Koan is one of the best (not to say the best) chill-out project in Russia. So many people looking forward their releases and here we have one of them. For those of you who havent meet koan tunes yet i will give some basic info on the project. The band consists of two members - Daniel Roeth & William Grey, who worked in this direction for many years since 1993. Besides Koan they are running two more projects - Vacuum Stalkers for progressive psy and Fatum Sci-Fi for more techno/experimental oriented releases. And Daniel Roeth runs his own solo project as well.
Russia is more known for its original psy sound that presents the cutting edge of heavy and dark style of psytrance. But Koan is more closer to world music and ethno motiffs paying much attention to oriental influences. There was their only international full-length release "Two Moon Butterflies" (Trancexplorer, 2006) that was dedicated to medieval Japan. Current release is project's step in a whole new direction. No more Asian tunes, no more cheesy melodic parts... Just some drops of it still in tracks but the rest is absolute new Koan's sound more connected to European manner of progressive chill-out featuring some nice psydub details as well.
Koan - Coastline EP (Iboga Records / Sofa Beats digital)
Fashionable Mood
Watermarks
Coastline
This is first digital release from well-known sublabel of Dannish mighty Iboga Rec - Sofa Beats Digital. The cover art is very nice done by Dovla and represents relaxed seacoast somewhere at Adriatica.
The first track - Fashionable Mood - is sort of a tune with some minimalistic melodic parts in the middle of it. There are various beat effects, slender melody and nice atmospheric sounds that start from far away and then moving to main plane. Rare fat kick gives it a peculiar dub flavor. Not so long but very good packed. Nice relaxing evening music that is good to meet summer sunset with. Next one - Watermarks - more dusky track and i think that many of you will appreciate it at its real value. It is much more longer and epic; representing night flow of psychill. Many tasty effects joined here with deep beat and slow development of whole thing. Many different layers of the track are combined rather skew way so you can enjoy original and bit weird atmosphere of it. Coastline (track 3) continuing the mood of previous track but starts to evolve it in more dub oriented way. With its development song becomes more & more lighter leading out very nice slow and atmospheric melody that takes you in a beatuful trippy mood. Colourful & romantic it is very nice ending for this short release.
All in all. Koan have made their very different 3 tracks of what they used to do in earlier releases. And they have defenitely succeed in doing that. These tracks are very good compiled and fit each other well. Sound is clear and quality of it is enough to be released at such great label as Iboga is. Congrats to Sofa Beats for this excellent first whole digital piece. Hope that next releases will be also great. Thanks Koan for these 3 pretty songs showing that the band is up-to-date and skillful enough to bring us new style of their creative art.
you can buy this release at:
http://iboga.itc.nu/index.php?menuItem=mp3...&release=37
https://www.beatport.com
http://www.dancerecords.com/releases/7178
http://www.junodownload.com/products/1282020-02.htm
You also can download previous FREE releases from Koan at http://www.myspace.com/koantunes
good set indeed. like 1st part especially. 2nd is not my cup of tea but 3rd is nice too. cheerz