Cerca:ambient

Through a cascade of field recordings over deep waves of Ambient and Classical meditations, "After Life" by British composer & producer Suplington is a grand yet forbearing course charted through the currents of one's final moments. His second album to chance a curious glance beyond the veil of waking life, "After Life" paints a nautical panorama with a variety of guest appearances, including flutist Nadiya Darling and Brooklyn-based Archie Pelago members, cellist Greg 'Cosmo D' Heffernan and saxophonist Kroba. "After Life" comes on 140 gram black opaque 12" LP with a special sleeve featuring poetic vignettes & track credits in a smooth, glossy jacket featuring a colorful collage by Suplington built from his own photographs taken on the British coast. All records include a card with a one-time use download code.

Along with its sister imprint Fluid Electronics - dedicated to all things more muscularly 4x4 oriented, from house to techno via ambient, Fluid Funk will offer a platform of choice for creators and lovers of soulful house, hip-hop, jazz, funk, disco et al. The goal of the label is to bring a community of like-minded people together, cleared from the complexities that sometimes hamper the good course of the label-artist relationship.

First to grace Fluid Funk's dance floor-ready grooves is Rotterdam-based emerging talent Beau Zwart. Fresh off a choice inaugural sortie on INI Movements that hit the streets a few weeks ago, Beau steps in with his debut 12", "Beyond Two Souls" - an infectiously smooth and solarpowered six-track platter featuring Dutch duo Fouk on remix duty.

Expect lavishly orchestrated cascades of ankle-twisting breaks, prismatic synthwork and summer-flavoured melodies to wrap your ears around as your feet and body give in to the power of that funky bass. Brewing elements of fuzzy pop, pixelated soul and tropicalised rhythms, Beau Zwarts sound takes us on a wildly enjoyable ride across luxuriantly flowered scapes and fluttering cosmic house horizons. Interlaced with sugary Rhodes stabs and 8-bit harmonics a la "Floating Points", Sykes' warm vox intonations shows us the way into a pulsating heart of wonky, bop-infused boogie.

Expanding to further out-there, club-optimised bravura, Fouk's take on the title-track is the kind of track that'll make an impact in the sweatbox as well as in a more cabaret-like setting. Pulling out the weirdo harmonics and left-of-centre jazz aerobatics, "Ixodus" lets its free spirited sense of playfulness take over completely. Flip sides and here's "Marble Book" unbolts the spacious pads and whirling alien riffs as a sturdy sub-bass and gut-churning kicks beat time onto further estranged
dimensions.

A slightly more muscular but thoroughly sensuous workout, "Bustin Out" fuses classical two-step-indebted breaks with lascivious "P-Funk" tropes into one compelling club heater, before the EP's sluggish closer "Illustrate My Way" sends us into orbit for good with its slowed down romanticism and otherworldly piano fantasy.

Black Truffle is very proud to present Peaks by Australian cellist Judith Hamann, her debut release of electro-acoustic music. Known mostly for her live performance work with composers including Sarah Hennies, Yvette Janine Jackson, Alvin Lucier, Tashi Wada, and La Monte Young, here she steps away from the cello, moving into an intimate dreamscape woven from recordings gathered over years of itinerant touring.

Peaks is a work in two distinct parts, crossfading between different landscapes and apertures; from rooftop to church, from stasis to flares of momentary romanticism. Peaks considers summits as being both above and below, reframing the idea of apex from a more intimate perspective. Hamann considers how our domestic and personal geographies might form their own apogees, meridians, or nadirs.

Assembled in 2019 while an artist in residence in Krems, Austria, Peaks begins with Hamann’s more familiar cello but soon unravels into resonant electronic interiors; Southern California nightscapes heard through windows, San Francisco bathroom fans, snatches of recordings of friends, hand organs, and engines. signal/centinela draws primarily on recordings from Hamann’s time living in San Diego, and carries with it a certain sense of nostalgia in the sense of homesickness, longing, and displacement of distance and time. Side B is composed from recordings gathered on a different continent, Europe, weaving piano with recordings of sleep, breath, church organ, and the act of climbing. under/over emerges as it recedes, overlapping moments of arrival to create another kind of ‘spire’ in the sense of spir (breath). Peaks, with its omission of any recordings from Hamann’s home of Australia, hints at how the very construction of home itself, might be restless, untethered, changeable, and malleable.

On Peaks, Hamann interrogates tropes of ambient concrète musics, intentionally pivoting formally around material which teeters on the edge of cliche. This exploration asks whether familiar frames of harmony, field recordings and narrative trajectories can excavate new territories, or be ruptured. Peaks untangles a very personal sense of tension between beauty and shame in experimental music: treating lushness and harmony as possessing potentially muscular musical properties that might wrestle with or construct senses of belonging and home.

Life is full of wonder and excitement. Now it is also filled with the 14th release on Fasaan Recordings, produced by one of its founding fathers: part-time fruit picker Prins Emanuel. Gli Ornamenti comes in three different versions, which is nice. The U20 Mix is all about that sweet Roland U20 and offers us many of its decorative sounds. The Maximal Minimal Mix is the one to go to when you don’t want a lot of different stuff, but what you want you really want a lot of. The Ambient Mix is perfect to play while inspecting the grass growing under your apple tree. This is a good 12-inch single for the industrial balearic summers ahead.

Pascal Terstappen a.k.a. Applescal has released his new artist album, ‘Diamond Skies’ on Atomnation. The nine-tracker is a collection of expertly-produced, instrumental melodic house with lush, ambient soundscapes and a nod to the analog sounds of the 90’s. The album has received heavy support from key names in underground electronic music community and is Applescal’s sixth studio album to date.

Terstappen has been running Atomnation full-time since his early twenties and has shaped it into one of The Netherlands’ leading independent labels and a home for an eclectic mix of electronic music including signed artists such as Gidge, Polynation, Tunnelvisions and Sam Goku. ‘Diamond Skies’ exemplifies the vibrant sound of Atomnation, a lush, colourful album which journeys through melody, ambience and emotion while offering an occasional surprise to the senses. The album was written and produced through 2019 and completed in the early days of March 2020 when dark skies were looming.

‘Diamond Skies’ represents a creative optimism and brings a sense of something to look forward to. Applescal has created a musical dreamworld for a listener to step into as an antidote to troubled times. ‘Diamond Skies’ is an album which feels uplifting and effortless, a confluence of melodic house, occasional breakbeat and ambient energy; the sound of a producer at the height of his powers.

Recumbent Speech, Ezra Feinberg’s second album, opens with a lament. Named for the Robert Frost poem, “Acquainted with the Night” was written during one of the many devastating spectacles of injustice under our current regime. Repeating flutes and synths beam out of a low-end darkness, reflecting a collective sense of loss and alienation. Rising slowly, thickening with guitars and strings, “Acquainted with the Night” lifts off, and so too does the album from there. The second track, “Letter to my Mind,'' features the dynamic interplay of Feinberg's guitar with the loose and playful drumming of Tortoise's John McEntire, both pushing and pulling atop a looping bass figure. "Palms Up" begins with a lockstep pulse recalling early Terry Riley before jumping into an Ashra-like jam with Afrobeat accents. Side B opens with "Ovation," a tryptic with McEntire on drums which sets a wide lens onto a sweeping landscape, with soaring flutes, wordless vocals, and a hypnotic bassline played on a humming fretless that recalls classic ECM jazz-fusion. The piece plunges into an ambient, interior space before reemerging with a guitar solo fried through an old Space Echo effects processor, conjuring lidded Pompeii-era Pink Floyd. The album's title-track finale, "Recumbent Speech," features the magical pedal steel of Chuck Johnson. Unwinding atop a Balearic analog synth pattern, Feinberg stretches textures of Fender Rhodes and acoustic guitar around Johnson’s lyrical steel, with nods to Japanese ambient legend Hiroshi Yoshimura, as well as Cluster & Eno. Recumbent Speech refers to the possibilities, pleasures, fears, and fantasies that occur the moment the noise dies down, when we are recumbent, in repose but still awake, still speaking, and still aware of ourselves as part of the maddening world. Ezra Feinberg is a guitarist, composer, and psychoanalyst living in Jackson Heights, NY. Feinberg was the founding member of the San Francisco psychedelic rock collective Citay, releasing albums on Important Records and Dead Oceans throughout the 2000s. After relocating to NYC, he issued his first solo record, Pentimento and Others, on his imprint Related States and on cassette on Stimulus Progression in 2018. The release, his first since Citay folded in 2012, earned praise from numerous music outlets including Paste Magazine, The Wire, Stereogum, Vice, and Aquarium Drunkard. In recent years, Feinberg has performed and toured near and far with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Steve Gunn, Alexander Turnquist, Cruel Diagonals, Daniel Carter, Jonas Reinhardt, Christopher Tignor, Kath Bloom, Robbie Lee, High Aura’d, Glasser, Ava Mendoza, Buck Curran, Real Estate, and many others, and has ongoing studio collaborations with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Arp, contributing both guitar and songwriting to the last Arp album Zebra.

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, and going by 'Jazz Rock', nor a record by its title. Though entering into jazz territory and featuring some distorted guitar, 'Jazz Rock' is more a beautiful marriage of funky breakbeat drumming and spiritual jazz instrumentation, combined with traditional Min'y music performed on the koto and shakuhachi.

Originally released in 1973, the record sounds simultaneously vintage and contemporary. It is akin to something Madlib might dream up whilst lost in Japan collaborating with Min'y players at a recording session. The record features some amazing shakuhachi (bamboo flute) playing by Hozan Yamamoto, which gives the music a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere. You can almost visualise the long grass blowing in the wind, and ear the bamboo rustling in the distance on a long hot summer's day. Takeshi Inomata, Tadao Sawai and Kazue Sawai anchor the session. Takeshi's exceptionally funky-drum work will almost certainly get some producers dusting off and firing up their MPC's. Whilst Kazue and Tadao work their magic on the koto (a traditional string instrument). Though certainly not an ambient record, 'Jazz-Rock' has the same meditative, other-worldly quality that invites you to sit back, listen and be transported somewhere else. Unfortunately, until now the 'Jazz Rock' album is a scarcity that commanded a high price-tag only for the most hardened of record collectors. So it is pleasure to make it accessible to all, and we hope you dig this lost, obscure future classic as much as we do.

Das Debütalbum des Briten Jake Storm Glover aka Stametshroom, der von Alex Paterson (The Orb) gebeten wurde, einige Ambient/Downbeat-Tracks für dessen Resident-DJ-Sets bei WNBC Radio zu erstellen. Das Ergebnis sind diese fünf entspannten Tunes zwischen Balearica, Space-Electronica und Ambient/New Age in Längen zwischen drei bis acht Minuten.

Erweiterte 25-Jahres-Reissue des Kollabo-Albums "Spinner" (1995) von Brian Eno und dem legendären Public Image Ltd.-Bassisten Jah Wobble, featuring Jaki Liebezeit (Can) on drums. Basierend auf dem Brian Eno-Soundtrack zu Derek Jarmans Filmtribut "Glitterbug" (1994), übergab Eno Stereo-Mixe der Sequenzen an Wobble, der diese mit Hilfe von Instrumenten ausschmückte und zu den "Spinner" Tracks verarbeitete. Das Resultat fusioniert eisigen Ambient mit einer Art psychogeografischem Funk. Physische Formate waren seit 15 Jahren nicht mehr erhältlich und enthalten nun die Bonustracks "Stravinsky" (ein Original aus Enos "Glitterbug" Soundtrack) und den brandneuen, exklusiven Jah Wobble-Track "Lockdown" auf CD und als LP-Download-Code.

Philadelphian multi-instrumentalist, producer and engineer SWARVY makes his solo debut on Kamaal Williams's imprint Black Focus with a stunning new EP entitled ‘Sunny Days Blue’, his first release as
the primary vocalist.

Smoked-out sound beds and lofi guitars sit gently with SWARVY’s voice, creating a juxtaposition of melancholic, yet sweet, melodies that loop in your mind’s ear long after the record stops spinning.
‘Bones’ opens with a stripped back rhythm section and existential observations referencing the human condition of overthinking, a recurring theme throughout the EP. ‘Cool’, ‘No Compute’ and ‘Smile’
subtly infuse jazz, funk and hip hop elements, while ‘New Moon’ plays out as a low slung hypnotic hymn echoing gracefully into the record’s closer ‘Ginger’ - a meditative ambient spiritual for solo piano.

Since relocating to Los Angeles in 2015, SWARVY produced a variety of records via DJ House Shoes’ Street Corner Music, Leaving Records and Fresh Selects. His writing and engineering credits extend to dozens of tracks by artists such as Maxo, Earl Sweatshirt, Nia Andrews, Mndsgn, Liv.e and the late, legendary Tony Allen.

Green vinyl includes digital download card.

This compilation features music from artists who perform regularly at the Diane's Hunting Club annual gatherings. Heavily inspired by and indebted to the influence of the natural world and open spaces, this is music for motivation, movement, and meditation. Conoley Ospovat (Kimochi Sound) begins with a breezy slow-house theme, followed by some similarly slow but a much more tangled webs by sug (Hausu Mountain). Lokua contributes a melodic deep-space techno roller, Area (Kimochi Sound) offers gentle ambient rhythms, Mukqs (Hausu Mountain) produces a shimmering sunshine beat, and K-rAd closes out with an vast dub house journey. Enter the zone.

Sunquake is the first ever vinyl compilation of work by Désaccord Majeur, the alter ego of French artist Jérôme Mauduit who played a crucial role in Europe's post-industrial/ethno-ambient scene. Linking with figureheads Muslimgauze, O Yuki Conjugate and Rapoon (Zoviet France) via cassette compilations and seminal label Staalplaat, his music is played today by the likes of Vladimir Ivkovic, Elena Colombi and Interstellar Funk. Three carefully chosen cuts by the A Colourful Storm crew, properly cut and mastered at 45 rpm and housed in full-colour printed sleeve. with liner notes by Vladimir Ivkovic.

Post lockdown does not mean we need to fall back into the same patterns like we did before. This EP contains a smooth transition to a new reality. ULTRATERRENO is TAGLIABUE`s (@josephtagliabue) newest EP on the Berlin and Zurich based micro Label Lustpoderosa.
The celestial sounds from the italian producer Tagliabue is a healing process of well tempered analog synthesizers. The cure is in the mix of pre dancefoor and ambient tracks inlcuding a slow trancy chug from well known and apreciated selector @AnatolianWeapons.
Tagliabue is not just inspired by the afro cosmic heritage of Beppe Loda and Daniele Baldelli, but also from post-folk, rock, prog and kraut infuences of 70’s and early 80’s, passing through New Wave and Synth Pop ofGaznevada or The Stupid Set and not to forget italians rave culture of the 90s with Franceso Farfa and MarcoDionigi just to mention a few.
This very intimate EP is a meditative and transcendental journey to another world. Literally

2020 Re-issue of Keith Kenniff's debut album under his Helios moniker. Originally only released on CD in 2004 via Miami based Merck Records, this album of hazy ambient electronica is now presented as a vinyl edition for the first time.

AllMusic Review by Joshua Glazer:

"Those who mistake ambient music for an endless tapestry of unwavering atmosphere, pleasant yet indistinguishable, should be handed as an argument to the contrary this album by a recent signee to Merck's rapidly expanding roster. Through 13 tracks of inarguably pretty music, Keith Kenniff displays the musical equivalent of a genius screen actor, able to send a million moods and messages with the most subtle of facial gestures. The opening pair of songs, "Velius" and "Cullin Hill," point to a blissful treat which sits on just the right side of new age symmetry (particularly given the former's live glistening piano treatment). But only eight beats into "Nine Black Alps," the sensation is irreversibly altered by a single, mournful bass note which rumbles like Hades against the bucolic tone that lead up to it. Unshackled, Kenniff continues to roam, drifting into circular beats on "Two Mark" before wandering off into weightless asphyxiation on "Samsara." He even allows for the organic sound of faint acoustic guitar and piano to join his endless travels, giving a moment of real world clarity at the eye of this hallucinogenic work. Few could get away with a singular ghostly voice transmission without implying a stretch for ideas, but by the time he reaches the song, "Suns That Circling Go," Kenniff is so recognized as an explorer that you cannot be surprised by where he may arrive next."

Chra is the artist moniker for Austrian Christina Nemec (Bray, Shampoo Boy). SEAMONS is the latest missive in her ongoing exploration of suffocating abstract audio. At once designed and falling apart SEAMONS is rough and crude, a stumbling and staggering electronic expedition where nothing presents itself explicit in intent. It’s a tense obscure record that teases you into it’s peculiar vortex from it’s suggestive nature of exploring the enigma beyond it’s haunted facade.

VICIOUS WATER REGIMES stutters along as an ‘ugly’ mass of grey electronica. CAST(O)RO shines from light from the depths with it’s occasional foray into glistening tones. COLONIA MARINA SERENELLA is a dank squelching backdrop for a dark age. CAST twists tension with flickering electronics chaotic in their perpetual design of order confronting inevitable collapse. LET SHARKS SLEEP is not only a great title but a mind tickling adventure of descending/rising digital dance that builds in intensity with it's relentless repetition. WIDOW WALKS gallops and creaks along a path veiled in whispers. ENGE lunges through time with an air of deep uncertainty. SEAMONS hovers on the outskirts, crawling out of the speakers with endless surprising turns, few of them comfortable.

SEAMONS is progressive ambient, not the kind that makes you escape, but rather one you can't escape from. SEAMONS crawls into the very guts of sound to uncover and unravel the uneasy and unsettling underbelly within.

Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles announces details of his highly anticipated new album Articulation, released on Erased Tapes on 31 July 2020.
‘Articulation’, the lead track and album centrepiece, links the record back to the analogue fluidity and colour of 2016’s Night Melody. The division of varying time signatures, intertwined with a complex structure of notes, creates an expression of a moving structure and conjures a dreamy motorik energy. Ryan Lee West explains, "The title track is about articulation and playfulness with shape and time. Its structure is very machine-like, but I was really interested in how melody and sense of story could develop out of this, and it became an exploration of mathematical structures - patterns and shapes having a conversation. I love that something on paper can appear rigid and calculated, but then take on new meaning based on the context that surrounds it, or how it changes over time."
Articulation (which follows 2018’s Persona) was conceived with a very visual way of thinking, unusual for the London musician and producer. During the writing process Ryan drew structures, shapes and patterns by hand to try and find new ways of thinking about music, giving himself a way to problem-solve away from the computer. The album title references a piece by the avant-garde contemporary composer Györgi Ligeti, though not for its music, but for the non-traditional graphic score that accompanied it.
“I find electronic music is often battling to say something with integrity because technology and production can easily get in the way. I think the goal of a lot of electronic composers is to find a balance between the vision of the idea and the power of possibilities on the computer. With a pen and paper sketch you can compose and rethink ideas without technology getting in the way, so for me it acts as a very helpful tool to refresh the process.” - Ryan Lee West
The idea of using analogue drawings and tools to bolster digital creations can be heard in the structure of the pieces that make up Articulation from the broody techno opener ‘Vibrations on a String’ all the way to the album’s boundless closer ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’. While the anthemic rise and fall of ‘Still Here’ and the beatless ambient meditation ‘Melodica’ evoke a certain nostalgia, ‘Forwardism’ achieves the very opposite by burying its melody within the fast-paced rhythm of its pulsating synths.
Rising out of birdsong heard from his studio window, ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’ has a particular urgency about it and seems to perfectly capture a longing for escape. Built around a simple and repetitive melodic theme, expanding and retracting over the course of its seven-minute odyssey, Lee West explains; “I like the fact that if you say something over and over again in music, then over time it can become something else, something reflective.”
Since the release of Persona, Ryan Lee West has taken his captivating live A/V set to all corners of the world. Last seen live on stage with 17 players of the London Contemporary Orchestra for a sold-out orchestral performance at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in January 2020.
Meanwhile Lee West has kept busy. After contributing an exclusive track titled ‘Them Is Us’ to Adult Swim’s coveted Singles series, he recently shared the beautifully textured solo piano piece Winter’s Lament on this year’s Piano Day. He has also been in high demand as a composer, scoring Charlie Brooker’s much talked about Black Mirror episode Striking Vipers, composing original music for Secret Cinema presents Stranger Things as well as renowned choreographer Alexander’s Whitley’s groundbreaking new work Overflow which was set to premiere at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre this spring.
Articulation will be available worldwide on 31 July, with live activities to be announced as soon as the situation allows safe event planning

we are very happy to announce this killer remix package. our dear friend superpitcher(aka pachanga boys) made three versions of remix.

studio mule’s original version which is produced by kuniyuki takahashi and sung by miyako koda (aka dip in the pool) is a cover version of japanese 80’s dance classic by taeko onuki.

superpitcher’s main mix is just for your peaktime set. it’s much more groovy and dance floor friendly than original version. it might be this summer anthem(if the party will be restarted…).

dub mix is more stripped down version and for more disco oriented dj. we love this version so much since superpitcher have been playing at his dj set.

ambient mix sounds like a japanese kankyo ongaku,it’s simply beautiful meditative music. beautiful cover design is by lily fei in new york, she is our new favorite illustrator.

In recent years, the Turkish drone-pop composer Ekin Fil (born Ekin Üzeltüzenci) has been refining her talents in the realm of the film score. Since her first recordings that were published by Root Strata and Students of Decay, she has always exhibited a preternatural ability to express the saddest of emotions through sound. Once channeled through the lens of a gauzy shoegazing smear of guitars and voice, she has peeling away layers of her ephemeral songs to reveal their emotional core. That compositional process that works so well for her award winning film scores informs the soft-focus tenebrous pieces of her 2020 album Coda.

It’s true that any number of these pieces on this album could announce the finale to an emotionally draining movie, but Ekin sculpts the entire album as a whole, dissolving one perfectly tempered piano motif, an impressionist ambient plume or a sibilant vocal melody into another. Just at the threshold of perception, she occasionally invokes cascades of distant noise that easily can be interpreted as the ominous premonitions for natural disasters - incoming storms, earthquakes, or tidal waves. This subtle disquiet amidst the introspective melancholy furthers the emotional weightiness of Coda.

Her somber, blissful compositions have considerable gravity of their own in the constellation of Grouper, Felicia Atkinson, and Harold Budd. Mastered by James Plotkin.

Berlin-based Swedish saxophonist Otis Sandsjö returns with the eagerly-awaited sequel to "Y-OTIS". On "Y-OTIS 2", released by Helsinki's We Jazz Records on July 24, Sandsjö and his close associate, bassist/producer Petter Eldh (of Koma Saxo), deepen their vision of genre-bending, forward-looking "liquid jazz" of tomorrow. The core group also includes Dan Nicholls on keys and Tilo Weber on drums, and also featured on the album are Swedish jazz greats Jonas Kullhammar (of Koma Saxo) and Per "Texas" Johansson, cellist Lucy Railton and trumpeter Ruhi-Deniz Erdogan.

Diving deeper into "Y-OTIS 2", you'll find details and ideas galore. The album is an inviting and inspiring audio mosaic, which links back into the previous Sandsjö/Eldh collaborations, namely "Y-OTIS" and "Koma Saxo". The result is a balanced album which quenches your thirst while making you more thirsty in the process. In other words, the many micro moods and sonic levels herein invite repeated listening, while the underlying rhythmic approach is informed as much by hip hop and electronica as by jazz, making the music approachable in a very natural way.

It seems unnecessary to pull the album apart by name-checking individual tracks but just for the sake of easy introduction, the single cuts "tremendoce", "ity bity" and "abysmal" offer one idea of signposts along which to navigate. "tremendoce" brings in Swedish jazz great Jonas Kullhammar (of Koma Saxo) and Per "Texas" Johansson, introducing an infectious flute loop integrating into the Y-OTIS sound, making it organic to the bone. "ity bity" could be built on a new wave synth sample (but it's not) and "abysmal" brings more serene, even ambient-sounding sonic pathways onto the map. It all belongs together, and makes for a sound that is instantly recognisable and constantly fresh. This is "Mauerpark liquid jazz" for the new decade.

Berlin-based Swedish saxophonist Otis Sandsjö returns with the eagerly-awaited sequel to "Y-OTIS". On "Y-OTIS 2", released by Helsinki's We Jazz Records on July 24, Sandsjö and his close associate, bassist/producer Petter Eldh (of Koma Saxo), deepen their vision of genre-bending, forward-looking "liquid jazz" of tomorrow. The core group also includes Dan Nicholls on keys and Tilo Weber on drums, and also featured on the album are Swedish jazz greats Jonas Kullhammar (of Koma Saxo) and Per "Texas" Johansson, cellist Lucy Railton and trumpeter Ruhi-Deniz Erdogan.

Diving deeper into "Y-OTIS 2", you'll find details and ideas galore. The album is an inviting and inspiring audio mosaic, which links back into the previous Sandsjö/Eldh collaborations, namely "Y-OTIS" and "Koma Saxo". The result is a balanced album which quenches your thirst while making you more thirsty in the process. In other words, the many micro moods and sonic levels herein invite repeated listening, while the underlying rhythmic approach is informed as much by hip hop and electronica as by jazz, making the music approachable in a very natural way.

It seems unnecessary to pull the album apart by name-checking individual tracks but just for the sake of easy introduction, the single cuts "tremendoce", "ity bity" and "abysmal" offer one idea of signposts along which to navigate. "tremendoce" brings in Swedish jazz great Jonas Kullhammar (of Koma Saxo) and Per "Texas" Johansson, introducing an infectious flute loop integrating into the Y-OTIS sound, making it organic to the bone. "ity bity" could be built on a new wave synth sample (but it's not) and "abysmal" brings more serene, even ambient-sounding sonic pathways onto the map. It all belongs together, and makes for a sound that is instantly recognisable and constantly fresh. This is "Mauerpark liquid jazz" for the new decade.