Wilson Trouvé & Wil Bolton - Escape (2021)

The French artist, residing in Belgium, Wilson Trouvé and Wil Bolton, the Englishman already known to the readers of this blog, released a short (for the ambient genre) album called Escape and this trans-channel cooperation makes one of the most beautiful farewells to 2021.

The lengthy soundscapes they offer burst with life and sounds under the apparent ambient layer. The rich compositions are filled with curious electronica that sound both beautiful and mesmerizing - like an invitation to the realm of self-discovery and wistfulness. Especially when the music is filled with clock-like pace (in Escape) that feels more fairy-tale-like than hasty and nervous. This otherworldly atmosphere is really what is so attractive in the artists' work, no wonder that the album's title suggests to escape with this perfect escapism tool.

Escape costs 3.5 EUR.

Wil Bolton - Above the Neon Glow (2021)

Check: Escape

Country: France/UK

Genre: trance soundscape

Label: 1631 Recordings

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SOM - The Shape of Everything (2022)

The American band SOM debuted five years ago with The Fall but at the beginning of this year they managed to release an even better followup in the form of The Shape of Everything (pun intended). Their heavy blackgaze is dark and captivating, no wonder this is one of the more important heavy music albums of January.

The band's sound, already baptized as "doom pop", creates a post-metal, heavy-guitar-oriented atmosphere with delicate, dreamy vocals sitting on top. In this case, they very much remind me of Holy Fawn and this is a huge compliment. The balance between the crushingly loud music with guitar riffs that dominate the soundscapes and the ethereal, shoegazey type of delivery is most certainly difficult to achieve but the Americans do it very well. You can feel that the music is heavy and airy at the same time. The blackgaze walls of noise seem to close on the listener in each of the compositions, making them feel as massive as possible and as a shoegaze release should.

This gloomy atmosphere that resides on the album and constitutes the core force behind its might, comes from observing the reality around us. Unfortunately, it usually brings darker inspirations as the band used "the darkness of recent times to create and heal". This blissful sound surely has some healing properties.

The Shape of Everything costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Son of Winter

Country: US

Genre: airy doomgaze

Label: Pelagic Records

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With Hidden Noise - Nowhere (2022)

Charlie Berger is of course known as With Hidden Noise and Slowly - with both of the projects appeared on this blog already. The Canadian artist came back at the beginning of the year with another great album called Nowhere.

This "collection of songs contemplating love, loss, life and death" is filled with ultimately slowcore music. Its slow pace and mood-creating abilities definitely fit the self-reflecting theme of the album. Especially with Berger's dreamy, properly dispersed vocals flowing just above the soundscape like an autumn fog above the ground. The theme is no joke and the artist doesn't beat around the bush either; already the first song brings up the most important question in any human being's life: "Oh my god, in heaven/ What will happen to me when I’m gone?" and then it gets only more melancholic with the theme of loss (in friendship - Two Ships and in relationship - my favourite track here Back to Me) being perhaps even sadder than the theme of death - at least you don't have to live through the latter.

As always, this intimate slowcore atmosphere makes me think of Raised by Swans with similar level of melancholy and emotions enchanted in dreamy ballads. Ballads that have a huge potential to fill broken hearts with tons of melancholia.

Nowhere costs 3 EUR (4 CAD).

Slowly - Reverse (2021)

With Hidden Noise - Beside the Sea (2019)

Check: Back to Me

Country: Canada

Genre: dreamy slowcore

Label: Lossleader Records

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The Glass Pavilion - When the Blazing Sun Is Gone (2022)

The first album released in 2022 on my blog is a debut album by Ashley Owens. The English artist makes music as The Glass Pavilion and he filled his first ever album When the Blazing Sun Is Gone with subtle solo post-rock pieces that often are closer to instrumental ambient than guitar-raging compositions.

Owens was forced to give up on his "bedroom indie" way of playing music so he chose to continue pursuing music career in the electronica post-rock field. He merges synths and electronic sounds with sampled guitars to create moody and slow soundscapes of pure atmosphere. The compositions are long and quiet, delicate noise makes a background for non-invasive guitar sounds while in many places, the soundscapes are made more beautiful with synthy melodies (so great in Open to the Sky). They are very well developed and it's only more amazing knowing that the artist created them "at [his] kitchen table (mostly), with studio equipment consisting of a laptop, a small MIDI keyboard, a smartphone and a pair of headphones".

As the title and cover art suggest, the album has the winter's dark vibes all over. it But the darkness here is not dangerous nor unsettling - quite the opposite, the music feels cozy and making the audience feel at peace. Perhaps that was the tool the artist used to settle after the difficult time in his life. As he states, "it’s not a despairing, ‘share my pain’ album, or at least I hope it’s not. I hope it’s music people might be happy to escape into" - and this plan of escaping works, especially when, in the impressive finish of the album in The Most Glorious Birds, the organ-like synths lead your way.

When the Blazing Sun Is Gone costs 6 EUR (5 GBP).

Check: The Most Glorious Birds

Country: UK

Genre: synth instrumental ambient

Label: Little Lights Recordings

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Horse Show - Falsterbo (2021)

A new supergroup from the Swedish city of Malmö released their first every album. The EP is called Falsterbo, making it the most difficult album to search for online (as Falsterbo is actually a name of a horse show in Sweden). But most importantly, it's a great debut all about fuzzy and melodic noise pop songs.

The band consists of members of a handful of bands from Malmö and the southern Sweden in general (like Hater, FEWS and YAST), who may have various music backgrounds but together make up an ethereally energetic combination. This supergroup of the Scania airy tunes, filled their debut EP with lively dream pop music that makes me think of the early Pia Fraus: there's noise, there's fuzzy guitars, but the melodies are what drives the project. There's a lot of earnest songwriting here: the songs feel straightforwardly fun and energetic with this lo-fi twee vibes all over them. It's all well audible in songs like Used To, Memory Chain or my favourite one Shame - all of them present an insane level of catchiness. Not to forget that Shame finishes with a very psychedelic and noisy way - the perfect combination. The short album really fits my private discovery of Swedish dream pop artists that made a great deal of the last year's airy music playlist for me.

Falsterbo costs 3.99 EUR.

Check: Shame 

Country: Sweden

Genre: noise pop

Label: PNKSLM Recordings

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anthéne - maritime (2021)

Brad Deschamps, a well-established ambient artist and curator of Polar Seas Recordings, released a fantastic album last November (curiously, through the Ambientologist label). And maritime catches attention with the subtle but ever-changing soundscapes that rush the audience into a dreamy trance.

Mastered by Ian Hawgood, the album is said to be unique for the artist as it "shift[s] from his usual expansive, time-stretching soundscapes" into "something altogether more grounded, more focused". The tracks don't feel particularly rushed, they present well-developed, delicately noisy soundscapes that seem to represent an open gate to the land of dreaming. Melancholic drones and peaceful mood really feel like invitation to a trance. Perhaps one less comfortable composition the audience can find in what the night will bring with its slightly more danger-sounding vibes in the synthy backgrounds, but maybe it's just autosuggestion. 

maritime costs 8 EUR.

Check: what the night will bring 

Country: Canada

Genre: dreamy soundscape

Label: Ambientologist

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Neonach - II (2021)

Craig Douglas debuted with his project Neonach only a year ago and he managed to got back with a follow-up album already in the final days of the last year. I love how unique and fresh the artist's music feels while still deriving the best parts from established music genres of shoegaze and psychedelia.

The uniqueness of Douglas' music is bound to the use of electronics means to achieve an unbelievably fun and smooth flow in his music. The songs seem to slide from one to another like people dancing on ice. And it doesn't matter that the follow-up album seems to be heavier than the debut, it's still the same, immersive and inviting atmosphere. There are moments of shocking noise (like in my favourite A Dream that sound almost like something taken from dubstep but melted in the ethereality of this music) or even metal-like galloping pace (in Human) but even they are so fantastically catchy thanks to the use of ethereal choirs and synth-like backgrounds. As well as the particularly distorted vocals that may feel like taken from older psychedelic rock records but feel very well fitted in the modern music the artist creates.

II costs 7 USD.

Neonach - Neonach (2021)

Check: A Dream

Country: Massachusetts, US 

Genre: electronic psychedelic rock

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WE​.​THE PIGS - WE​.​THE PIGS (2021)

It's been already 6 years (!) since the Swedish band WE.THE PIGS' debut EP I posted about on this blog back in its beginnings. The musicians finally (!) released their first LP and, fortunately, I can safely say it was wort waiting for as the self-titled album shows a lot of noisy and dreamy magic.

Their noise pop is characterized with lo-fi, bedroom recordings quality and it directly influences the haziness and mystery surrounding the melodies. To dig through the noise and the whole fog of imperfect sounds to reach the airy vocals and lofty tunes is a fantastic experience. And very rewarding too as songs like Drift to Sleep or Curtains show how beautifully merged the ethereality and catchiness are here. It goes without saying that the airy vocals and ballad-like compositions boost the ethereal atmosphere that is thick and moody from the album's beginning to its end. Not to mention the melancholic, city-based and emotional lyrics. And even when the band steps on it and gets more indie-rock powerful in songs like Fuck Your Songs or Vi striker, the overall blanket of haze and dream-like atmosphere swiftly reappear to provide more airy vibes for the audience.

WE​.​THE PIGS costs 12 EUR.

we.the pigs - EP (2016)

Check: Drift to Sleep

Country: Sweden

Genre: lo-fi noise pop

Label: Dreams Never End Records

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Hemelbestormer - Collide & Merge (2021)

Hemelbestormer is one of the bands that define the heavy music scene in Belgium, one that never disappoints fans' expectations when it comes to the overwhelming guitar noise compositions. Three years after their third album A Ring of Blue Light, they are back with immersive and absolutely massive Collide & Merge.

This extremely long album (physically existing as double CD/LP) is filled with long and slowly developing (or even developing and diminishing and then developing again within one track) very much guitar-oriented compositions. They seem to last forever while the storm of guitar noise comes and goes, making this feel nature-like epic. There are traces of electronica here, but the focus is solely put on what can be achieved with a wall of guitar noise - and the results are so impressive! The blizzard of sound they can generate is fantastic with the noise parts in Collapsar (or rather somewhere within Collapsar's complicated soundscape), the first seconds of In Praise of Sun and in my favourite Void that constitutes almost a quarter-of-an-hour-long love letter to loud music.

But there's more to this music than only the crushing quality of noise. There's a lot of space for moody atmosphere building, drone ambient-like passages as well as for skillful guitar riffs. I love those mysterious spoken word/whispering bits in Quasar as well. In general, the whole album sounds like it was carefully designed to reflect what's the best in instrumental guitar music.

Collide & Merge costs 6 EUR.

Hemelbestormer - A Ring of Blue Light (2018)

Check: Void 

Country: Belgium

Genre: massive post-metal

Label: Ván Records

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Saáadon - мреть (наутро ночь) (2021)

That's a great story on itself: two music projects Sádon (a Russia-based duo) and Saåad (Romain Barbot from France) came together to make music so they called this collaboration Saáadon, I think it's brilliant. Their album is called мреть (наутро ночь) which translates to "Die (in the morning night" which makes it clear that its content is going to be dark and poignant.

And the opening notes of heavy organ-like keys are certainly an emotional treat. The very slow soundscape the artists create have those heavy qualities, it's clear for the audience that the music i made to overwhelm and make them feel things. It's noisy, it's tear-jerkingly beautiful and, to top that, there are dispersed vocals that are based on Sádon's Donat Mavleev's poetry. They talk about "the end of time, its horizon and beyond" - quite bombastic themes but also, for ambient music, this is the most grandeur-invoking music you can get, especially thanks to the organ-like parts that make me think of Anna von Hausswolff's collab with Godspeed You! Black Emperor - similar dark and sacral vibes here.

мреть (наутро ночь) costs 8 EUR.

Check: Явь

Country: Russia/France

Genre: heavy soundscape

Label: Cyclic Law

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Fragrance. - Salt Water (2021)

Matthieu Roche, a.k.a. Fragrance with a dot, comes from France and creates very unique blend of heavy club music with extremely airy vocals. His music is both moody and catchy so I couldn't miss the opportunity to post about his second album called Forevermore.

His music, in many ways similar to what another French artist, Hante, does, creates this peculiar feeling in the audience: the urge to dance and to sink in the melancholic atmosphere at the same time. The basses Roche creates are deep and the compositions very much club-fitting, but there's a touch of darkness in them as well. Darkness that is obvious when you listen to his vocals - airy, smooth and whispering-like, a true dream pop way of singing. This surprising and exciting marriage of genres is only more so when the music becomes full front dance-inciting in Bind Me Up with Your Flesh. This depressive dance feeling is so well explained in my favourite track on the album, Crisis: "You will dance your pain away/ You will dance it anyway/ Now the crisis’s back/ Intertwining dark". Easy - you're in pain but you dance anyway, like all of us.

But the true value of the album is how the tracks are both dreamy and extremely catchy at the same time with songs like Covered in Gold (with those fantastic backing vocals!) and Crises are simply speaking pure music hits and it's only fortunate that they, in some way, belong to the dream pop genre.

Salt Water costs 7 EUR.

Check: Crisis

Country: France

Genre: dreamy dark electronica

Label: Synth Religion

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Oka Sun - Twin Flame (2021)

Oka Sun is a musical duo (or "the love child between two long time friends" as they adorably state on their Bandcamp page) from California. Previously known as The New Tenants, the band consists of Yoshi and Mandy and a lot of lovely, artistic pop released on their debut album Twin Flame.

As the intro in The Storm suggests, the album is all about beautiful compositions on piano and violin. Their chamber pop or art pop songs are based on melancholic vocals that sometimes sound more dream-pop-like, sometimes like some kind of indie folk. And so the lyrics they write are very fittingly about finding home, feeling lost in life and tons of melancholia ("Endless seasons/ Growing weakness/ Somewhere I’m sleepless/ Reckless and restless") - a perfect marriage of indie pop/rock/folk and the dreamy genres. And so is the music in the backgrounds with the sad guitar/violin/piano combination that is so moody and atmospheric. But the artists prove they can navigate through various music genres like in the album's finish in Twin Flame where their music turns into very moody post-rock, and, I have to add, I dig this ending.

Twin Flame costs 7 USD.

Check: Twin Flame

Country: California, US

Genre: dreamy indie folk

Label: Old Press Records

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Murmure - Les mémoires dissociatives (2021)

I remember the Canadian Murmure as extremely airy dream pop, very much Slowdive-style. However, the new release, an EP called Les mémoires dissociatives, added to this a lot of heavy-sounding guitars  enriching the sound and make it even more shoegaze-like.

This short album is clearly inspired by the best shoegaze artists from the past. There's the airiness and ethereal vibes of Rachel Mayer's vocals and a lot of catchy melodies with loud and noisy guitars on top. Those are fantastic - in Au bord de l'abysse the guitar passages seem to have unlimited flow and ability to engage the audience on such a good level. No wonder the track is called "On the edge of the abyss" - it feels like just a step further, one would end up in a really noisy madness of sounds. The Ep is collection of potential shoegaze hits with Post-traumatique being one of the best tracks to combine the genre's holy trinity: the melody, the loudness and the ethereality.

Les mémoires dissociatives costs 3 EUR (4 CAD).

Murmure - Nos idées fantômes (2018)

Murmure - Évaporation (2017)

Check: Post-traumatique

Country: Canada

Genre: shoegaze dream pop

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Hope Drone - Husk (2021)

The Australian band Hope Drone works as a collective for some time now (10 years!), but recently they found they needed some change in their sound and this change (make their music and their name more fitting together) is something that turned me back to them with their new album Husk being a really solid take on offstream metal.

As far as I remember, the band's previous releases didn't quite strike a chord with me "Strange times call for new perspectives and the chaos of the last few years has given rise to our new release where we set out to experiment" - this change of sound involves putting more focus on bass and drums at the expense of guitars and vocals that got transferred more into the backgrounds. This made their music more ambient/drone metal with its hazy atmosphere and soundscape-like values. And even that the pace of drums is usually very much black metal, the general impression left by their music is the massiveness and weight. The album consists of four tracks only, but they are long enough and written in such a way to slowly develop and impress the audience with heavy and satisfying finishes (so well-done in Existere) and leave it wanting even more.

Husk costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Existere

Country: Australia

Genre: drone metal

Label: Moment of Collapse Records

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Christina Giannone - Glazed Vision (2021)

The New York City's Christina Giannone was introduced to the Past Inside the Present label back in 2019 but only now her first LP for them is released. I mean was in the last October when Glazed Vision was released with its drone soundscapes that accumulate like grey clouds over your head.

The whole album is absolutely filled with drone soundscape. The sounds twirl and create layers becoming considerably heavy and thick. But this is a peaceful music, very much leaning towards relaxation and self-reflection. Nocturnal music but without the element of danger and uncertainty. I feel like everything is fine and there's little to worry about when the short (for an ambient album) release is revealing its contents. And it is finished with a remix by worriedaboutsatan, which is a big deal on its own. 

Glazed Vision costs 6 USD.

Check: Divinity

Country: New York, US

Genre: dark drone

Label: Past Inside the Present

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Blush - Blush (2021)

It's incredible how many shoegaze/dreamy bands are called Blush (or similar like Blushing or Blush Response) now.  This time it's a debuting band from Singapore whose sophomore EP called, you guessed it, Blush, presents some adorable and catchy noise pop.

The band may be new but the artists were involved in quite a big number of Singapore-based projects, most notably including Sobs. You can hear that they know what they do - the guitars produce a good-quality noise and bring exciting melodies while Soffi Peters' vocals are dreamy and airy, just as they should be. The EP is very short and includes the previous single track Best Friend and two quality noise pop tracks. And just as it is advertised (that "ubiquitous to Blush’s sonics are a crescendo fuzz that’s thick as syrup, and as cathartic as it is cacophonic"), they are very noisy and loud and this loudness transforms into an ethereal bliss in the listeners' minds (especially in the more slowcore-like, album-finishing Suck).

Blush costs 2 EUR (3 SGD).

Check: Suck

Country: Singapore

Genre: noise pop

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Carmen Sea - HISS (2021)

Carmen Sea are from Paris and last autumn debuted with an album called HISS. Their rapid and surprising post-rock is bound to impress many fans of the genre, yours truly included. 

The EP begins with a chaotic and extremely energetic sounds of Frames that suggest a lot of mathrock influences. However, what clearly is the first thing one notices, is the involvement of violin sounds - not ones that are supposed to generate mystical or depressive atmosphere but ones that are pure energy and fun, folk-style. And when they lead the heavy guitars in experimental compositions, it's beyond impressive. Especially that there's also a good quantity of electronic effects involved (almost dub step-like in some places) - the chaos that's generated this way brings energy and strength to dance and/or destroy things around. It's even more surprising when in the album's finishing track, the long Glow in Space, the violin gets suddenly very artsy, almost as if taken from The Irrepressibles' works, only to get back to the band's signature madness after a while. I love it.

HISS costs 7 EUR.

Check: Frames 

Country: France

Genre: violin-led mathrock

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Mariuk - Blue Days (2021)

Mariuca García-Lomas is best known as the vocalist in Northwest, the London-based experimental and artsy project I posted about almost three years ago. At the end of the last year, the Spanish artist released her solo album Blue Days and it's a real dose of ambient pop magic.

The story of this album is very inspiring. Back in 2020, García-Lomas made a public declaration to learn how to play guitar and prove it by releasing a single every month. This album consists of 12 tracks so the artist proved to be successful in her challenge. And although the songs are not recorded in brilliant quality, they create unique, very intimate atmosphere; nothing brings an artist to their audience so much as small mistakes and imperfections that have to be battled with. This resulted in an ambient pop and quite noisy album that makes me think of Grouper or Midwife but with some of Northwest's very artistic vibes.

When describing the process of creating this album, García-Lomas mentions how difficult 2020 was and how she faced existential crises and it's well visible on the release. It's no coincidence that the first song's title is literally Sad and the artist doesn't shy away from singing about the most traumatizing things ("How could you not feel sad?/I'm afraid of dying all the time" or the one of being Almost 30 (that's depressing, I'm already past that)). But this sadness gradually gives place to very much more hopeful tones with The World Is Yours as their pinnacle. It just shows that the album portrays more than just one evolution of the artist.

Blue Days costs 3 EUR.

Northwest - II (2019)

Check: Hunger

Country: Spain/UK

Genre: noisy ambient pop

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Plaisir - Foam (2021)

So the Italian-Swedish-French trio from Berlin came back last year to gift us their longest album up to date. I already posted about the dreamy but also erotica-soaked band when they had only a short single two years ago so Foam is something I really had to go back to.

First of all, what the hell? The first track's title is in Polish and translates to "salty butter/butter with salt" and the only thing my brain makes connection to is a taste of crisps. In reality it's meant ot be a "hopeful song about agony" and warns us to be "far away from butter and salt" - is it because the crisps are unhealthy? Probably not. But the certain thing is that this track shows what I like about the band the most - the way all of the musicians sing (sometimes in their own languages, sometimes as spoken word) and how it creates a chaotic but very engaging atmosphere all over the album. 

But there's more to their music. It is built on very prominent bass lines with the psychedelic hazy sounds playing less important roles than it's traditionally in dream pop. So although there's tons of oneiric atmosphere here, especially in the way the vocals cooperate, the music has a very noticeable post-punk vibe. And, what's at least as important as the atmosphere, the artists can create so catchy melodies! Cold the Paraoh or Hunting Season are best example with their tunes following me since I first heard them.

Foam costs 7 EUR.

Plaisir - Sap (2020)

Check: Masło z solą

Country: Germany, Italy, France, Sweden

Genre: ethereal wave

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36 & Duenn - Distance as Power (2021)

Dennis Huddleston, the ambient artist from UK, has such a long discography that it can barely be believed. Only this year he created 4 albums (featuring a collaboration with Awakened Souls). The last one, Distance as Power, is created together with Duenn, a Japanese vocalist, and present a very airy take on drony soundscapes.

The Japanese artist (who frequently works together with Merzbow for instance) provides the ethereal part of the project with the dispersed vocals creating soundscapes on their own. Foggy and mysterious ones. But the further into the album, the more important the role of the dark electronic drones. It's this kind of slow, contemplation-fueling music that is perfect for the long winter nights, especially in the finishing parts of the album when the layers of sound are heavy and leave little space for focusing on anything else than the music itself.

Distance as Power costs 6 USD.

Check: Distance as Power

Country: UK

Genre: ethereal soundscape

Label: Past Inside the Present

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