abasio

1. Shpongle - Are You Shpongled? 2. Shpongle - Tales of the Inexpressible 3. V/A Eclipse - A Journey Of Permanence & Impermanence 4. Hallucinogen in Dub 5. OTT - Blumenkraft 6. Shpongle - Nothing Lasts Mostly Shpongle & OTT, for me easily the best thing on twisted is there downbeat stuff also they re-released SPs debut Twisted which would be top of the list if it didn't feel so much like a Dragonfly release in my heart

Padmasana Padmasana (Balinese Space Dub) Dakini Records 1999 (Reissued in 2001) Tracklist 1 Be Where Now (12:19) 2 A Distant Star (11:08) 3 Holistic Resonance (18:20) Padmasana is a collaboration between Gio Makyo and David Hikari, a pair of Tokyo chill-out djs, and the mysterious S. Widi, their "spiritual advisor" from Bali. This album was inspired by misty nights in Ubud and the mind-shattering "oong" mushrooms of Bali. The music takes you on a trip through inner and outer space, finally ending up back in the lush, tropical ambience of Ubud at night. The album features field recordings and live performances recorded in Bali, Tibet, and Tokyo, and varied instrumentation, including: Tibetan mantra, gamelan, Indian frame drum, water drums, bass, assorted Balinese percussion, sampler, cumbus, broken BassStation, Korg Z1, voice, Eventide Harmonizer, tr-303, tabla, and Ubud night insects and frogs. 1. Be Where Now A nice opening track. Has a nice chilled out bassline through out the majority of the track playing like a melody. Lots of tribal ethnic sounds in this one but in the usual Dakini way, the ethnicity of the music never goes too overboard or gets too cheesy. It all sounds very real, a perfect mixture of tribal sounds, modern technology & future spaciness. This last element is given a perfect boost by the sample The spacecraft passes through the gateway, space returns to normal halfway through & continuing with scattered short samples of space & time & spacecrafts through the rest of the track just the right length to be trippy as hell & never annoying. The melody playing through the whole track is a simple falling melody that fits as a link from the earthy beats to the spacey vocals. All in all it's a fantastic track. One of the best from Dakini 2. A Distant Star With lush vocals from Keiku who has featured on other Dakini tracks, most memorably for me was her vocals on Puff Dragon's Qi Gong. For a long while it is just her and some nice ambient sounds. A lush drone, some very soft tribal percussion & some gentle strings. It's all such beautifully done ethnic ambient. As before it sounds so real, no forced ethnicity or cheesy overdone stuff here, this sounds like the Eastern Promise in my dreams of Tibetan temples when I was younger. Picture yourself trekking through the mountains, the clouds low all around you & as the mist clears you find yourself in front of a large yet humble temple. As you walk in through the gates there is a quiet market with peddlers selling their wears and priests walking serenely among them. In the main building you can hear the voice of a goddess & you are drawn to it but the more you go towards it the more distant it becomes. These are the images conjured in my head but as the voice finally disappears I find myself back in a small hut, pipe in hand, wondering where I've just been. 3. Holistic Resonance The last track is an 18 minute journey into your deepest inner reaches & past your outer limits into the limitlessness of space. It's soft melodic ambient, mostly beatless in the first half but with enough energy through it moving. There is hints of soft percussion here & there but it never really needs any beats. The music drifts along beautifully without it that by the time steady beats do materialise you are left wondering how long they have been there. The NASA type samples are amazing out of place with the whole feel of the track yet surprisingly seem to fit in as well. During the second half the track picks a bit more energy with the beat becoming more prominent and some oddly places vocal sounds. the real treat musically in this track though has to be the chimes that make up the melody in the final run of the track. Dreamy in a meditative sort of way. Like sitting in a forest clearing on a warm summer evening, connecting your thoughts to the nature around you & really looking deeply inside yourself from far away so you can see how the deep inner reaches of your mind & body are connected with everything else. One of the best final runs I've heard not just from Dakini but in ambient music in general. This album is definitely a must if you like Dakini's sound. One of the highlights from a very good label. It's soft dreamy music conjuring images of Eastern Philosophy and deep space ideals. The ethnicity is very real & never sounds fake, cheesy or forced in anyway. The vocals in the second are goddess like in their beauty & have to have been made for the track rather than a sample used by the producer. The percussion is very down to earth tribal beats & the basslines are subtle a tuneful. The melodies add the spacey feel as do a few well placed samples. The only flaw is the length at under 42 minutes you are always left wanting more. Still, best to release 3 brilliant tracks only than 3 brilliant tracks & 3 sub par tracks maybe. About Padmasana "Padmasana" is a common type of shrine found in Bali --although most gods and goddesses are usually visually depicted with statues and other works of art, the supreme godhead is shown only as an empty chair, the "padmasana" ("lotus seat"). On one level, this is a great spiritual prank; on another, it's full of meaning: the divine cannot be shown as a "god", because ultimately, it's everywhere and in everyone.

Padmasana - A Distant Star Perfect spacey tribal atmospheres full of eastern promise without getting cheesy

Am quite liking this

Damn! You just made me hungry This 2CD is making me hungry for it too

I blame Dudev too

There will always be good stuff, great stuff even but it will be more & more difficult to find. There is more good music now than there used to be there is just even more shite than we ever imagined possible & it's getting harder & harder to shift through it.

My Saiko Sounds order arrived and a while ago I got some Japanese ambient but it's not on discogs cool though Rather happy right now

Mangrove Gengis Khan's Reverie Hardcore Buddhist Arcana

Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting this one

Neuron Compost - Le Forest Femme

Cool! Looking forward to those Already have this, mostly very good with a few overly cheesy tracks thrown in

The Prodigy - Out of Space Sometime around the release date in 1992 & got into electronic music a year or 2 later I heard Genetic - Transmission on Project II Trance & got addicted to psy

Just listen to BPC's other down tempo work! Remember nothing sounds exactly like wild city apart from wild city! What the hell do you expect people to recommend you?

Liquid Stranger　- Liquid Stranger on the Run

15 years & I'm still listening to it so I'm sure I'll still listen to psy in 5 years time. I think the music will get better but the percentage of shite will increase. So it'll take more effort to find the music. I think CDs will still be around, maybe less but people will still want some physical products

Out of curiosity, which chill releases did you listen to that you didn't like?

Damn That sure is sucky news Is there not any cheap CD internet sites where you can press CDs or CD-Rs with no minimum? I know nowadays you can print one copy of a book so surely there must be places you can press CDs. No?

I guess this is a love it or hate it album! At first I was like WTF?? These sounds are so fod damn annoying & it's too glitchy. But after it randomly came on my ipod one depressed walk back from work, I was touched by the melodies in the last few tracks. There really is a lot of really good emotional stuff here. If you can get over your preconceptions of the annoying instruments used it's not bad. Definitely could do with less glitch though.

Solar Fields - EarthShine

Solar Fields - Small Little Green Cubes This guy really is pure genious in my book. Everything he creates just oozes class. This sounds nothing like solar fields, it's much more electro & clubby than anything I've heard from him. The only think that shows me it's him is the quality

Master Margherita - Schulze Echoes