Bring Me The Head Of Orion - "Demo '08"

Dark guitar ambient (8/10)

Hailing from Austin, Texas, Bring Me The Head Of Orion offers a musical experience as large as the state itself. This music contains a sprawling, open-ended quality that confounds expectations by being simultaneously evolutionary and completely static. The formal architecture is built on simple, clear cut melodic ideas and a minimalist type repetition that moves from idea to idea with a refreshing clarity. Depending on your point of view, you might consider the sonic result to accompany the beginning of the world or its end. As or myself, I relate more to it as a soundtrack to the eschaton, and frankly would be worried as to what type of world would produce these sounds from its point of origin. [Read more --->]

[Myspace]

Quite interesting dark & heavy guitar ambient (it's not electronica!). Mostly distorted guitars and drums. And gloomy atmosphere.

The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

TenGooz, the - "Inertia"

Good but... (7/10) Our spirits soar high,but we are GROUNDED IN GROOVE! The TenGooz play very soulful original music in a style all their own, which they have forged over the years- what sax player Michael Frei has dubbed WORLD FUNK.Their LIVE performances have been known to keep the dancing going for HOURS! Inertia was recorded in 2 days at the Niji no ongaku do, deep in the rural heart of Ibaraki Prefecture. Avi Landau- Vocals Sagara Kenya-trombone Hase G- Bass Tanaka-Guitar Jon hicks-Drums Joe Kern plays drums on Stranger Almost all reviewers praise this album as if it was a masterpiece. Gimme a break! It's good, but nothing more. I like the trombone, not so often used in such popular music. Melodies are quite nice and catchy. Blending so many genres on one album (even on single songs!) is done quite wisely, so the result is not chaotic but raising interest. But... It's too nice, smooth and lightweight. The result is these songs lack power and don't impress like they should. The same can be said about the singer's voice, which is sooo nice, pleasing, delicate and sweeeet. He could make a big career in a boy band. Teenage girls would be delighted. But music with roots in funk, punk, rock etc. need completely different voice and completely different manner of singing. "Johnny I" is an anti-war protest song??? :-0 I would never guess judging from the song's shiny happy atmosphere. "Kanashibari" is about a creepy medical condition??? :-0 So it's not about sweet girly eyes, what singer's voice and intonation suggests? ;-) So 7 out of 10 is a rating with a credit... In hope they are capable of setting the stage on fire during their live acts. Instead of sweetening the public to death, what they are trying to achieve on this recording...

Royalty-free music for professional licensing [Artist's website]

SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation.

Bring Me The Head Of Orion - "Contagion Rite"

Dark guitar ambient (8/10)

Hailing from Austin, Texas, Bring Me The Head Of Orion offers a musical experience as large as the state itself. This music contains a sprawling, open-ended quality that confounds expectations by being simultaneously evolutionary and completely static. The formal architecture is built on simple, clear cut melodic ideas and a minimalist type repetition that moves from idea to idea with a refreshing clarity. Depending on your point of view, you might consider the sonic result to accompany the beginning of the world or its end. As or myself, I relate more to it as a soundtrack to the eschaton, and frankly would be worried as to what type of world would produce these sounds from its point of origin. [Read more --->]

[Myspace]

Quite interesting dark & heavy guitar ambient. Mostly distorted guitars, drums and keyboard drones. And gloomy atmosphere.

The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

Ana Never - "Ana Never" [remastered and rereleased]

Depressive post rock (8/10) At first, we would like to say THANK YOU for Goran and all Ana Never crew for makeinkg possible to show this beautiful release in Poland. You'll find some more info in a release booklet. It's great pleasure to have a chance to re-realase and distribute this album in Poland ... few more words about release soon ... now just enjoy with listening this stuff. Extremely sad, deep and anxious dose of experimental, post-rock, ambient music from Serbia. This is depressive atmospheric post-rock of really high quality. Perfect as a soundtrack for suicide attempts. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format. You can also buy it directly from the artist at Bandcamp for as low as $3.60 - no money goes to the fuckin' RIAA. If you like the music - do it! Support the artist. A lossless FLAC version is also available. The version released by 49manekinow contains two bonus live tracks:

[Myspace]

Pablolek - "Altamar"

Boring ambient (4/10) Quiet experimental, astonishing and fresh release from Argentina. Boring ambient. Only one track is not bad: "003.linfatico". The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format. [Myspace]

Nie, dziekuje - "Spacery"

Not so good... (4/10) What does drummer do when he is fed up with hammering on hides? He became an enginer of space travelling... in a walking tempo. How much does the devoid drums ambient-experimental heaven of Michal Witkowski offer? You will find it out right now. If people are stars, then the space is crowded is in places. There are also nebulas of calm and pianos of emptiness. The first walk from the second is separated by four deep breaths. Because in autumn the rhythm is unnecessary to stroll. It's some experimental ambient. Unfortunately, the experiment has failed. Only two tracks (04 & 06) are listenable, while others are boring, chaotic, without any thought behind them. Not to say about ripping or compression errors present in some places. :-/ The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

[Myspace]

KraftiM - "Flaxas" [EP]

I didn't like it... (6/10) Awaiting the new album, here's a little excursion inbetween. These rather meditative tracks are based on saxophone play from Alfred from Benin. KraftiM took the liberty to play around with those waves. Objectives were to give a dreamy, introspective and relaxing reading from the playing from this great african artist, who generously provided me with these special wavs. Thanks Alfred. WarMocK is the German artist who made the great sleeve and let the sax shine. Thanks WarMocK. I really didn't like this album. This is just the type of KraftiM's work that I cannot dig, no matter how hard I'd try. This album is 100% pure ambient. Everyone who read some of my reviews knows that it's not my favourite genre. On the other hand, there are ambient works that I adore (or maybe somebody dares to question the ambiance of "Selected Ambient Works" by Aphex Twin? Nobody? I knew it.) Typical for true ambient, you won't find here any beats at all. Just long atmospheric passages without the beginning or the end. Oh, did I say atmospheric? I should say sleepy... boring... monotonous... repetitive... uncreative... OK, maybe you could say "unfolding the atmosphere of boredom", but that's not exactly the thing I expect from ambient works... My reviews are usually rather analytic, while others prefer to write about their feelings raised by the music. So, this time let's talk a bit about my feelings. Listening to this album I felt like I was a husband of a saxophone player, who arrived at the club to pick up my wife after rehearsal. Unfortunately, I arrived early and the doors were locked, so I had to wait outside in strong wind and pouring rain for my wife to finish playing. I didn't want to disturb her, but I heard that she wasn’t even playing any particular melody. It seemed like she was just tuning her instrument or just fooling around to kill her boredom playing accidental notes, while she waited for me after the rehearsal had ended. After 20 minutes and 11 seconds of listening to these accidental sounds, which in a strong wind were sometimes louder, sometimes almost couldn't be heard at all, I had enough. I love my wife's playing on a sax, but this mess-from-behind-the-wall in any way couldn’t be called listening to music. So, after the said 20 minutes I finally banged on the door and my torture ended. I wanted to give this album 6/10 rating. But as you see - I didn't. Why? I don't know. Usually I rate the albums that I don't like, because I don't believe in writing 100% objective reviews. The art you experience is always filtered by your preferences, emotions and thoughts and cannot be judged completely objectively. You can say something is professional, stylish etc., but you shouldn't (and you can't!) rate it without taking your feelings into consideration. Potential listeners are also human beings, not robots, and it could be useful, when they'll read "I personally don't like this album, because it does not fit my taste" or "it's too noisy" or "the subject of songs is unpleasant". Maybe they also don't like explicit lyrics or noisy music or have a similar taste to the reviewer's. The true masterpiece will defend itself, despite a few negative reviews. But this time... I don't know, maybe it's a matter of extremely enthusiastic reviews, maybe extreme vulnerability of KraftiM ;-)... And maybe I feel this can be something great that I just don't comprehend or I'm not able to appreciate... So I don't want to spoil general rating of the album? Maybe... So, to end this much-too-long review: believe the others and check this out... And if you won't like it, don't forget to write a negative review. So I could stop feeling so lonely down here. ;-)

Royalty-free music for professional licensing [Myspace]

SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation.