abasio

Various Artists Twelve TIP.World 2001 Tracklist 1. Logic Bomb - A 2. Bus and Siddartha - D 3. Cyberbabas and Paul - G 4. Process - C 5. Total Eclipse - F 6. Manmademan - B ♭ 7. Spacedrifters - E ♭ 8. Nick Doof – A ♭ 9. Synthetic - D ♭ 10. The Antidote - D ♭ 11. Earthling and Chicago - B 12. Hallucinogen - E Twelve is "A twelve part ambient journey into inner space" where Raja Ram has collected many artist appearing on TIP.World records when it was still good to create six minute ambient pieces for this 72 minute journey. The result is very pleasing with some of the biggest Psy Trance names from around the turn of the millennium turning their hands to more relaxed downbeat soundscapes, the music is soft & soothing & the production is classy & deep. Each track in a different key is an interesting concept that is a little lost on me but the quality journey music more than makes up for it. Logic Bomb starts us off with A, a very tribal ambient track. The beats are reminiscent of some ritualistic dance in Africa but the air surrounding the beats is filled with a plethora of weird twisted psychedelic sounds. A very nice start to our journey, it’s very positive a trippy. The next track, D by Bus and Siddartha follows suit from the logic bomb offering with ethnic drumming & a melody played on the sitar, an instrument I don’t often like but played quite nicely hear with a lot of atmospheric sounds floating in the background giving this an intense yet relaxing vibe. Cyberbabas and Paul – D has a female vocal softly calling out around the simple repetitive melody & little chimes here and there in the first half. The melody picks up intensity a little as do the other sounds & the voice. It all seems to be pushing at the walls of my brain trying to get in & twist it all around. No beats per say but the melody is quite rhythmical giving the illusion of percussion. Next up is Process – C which is a weird trippy synthesised take on natural ambient. There are natural sounds like water, storms & birdsong but they are all twisted out of reality into some kind of electronic voyage to trip out city. It is Beatless without any rhythm, just a strange descriptive soundscape. Even the melody seems unmelodic and it will all try to cook your brain. Total Eclipse – F brings us back to a relatively normal place with a deep & intense rushing track. I can picture myself rushing the tunnels of hyperspace while listening to this. As I fly, voices call from the other side of the tunnel but I keep on careening unable and unwilling to stop for them. They sound like an announcement in an airport but I’m already flying high. This is really really good as you’d expect from Total Eclipse. Manmademan - B ♭delivers a very peaceful ambient track with deep rushes of ambient drones layered in the background, muttered conversations & dark ethereal voices crying out. Quite dark & cold like a late autumn evening this offers a desolate feel like standing on a cold dark moor lost in the middle of the night. Unsettling without being terrifying, a great contribution from Manmademan. Spacedrifters - E ♭follows on with the darker melancholic feeling with great melodic drones playing a sadly reflective tune. Very stuff on the piano & the electronic synth accompaniment fits very well. One of the best tracks on this wonderful album, this could be music for a very heart moving movie during a time of great pain or adversity. Nick Doof – A ♭has a slightly warmer feeling with a soft bassline hugging tight to protect from the coldness beyond the door. Melancholic again & dark with some ultra trippy dripping noises like the ceiling of my reality is slowly melting. The soft synths try to push my brain back in but it’s too late. It’s already escaped into the night. Synthetic - D starts with a voice that reverberates quite harshly at first, in such contrast to the soft brain squeezing ambience of Doof’s track. As the voice leaves though in comes a huge orchestral melody that takes the breath away. I think I’d prefer a track more like that middle section but I must admit the return of the voice is very trippy as is the sudden change back to the orchestra with psychedelic trickles down the spine. The Antidote - D ♭continues the orchestral sound slightly with long deep strings that make way for a glitchy electronic section and ending up with a fusion of the 2 sounds. Glitchy electronica with deep beautiful strings is probably quite hard to pull off but The Antidote has done a wonderful job with this one. Earthling and Chicago – B is a fantastic piece of natural sounding ambient. The percussion sounds like bamboo drums matched by soft synths & the melody has a mystical feel to it, kind of eastern promise & spacey textures combining into an awe inspiring track. When the melody starts cascading down in a sonic waterfall of sounds it’s almost time for a new pair of trousers as this is one pants shittingly good ending. Hallucinogen – E ends the compilation with one of the best tracks not only on this compilation but by Simon Posford. The piano melody is basically all there is apart from the ambient drones that shadow it & those that rush up & down behind it. It’s very melancholic, a feeling that is heightened by the violin that comes halfway through. One of Simon’s best efforts ever, so good it almost makes me angry that he doesn’t produce more down tempo music like this as it is far superior to his trance in this reviewers humble opinion. Well then, this album was released back in 2001 when TIP.World still had a lot going for them, before they embraced a direction I’m not too fond of. This album probably does not appeal to the masses and that’s probably one of the reasons why it is so much better than TIP’s recent output. This is music made for the sake of good music, not just to instantly gratify some drugged up kids but to last for years of deep reflective meditation. It would be great if TIP.World could make a few more CDs like this. Release their half baked easily accessible stuff to make money but explore some more daring routes like they did here. One can dream.

Matt Coldrick Music For A Busy Head – Absolute Ambient.com Volume 1 Absolute Ambient.com 2001 Tracklist 1 Crown Violet Selflessness (7:36) 2 Brow Purple Wisdom (5:48) 3 Throat Blue Unity (7:35) 4 Heart Green Contentment (6:49) 5 Solar Plexus Yellow Radiance (6:17) 6 Naval Orange Purity (8:02) 7 Base Red Patience (8:18) Having taken a long time to get in to Elemental Journey but ending up truly loving it and instantly loving the Pan PAcific album Conscious Pilot released recently I was very curious as to how the first release from this record label would sound. The title filled me with hope that it would be a beautifully relaxed horizontal eyes closed synaesthesia inducing album & I was not disappointed. This album is a wonderfully peaceful journey that soothes a tired head & makes you forget your stresses & lets your troubles float away into the ether. "The tracks are composed in keys that resonate with each of the seven chakras in turn, all below the tempo of the human heart at rest." Crown Violet Selflessness is an eastern sounding track with lots of natural sounds. The eastern feel comes from the melody making me picture Tibetan mountains on a warm summer day. From the feel of a cool breeze to the mystical melody it’s all very self-reflective. Brow Purple Wisdom takes us from the mountains of Tibet to the white sandy beaches of a tropical island getaway. It is once again quite peaceful with a lot of water sounds, most noticeably being what sounds like a downpour of rain on the ocean but each time it’s very brief. Big bass sounds cut through the air accompanied by a light melody. Loving those water sounds so much. Throat Blue Unity takes us up a notch in the chillout stakes. I am left thinking that the last track was a mess of harsh sounds compared to this. A very simple melody repeats over nothingness, a few other noises come in & out, some rushing water sounds a few brief melodious sounds & brief strings etc but it’s all basically just the same few notes repeated again & again. Less is most definitely more. Heart Green Contentment I think is a title that perfectly sums up the music. I get a feeling of happy peaceful contentment listening to this track. From the slow, slightly melancholic melody on the flute & piano to the upbeat chimes rising like bubbles & cascading down I get a lot of emotion from this piece. Very simple again, some might call it boring but it’s extremely calming. This really is Music for a Busy Head. Solar Plexus Yellow Radiance has more energy with a melody played that seems to be constantly rising yet always stays in the same place. The big ambient drones add a lot of spacious atmosphere to the music & the flurries of flute combined with the very eastern melody sends my mind right back to Asian rice paddies on a warm spring day. Another beautiful track. Naval Orange Purity takes advantage of the human voice in a very pure way. A few times in the track you can hear chanting that sounds like it’s coming from a great distance but that has been carried on the wind to us with no loss in clarity. This is another very reflective track with nice outdoor sounds for a warm heart. Base Red Patience is the coldest sounding track with a deep dark bass drone & a wind like sound rushing through it like it’s a dark windy night outside but I’m snug as a bug in a rug wrapped up in my warm blanket by an open fire. Very relaxing ambient, I like it a lot. All in all this is a wonderful collection of tunes. Very beautiful each of them & although very different they combine together nicely to create a lush journey for your mind to float away on. The sounds are very warm & natural, a perfect album for anyone who likes their ambient warm and cosy like a summer’s day or a big fluffy blanket. I think this album has definitely been overlooked by many but it’s still readily available in shops like Saiko Sounds so give it a try.

almost as good

I made the same mistake myself untl someone kindly pointed out my error np Takagi Masakatsu - Rama one of the greatest tracks ever crafted. Amazingly a live composition

I suppose a link would be good

Distant System - Astropolis In the city of Astropolis where the skyscrapers rise 5000 metres into the sky & small passenger ships fly between the high rises. Where the sun beats down but reaches the bottom only after it's been reflected thousands of times through windows. Where the higher you　live the better your status & the lower you live the more chance you have of a violent death. A futuristic hive city.

Elemental Journey - The Band From Atlantis

just put this on myself

Why were they deleted?

Matt Hillier is in my opinion one of the ambient masters. One of the best ever with his beautifully relaxed & natural style he has found his way into many people's hearts I'm sure. Just about everything this guy makes is top class music & I don't think I've heard anything that I didn't love form him. His collaborations with other artists are just as good. I've made a mix of my most loved tracks from Ishq, his other projects & collaborations. Tracklist 1. Conscious Pilot - Always A Way/A Moment Of Grace (With Matt Coldrick) 2. Ishq - Fire Salamader 3. Ishq - Ra 4. Ishq - Sundive 5. Indigo Egg - Smiling Buddha 6. Elemental Journey - The Band From Atlantis (With Matt Coldrick) 7. Ishq - Aphrodite 8. Ishq - Bakhti 9. Ishq - Alaya 10. Ishq - En Soph 11. Colourform - Nubien Sunset (With Jake Stephenson) 12. Ishq - Sol 13. Ishq & Shulman - Mother Nature (With Shulman) 14. Ishvara - Blue Helix 15. Elve - Utoia 16. Ishq - Fluid Earth 17. Elemental Journey - Air (With Matt Coldrick) 18. Colourform - Kaliedoscope (With Jake Stephenson) There's some beats but most would describe the greater part of this mix as beatless. If you are not into beatless ambient (or what is usually referred to as beatless) then check this out anyway. Matt Hillier just makes good music, he can change your mind The beatier tracks are at the start.

Discogs don't allow hotlinking of their images. You can see it because of cookies or something but we have no idea what you are posting. Just looks like a blank post. NP Vataff Project - Carpet Sounds

Sasha & John Digweed - Northern Exposure

Man that cover is so Pavel. I hope they haven't gone too cheezy fullon. Fullon is so Radi. It's nice to have part of you (name or orientation) associated with what everyone thinks is bad isn't it? Anyway I don't have high hopes for this album it'll probably be uber-pavelradi crap

Cymphonic - Phonema Sacrata (DataObscura 2006)

Indigo Egg - Smiling Buddha

Indigo Egg ixland Celestial Dragon Records 21st March 2008 Tracklist 1 Clouds Of Indigo (13:01) 2 Planet X (11:42) 3 Tree Bark Dreams (9:51) 4 Smiling Buddha (8:35) 5 Lhasa Oblongata (3:24) 6 Ixland / Clearlight (5:27) 7 Home (2:13) Matt Hillier, the ambient master who brought us the masterpiece albums Orchid (Ishq), Magik Square of the Sun (Ishvara), Infinite Garden (Elve) and much much more. This album was originally worked on in the late 90’s but was shelved as other projects took precedence. Brought up later, remastered it finally found it’s way into a release. This album therefore highlights Matt’s early sound & is very reminiscent of that late 90’s ambient sound. 1. Clouds of Indigo We start off with a very natural intro, waves, wind that kind of stuff before it becomes a much more spacey psychedelic sounds with a soft but steady beat & little plops of trippy bubbles all around. Things rush off into the atmosphere & cascade down like a sonic shower. A very simple melody is strangely encapsulating and it all manages to build a very nice relaxed & very trippy atmosphere. The melody goes up & down & twists all around in a very slow manner. It’s one of those tracks that just manages to make time seem irrelevant as while it is 13 minutes long it seems to be over in no time. It’s a great opener and would work well mixed with some of The Infinity Projects ambient stuff. 2. Planet X More natural sounds at the start of this one, birdsong being the most prominent continues through the track but at a much more subtle layer after quite a hard beat kicks in. The beat is sharp & cuts through the soundscape with every kick. Whereas the intro has me scratching my head as to why this track is called Planet X, after a while I come to understand. The sounds used are very alien feeling, extremely trippy & it makes me picture a purple late evening sky with ringed moons slowly rising in the sky. It’s a bit like the music from Magik Square of the Sun but more upbeat and more colourful than I found that album but it shares the same mechanical feeling I got from it in a similar alien environment. 3. Tree Bark Dreams Fantastic 90’s ambient beats are like a very welcome blast from the past. They remind me of the sort of trippy beats found on the Early Northern Exposure compilations with a slightly more twisted edge. The beats trip along echoing on each hit. The spacey sounds put me in mind of the Northern Lights & how they would sound if turned into music. I picture myself lying on my back on a frozen over lake far into the arctic circle watching them flicker overhead waiting for an alien spacecraft to and rescue me from the drudgery of everyday life. I find this to be a nice track full of escapism. 4. Smiling Buddha Smiling Buddha slows us down a bit, the beats are still there but they are back to an undanceable rate. You could stand in the middle of the dancefloor and move but move but it wouldn’t really be dancing. Very spacey again with alien blips rising & cascading, long synth lines droning in the background & a sample I can’t quite make out. It’s a fair bit darker than the previous tracks more like night time space ambient. It feels like open spaces, dark skies and the tops of trees obscuring the moonlight. The whole atmosphere is very big & dreamy, my favourite track on the album 5. Lhasa Oblongata This is a spacey, floaty, beatless track that manages to sound spacey & earthy at the same time. The bubbles sound like they are in some ocean in hyperspace whereas the birds sound like they are over an earthly body of water. Maybe it’s on some mirror world, just like here except different in an indescribable way. 6. ixland/Clearlight Back with some heavier beats (not heavy just compared to the beatless track before). The sounds are harsher in this too sounding like some acid stabbing through my brain, quite a shock from the bliss that has preceded it. It’s an interesting storm of sounds swirling around. Halfway through it really calms down becoming a calm beatless adventure onto a beautiful island. The sound of birds greets us & the voice of a Psiren speaks to me, welcoming me. The contrast in styles from the start to the beginning is quite unusual & I think I’d prefer just the latter style. 7. Home A wee track to end on, for me it’s like a continuation from the end of the last track. I can see myself lying on the grass in the middle of my island looking up into the clear blue sky & being very much at peace here at home. Well, all in all this was not what I was expecting. I was expecting something more along the lines of his beatless Virtual Music releases or his Ishq releases. But Matt Hillier has a different name for every different style & this style is definitely needing it’s own name. The music is musical, not just an ambient soundscape journey but it has melody & rhythm too. Like most of Matt’s work a casual listen doesn’t sound that spectacular but lie down & give it a real listen & the beauty unfolds. I would heartily recommend this to any lover of Matt Hillier, 90’s ambient or just good trippy music. This is a very psychedelic album in my humble opinion; it really takes my mind places. The mastering is great, it all sounds very clean but the only thing I don’t like is that at the end & beginning of some tracks it seems like the music has been altered a little to make the album a seamless (gapless) journey of an album. I don’t quite feel though that it succeeds and the transitions from one track to another distract me briefly. That’s a small qualm though & it does not ruin my enjoyment of this very good album. Not Matt’s best work but a fine release nonetheless.

Artifakt - The Magus

Jikkenteki - Abiguity

Here is an ambient scene. The story starts in the late evening beneath a garland of stars. The night gets darker as it goes on & we travel through the city. The city never sleeps though & there is always someone working. The darkest time of the night is just before the dawn & the dawn brings a brief morning optimism but the sun never manages to climb very high in the sky & we end with a cold dark half light of the far north. Enjoy Tracklist 1. Robert Davies - Beneath Strange Stars 2. Evan Bartholomew - Secret Entries Into Darkness 3. Robert Rich & B. Lustmorde - Delusion Fields 4. Nuc Stans - A Logic of Dissolution 5. Lammergeyer - Atonement 6. Robert Davies - Spectral Visions 7. Evan Bartholomew - Born, We Fluctuate & Fade 8. Solar Fields - Air Song (8am Version) 9. Spielerei & Mantacoup - Where It All Ends 10. David Bickeley & Tom Green - Polar Sirens 11. Robert Davies - Plateau of Delusions Link

Crazy & very disturbing

Robert Davies - Beneath Strange Stars

Some PSYchill here. Downbeat psychedelic squid tentacle monkey arms. For once a nice CD length mix Part one of my wee series 1. Jikkenteki - Ambiguity 2. Prosect - Palenque 3. The Peaking Goddess Collective - Being Transformation 4. Mauxaum - Bleeding 4 Africa 5. Tripswitch - Lyra 6. Aes Dana - Lysistrata 7. Khooman - Dahkara 8. Solar Fields - Air Song 9. Shulman - Inner Shelves (Ishq Remix) Link