high wolf

high wolf ~ atlas nation (holy mountain 2011)

France’s High Wolf possesses a natural-born ability to zero in on the tones most conducive to inducing transcendental states. High Wolf’s tracks carry the uncanny sense of sounding as if they’ve been sluicing since the beginning of time, and that he had the graciousness to siphon them for teasingly brief absorption before they shimmer off to the vanishing point. This elite droneur is one of the few musicians who could title a release A Guide To Healing without it coming off as an ironic gesture or a laughable boast.

Atlas Nation, recorded in 2010 after a long trip to India and Nepal, deepens High Wolf’s penetration into the mystic. He evokes an uneasy peace with a new breed of tribal psychedelia shorn of all hokey signifiers. “Fuji Descent” starts the album with what could be a languid, paradisiacal soundtrack to a scrapped Alejandro Jodorowsky film. “The Dawn of Man” is a stark, stoned processional burrowing into malarial climes where guitars squawk in ominous tongues and congas cave in chests and clear brush with a vengeance. “Raagni” magnifies and psychedelicizes Rapoon’s mantric, ritualistic hand-drum patter and tropical-forest drones while hinting at Don Cherry’s jazz-raga peregrinations. High Wolf claims that “Haiti” was “recorded in a couple of hours on the day of the big earthquake in Haiti, so it's the darkest, saddest High Wolf track ever.” It’s a fittingly miasmic, climactic threnody.

Think of Atlas Nation as a surreal aural travelogue that takes a giant step beyond Jon Hassell’s Fourth World music, a humid milieu teeming with alien tonalities and oracular currents. It’s as welcome as a new, improved entheogen on the streets." holy mountain

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transcending

va ~ transcending (october, 2011)

01. gkfoes vjgoaf ~ a ritual
02. gkfoes vjgoaf ~ healing dream
03. wyld wyzrdz ~ in wonder
04. ashan ~ peace of joy
05. town & country ~ sleeping in the midday sun
06. wyld wyzrdz ~ through water through time
07. wyld wyzrdz ~ touching stars

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foto: posartry

wind in willows

wind in willows ~ overall aura (6thplanet 2011)

"Wind in Willows is a solo project of Anton Filatov, from Republic of Karelia losted in swamps and forest in Russia, just near by the Finnish border. Childish synths, cutting your ear walls of guitar drones, and peacefull psychedely sometimes turning into new age. Overall Aura is an intimate work, free jams with friends, synth loops, and simple ambient passages"

dolphin synts, free jams...may clouds fly away!

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riviere amur

riviere amur ~ bois flotté (i had an accident 2011)

"riviere amur is inez lightfoot + je suis le petit chevalier = jackie mc dowell + félicia atkinson = two wandering foxes running wild together towards invisible lands"

"Bois Flotté is like discovering something unfamiliar through the familiar. An alternate perspective on reality. Side A begins with the familiar sound of the ocean, as meditative chants and slow tonal changes emerge from beneath. Crashing waves decrease in force as if Rivière Amur could calm the most violent of seas. Bells chime in the background, like a hypnotist signaling you in and out of consciousness. Don’t fight it. Forget everything you know and accept this new reality. Approach the world with a naïve eye, as if just born. All knowledge is now a priori. Disassociate objects around you from the names given to them. Focus on the aesthetics: shapes, color, and movement. What do you see? What do you hear? Whispered voices and chirping birds in the background have become nebulous and have fused with the droning soundscape. Familiar sounds have transformed into something new. Something radiant. Don’t fight it. You’re now ready for Side B." half hour handshake

qué ilusión formar parte de un disco tan bonito ^^

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gkfoes vjgoaf

gkfoes vjgoaf ~ healings (inner islands 2011)

"I'm writing to let you know that today I've released my last gkfoes vjgoaf album, Healings. It's a c30 cassette, pro-dubbed, beautiful glossy artwork. New Zealand forest images. I just want you all to know how special this release is to me. It's magick is straight from my heart and my desire to share love and good vibes with all. If you don't have a tape player, you can also download a digital version or stream it from the Inner Islands bandcamp page." sean conrad

"holding space for peace, light, and love."

to purchase physical releases visit inner islands and the gentle ways store, to listen to and purchase all tracks and albums digitally visit gkfoes vjgoaf bandcamp

healing dream (mp3)

secret birds

secret birds ~ moon clouds infinite (sonoptik 2011)

"We’ve been loosing ourselves here on the west-coast recently basking in the sweet fall sunshine and Secret Bird’s new jam, Moon Clouds Infinite. This new release marks a radical departure from earlier incarnations of the band. Having consisted of almost 30-band members in the past working on a revolving door basis, Secret Birds has and always will be the brain-child of one man, D.Black.

Across Moon Clouds Infinite we hear bollywood, hypnagogic, doom, pop, kraut and a host of other tags you could lay on this album, a thinking-man’s ambience, provocative but not distracting with the right amount of subtle shifts, abrupt changes and lulling melodies, we have a hunch at Sonoptik that D.Black is on the cusp of something big..." sonoptik

foto: robin mellway

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easy feelings

easy feelings ~ s/t (sicsic tapes 2011)

"Like the name suggests, Easy Feelings is intuitive & ethereal psychedelic ambient music to make love to or dream an autumnal afternoon away. It’s a collaboration of Love Cult & Bedroom Bear (Sergei Dmitriev, Anya Kuts & Ivan Afanasyev) from the Republic of Karelia, Russia. The mellow synthwaves, the dreamy voices & the trippy guitarplay of this trippy three piece channel your innermost emotional states of peace & balance." sicsic tapes

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breaking bad

"...I believe that actors love to act and sometimes what we miss is what is in between the words and what is in the silence. I chose to create this character in a minimalist way. I chose to give him a quiet, deadly calm. He really allows himself to be present and really it's like a self-study, in a way. He is a very, very good listener. For an actor, it can be more effective to work on one thing, not two or three things and do that one thing well, and then sometimes the flower opens in a very different way.

For me, it was to cultivate stillness and calm. It's hard for me also to use the word villain, because I think he is a real human being who really does care, but it was a really wonderful and a great challenge to drop myself to a point where I wasn't forcing anything. Everything came out of an organic place. It has been not only a wonderful exercise, but I think the fruits of my labor have shown because people have gotten him and are enjoying this character in a monumental way." giancarlo esposito aka gustavo 'gus' fring

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fennel

fennel ~ resuming the trail (pocket fields, 2011)

"Hours are leaves of life.

And I am their gardener.

Each hour falls down slow."

susan morrison

"Fennel is Franciscus Alex Rebro combining raw field recordings with partially improvised, partially composed music. This ongoing project began in the early part of 2010, with the debut album "A Leap Across A Chasm" released on Bandcamp in June of that year. This was followed up by the EP "Relics" in March 2011 and full-album "Resuming the Trail" in October 2011"

crecí en una habitación con una ventana que daba a un patio interior de paredes grises, recuerdo que tenía que alzar el cuello por la ventana para poder ver un poquito del cielo y hacerme una vaga idea del día que haría. los sábados por la mañana solían despertarme las notas de un piano que se colaban por ese patio interior, por la ventana, hasta llegar a la almohada. recuerdo que solía quedarme en cama soñando que esa música salía de mis dedos, imaginándome en conciertos rodeado de grandes filarmónicas, fracs, anteojos, vestidos imposibles y telones rojos. siempre he querido tocar el piano, soy de esos que se cuelan de vez en cuando en las tiendas de música para sentir las teclas aunque no tenga ni la menor idea de cómo hacerlas sonar con sentido.

esta mañana al abrir el correo me topé con un correo de franciscus rebro (aka fennel) invitándonos, a los que escribimos en el blog, a descubrir su música. al escuchar los sonidos anónimos de la ciudad salpicados con las notas del piano me acordé del piano de mi infancia y todo lo demás os lo podréis imaginar. la música como regresión y catarsis, reafirmando, una vez más, que la vida es un piano.

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foto: swimmel_

emily lacy

emily lacy ~ country singer (self~released 2010)

"I grew up in the forest. I started drawing at a young age to entertain myself. around age 16 I began to focus heavily on the visual arts, particularly painting and film. I started playing guitar and writing songs at the age of 22. I believe in making committed and active performance environments where sound and vision are joined into a wild trance of human exchange.  Together, in our parade, we can make a way forward." emily lacy

"Country Singer is a brilliant record full of vibrant and dusty folk songs, following in the foot steps of the great country artists of our past. Eerily beautiful. recorded by Ezra Buchla (of Gowns)." folktale

foto: heiner luepke

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sandro perri

sandro perri - impossible spaces [constellation, 2011]

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"it is both a pleasure and a frustration to be at a loss of words when trying to express properly the wonderful, magical turns of a nearly perfect album. a pleasure for hearing, for being a lover of music, for having unequivocally a new master work with which to sink into. a displeasure for the ways in which the music magnifies your inadequacies as a writer. sandro perri's impossible spaces is performing this bitter-sweetness on me.

of course, for those operating outside of the hype machine, impossible spaces is simply a reprieve. an actual island where a listener can rest its ears and suck in the sweet goodness, relieved from the exhaustion of an industry clambering for the next big thing.

sandro perri likely is not the next big thing (not that he doesn't deserve to be). he's simply not young enough, for one. he's also not burrowed into the singularity of a strike-while-it's-hot genre explosion. perri's been around for awhile now, operating in various capacities for a decade's time. nope, they do not award 'next big thing' to individual's with perri's cv.

that decade-length experience is well exhibited on impossible spaces as perri's fluid, multi-layered songs cover a variety of sonic territory while maintaining a personality all its own. impossible spaces is soul music. flush with breezy, muscle relaxing jams and more introspective, tenderly rapturous moments, the album feels to me like a more successful version of the dirty projector's bitte orca, or a more focused version of skeleton's money. comparisons though do perri's work a disservice. this is a singular record that demands its own space. here's hoping perri finally gets his due." forest gospel

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sandro perri · love and light from pedro maia on vimeo.

fotola: w.wei

melancholia

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meg baird

meg baird ~ seasons on earth (drag city 2011)

"...on “Friends” Baird sings “One day maybe I’ll buy myself an island and there with my friends you know I’d stay.” This may illustrate the best way to enjoy “Seasons on Earth.” You have to go away with it for a little bit."

otra dimensión

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salvador cresta & fabito andrade

M. M. Peres • Edu, The Trumpeter [self release, 2011]

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:: Recorded live during an afternoon at the home of Edu Gurdjieff, Mountains of Dhórcovah ::

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fotola: elliot michael fairhurst