Donnacha Costello - Stay Perfectly Still

Any new instrument, software, toy, or newfound capability to be creative is going to inspire you to be more productive. Just this past July, Donnacha Costello gave us his latest creation from his synth-inspired world- Love From Dust, and he's already tweaking the style and approach on his beloved Buchla Music Easel to bring us a new album, titled, Stay Perfectly Still. 

Love From Dust varied in approaches (which was outstanding given the overall simplicity in end-sound), invoking a certain Japanese feel alongside moments of complete ethereal, sci-fi induced space music. Stay Perfectly Still sees Donnacha refine the sound even further, getting closer to his 2001 ambient core and drawing parallels with productions such as Dry Retch. 

Melodies develop slower, layers envelope with more patience, distortion creeps unknowingly, tones become softer, the blanket gets softer, and you nod-off to sleep quicker. 

This Way, is the albums quiet interlude, to a quieter, That Way. Enso is the albums yang to Love From Dust's, track Farewell.  It's easy to draw comparisons between them both but you'll notice a maturity in approach, a taming of the beast, a taming of the Buchla maybe. Such a machine boasts such potential, and it takes skill to refine a sound rather than push it any many different directions.

Available on Bandcamp in vinyl and digital formats. 

Read more on Donnacha here, where I dive into some of my favourite tracks from his esteemed Color Series.

Helios - Yume

It's been three years since Helios graced us with a full-length album and in that time, those who followed him on social media may have seen the many soundtracks and scores he's been working on for the likes of Facebook, Apple and Google. A fitting job for such a talented artist and good on him for paying the bills through his talent, but it's been at the expense of his fans, craving new material under the Helios name. 

A successful Kickstarter campaign this year helped kick Keith's newest album into gear and we're now once again graced with his gentle, post-rock, ambient-blanketed touch.

Die-hard Helios fans will be pleased to know the sound we grew to love hasn't departed. A slightly more confident approach and some subtle experimentation and depth across instruments is more present; perhaps brought on by his recent soundtrack work. Uptempo tracks such as Pearls, and slow-burning melodies in Sing The Same Song Twice, are balanced against the grainy warm colors of album-ender, Embrace - my favorite track of the bunch, and Sonora Lac; featuring a gentle, teasing climax that so many Helios tracks sign off with. 

Keith's style is echoed in many of the artists we hear today and rightly so, from classical soundtrack influences, to guitar-licks, Helios' music continues to reign supreme. It's weird listening to this three years after his last album and thinking of all the artists I've listened to in this period that ring true to his sound. It's not to say Helios coined this style, but he was definitely one of the first influences for me, personally, in accessing the more post-rock / instrumental side of ambient music. I'm still to see him live, and live by his Live At The Triple Door, recording. 

I'm still a firmer admirer of his lighter, more textured ambient music such as Vargtimme, and his more recent Moeity, but there's no denying Helios still has the power to transcend genres and pull together a wide-encompassing, perfected sound that touches the soul. 

Available on Bandcamp in Digital and CD formats, with vinyl coming soon.

Video: Markus Guentner - Theia (teaser)

There was chaos and violence, a collision of dark matter and heat. 
In the maelstrom, a legacy was created and a new moon born. 
She left something here forever.
But amongst infinite black depths,
Theia rages on.

Markus Guentner's new album, Theia is getting closer by the day, with an expected launch date around early November. This rather beautiful video to help tease the release was put together by Jan Goldfuss http://jangoldfuss.de/.

Stay tuned for more on the ASIPV004 release and watch the full video below featuring a snippet from the first track off the album, titled Magnetar.  (Make sure you watch in HD with your headphones turned up).

Neglect - Western Romance Novels

One thing I noticed whilst living in Portland (Oregon), is the ridiculous amount of talent, passion and enthusiasm for ambient music. The community is a fantastic crowd, and I was lucky to meet a few, even DJ alongside, and witness low-key gigs first-hand on many rainy mid-week evenings. I've been meaning to do a separate Portals feature on the city (which will come soon) as the scene is a haven for ambient music lovers, but until then, there's some great music emerging from my previous home which is too good not to share.

Lifelike Family are one of the collectives holding the community together through numerous local gigs and a consistent label presence. Both their shows and releases feature home-grown talent, focusing on some of the many ambient, drone, experimental artists that call Portland, or the greater PNW, home. The label has focused on digital and tape releases (yes, of course tapes are a thing in Portland) but in this case, the label suits the format. It's home grown, with releases in local stores and passed to friends, just like the good old days. And the music, for the most part is grainy, textured and immersive, perfect for the extra analog feels.

Their latest release comes from Neglect - local Portland artist Joseph Valentino. I was unfortunately unable to see Joseph perform during my time up there, and after being nudged in the direction of this release, I'm gutted I missed out.

Neglect's album, Western Romance Novels, seems to pull from a wide array of influences, forming some beautiful tones and textures. The entire album has the feel and patience of a Pop Ambient compilation, with gentle looping strings on tracks such as I Am At Home... opener, We All Want To Belong... and title track Western Romance Novels.

Expansive drones give the album some depth and measure, on The Presence Of Life and organic, evolving guitars liven up the journey on my favorite track of the bunch, Kayenta. Ocotillo Wells reminds me of Marsen Jules' finest pieces with its seductive Castilian guitar licks and ever-expanding delay. Ulf Lohmann or Klimek simplicity also comes to mind - both early Pop Ambient contributors, and you can even pair it with some Harold Budd or Brian Eno if you wanted a 35000ft view - the backgrounds have been perfected and the accentuating instruments subtle and poignant in nature. 

Comparing an entire album to a certain style or series, isn't a habit I want to keep - and you can argue any comparisons to Eno or Budd are pointless, but given Neglect will be new to many of us, I wanted to set the scene and make it a little more accessible to those willing to adventure. Put it this way, even if this album popped out of Wolfgang Voigt's Pop Ambient selections, I wouldn't have been surprised, which is some of the highest praise I can give for Neglect and his superb album, Western Romance Novels. 

I see how much hard work Lifelike and it's many artists and friends put into the label and shows, so supporting music like this is important. But when it's this good, they deserve every praise they can muster. So go like their Facebook page to catch an upcoming show, and chuck a few bucks their way on Bandcamp, either on this album or the many other greats that Jay + Ryan and the Lifelike crew are cultivating. 

Western Romance Novels is available on tape, or for name your own price via the Lifelike Family Bandcamp.

isolatedmix 56 - Night Sequels: Listen To The Ni-Fi

Throughout my seven years writing and curating on ASIP, every now and then I stumble across an artist that introduces me to a new music style and opens up an entire rabbit hole of discovery. It's why I love doing this; maybe it's a self-preservation thing; a perpetual cycle of discovery and education; but it's artists like Nick Huntington and his aliases that keep me searching.

You may know Nick as one half Freescha - that warm, analogue, bubbly electronica duo (alongside Michael McGroarty) I've talked about for years on here, responsible for superb albums such as Kids Fill The Floor, and Head Warlock Double Stare, which contains one of my favorite electronica tracks (an example of just how much I enjoy Freescha). Talking of favorites, Nick also released music as Christmas Lights, the only album to stem from that name so far, but an absolutely beautiful piece for anyone into warm, downtempo synthesizer focused music.

Nick is also behind, Attacknine, alongside Erik Alwill, a California based label born to release Freescha music, that's ultimately gone on to be an extremely well-respected underground electronica outfit including artists such as Casino Versus Japan.

But it's Nick's more recent, strobe filled, colorful, outer-space themed soundtrack alias Night Sequels that's jumped aboard the isolatedmix rocket. Nick just released teasers and pre-orders for his debut album, The Children Of the Night Make Music, and it's a warm summers evening jam through a spectrum of psychedelic light. It's Freescha on acid, which is sure to be nothing short of astounding if you know and enjoy Freescha. And now, we're lucky enough to get a taste of the hallucinogenic drones, dream-drifting vocals and never-ending filtered warp-holes with Nick's isolatedmix. Featuring music he outright enjoys and previously unreleased Night Sequels tracks and remixes, isolatedmix 56 is another very special addition to the series, with Nick also taking the time to talk us through his selections in glorious detail below.

Never has the artwork been truer to the music in this mix too - take a seat in a dark room, whilst the kaleidoscope of color from the outside world and a small breeze, seeps through the dusty windows. As Nick quotes, "turn out the lights, touch your volume knob, and turn it up". 

Download.

Tracklist:

01. Jerry Goldsmith - Outland Main Titles
02. Claudio Gizzi - Old Age For Dracula
03. Queen - In The Space Capsule (Love Theme)
04. Steve Moore - 248 Years
05. Philip D'Aram - La Valse Grinçante
06. Gary Numan - Down In The Park (Night Sequels Tweak)
07. Night Sequels - All Cats Are Grey (Previously Unreleased)
08. Night Sequels - Mainstreet Meltdown (Previously Unreleased)
09. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Psychic Love Damage (Night Sequels Remix Mk. II) (Previously Unreleased)
10. Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike (Re-synthesized by Night Sequels) (Previously Unreleased)
11. The Beach Boys - Feel Flows (Night Sequels Treatment)
12. Night Sequels -  Star Car Bizarre (Previously Unreleased)
13. Valentyn Silvestrov - Der Bote
14. Tones On Tail - Rain
15. Schubert - Trio in E-flat (Drenched)

You can pre-order Night Sequels' new album here, containing the usual brilliant Attack Nine colored vinyl + tshirt combos.

Tracknotes:

Jerry Goldsmith - Outland Main titles
What can I say, he's amazing.  One of my favorite composers, perfectly capturing the vast isolation of space.

Claudio Gizzi - Old Age For Dracula
From Paul Morrissey's Blood For Dracula. Mike and I (Freescha) are big fans.  The whole score is great, as well as his score for Flesh For Frankenstein.  Incidentally, they've just been reissued on vinyl by Dagored. 
 
Queen - In The Space Capsule (Love Theme)
There is no Freescha without Flash Gordon.  I remember sitting in the theater watching this movie as a little kid, and in particular this scene.  The beautifully eerie synths, billowing clouds of colors, and subtly erotic staging left a big impression on me.  Dream Zone 101.

Steve Moore - 248 Years
I stumbled across this record a few years ago.  Somewhere, this is the music to a New Age of my fantasies.  From the album "Primitive Neural Pathways". Steve Moore Bandcamp.

Philip D'Aram - La Valse Grinçante
From Jean Rollin's film "Fascination".  I was watching this movie on repeat around the time of recording Freescha's "Kids Fill The Floor".  I was in love with the music.  It haunted my nights in the Fall of 2000.

Gary Numan - Down In The Park (Night Sequels Tweak)
The Ruler.

Night Sequels - All Cats Are Grey (Cure cover, Previously Unreleased)
Still my favorite Cure song of all time.

Night Sequels - Mainstreet Meltdown (Previously Unreleased)
A Bob Seger cover.  I remember being a little kid, in the back of some friend's car, their parents driving us home at night, and hearing Bob Seger's "Main Street" come on the radio.  I seem to hear this song on the radio more now than I did then. It was always a treat when it would come on.  I thought the guitar lead was so dreamy, and perfectly captured this feeling of sadness-happiness-yearning.  I've been addicted to this feeling in music since I can remember. 

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Psychic Love Damage (Night Sequels Remix Mk. II) (Previously Unreleased)
In 2013 Tom (aka TOBACCO) from Black Moth Super Rainbow asked if I'd like to remix a track off of their album Cobra Juicy for a remix album*.  I chose Psychic Love Damage, and you can currently hear the remix on Soundcloud.  I liked how the remix turned out, and thought for this mix, it might be interesting to try and do a remix of the remix.  Turns out, it's not interesting.  BUT this alternate remix did come out of that attempt, and I like this one too. *(release date of this album still unknown)

Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike (Re-synthesized by Night Sequels)
A previously unreleased remix.  I have a few incarnations of this, but this one works best for this ASIP mix I think.  The original version of "Swamp Bike" is on Brian Grainger's awesome  "Highschool Guitar", and was also released as a digital single.

The Beach Boys - Feel Flows (Night Sequels Treatment)
As awesome as Brian Wilson is, Dennis and Carl were just as great in their own right. "Feel Flows" was written by the late greats Carl Wilson and Jack Rieley, with Carl singing, and it's a great example of classic Beach Boys piano bass work that I hear pop up in my own playing from time to time..  

My dad played a lot of Beach Boys when I was a kid.  He had all sorts of rarities on reel-to-reel tapes, bootleg vinyl (if my memory serves), and cassettes.  This was long before a lot of this stuff became available in box sets.  There were no CDs yet.  The only way to hear this stuff was to find a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a guy that heard of another guy that knew someone who had some unreleased Beach Boys session recordings.

So I may have heard this song when I was a tyke.  But the first time it made an impression on me and turned me on to a whole era of the Beach Boys that was, for the time (and possibly still is), forgotten, was in the Summer of 1995, when it came on the radio late one night.  It blew my mind, and I immediately had to know who it was, but the DJ never said.  I had a feeling it was the Beach Boys because the voice sounded familiar and the way the bass notes moved around on the piano, I thought the odds were pretty good it was them.  But since I had no idea what it was called, I didn't have a recording of it, and I didn't know the lyrics, it became very difficult to track down.  What made it harder (I would later learn) was that in '95, the albums from this era of The Beach Boys were all out of print on CD and very hard to find, so when I would listen to their CDs at used record shops, this song would never turn up on any of the them.  So I started scouring Salvation Armys and Goodwills, buying any Beach Boys vinyl that I hadn't come across on CD.  I started to doubt that it was even the Beach Boys.  Maybe some other band that sounded similar?  Who could that be?

And then eventually, after months and months of searching through The San Fernando Valley, I found a ratty ass copy of "Surf's Up".  
And Low.
And Behold.
When I flipped it to the B-Side.
There it was in all it's the glory.  The song I'd been looking for.  The feeling of elation when those sweet sweet sounds came out of my speakers I'll never forget.
And thats's my Beach Boys story.
Here it is for you with a little treatment from me, but it's pretty spacey and flange-y even without it.
I hope you dig as much as I do.

Night Sequels -  Star Car Bizarre (Previously Unreleased)
A little jammy I put together that also mixed well coming out of The Beach Boys.

Valentyn Silvestrov - Der Bote
From "Der Bote - Elegies For Piano " by Alexi Lubimov. Things like this make me sad that one day I will never hear it again.

Tones On Tail - Rain
If there is no Freescha without Flash Gordon, I think I speak for Mike and myself when I say there is definitely no Freescha (or Night Sequels) without Tones On Tail.  When Mike and I met in high school, Tones On Tail were an endless source of inspiration for us. They have the perfect sound palette: a balance of weirdness and pop, cool synth sounds and strange guitars. 

Fridays after school, Mike and I would usually drown in the pool during a water polo game, then go to his house and jam in his family's band room for hours, miking  everything through delay pedals, and playing "A Forest" and "Bela Lugosi's Dead" nonstop for hours.  Then we'd crash out, usually listening to Tones On Tail's "Rain".  I remember lying on the floor listening to this, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling and thinking how cool it would be to be able to record music like this. 
There's still nothing that sounds like them.

Schubert - Trio in E-flat (Drenched)
A recording from the 1983 film "The Hunger". This film had a big impact on me.  I love everything about it.  Impeccable style. Neon classical.  And the Bauhaus segment in the beginning was a life changing moment, it was that impactful on my musical and visual sensibilities. A nice place to end this set.