#onlyambient

On a bit of a Pjusk wave at the moment; couldn't tell you why I hadn't paid enough attention to his work previously, there's some incredible Ambient/Ambient Techno workings within his catalogue and this track is no exception. Chilly, Arctic minimalism contained in a more jovial shell; sounds a bit like Kiln just without the sun-drenched blissout. 

I am readying myself for the new Lusine album this coming February by re-exploring his extensive back-catalogue; there are some real gems within it, I must say.

Well Dead Can Dance went down a storm, so here's some more Neoclassical Darkwave for ya'll with Arcana. 

Slowcore, Post-Rock, Ambient, pick any or all of the above. I'm way too tired to go into genre classification, and at this point I don't care too much. It fits in with the theme of the blog, that's all that counts :)

I guess I should probably upload something then; this is from the new Dead Can Dance album, their first release in about 16 years. One of my favourite albums of the year, no joke; stunning darkwave

Help your indie cred by listening to this small-time Bandcamp artist, Jahktute. Brilliant little Drone album by an unknown.

Releasing a final album before a band breaks up is a tricky business; releasing an album 2 years after breaking up is even more difficult. In some cases it is curious to wonder whether they knew it would be their last, trying to use hindsight to detect some sense of melancholy in the work. Yellow Swans don't even need to pretend, since this album is everything to do with their breakup; they even left the clue in the title. Drone and Noise are difficult genres of music sometimes; conveying emotion is a delicate matter of building up textures and manipulating raw sound, it is very easy to produce something uninteresting and lifeless or go overboard and drown out the original message. Here though, Yellow Swans make it more than clear what they are trying to express. The track names ("Going Places", "New Life", "Opt Out") start the story, informing the listener that the end is nothing more than a new beginning, but that is where the music picks up the mantle and gives us the real story. Tracks are loosely structured amalgamations of brown noise, occasional bass beats and burbling water samples, like jacuzzis filled with mud. But each track is progressive, each track has a purpose and a direction, and that is the end. While tracks like "Foiled" have crescendos and build ups of their own forged from slowly rising pulses in the noise, these are merely premature unbottlings of energy before it culminates in the chilling epic finale of the title track "Going Places". Here, the true torment of the breakup is revealed with enormous walls of wailing, screaming sound, rising rapidly to a hair rising, spine tingling climax of raw power before subsiding away quickly, its energy spent to be seen no more. Yellow Swans really pulled out all the stops for that last track and by God is it a good 'un. Despite the wistfulness, the melancholy, the catharsis, there is a definitive sense of finality, that Yellow Swans are "Going Places" and that there can be no return. There is a sense of relief that they have expressed it and laid it to rest, no matter how hard it is or how bad it hurts. What this album has to offer is more felt than heard; it may not be music to everyone's taste but you cannot deny the emotional power contained within. Turn up the volume, turn off the lights and close your eyes. Immerse yourself in the noise, the rawest sound of emotion.

I'm feeling some Boards of Canada for the next review.