Parts of this album has sounds that remind me of the X-files theme (possibly one of the best tv show themes of all times – certainly one of the most instantly recognisable) and bits from my own collection. I fell in love with Manfred Eicher’s ECM label back in the 70′s. The label had a wonderful collection of excellent jazz guitarists, Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie (who I really must talk about one day) being the main attractions for me.

What really sealed the deal though was the recording. Clean, clinical, stark, you were left with the impression that there was nothing between you and the performance. Back before CD and digital, this really was as good as it got (yes, yes – Windham Hill were doing it as well but they were a few years later). Oh and I am not getting involved with the “analog V didgital” stoush either. I signed on for music and performance. ECM gave me both.

BUT all of this is a digression by way of giving you some background as to why I am having such a ball listening to Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer’s Re: ECM

Now here’s some hype from the ECM website

Berlin-based DJs and composers Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer – two of the best-known names in contemporary electronica – share their admiration for music on ECM in a unique double-album of specially-created “sound-structures”. Their project “Re: ECM” will bring the label’s music to a new listenership. It is certain to be one of the most talked-about albums of the season. Using original ECM recordings as a starting point, Villalobos and Loderbauer create new music that bridges several worlds, including ECM’s world of space-conscious improvisation and composition and the worlds of ambient electronics and minimal techno. Source materials on “Re: ECM” include recordings of Christian Wallumrød, Alexander Knaifel, Louis Sclavis, John Abercrombie, Bennie Maupin, Arvo Pärt, Wolfert Brederode, Paul Giger and more – looped, sampled, remixed and reworked in evocative new treatments. Pleased with the duo’s creative response to his productions Manfred Eicher gave them carte blanche to carry on experimenting with the ECM titles of their choice. Eicher subsequently supervised the mastering of “Re: ECM” in Munich, completing a unique sonic experience.

You can listen to a track here @ Youtube (while it lasts)

Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer — Rekondakion

If you scored a CD voucher for Christmas from your favourite aunt and by some strange quirk of fate you still have it left, let me suggest that there are lot worse albums out there you could cash it in on.

I have already ordered my copy.

Two Lone Swordsmen

Two Lone Swordsmen are British DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall and studio engineer Keith Tenniswood. They fired up in the mid Ninetie’s and have over the years have played with a multitude of styles, from electro to post-punk to idm (intelligent dance music?). To give you an idea of just how much stuff they have done have a look at their page at Last.fm.

So with all the myriad bands available for us all  to listen to, why these dudes?

Texture, have a listen to “Born Bad Born Beautiful” or “No Girl In My Plan”. Both are full of just the best bass and drums and guitars that I have had fun with for ages. These are songs full of strut and attitude. It’s not so much a “would you like to have a listen to these tracks? Maybe?” so much a splintering of the door as it is kicked in and  you are grabbed by the lapels. With a voice in your face saying – “Good Innit!”

Here is some hype about a recent album

With elements of garage and rockabilly, but also the more familiar layer of electronica, this double album promises a whole new direction. What is particularly striking is Andrew Weatherall’s growth in stature, not only as a singer and frontman but also as a sharp wordsmith. Here we find tales of love and rejection that rip open a seething underbelly of mistrust, tension, revenge, and redemption along the way. Like Robert Johnson’s appointment with the devil, Two Lone Swordsmen find themselves in a clandestine engagement at Dante’s Inferno, pulling up a stool while St. Nick pours from the bottle and take a hearty swig.

The best thing is that over the years their focus seems to have moved to making music WITH machines, rather making music by machines.

Highly Recommended

Websites at www.myspace.com/twoloneswordsmen and www.twoloneswordsmen.com/

Zero Cult

ZERO CULT is a solo project of Emil Ilyayev, he is from Israel and has been playing downtempo / chill since around 2002. The track that hooked me is titled “Seclusion”, a tad vigoorous for Chill but it has such nice sounds and textures. Layers and layers of ambient noises, string sounds, lush reverb and all in all a lot of fun. I like the way he has the music build and then recede and then build again, it’s very organic in it’s approach. Sort of like watching waves in some respects.

Here is some hype…

ZERO CULT is the project of DJ,Producer and Remixer Emil Ilyayev. Emil first began producing music in 1999 after discovering the new sound of Downtempo and Chillout music in the underground scene. His first tracks was released on compilations “Chill on Ice”,and “Fragile Life”. In june 2006 Cosmicleaf Records released his debut album “Art of Harmony”. The album got very good feedback around the world and was described by the Morpheus Music Awards as one of the best chill albums of the 2006.

Highly Recommended (as is the rest of the stuff over at www.myspace.com/zerocult)

Glyn “Bigga” Bush is an indie producer and DJ from the South West of England. His two main projects BiggaBush and Lightning Head reflect his love of dub reggae, Brazilian rhythms and Afro-Cuban beats and he has produced two albums “Studio Don” (Best Seven/Sonar Kollektiv) and “BiggaBush Free” (Stereo Deluxe) as well as many remixes (Tapper Zukie, Tosca, Up Bustle & Out).

Over at www.myspace.com/biggamusicHis latest album project “13 Faces of Lightning Head” is a mix of afrobeat, deep funk, reggae and ethiopic grooves and is seriously addictive.

BiggaBush’s DJ stuff uses virtually any style of music to create interesting grooves, from jungle to boogaloo, from dubstep to breakbeat. But more importantly for me, he fronts a 16-piece percussion group, the Magic Drum Orchestra, which plays a wide range of grooves including samba, batucada, samba reggae, afrobeat, bembe, dancehall and funk.

DJ Fitchie & Joe Dukie of Fat Freddy’s Drop get the BiggaBush and Lightning Head treatment. Visuals by Schmooz and Grainy One

Websites at www.biggabush.co.uk/ and www.myspace.com/biggamusic

James Shuttle wrote on his opsound page…

I describe most of what I do as “music to walk by”. I love the way having certain pieces of music playing as I walk around changes my perception of my surroundings, and my work is mostly an effort to consciously pick the flavour of experience. City centres can seem peaceful; a dark underpass can feel comforting; fields and trees can be disturbing.

Now I am a big fan of racing around plugged into my MP3 player (or is it plugged into me… no I don’t think this is the time or the place for philosophical musing of this nature) and I have to admit I don’t have a lot of downtempo on it, it’s way too slow for crowd surfing, but I have made an exception for a couple of James pieces.

“All The Trips” is another slower piece laid back piano and synth on shuffling drums. “Kinky-noir somewhere between Portishead and Death in Vegas”. This should be a soundtrack to a Philip Marlowe movie, there are some great “scary music” bits lurking on the fringes of this one.

He is a lecturer at Coventry University in the UK and has been making noises with his computer for over a decade, although it’s only been in the last couple of years that he has started posting to the net. You can find a lot more of his work at dis-dot-dat.net/ and they encompass a wide variety of styles.

Give him a listen.

The Orange Lights are an indie outfit currently hailing from Newcastle. So what makes the m worth mentioning?

Have a listen to “Click Your Heels”, too clever by half lyrics, a vocalist who can actually enunciate, yummy guitars (have a listen to the title track of their album “Life Is Beautiful”) and gorgeous lush production. Really, I ask you… what else do you need?

Nownot being one to be deceived by the classy arrangements and sophisticated vocals, a quick look under the hood shows that there is a real powerhouse driving this band. Vocally and lyrically, anyway.

Pop music comes from many different places. Some of it comes from happy accidents; a lot of it comes from the programmed, laboratory environment of a hit factory. Very occasionally, great pop music comes from somewhere deeper within the soul. So it is with The Orange Lights. Their epic, widescreen guitar soul has melodies that scare the sky and words that come laden with meaning and tug at the heartstrings. One listen and there’s every chance you’ll be hooked. This was definitely the case for fabled Coldplay producer Ken Nelson, who ignored the pile of lucrative offers from major artists and chose instead to work with The Orange Lights when they were still unsigned. Nelson felt – and responded to – the band’s music and their passion.

Jason Hart (vocals and guitar), Ewan Warden (guitar), Chris Gittins (bass), Paul Tucker (keyboards), Alex Lucas (drums) have created a ripper band and somehow I don’t see them “clicking their heels and vanishing”… damn they write a good song.

A bit of a diversion today, last week when I was checking out Ambient Teknology I noticed that Magnatune had put together a downtempo compilation called The Art of Persuasion. It’s not bad.

There are a tracks by some artists that we have chatted about in the past like
Liquid Zen, Burning Babylon and some Lisa DeBenedictis remixes, as well as the afore mentioned Ambient Teknology.

Some of you may have run into the early Buddha Bar CD’s, if you have this would be a perfect CD1… the dinner and drinks one. (If you haven’t run into them before, they came as a two CD set. CD1 was a more subdued affair as a rule and CD2 was full on party. The musicians were just same as the Magnatune people, amazingly talented. And the recordings were of a pretty high standard as well).

So have a listen to The Art of Persuasion and let me know what you think.

I should add that we have no commercial arrangements with Magnatune apart from loving the music they supply.

I know it’s supposed to be Chill but I stumbled across Domased Electronica on the Magnatune site a while back and was rather taken with the mix of old and new electronic textures that he manages to fit into his work. We have old school trance, ambient and seriously intense trip hop. Not bad going.

He doesn’t gig live, which considering how uptempo some of these pieces are I find suprising.

Here is a whole heap of hype from his site..

The man hidden behind the “Domased Electronica“ is called Ladislav Zajíc and he is a Slovak producer of electronic music. He was born in 1975 and produces mainly music in the styles of old-school trance, down-tempo, ambient and lately also progressive trance.

His way of experiencing went through Prodigy, Felix Da Housecat, Usura… Between years 1995 and 1998 he got interested in radio broadcasts regarding electronic music, but most of all he concentrated his attention and interest on a local regional radio and its Saturday evenings led by Bruno Hausner.

He started to make, nowadays already a rich musical collection. He liked Sven Vath, The Future Sound of London, Hardfloor, Cosmic Baby, Oliver Lieb, Nexus 6, Cygnus X etc., and experiments of Aphex Twin, Orbital or Bjork.

The American Internet publisher Magnatune.com showed an interest in his production in 2003, which released 3 albums (Return Back, New Memories, Slowdown) as a section of Domased Electronica production.

With support of the label Phreak Da Sound (PDS) the first official album was released in 2004. His title was Selection and it was oriented to oldschool trance, ambient, down-tempo and electronica.

In October 2004 Domased Electronica had his first performance which took place in the Internet cafe Cyber Cafe and was assisted by DJ Check.

In the late of 2004, 2CD compilation Ambsine Vol.1 was released in a young slovak label Ambisine Records. This compilation was made in the styles of ambient, down-tempo, chill-out, dark ambient, electronics and the track “Ghosts” from Domased Electronica was included.

Nowadays Domased Electronica is producing slower tracks and progressive trance tracks.

I know that’s a lot but I like what he is doing, there has been a track or two of his Slowdown album on the MP3 player for a while now. Well worth a listen.

Today’s pick is from the ever entertaining Magnatune catalog.

Lets start with the hype…

Known for an opulent synthesis of vocals and electronics, Roland St. John Perez takes a “no deadline” approach to making music, and the result is an exotic, atmospheric sound that touches on everything from Pink Floyd and T Rex to Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream. Elements at Loop 10 was composed and recorded at Perez’s San Antonio studios and features guest appearances by vocalist Holly Nelson, James Sidlo of Honey Barbera fame, as well as the blissed out guitar craft of Damian Rodriguez.

There is so much stuff here that sounds old and familiar… and it’s not, Liquid Zen (Roland St. John Perez and Damian Rodriguez) are based in San Antonio, Texas, and have produced, composed, and performed on a collection of albums including the latest, “Seventy Three”, Mosaico ? “Magic Midsummer”, and of course Liquid Zen. There is a lot of craft evident in this music. They chose not to work to a deadline (this can be deadly to your output) and just take their time with the various projects.

I’ll be honest, I have had this album playing in the background for about an hour or two and picked the title track “Elements At Loop 10″ almost at random, you really need to check out the whole album at magnatune.com/artists/albums/liquid-elements/ and then press the buy button.

A really enjoyable find.. and best of all, there are another two albums for me to listen to. Going well isn’t it?

I wanted something lush today. I have been thinking and reading about Casablance and Michael Curtiz recently and it brought up the memory of Max Steiner’s wonderful score. I mean his arrangment of “La Marsellaise” and “Lied der Deutschen” in the “singoff” scene at Ricks is awesome. But I digress… as I was saying. I wanted lush.

So a quick trip over to Magnatune, I type in lush and found

Paul Avgerinos: beautiful ambient space music
By the time Paul Avgerinos graduated from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in 1980, he had already performed as a bassist with The Beaux Arts Trio, Baryshnikov, Isaac Stern, Jean Pierre Rampal, and many other world renowned classical artists. After graduation, Paul served as principal bass of several major symphony orchestras around the world, and also performed solo at festivals in Tanglewood, Aspen, Grand Teton, Taos, and Spoleto (Italy).

Expanding into more popular genres, Avgerinos then toured with Charles Aznavour, Liza Minelli, and the jazz legend Buddy Rich. Eventually, however, Paul decied that he wanted to further his original composition skills and childhood passion for electronic music, so in 1984 he built Studio Unicorn?a comprehensive digital/analog recording studio.

Not bad eh? Paul is quite an accomplished musician and composer. The album Muse of the Round Sky fitted the bill perfectly especially the title track. I got my lush strings and textures (thet remind me of Ligeti in a way), a rather yummy acoustic guitar and as a bonus, music that fitted the mood I was looking for.

Worth a listen? Absolutely. (Max Steiner and Casablance, not by several light years, but as I said he captuered the mood I wanted perfectly)