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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terenNowy.live - "Ambientnosc"

Impressive ambient (10/10) Project terenNowy it's an opened collective of creators that spontaneously develop motto: Creation through recreation, or the other way round. Multi-plot and differentiation of artistic statements become an basis for free multiplication of the idea of organics, meaning: each in self direction, but fun is for all. Co-influences and inspirations evolve into unexpected scenography-sound sets, creating the genuine sections such as terennowy.live, terennowy.kids, terennowy.movie and terennowy.art. There is no place for trials, or scenarios - each meeting generates own climate naturally adopted both to space and public, because these two elements are as vital to the project, as the collective itself. We say: interaction is an initiation of the creation. Or the other way round. Ambientnosc (Ambiency) is the ambivalence of the aesthetic tendencies. The oldest instruments of the humankind embraced in the improvisation process with newest technology create the indifferented music.

It is not a secret that ambient is not my favourite genre. Ambient works are often totally boring, because of the false apparent easiness of this genre. Some people think it is enough to break a constant drone with single notes once in two minutes to produce an ambient masterpiece. And in fact, it's quite the opposite. It is very easy to make a bad ambient recording. But it requires plenty of talent to make a good - not boring - ambient work.

The second cause of my somewhat ambivalent feelings for ambient is that these days the majority of ambient recordings are made on a computer, using only electronic sounds. There is nothing wrong with it generally, only that it becomes slightly boring after hearing a hundredth album with similar recycled sounds. One just starts to long for some decent guitar or real drums.

So it feels great to come across such album as this one. Such works convince me that with enough talent, you can make a masterpiece in every musical genre.

This is truly an outstanding recording. It contains improvised ambient music played on real instruments by a live band of very skilled musicians. The songs are full of mysterious strange sounds; very diverse, but never chaotic. All this improvised mess is in fact well thought-out and form a cohesive whole, despite including such different elements as synthetic sounds, reverbed human whispers and folk instruments. So much is happening throughout each track that you are never bored. So if you like ambient and/or experimental music, you cannot miss this one!

The album has been released by MegaTotal.pl, a social financing website similar to Sellaband. You can listen to the full album here or buy a CD for mere 5 euros. Unfortunately, they don't have English version of their website, but there is a Google Translate interface on the bottom of the page. I don't know if it is enough to really use this site without any knowledge of Polish, but I can assure you this album is worth trying. You can always drop me a line in case of any troubles and I will be glad to help you.

[Artist's Website / Myspace]