K Markov: Dark Energy I & II

K Markov: Dark Energy I & II
Released: 15 January 2024 & 12 February 2024
kmarkov.bandcamp.com

While each genre has its own themes, tropes and imagery the basic human point of Electronic Music is self-revelation. Expressing oneself by shaping timbre, the very fabric of sound, may be the most direct route to the galaxy inside. Throughout a range of works K Markov displays remarkable growth. His Dark Energy I (71:57) and Dark Energy II (69:53) seem to interrogate The Universe itself. Across 8 tracks total the music rises and falls, lightens and darkens, exists and flows without any regard to Earthly factors. Somewhere in the glimmer of the imaginative spirit modulated effects emerge, open and wither – inviting us down into churning tones and alien drones of dungeon synths and the starless regions of space. Textured and corroded, then inward-facing and soft Dark Energy I & II offer an electrifying immediacy of excited circuits chilled in stalled zones of oppressive nothingness. Between the abstract tones and curious currents the awakening of the mind becomes this music’s most meaningful source of truth. Markov’s engineering murmurs of empty space, and suggests surreal apparitions and night thoughts better hidden until daybreak. Being exposed to such challenges ultimately widens and expands our definition of what beauty is. This process can feel uncomfortable, but for the more open-minded there is some immeasurable factor that steadily pulls us in. All of us need more of this in our lives. And musicians such as K Markov are a gateway to finding it – not with conventional consonant arrangements, but with his innovative explorations of dreamy atmospheres and negative space. To have a meaningful experience, we will have to listen differently – using a different part of the brain if we are to attend and engage with the music itself.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 22 February 2024

Steve Roach/Robert Rich: Waves of Now

Steve Roach/Robert Rich: Waves of Now
Released: 19 January 2024
www.steveroach.com
www.robertrich.com

After 30 years apart, on 5 December 2023 Steve Roach & Robert Rich resumed their fascinating alliance at the Club Congress in Tuscon, Arizona – an event that was recorded live and produced into their album Waves of Now (124:28). Connected to the two previous Roach/Rich collaborations, Strata (1990) and Soma (1992) Waves of Now feels as if sound has materialized out of memory. This dream of a work drifts its way through an intriguing soundscape of breathy flutes, serpentine steel guitar, resounding piano notes and an alternating current of synthesized harmony and rapturous electronic forms. Free-flowing in structure and featuring a range of contrasted states, colors and tonality Waves of Now is so enveloping that you may want to heighten its impact by closing your eyes. The 16 tracks run from live versions of studio works and solo expressions to in-the-moment collaborations where signature sounds of one musician are elevated and enhanced by the other – converted into something fascinatingly different from the original, while remaining hauntingly familiar. From soft moonlit chords and floating synth atmospheres, to kinetic percussion loops and electro-groove curvets this work extends all the way to the horizon, yet still manages to offer many fine details. Driven by the mental meter of cerebral scales a forward momentum meets molten motoring synth arpeggios as sequencers echo out into monumental proportions. Beyond the heated sonic rush this duo also conjures up cooler moods. From each zone arises a distinctive intensity, showing an expertly guided energy arcing magically from beginning to end. Pleasingly inventive, ethereal and illuminating, the electrifying immediacy felt throughout Waves of Now points to endless future possibilities. This kind of live music is an art in the making. Each of its new complexes of sound is an elaborate expression in the poetics of the present. The liminal realm realized during this long-awaited concert hints at the infinite. But Roach & Rich find it necessary to bring an audience with them as they navigate interior landscapes – asking their listeners to please stop reacting to the outer world for a spell, and spend some time experiencing that which may be found within.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 8 February 2024

Jeff Greinke: Oceanic

Jeff Greinke: Oceanic
Released: 2 February 2024
www.projekt.com

Oceanic (51:51) by Jeff Greinke offers us another chance to step inside his story, to hear something from where he dwells and maybe even find something of ourselves. This tenderly observant aural drama dares to be thought provoking. Utilizing a variety of grainy then cloudy synthesized and digital emanations Greinke confidently manufactures the nine vividly breathing, softly building pieces that make up this album. With all the pleasures of poetry blooming within this slow dance of timbre and tone we find the feelings that are generated running ever deeper, until we wake to our own response. Ominous drones one moment, then elegantly executed piano phrases the next, Oceanic is at times slowing, at times transporting – providing a constancy of adventure for the cerebral state. Some tracks extend in blank strains of gently colliding sounds, yet others cling to the ears in an expressive range of sonic shades and musical mutations. Hints of piano arise from beneath a roomy reverberation to mingle and loom above eddies of echoing electronics and flowing zones of drones. Emerging from a sustaining consonance unforced notes materialize – exerting their own freedom in a gradually transforming complexion and hue. As soundscapes coalesce into an indecipherable ambient fog the current keeps moving, churning in slow tides and chilled depths. As it moves between vivid textures and indefinite atmospheres our navigation of Oceanic always feels precise in its approach of something essential. Give yourself over. This is a realm you want to visit. From the quietly intense and eerily expectant, to calm chords of comfort Oceanic presents a play of shadows for the dreamer equally against remarkable drops into discovery for the disciple. Throughout his many years and notable works Jeff Greinke has been suggesting that our world’s will to create will outlast its will to destroy. To know this music this well is to care about it and its listeners quite deeply – which inspires his search for those invisible waves that drift one soul closer to another.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 1 February 2024

Palancar: Mesomatter I & II

Palancar: Mesomatter I & II
Released: 1 May 2023 & 2 October 2023
www.palancar.net

Palancar (otherwise known as Darrell Burgan) is steadily carving out a niche for himself as an Electronic Musician with a wide-ranging creative power. Across the combined 18 tracks of his albums Mesomatter I (76:05) and Mesomatter II (66:50) he traverses an impressive sonic terrain of remote undertones and alien ambience. On these two volumes he aspires to bypass the conscious sensibilities for a direct connection to that which is elemental within the listener. Moving from the dolorous to the ecstatic in a balance of opposing tensions, Burgan dispatches his thought experiments in a continual liberation of sound. Mesomatter I & II exert an eerie, mesmerizing pull. Through the assured and expressive use of atonality ideas congeal and realize off an extensive aural palette. Synthesized chord clusters churn into a soft mass of expanding rounded sound as one desolate, dissonant scene changes seamlessly into another. Choosing an impressive range of textures, from the curious to the furious, superbly arranged into impartial collisions of indefinite pitch and amplitude, these captivating designs invite us to explore the vastness of the cosmos. The absence of signposts such as rhythm or melody portend a one-way journey to these outer most reaches. Navigating Palancar’s elusive interstellar darkness we are surrounded by hushed electronics and gloaming modulations. The spaciousness, timelessness and chilling aural undertow conjure a surreal realm of unidentifiable timbres and tones writhing beneath a cavernous reverberation. Somewhere in this formless night a primitive beauty emerges. Tender yet massive, thought provoking when it wants to be, Mesomatter I & II reveal an artist expressing themselves freely and without fear or hesitation – the highest aspiration of this genre.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 25 January 2024

subtractiveLAD & Tamika Roberts: Ocean

subtractiveLAD & Tamika Roberts: Ocean
www.subtractiveLAD.com
Released: 1 December 2023

Somewhere during a commercial music endeavor subtractiveLAD (otherwise known as the neoteric navigator Stephen Hummel) and the up and coming singer songwriter Tamika Roberts created the four supremely beautiful tracks of Ambient Music found on Ocean (65:32), an album which appears to exist and flow without any regard to mortal factors. Such ethereal music would seem to interrogate The Universe itself. Its rippling textures, dreamy atmospheres and aspiring ideals are far too beautiful to be real. The open-hearted performances, fearless in laying bare sensitive souls, leave listeners drifting in sonic splendor, free to roam the sea, the stars, and the symphony of the mind. In emotive bestowals missing from much of the sound art circulating the spaceways, throughout Ocean this duo realizes something gently revelatory, something that cohabitates your mind and soothes your thoughts exactly the way you need it to. With its softly breathing synths, seraphic voices, and electric piano patter we may imagine Ocean extending to the shores of some celestial realm. But it may be that this music was meant to bear us on tides of harmony across the Fearless, Boundless, Painless, Endless wonder of the continent within.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 18 January 2024

Stellarium: Pillars of Light & Solar Magnitude

Stellarium: Pillars of Light & Solar Magnitude
Released: 21 March 2023 & 24 October 2023
exospheremusic.bandcamp.com

Recording under the name Stellarium the Electronic Musician Sebastian Hebert has realized both Pillars of Light (72:05) and Solar Magnitude (67:48) in the poetics of the present. Across eight tracks each these two releases prove rich in sonic symbolism and contemplation of the complexities of our place in the Cosmos. While ever so cerebral in meaning, it is the conception and execution of these works that is consistently astonishing. As sequencer patterns divide, stratify and wind out in cycling circuits of well-ordered notes, synth harmonies rise, blossom and recede, inviting us to examine the abysmal tones and churning drones of dungeon synths and shadowy labyrinths. Pillars of Light and Solar Magnitude share a driving energy, a quality that makes us want to more explore. While their building sound forces do indeed seem to move with the night, this music contains much light, meant to illuminates a path ahead. The synthetic shades and spacey scale point to endless future possibilities, yet it is Hebert’s talent for drama and design that will most readily touch and warm Spacemusic fans. Some people only see The Universe as something to conquer and rule, others as something to explore and comprehend. If you listen to these albums yourself, with open ears and open heart, then you will be left to dream about them for yourself – in the dark corners of the galaxy inside.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 11 January 2024

Pauline Anna Strom: Echoes, Spaces, Lines

Pauline Anna Strom: Echoes, Spaces, Lines
Released: 10 November 2023
www.igetrvng.com

Star’s End listeners will have first come in contact with Pauline Anna Strom through the frequent airings of her Plot Zero LP (in 1983, the year of its release) which was initially put out under the Trans-Millenia Consort handle. Contemporaneous releases by Michael Garrison, The Ghostwriters, The Nightcrawlers, Michael Stearns and a few other innovative musicians revealed to this enthusiastic audience that motivated artists and small independent labels were producing albums of high quality and unique vision outside and far above the mainstream channels and values of these times. The release of her Spectre the following year added to the remarkable feeling of the future that this genre exemplifies, and further established Strom’s significance in the growing field of Spacemusic.

The four CD box set Echoes, Spaces, Lines (197:33) presents 32 tracks (three of which were previously unreleased) across four titles (one of which was previously unreleased) by Pauline Anna Strom: Trans-Millenia Consort (48:53) [1982], Plot Zero (40:23) [1983], Spectre (52:21) [1984] and Oceans of Tears (55:56) [recorded in 1982-1983]. A substantial document of one of Electronic Music’s most inspired spirits this multi-disc, limited edition collector’s item achieves even greater merit by including new cover art and an illuminating 16 page booklet, which are held along with the CDs inside of a 6″ x 6″ box, with all audio treated by the many modern methods meant to deliver today’s fuller, richer sonic experience.

Strom’s first offering Trans-Millenia Consort exists and flows without any regard to external factors. Its easy-breezy electro-zones and synth safe fantasies offer plenty of wonderful welcome details to secure your entry.

Originally issued under the alias Trans-Millenia Consort the subsequent Plot Zero and Spectre mark a turn towards a more mysterious and portentous expression of Spacemusic. With track titles like Mushroom Trip, Freebasing, Blood Thirst and Blood Celebrants it is doubtful that anyone would ever file these records in with the confections of the New Age Music section. Here we find a synthesist with a bold passion for sound and atmosphere. Haunting us with wild pleasures along a current of electrified artistry, the ascending rush, then descending calm of these classics imaginatively leads us into both nightmarish and redemptive realms.

Shaded and unsettled, Oceans of Tears guides us through deep brood moods up to contemplative atmospheres which hold, heighten and then lighten our feelings and moods. Pointing to endless future possibilities here Strom affirms the hopes of self-willed humanity. Eloquent melodic lines are produced through the smallest quantity of keyboards, yet yields the greatest number of meanings. Her realizations move at their own pace and speak in their own voice – the touching gravity ranging from that of a gentle lullaby to the charged poetry of the dreaming mind.

A captivating mental experience this music is trying to say something for which words have not yet been invented. Beckoning to us from across the decades the invitation to join her in this singularly original music space reaches us yet again, now in this treasured collection – where Pauline Anna Strom still calls on us to think about a time yet to come, and what our world could be.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 4 January 2024

André 3000: New Blue Sun

André 3000: New Blue Sun
Released: 17 November 2023
www.epicrecords.com

Coercing the mind to contend with ambiguity André 3000 (André Benjamin) presents his audience with New Blue Sun (87:41) – an album of eight instrumental works for wind instruments and innovative spirit. Amidst his bold, beautiful, musical mind-zone of a release we encounter a moving mixture of flutes, EWI, curious customs and current technology. André 3000 brings to this adventure a background in popular music, which has been subdued to accommodate the wayfaring compositional arc of the open-ended soft jams that populate New Blue Sun. Communicating in unique aural symbols each moment of timbre and tone, pushed possibly by deep ethereal breaths, curves gently out into the air. The result is dramatic in a jazzy, ambient, deeper kind of way. In a minimal realm such as this the subtlest gesture can have the most profound effect. In measured motions each track builds. Along with feeling flutes we will find an intelligent mix of seductive percussion, spacey organ, dreamy keys and electronic processing – painstakingly combined into a substantial and sustaining sphere of sound. The serenely sweet sonics travel so sedately that time seems to stretch. With its clouds of sounds drifting, ebbing and flowing across minimal mindscapes, this music may come across as quite cosmic or synthetic. But, no matter how spaced out these realizations may go they will always exist on a human level – as the basis of each piece simply comes down to the length of the players’ breath. Entrancing abstractions yield to a stream of transformations, giving way to passages of slow burning brightness, as an argument for the future becomes clear. Lit by tomorrow’s sun, in his successful synergy of ancient ways and future days André 3000 tells us of life under a different light.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 28 December 2023

Chuck van Zyl: Stars Landing

Chuck van Zyl: Stars Landing
Released: 4 December 2023
therotundaphilly.bandcamp.com

Perhaps best known as host of Star’s End – the revered radio program of Ambient Music, or as founder of The Gatherings – Philadelphia’s premiere concert series of Innovative Music, Chuck van Zyl has also been producing his own electronic works since the mid-1980s. He has played live at a variety of venues and issued numerous studio albums and concert recordings – all in service to an enduring impulse for expression. His ambitious, continuous, five-hour improvised performance at Stars Landing was the fulfillment of a years long aspiration.

The Rotunda presented this Free Admission, Real-Time, Live-Streamed recital on Sunday 4 December 2022 from 1AM-6AM (EST). Featuring a live Q&A/interview, plus the overnight performance, this special online event originated from ElectricLattéLand studio in Philadelphia (an archive of which remains available to listen/watch).

Stars Landing (293:30) presents this epic dispatch in five one hour segments. Given such range the realization Night Riders is surprisingly cohesive. Its science fiction visions and progressing restless moods encourage the audience to dream big, while an effortless warmth holds us close in every electronic moment. Having mastered the use of color, scale and composition Van Zyl skillfully shades the atmosphere with a current of sparkling exuberance, then downshifts to a looser, lighter sonic terrain. The patient and pleading unfurling of sounds yields a swirling charge of discovery. Yet it is in the creative interplay of voices, timbres and tones that we are provided with enough reasons for repeated listening.

Four of the five sections formed incrementally, steadily building along interlocking orbits of sequencer spirit. As energy rose in assemblies of Berlin-School patterns, we hear ethereal chords and spacey synth leads encouraging an outward view. Further within this remarkable nightshift a thousand dreams softly burn. Along shivering chill currents we pass the control of known forces to drift timelessly in all directions at once.

Seemingly transmitting from beyond the confines of our planet, throughout Stars Landing Chuck van Zyl opens up as he never has before. Uniquely bold and inventive his free-spirited endeavor bursts with the joy of its making. Confidently taking all Night Riders into unexpected zones this concert’s vast message is shaped less by the decisive use of synthesizers than in the slow workings of intimacy and quiet influence of each listener. We were not sure where we were headed, but it felt exciting; to be together and searching for the truth of this music. Although Stars Landing cannot be called a Love Story, Love pervades its every moment – which ultimately is the more meaningful aspect of any Spacemusic adventure…

Proceeds from the sale of Stars Landing by Chuck van Zyl go to support the efforts of The Rotunda in Philadelphia.

From the Press Release – 4 December 2023

Amongst Myselves: An Abandoned Day

Amongst Myselves: An Abandoned Day
Released: 1 December 2023
www.amongstmyselves.com

Steve Roberts, one of Ambient Music’s most thoughtful practitioners, acting under the sobriquet Amongst Myselves seems always to be pointing to endless future possibilities. On An Abandoned Day (54:35) we are left to wonder if any of them could possibly hold a place for humanity? Spin any of his previous eight discs and you will drift into a rich realm of musical wonderment. All certainly worth revisiting for their vivid atmospheres and textural brocade, his ninth release reasserts these qualities beneath an overarching air of prophesy. Playing with spirit, searching and personal strength Roberts offers eight tracks that move with the night. Much like dreams, so vulnerable to daylight, his work on An Abandoned Day expresses the transient, fragile qualities of our planet. Precise like a prayer, then plunging into the twilight sonic territory of the transcendental, we wander through these beautiful spaces as within the uncertainty of a dream. Pulled through the shadows with only a swirl of moonlight to illuminate our surroundings a remarkable range of emotion and drama are generated from deceptively simple forms. Reverberant guitar plucks glimmer above some new no-space as the subtle tone withdrawals through shivering chill currents. With its field recordings, sampled female voice, and luxurious swaths of whirring, murmuring synths these potent realizations resonate with, then haunt the listener. Losing ourselves in the softly bracing sound fields and designs presented throughout An Abandoned Day we travel from brood moods of liminality and ambiguity to harmonious accord, and finally an unexpected tenderness. Amongst Myselves consistently provides music that is always alive, always developing. Even as a gathering darkness rumbles in the distance this artist is not hindered in his mission to express the inexpressible qualities of the human condition – to our very last, simplest, loveliest, most quietly shattering moment.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 14 December 2023