MAS & Travis McAlister’s Vintage Melancholia

M A S & Travis McAlister - The Fade Out Room (tube 243)

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a sonic photograph of ages past. M A S (aka Makram Abu-Shakra) and Travis McAlister, both talented multi-instrumentalists, have come together to create an atmosphere that hearkens back to the scratchy phonograph records of the early 20th century complete with subtle organ swells, a tinkling music box, a plastic trumpet and hints of old jazz. This is equal parts music production and sound design as the tracks invoke melancholic moods, while painting an aural portrait of empty rooms, jangling cans, flooded basements, peeling wallpaper, and faulty film projectors.

Listen to this first track from the album and you’ll understand:

It’s creepy, sublime music that gets under your skin. Partly because, like a broken record, it purposely repeats not just phrases, but whole sections of certain tracks immediately after a fadeout.

The Fade Out Room makes a perfect soundtrack for a gothic psychological thriller involving necromancy, or even an artsy indie film about mental illness. In its own way, it is a beautifully crafted piece that is haunting — both literally and figuratively.

Details:

• Download the entire album (56 MB) from the Test Tube Netlabel (Direct Link)
• Download page on the Test Tube Netlabel
• M A S website
• Travis McAlister’s bands: Nequaquam Vacuum myspace |The Krebsic Orkestar

Tags: ambient, field recording, lofi, USA

Bauhaus Cloud’s Film Music for Philistines

Bauhaus Cloud playing live

If there’s one thing Manila-based musician Bauhaus Cloud (aka Noel “Chox” Queja) is not, it’s boring. What he does is create soundtrack music for films that have yet to be made — taking orchestral samples and chopping them alongside jungle beats, or noodling with a piano track till it transforms into a doorbell, or slicing up a melodic sample until the micro-bits emit white noise.

It sounds like he’s overplayed his frayed copies of Goldie’s Saturnz Return and Bjork’s Vespertine till he can hear them in his sleep. Then he watches the Matrix trilogy for the 277th time to study the musical cues and see what he can sample from there.

The collection of tracks on Soundcloud entitled “So Last Year (2010 tracks)” could be called an EP, though in running time it more closely resembles a short album. Nevertheless, you get 5 tracks that are never boring, never predictable. It’s expansive, encompassing, and as one would expect from film music, dramatic.

Someone get this guy to score their film project ASAP.

Details:

• Download the collection of mp3s from his SoundCloud set

• Bauhaus Cloud on Facebook
• Bauhaus Cloud’s Soundcloud page
  

Tags: drum and bass, electronic, instrumental, jungle, Philippines, soundtrack

Audiophil’s sinister songs of modern isolation

On “Call Myself” [Phoke72], Berlin-based musician Audiophil (aka Nico Steckhan) and singer Pollyx create fragile, glitchy, IDM-laced synthpop with ghostly vocal melodies and minimal electronic arrangements that suggest rather than drown. Audiophil’s dainty beats and acoustic instruments (piano, guitar, drums) underscore stronger themes of emotional isolation and dislocation that suit the sparse, sterile melodies provided by Pollyx and at times, Audiophil himself.

“Forget the Time We Had” by Audiophil

Take the track “Forget the Time We Had.” The first half features a discordant acoustic piano coupled with the synth burblings and electronic beats and effects-laden vocals reminiscent of 80s synthpop. Soon, there is only the electronic stuff left, along with the sung line “Don’t miss you anymore / Completely forgot the time we had.” Like a sinister Depeche Mode or a soundtrack to a psychological thriller.

“Touched Me” by Audiophil

Other times, you get pretty, acoustic tunes like “Touched Me” that turn from a slow guitar ballad into a frenetic glitchy vocal track that sounds more pop than IDM. Or even the opening track “A Lake in the Desert” which transforms a very accessible chord progression from folk music into a pleasant pop track complete with thumping darbouka percussion and synth stabs.

The idea for the album title was taken from a Zen koan, which could explain why the arrangements contian a spartan, minimalist aesthetic that reminds me of oriental design.

Even as the album keeps emotion at a distance, it draws emotion from you as the listener. This is beautiful work which is sinister in its ordered chaos yet strangely enticing. A refreshing lake in the desert of modern music, indeed.

Details:

• Download it free from Phonocake records

• Artist’s website
• Audiophil on Last.fm

Here’s the “Making Of” video for Audiophil’s Call Myself:

Tags: electronic, Germany, glitch, idm, pop, vocals

Amniotic’s Abstract Liquid Guitar with Vocal Textures

More sound art than commercial audio product, this album which Amniotic describes as “lo-fi sounds from the Seaford Underground” combines liquid guitars and bass with improvisational vocals that are often barely discernible. Sometimes it’s a quick stitch of melody, or spoken word poetry or lo-fidelity recordings of a disconnected, discordant tune. And then from time to time, you get actual melodic lines and lyrics such as those on “The Valley of Wine” and “The Message is Clear” (although to be honest, it wasn’t all that clear to me).

There are no drums, no overt beats, no loops. Instead, the minimal instrumentation uses sound as a texture, weaving vaguely surreal field recordings and stringed instruments into a bizarre experience straddling the line between art and chaos, between reality and nightmare.

These questions occur to me while listening to the massive, 17-track album Let the Dogs Erode: Is this the ghost of melodies past? Is this a packaged product or a drug? And on songs like “Soliel,” is this the sung melancholia of a million aborted fetuses who once swam in amniotic fluids?

The artist name actually makes sense in a strange way. If amniotic fluid or liquor amnii is the nourishing and protecting liquid contained by the amniotic sac of a pregnant woman, then this music is the nourishing, flowing water of your subconscious which feeds nightmares and slow-motion dream sequences.

It’s tender, it’s unsettling, it’s fragile, it’s awash in reverb, and yet sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered. Who knew field recordings plus guitar music could produce something so dangerous?

Artist’s Self Description:
Started improvising with a whole heart in 2006 on modified guitars and a home-made drum kit (made by my collaborator – Carl Henderson).
Began recording and editing jam sessions.
Began recording solo work in the beginning of 2010.
Collated works into double album in 2011.
Studying at the University of Brighton currently.

Details:

• Amniotic’s album on Bandcamp
• Caul-Imprint, the artist’s blog.

Tags: acoustic, ambient, atmospheric, field recording, guitar, lofi, UK, vocals

Electronic Encounters – a New Soundtrack to Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind

The album’s name says it all: Electronic Encounters – Music inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K). A group of various musicians came together and wrote music inspired by the 1977 Steven Spielberg film, most even included the 5-tone “motif” used to communicate with the aliens. What this is then is a homage and a new soundtrack — made for those who enjoyed the movie and for those yet to realize how much of a contributing factor the movie was to pop culture, specifically The X-Files and Fringe.

But what about the tracks themselves? Mostly ambient, mostly introspective shoegazing electronic meanderings, but also some almost pop-like gems. Some with beats, others with spoken word samples. All containing elements of mystery and awe necessary for an extra-terrestrial experience.

Moving from the dreamy shivering pop of Golau Glau’s “Seeing this Shape” to Neil Fellowes’ new age reworking of the alien motif in “Encounter” to the swirly ambient dub of Pye Corner Audio’s “Are We There Yet?” to the glamorous 80s-style electro of Black Cat Clap Clap’s “Manor Park 1983″ to the abstract spoken word sound art of Dolly Dolly’s “Mr. Taylor’s Trousers,” the whole album is surprise after surprise of the eerie and enjoyable.

The anchor that holds the 13-song album together is atmosphere. They all have it. They all drown in it. Immerse yourself into their atmosphere as if in a good dream, and relive the excitement of seeing silvery aliens for the first time.

Details

• Album: free download on Bandcamp http://electronicencounters.bandcamp.com/
• The Electronic Encounters Blog
• Everything you always wanted to know about CE3K

Stream This Release:

Tags: ambient, atmospheric, electronic, soundtrack