the Scottish fella who was in De Rosa but whose The Other Half Of…

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    Pete Judge: Piano 2

    Kicking sand in the face of under-achievers everywhere is Pete Judge, a professional trumpet player with the jazz / rock quartet Get The Blessing, but who can play more than one instrument, in this case the piano; this is a collection of tunes he wrote for another band he’s in, Three Cane Whale. It’s a…

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    Thomas Bartlett: Shelter

    Pianist/producer Thomas Bartlett has toured the world and worked with people from The National to David Byrne and produced the likes of St Vincent and Sufjan Stevens, with whom he earned Academy award and Grammy award nominations. But like all the rest of us, come lockdown he was stuck at home with only his piano…

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    Stumbleine: Sink Into The Ether

    Producer Stumbleine’s seventh album, offers, say the Press notes, “a deep submergence within a celestial upper region somewhere beyond the clouds”, which in a nutshell is Moby in his more thoughtful moments. It’s a decent album, albeit low key: one for late nights and reflection. If you weren’t locked in your house, it would be…

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    Basil Athanasiadis: Book Of Dreams

    This is a delightful album of Japanese-inspired music from the Shonorities, an ensemble created by Greek composer Basil Athanasiadis. It’s an album of music that’s barely music — often more of a background ambient sound. It reminds us of Steve Hillage’s Rainbow Dome Musick, an ambient album released in 1979. Brian Eno, who pioneered ambient…

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    Lasse Marhaug: Gjota

    So: hands up all those who know Congleton has its own record label? Beartown Records was founded in 2009 “in the treehouse at the former Naturecraft pottery works,” says its website, and it releases “anything we like or don’t like” it says, “the only common thread is that each artist must have a link to…

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    Francisco de Peñalosa: Lamentations

    This is a beautiful collection of religious music from the Renaissance. If you like religious vocal music that errs towards the sombre — the album title gives it away— this is a must. The singing is fantastic and the acoustics of wherever it was recorded only add to the experience. Peñalosa’s music is redolent of…

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    Chris Gall and Mulo Francel: Mythos

    Saxophonist Mulo Francel is well known (though not to us; we won’t pretend) for his work with platinum-selling jazz/world quartet Quadro Nuevo; Gall is a fifth member for live gigs. Kulturnews magazine credits Francel with the “most sensuous saxophone sound in Europe”. The idea of this album apparently began at the end of a hard…

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    Death by Piano: Countdown EP

    On one hand this could be called a little samey, on the other we’re always sad when it ends; it’s too short. We assumed the title meant a lot of piano but it’s chilled-out synth. (We did find out that death by piano is very rare: a report we found said that virtually every case…