I must say that I do not know that much bands, or projects, if you want to, hailing from the state of Alaska. But one of my faves for sure is this one: Common Eider, King Eider. This multi-artistic collective has created several highly interesting recordings in the past – with gratitude to e.g.
Ah, what a great surprise. Okay, when a label celebrates its 100th release, it is like party time, but when they come up with a fabulous soundtrack to enrich that festivity…
On April 10th I published another review for Raison D’Être, this time for the collaboration called XIBIPIIO – In And Out Of Experience, created with another notorious artist, Germany’s Troum (http://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/raison-dêtre-troum). It was released via Peter Andersson’s own label Yantra Atmospheres, and via Transgredient Records, a sub-division of Drone Records.
I think it is a positive evolution: more and more women are starting their own Drone / Ambient / Experimental / Noise project. This can be solo - think ProtoU, Lamia Culta, Inwolves, Artefactum, Allseits, Lamia Vox, Halgrath and so on - or in a partnership (Martyria, Corona Barathri, Hymnambulae, Der Blaue Reiter a.o.).
For almost two decades, Norway’s Svartsinn can easily be considered one of the most impressive acts within the Scandinavian (and worldwide) Dark Ambient scene. The project was born at the very end of last century, created by Trondheim, Norway born Jan Roger Pettersen. Throughout the years, there were not that much official releases, yet all of them put they mark on the universal Dark Ambient landscape. Within quite a lengthy list with influential artists, Jan Roger might play within the premier league, I think.
My first acquaintance with Phurpa was about three years ago, when Cyclic Law released this project’s self-called album. I did a review for it, which had been published on November 16th 2014. But this Russian act is active for quite some time. Actually, founding member Alexei Tegin started this outfit more than two decades ago, being inspired by the Bon cult, a tantric philosophy closely related, yet somewhat different (and older) than traditional Tibetan Buddhism as we, ignorant western people, know it.
Vortex might not be that known, but this project by German artist Marcus Stiglegger did release three albums before this one. Being inspired especially by cinematic concepts, ritual heritages and spiritual subjects in general, Marcus permanently searched for conceptual sources to create his evocative Music. With Moloch, Vortex (excerpt from the bio) ‘crafted an apocalyptic soundtrack for urban decay’.
At the end of the Eighties, I set my first steps within the wonderful world of Industrial as a completion to my passion for Extreme Metal at the one hand, and esoteric Wave Music at the other. Actually, I already knew quite some bands / projects, but now I was about to delve deeper into the genre.
Ventre, dear reader, is actually a total artistic package, i.e. a book and a CD in one. But it’s not the first time that Cyclic Law come up with such thing. Cyclic Press can be considered as a visual art book-oriented sub-label of Cyclic Law, with material done before by Krist Mort and Dehn Sora.
Well, I was enormously surprised, the positive way, when I received a message from Cyclic Law telling that there was a new Sophia album coming up. For more than a decade we did not hear anything anymore, at all, about this project by Arcana’s Peter Bjärgö. And indeed, it was true that there was a new work in the making.
