Category: the crate

SOGAR provides the first releases for the new online-only imprint of the 12K Records label, an assortment of three pieces of microsonic ambience, recorded live in Paris. (Click on “Term” on the 12K website’s navigation bar at 12k.com.)

Aphex Twin‘s Drukqs album is remixed into a 37-minute suite on the ThinkToy site (thinktoy.com).

Night Must Fall‘s “Sheer Delight” is one of three free MP3 files offered on London-based musician Gary Curtis’ web site. Curtis specializes in soulful jazz-tinged ambience that mixes the elegance of movie soundtracks with the starkness of industrial music.

Motion is one man, Chris Coode, and Pictures (Motion) collects a dozen of his delicate sonic constructions. A first listen will focus, no doubt, on the ephemeral nature of the sounds from which these deceptively thin compositions are made: what seem like small bells and sitar and piano appear in a slow progression. But these sounds — incorrectly identified above, no doubt — are only part of the story, because Coode intersperses them with a substantial leavening of more mysterious material. Some of these stranger sounds result, likely, from his editing of the familiar snippets — what sounds like piano is replaced with what may simply be the piano’s distant echo; what sounds like bell is overshadowed by what may be a choice split-segment of the ringing tone. A track titled “Field” opens with the sort of choral synth that might launch a house anthem, but the downbeat never arrives. Another, titled “Snapshots,” shuffles squirts of noise while a childlike melody sets the pace. And pace may be Coode’s strongest gift as a musician, the way he uses space to create surprises and associations, drama and grace.