Hoffmann, Michael - "Ruff-Stuff Edition"

A massive dose of experimental ambient (9/10) RUFF-STUFF Edition is a documentation of live-sampling experiments, which I produced in 2009 on a period of 12 months. All tracks are pure improvisations by using live-sampling work and were occasionally grafted by carefully additions (add. Instuments, Efx, mixing). I pondered for a long time how to review and rate this album - over 5 hours (!) of experimental improvised ambient. It is hard to comprehend, it is hard to listen in one take. It requires a lot of attention to catch the subtleties of particular tracks, which all are slow-paced, quiet and drum-based. For people that don't have much experience with such music it would be probably a torture. Of course, its inaccessibility for general public should not influence an opinion on music as such. So what is my opinion? I'm still not sure. I guess you won't be very surprised if I write that it's too long and it'd profit from some selection of the recorded material. However, you'll probably be very surprised when you read that I'd delete only three tracks. In all the rest the artist somehow managed to include enough interesting ideas or to produce fine disturbing atmosphere to keep my attention focused. This fact only deserves the highest praise, because it requires a true genius to improvise such massive dose of ambient music without making it boring or too repetitive. One must also have a lot of courage to publish such unconventional work. On the other hand I won't give the highest rating just because of the qualities of the artist himself. This is a review of music, not of the artist's talent as such (which is - without any doubt - enormous). I also won't rate the originality by itself, just like I refused to lower the score because of inaccessibility. What truly matters is if it is good music, enjoyable (in a broad sense of the word) and worth of repeated listening. The answer is of course "yes", but at the same time it is not perfect recording for me. I truly appreciate the artist's mastery as well as novelty and originality of this work, but I cannot give full 10 points. Anyhow, this is an exceptional album and should be on a "must-listen" list of every true fan of ambient. Apart from Jamendo, the album is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 and ogg formats.

Royalty free music for professional licensing [Artist's Website]

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