AUDIBLE APPROACHES FOR A BETTER PLACE is a project headed by the label C.Sides. The first part of this project took place on May 12th when Gold Panda, Brandt Brauer, Frick Ensemble feat. Ketan Bhatti, Casper Clausen and Mads Brauer (of EFTERKLANG) feat. Karim Ghahwagi, Christian Löffler, Eliad Wagner, Glitterbug & Ronni, Shendar feat. Enas Massalha, Jasmina Maschina feat. Liz Albee (trumpet) & Boris Hauf (saxophones), John Kameel Farah and Khan did short performances. Then, the label, asked them and to Brandt Brauer Frick to create new works, all sharing one goal: to make a humble contribution toward making this world a better, more just and beautiful place simply by doing what they can do best, make art and create music! The double CD compilation, which will be released on September 12th, offer ten exclusive long tracks. The first one is by the German electronic producer Glitterbug and Israeli-Palestinian Arabic soprano opera singer Enas Massalha. "The Sky Fell Silent" is a passionate chant with light drones on background, where Enas Massalha's vocal overdubs mesmerize the listener. Israeli musician Eliad Wagner, composed a bleeping suite recording different tracks with the classic analog synthesizer Arp 2600, creating a suspended in time atmospheric piece (if you like Philip Glass, you have to check it out). Christian LoÌffler with "Cast", is here with an ambient suite enriched with growing texture made with guitar echoes, sub bass sounds, percussions and tiny melodies. Really nice. Khan presents "Shahane", a pulsating track that mix industrial and electronic melodies (synths, treated vocals, etc) creating hypnotic atmospheres. Gold Panda's "Air" is a fragmented cold experimental i.d.m. tune with feedbacks, drones, digital noises and vocal humming. Sometimes melodic and then noisy, the track will lead you toward dreamy landscapes. The trio Brand Brauer Frick with "Schwan" open the second CD with a ten minutes tune that mix jazzy experimentalism, dubstep and electronica. John Kameel Farah's "Mountain Hymn" is a musical improvisation made using computer sequencing, piano, vocals and synths. Jasmina Maschina's "Romantic Rebellion" is a recording of a live performance where she gave to the musicians the freedom to perform variations around the E, G, A and B notes. It sounds like a jazz orchestra performing a Glenn Branca suite. After this one there's another edit (the vocal edit) of Glitterbug feat. Enas Massalah's "The Sky Fell Silent". Caspar Clausen (Efterklang's singer) & Mads Brauer recorded a soundtrack to a short film shot by Karim Ghahwagi. "The Figment Notebook" has different moments: piano melancholic atmospheres are followed by orchestral upbeat moments with the add of a choir just to be back to the piano melodies. The track is present in two variations: with and without Sara Davis narration.

Laszlo is the moniker of Aaron Frederick Wheeler, composer/producer based in London. His music blends many genres like IDM/Electronica/Experimental and Jazz/World/Folk/Classical. His first album, which will be released on Lydian Label the 5th of September, is titled RADIAL NERVE. He decided for such a title after he broke his radial nerve and once recovered, succeeded into composing new tracks even if doctors were thinking it would have been impossible to. The eleven tracks of the album shows really well Laszlo's wide musical interests that spans from Balearic atmospheres passing through jazz and techno. Many different instruments have been used on each track and if fusion sounding "Satori" has piano, mandolin, flute and vocals with i.d.m. rhythms, the short opening "Radial Nerve" to me sounds like a techno version of "Tubular Bells" and it sounds great. Percussions, dulcimer, piano, percussions and gongs are the main elements on "Musicbox Vs Dulcimer" while piano (sometimes reversed), vocals, jazzy drums, synth bass, flute and classic guitar are the ones of "Lydia's Dream". Sounding sometimes dreamy and others cinematic RADIAL NERVE will please the lovers of sophisticated chill out music.

This is a tree track album between classical, ambient and sound art composed by Gregor Quade playing synths and Piano and Andreas Usenbenz filtering the produced sounds with the Kaoss Pad. The album is played live and the recording carefully edited by the sound artist.
"February 01.1" opens this release with a small loop and a synth almost droning, than some quiet noises gives depth to all the structure and slowly develops until the piano slowly introduce the listener to the final, almost ambient, part of the track. "February 02.1" is a shimmering miniature constructed upon small loops, resonances and noises. "February 03.1" starts with a small loop introducing a piano loop above a drove and coloured by noises and loops entering and exiting.
Apart for the brief length, less than 25 minutes, this is an example of how economy of material could result in a small beauty in search for good ears. Recommended.

This second release by Paragate' on the trustworthy Auraltone Music's imprint sounds like a sort of documentary collection of a series of mystical experiences, whose title could ideally refer to the musical unwinding of a conceptual catachresis, whereas a reflected light unavoidably amplifies a refecting light. It's a process which seems to have a requital echo in the sound processing: the close delays, the echoing sounds which look like rapidly tramigrating from one point to another one inside the sonic space and evaporating into scented clouds on quasi-drone built on microtonal variations just like permanently recombinating and changing state could be considered a musical transposition of such a process. Most of tracks rest on that kind of padded ambient sets which are close to the so-called therapy music, even if the underlying rules Tim Risher, Tom Deplonty and Claus Gahrn (on mixer and ebow guitar) tried to severely stick to, based on the recursive repetition on a particular number of chords and the slow changes on rhythm as well as on the wise alternation (and in some moments of the record, we could more properly speak about a fusion) between sound and silence, could remind the canonical rigour of a classical ensemble. On the other side if you don't consider just the technical aspect, it could be easy you'll find yourself in an imaginary picaresque novel, wandering about a maze of mental alleys while listening the intricate piano daintiness of tracks like "Lord Of Stones", the muted metallic sticks and plops of "Still Morning" and "Concern With Language" (a track with a whimsical extract from Near and Random Acts by Charles Alexander, recited by an estranging voice), the enveloping natural soundscape of "Still Day" (whereas you could imagine yourself in the middle of an enchanted forest, inhabited by fairy lighting creatures), the sonic alembics inside which the sound seems to be electrochemically treated in "Tafelmusik" and then liquefied in the whispering bliss alchemy of "Stilhed I Spejlet", the entrancing sonic interpretation of the ode "To One In Bedlam" by Ernest Dowson (a poem I didn't know...you can just imagine my enthusiasm when reading verses saying "Half a fool's kingdom, far from men who sow and read/All their days, vanity? Better then mortal flowers/Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep/The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!"), the stifled tolling in "Quietude" and the sweet hypsnosis of the final "Dreaming". The vague sense of bliss, peace and stillness impregnating the ground of this record could let think about it as a possible soundtrack for a Buddhist sutra, but I could warmly reccomend to listen to it while driving your car surrounded by the colors of dusk or dawn!

I'm pursuing Dj Cardo aka Luis Garban since when I discovered his sound by chance in a small record shop in Berlin through Unity Means Power - Cardopusher's second album - on Ad Noiseam's imprint three or four years ago. His way of combining dusty chirping breakcore (from8to64bits) chips with massive dubstep quite similar to that mania affecting some wholesome people like Soundboy, Tes La Rock or Quarta330, could have sketched a sneering smile on my face close to the ones which made Richard James so attractive to so many people, but I cannot confirm such a circumstance as I don't remember any mirrored image of myself in that shop! I'vee been so pleased to find out that even if this guy partially changed stylistical explorations as it seems following the abstract/cosmic directions taken by some dubstep producers and its crossings with ambient and other syncretic syncopes, his sampledelic way of creating miscellaneous tracks featuring that bizarre and eccentric hook Tigerbeat6's team usually dumps proves to be inshrinkable and trustworthy as well. Mechanics of the first two tracks, Antisharkz and Paintbrush, based on the intertwining of good rhythmical crafts with bleepy phunky sounds is quite similar, but if you keep on listening to the album, you'll enjoy Cardopusher istrionic skills as he easily juggles with Latin sketches, dubby techno, sampling, electro, vocals all over it! There are many tracks which could be frequently burned inside your hi-fi system. I'll just list mt favorite ones: on the top of the list, there are tracks such as Juice In Blender, Coppertoned Punch and Idle Talk, whereas Luis blends the highly danceable synth grooves (it's not casual the presence of remixes of the first two of the mentioned songs in the tracklist...to be honest I prefer original versions) with latin and floating ambient elements, the little rascal hip-hop golden sensation evoked by MC Sensational on We Want Ca$h, the funny remixe of Kid606 & Jessie Quattro's Holiday whereas Cardopusher enjoys playing on fills of the four percussive elements of the rhythmical pattern on the intriguing "la-la-la" by the female singer. I'm pretty sure most listenerswill appreciate the elegant style by Cardopusher as even if he generates storms on the pattern, it seems he doesn't lose his composure. My fifteen minutes-lasting coffee&sigarette break for reviewing this nice record is up!