Prana is a deep, cleansing breath of music, a calm and uplifting meditation–which is fitting since, as Trevor Oswalt, the man behind East Forest notes, “Prana was recorded and improvised live in an underground former silo in the deep southern Utah desert over the winter solstice of 2012. The temperature outside was at about 10 degrees below zero; inside, I was playing right next to a giant wood stove, and around me were twenty or so sonic journeyers forming a circle on a slate floor.” Now you get to take part in the moment, and while it may not be as cool as meditating in a silo, the music retains its wonderful, salving potency. Piano takes the forefront here, accented with soft synth washes and chants sung in a language that exists strictly in the heart. I love this aspect of Prana; Oswalt uses “channeled sounds intended keep our language centers quiet and our hearts open,” but theser ur-words carry their own weight and intonation, and we the listeners, in turn, translate them according to our own emotional needs and understandings. The piano is gentle yet insistent and strong, with a very New Age quality to it. It takes on a Steven Halpern feel when Oswalt switches to electric piano on “Samana,” and your core vibrates in harmony with its deeply resonant tone. Oswalt’s playing across the disc is honest and full of meaning. And he packs a lot in without overloading. Natural field recordings wash in at the edges. Wind, water and crickets. Wind chimes sing. Time just sort of fades as a consideration while you’re listening. Prana is just five tracks and 46 minutes long, but it’s so cleansing and relaxing, it feels pleasantly longer. Just leave this one on loop and fill your space with it. It’ll do your soul a whole lot of  good.

It’s become my habit, when reviewing a new release from Radio Free Clear Light, to let JC Mendazabal, the mad sonic genius behind this ever-shifting collaborative, explain what it’s about. So: “This project was inspired both by RFCL’s prodding into the history of those heterodoxical sects termed Gnostic as well as a creative analysis of Umberto Eco’s linguistic parable The Name Of The Rose.” Out of that comes another round of funky experimentation that glides between uneasy, skewed dreamscapes and subtly beat-based chill. The more drifiting pieces, like “Seven Trumpets” or “Adso Tastes Ox Heart,” are heavily layered and in constant motion, putting the listener into a very dynamic space that’s easy to visualize. (Don’t worry about the minor hallucinations if they come; it’s par for the course with RFCL.) Instruments are distorted and reborn, voices wail and cry , long, thin drones make their way along the foundation. A sense of sacred music creeps in with the chant-like quality of the voices, and viola from Colin Hamilton and Elanna Sack offer a sort of neo-classical, chamber music angle. Their sounds are beautiful and a trifle mournful. Mendazabal and Co. do a great job of balancing the softened-brain mesmerism brought on by the drone with a rich and real aural environment that you want to pay attention to. The detailing, as always, is superb. The centerpiece here is the 10-minute, smooth and slightly eerie “Penitenziagite.” moves along on a steady and hypnotic three-note bass line. Drums shuffle in the background and Lydia Harari ululates a wordless incantation in a sometimes uncomfortably screechy voice. (Mind you, it works for the piece.) An arpeggio dots the flow and amps up the rhythmic side. It’s a weird and wonderful piece that encapsulates what RFCL is about–layering the familiar with the mildly frightening and the comfortable with the alien. And once again, it works. Put on your experiment-friendly ears and dive in.

Available from Black Note Music.

Rolling by like a dark cloud that engulfs you for 30 minutes, New Kings and New Queens takes a minimalist approach to standard dark ambient tropes. All in all, it’s fairly innocuous as dark ambient goes. It’s moody, with its drawn-out drones, hammering piano chords, and specks of industrial clamor, but it’s also comparatively easy to get through. Composer Matej focuses on feeling, which is good, but expresses it in fairly straight lines, and very long ones at that, dependent on small shifts in the flow for any sort of dynamic. Four cuts in, with “New Queens,” he starts to show a more bombastic leaning, the piece coming in on big fanfare chords. It’s a good wake-up call at the start but then just hangs there without much texture. At no point did New Kings and New Queens make me need to pay attention, or elicit much response from me. Dark ambient fans may find this to their liking, or, like me,  may find it a little too much on the light side of dark.

Available from Malignant Records.   

Back when the classic rock radio format was new, my local station announced, with great fanfare, that they would be playing the long version of “In A Gadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly. Not a long radio edit, but the whole 17-minute album track. Literally promo’d it for a week like it was the Second Coming. I asked my girlfriend at the time if she’d ever heard the long version. (She was six or seven years younger than I.) She hadn’t, so when the evening came for it to be played, we went out to my car, put the seats back, turned the radio up, and stayed there, just listening, until the last note faded. I was reminded of this when dropping yet another hit of The Trip, the first all-studio album in eight years from venerable prog-ambient jam band Djam Karet, because I’d do the same thing if I was introducing someone to it–set aside 47 minutes, get comfy, and do nothing but be in the music. The Trip blends long stretches of fairly quiet, introspective, wash-filled sound-spaces with a pair of very, very solid rock jams. After opening with a little melody that comes back around at the end, the band spends about 20 minutes fiddling with small sounds, vocal drop-ins, airy drones, electronic twiddle, and guitar, all folded into a meditative and deeply detailed space. The mood turns just before the 15-minute mark, going from lulling to edged with shadow and rough edges, but never to a point of distraction and it passes to make way for the next stage. Around the 20-minute mark is the first place where The Trip steps over to the rock and roll stage to give us a little Pink Floyd homage. While Gayle Ellett lays down a bed of keyboards that would do Rick Wright proud, guitarists Mike Henderson and Mike Murray take turns scorching the landscape with riffs and runs and big, bold powerchords. Ellett takes his own solo as well, dripping melty psychedelic lines all over your brain. The whole section oozes with a great combination of head music and pure, fiery 70s guitar rock. Plus, it has a great open-jam, “You take this” feel to it as the players trade off the spotlight to keep the whole thing cruising. This portion empties out into another darkly lighted realm full of ominously pealing bells and bassist Aaron Kenyon leading us through it with slow, sinister lines. A stretch of dark ambient follows, a slow-moving, pulsing thing that gets invaded by lively electronic swirls. A vortex of sound rises and then, out of nowhere, drummer Chuck Oken, Jr. crunches in with a hey-now full-on arena-rock drum fill, Henderson and Murray dive in with powerchords, and Djam Karet bring this baby home in gorgeous prog fashion. Ellett leads the rhythm section with Hammond-sounding keys (giving you your dose of Jon Lord nostalgia) and later absolutely dominates with a soaring, spacey solo that hits just about every rock keyboard meme ever laid down. I wish I could tell you who’s who on the guitar solos, but suffice to say that both axes tear the place right the fuck up. Period. The back and forth between them and the support each offers the other is the stuff you only get from decades of chemistry. The disc ends where it began, with that happy little phrase and a quiet whoosh of wind and, if you’re at all like me, a strong urge to do that again.

Djam Karet have been at this for 29 years, and The Trip makes me very sad that I haven’t been around for the first 28. This is an exciting, deep, relaxing, funky album that is a pleasure to listen to. Keep a hand on the volume knob because although you can ease through the misty and shadowy ambient parts, you will max out your speakers on the prog. These master musicians, craft honed to an absolute razor sharpness, will see to that. This is a stunningly good disc.

Available from the Djam Karet web site.

Toaster (aka Todd Elliott) tells a story in both song title and sound on his new release, Theophany. In my previous outings with Elliott’s music I often found myself looking for a point of entry, something to hang on to when things went a little far afield for my tastes. I had no such issues with Theophany. Maybe this represents a slightly more restrained artist in that regard, or one who can set himself a fresh thematic course when needed, but it certainly doesn’t mean he’s lost any edge. Theophany moves in a distinct narrative direction, coursing from straightforward, beat-based electronic music into hypnotic ambient spaces and ending in darker, abstract zones, and all of it’s handled well. The disc opens with birdsong and the lazy beat of “From the Coast We Traveled East.” Sequencers gurgle over long chords and pads. It’s a nice, laid-back and accessible piece–and then things begin to change. “Eventually, We Reached the Desert” and “We Set Up Camp, and Got Drunk” are more angular and leaning toward disjuncture. “Eventually…” is pushed along with a thudding beat and a melody played out two plunking notes at a time. “We Set Up Camp…” elbows its way in with a recorded conversation thrown over hissing drones and a shuffling beat that turns into an almost-urgent and strident rhythm. After this is where the shift toward ambient and deeper spaces begins. “When We Woke Up We Realized We Were Lost” tosses out the beats and turns the landscape into a mist-shrouded, half-lighted place. “Night Fell. We Saw A Light and Walked Toward It” starts out hushed, but evolves into big-waveform ambient, swells of sound layered with more vocal samples. It leads to the center of the release, the 29-minute title track. This alone is worth the price of admission. It’s a vast, droning track, recorded live, heavy on the low end and accentuated throughout with (more) muffled vocal bits and other wayward sounds. Thematically, if this is the point where we experience theophany–the physical manifestation of God–then this is the slightly disjointed, mind-altering space we’re taken into, experiencing something with which we’re not familiar, and looking back through the manifestation to get our bearings. Elliott takes us through it with these gentle sounds and breath-slowing simplicity, but heightens our awareness with the additional elements. Late in the track he folds in harsher sounds, forcibly pushing us out of reverie. A great track. It also serves to take us into the disc’s biggest gamble, “We Made It Back to the Coast.” Minimal drones rise to a buzzing level, then give way to a long stretch of little more than wind, rumbles of thunder, birdsong and field recordings. (And a couple of jarring slams.) This is where Elliott runs the genuine risk of losing the listener. We’re talking about almost 10 minutes of a 14-minute piece given over to what might literally be a sound recorder sitting on a window sill. Listen at the very end–someone comes over and picks it up. I find this part fascinating for its simplicity, the layering of sound–I can’t tell if the wind or a bass drone is grumbling at the low edge of hearing–and also for its sheer ballsiness. I do think, however, that a fair share of listeners may be put off by it. The disc closes with the  deep drones of “We Mourned the Dead, and Drew Comfort from God,” another live recording, to end the story.

I like the way that Theophany starts with very open doors, very accessible and, for lack of a better word, easy, and then gets more challenging as its story progresses. Elliott’s not afraid to leave people behind in pursuit of what he’s got to say. The depth of sound here is excellent, and it’s a very affecting release. I’m coming to appreciate Toaster more with each new exposure.

Available at Bandcamp.

In past encounters with Ryan Huber, posing as Olekranon and Sujo, he has fairly bludgeoned me with ultra-dense, noisy industrial drone. These were beatings I gladly accepted. Now, donning his 303 Committee mask, he takes a fresh tack and tries to insinuate his dark musings into my head by way of subtlety and hypnosis. The noise is still here, but it’s a hissing, whispering, patiently insistent thing, grey noise as opposed to black with virtually no sharp edges in sight–although rough textures abound. This self-titled release will find its strongest audience among those who like a dark and minimalist approach, but an accepting listen, working past the sometimes gritty, always moving surface, reveals Huber’s layering. A rhythm lurks in the opening crush of “Augmented”; chanting voices are buried under over-amped sound in “Junta,” coming out like a hymn in the midst of a holocaust; a faint chord progression seems to peer out of the wash in “Opium King,” always kept at a distance. When Huber decides to unleash on his listener, it’s more effective for the lack of obvious power in the tracks before it. “A Sinking Ship” slides in on a warbling drone and a slow, single beat that lulls you yet again into soft-brained complacency before it bursts like sudden anger into aggressive wallops of sound–and then they’re gone and we’re back in the big, ambient wash of “Aught.”

This disc is only half an hour long, but it’s packed. Again, if you listen, it helps if you’re amenable to very minimalist, noise-based structures. The comparative softness of the noise–that is, compared to what I’d normally think of as noise–is both surprising and engaging, and it’s not as if the work suffers in potency from it. On each subsequent listen I found myself diving more into the subtlety of Huber’s construction, the small shifts of tone and the things buried under the grit and darkness. Not for everyone, but everyone should try. There’s more here than first meets the ear.

Available from Bandcamp. (Physical discs are/were limited to 33 copies–and I believe I have number 22.)

Ocoeur (aka Frank Zaragoza) takes a straightforward recipe for chill electronica, gives it a few shakes, and pours out the delicious blend that is Light As A Feather. Starting off from (and coming back to) a basic sound-set reminiscent of harp, dulcimer, and music boxes, Zaragoza melds today’s glitch styles with laid-back IDM that conjures sharp memories of its ancestry. The disc kicks off with the sparkling, high notes and energy of the first few tracks. I particularly like the segue between “Resonance” and “Reconstruction.” The first is a quiet, beat-based drift. Crunchy glitch crackles over a low-volume bass line and echoing keys. It’s a brain-massager of a thing. The second enters, sharp and bright by contrast, on ringing chimes and string pads. Shortly thereafter, the tone takes an interesting shift. “My Love” is a simple and beautiful piano solo backed with the sound of rainfall. It’s lovely, but suffers from what has to be a huge editing gaffe at the very end. I have to imagine the rain sound was intended to cross into the start of the following track, “Arret Sur Image,” but just before the end of “My Love,” it cuts out completely. There’s a half-second’s pause, and then “Arret…” jump-cuts into its start. Even a fade at the end of “My Love” would have served Zaragoza better. Getting past that, we move into the sighing flow of “Arret…” and then comes what is perhaps undeniably the best piece on a very strong release. “Astral Projection” is fantastically catchy, carrying a bit of Kruder & Dorfmeister DNA in its laid-back groove. Zaragoza even digs up the ubiquitous vinyl scratch at the start of this homage to mid-90s lounge. Thumping, steady-count bass drum and glitch percussion pave the way for cool organ chords and pads. This lays the basis for the disc to return to its glitch-and-glitter sound-set on “Feather” and “I.II.” It closes with “Envol,” a dreamy ambient piece composed in somnambulistic pads finding their way across a field recording of children’s voices. It bring the disc to a hushed close.

Light As A Feather is an easy disc to fall into repeat play with. It’s nicely constructed and stands up to deep listens. There’s a lot of dimension to each track, and the manner in which Zaragoza weaves old and new styles doubles the effectiveness of his grooves. Another excellent dose of melodic electronica from the increasingly impressive n5MD label. Check this one out asap.

Available at n5MD.

Inveterate sound-tweakers Cyberchump (aka Jim Skeel and Mark G.E. Eberhage) are also apparently avid recyclers. For their new release, Flutter and Flow, the duo took existing tracks, used the PaulStretch software program to pull them out to 30 minutes, then listened for “sweet spots”–rhythmic passages that sounded ideal to jam over. The result is a seven-track, 45-minute psychedelic groove replete with wailing guitar, easy downtempo beats, and wavering washes of sound out to hypnoptize you. One of the things that immediately catches my attention is the abundance of thick, meaty bass lines courtesy of Eberhage. It’s a hefty anchor of sound, heavy on the funk, and I can’t get enough of it. I quite like it strolling its way through the title track, accompanied by a heart-pounding rush of glitchy percussion and Skeel’s guitar, or its casual lope as it anchors “When Time Was No Time.”  Skeel’s leads are another obvious attraction, alternating between gorgeously drawn-out howls and wails and fiery slashes of rock-soaked guitar joy. He fires it up on the deepest groove here, the 12-minute “China Dreaming.” It’s got something of a Berlin feel to it, roaring along on a steady low-end sequencer riff in a toe-tapping time signature. Analog-synth whooshes shoot through the backdrop. A rewinding-tape sound makes for a funky break early on. In among all this, the guitars (may I assume they’re from both of the gentlemen?) launch sustained chords and soulful riffs in equal measure. This track, particularly, is signature Cyberchump.

I like the concept at work on Flutter and Flow, and Skeel and Eberhage make it more than just a curious little experiment. The extended sound-beds give everything a floaty edge and retain hints of their melodic origins, so they are also, in a slow-motion kind of way, dynamic. The improv’d jams have an ear-pleasing rawness to them and never lose their way. Blend all that with the easy cool that pervades these tracks, and Flutter and Flow quickly locks itself into a repeat-play slot. An excellent release from Cyberchump. They just keep getting better.

Available from the Cyberchump web site.

You don’t have to spend three consecutive hours floating around in Shane Morris’ “Verses Trilogy” of related long-form works, Multiverse, Omniverse, and Xenoverse, but I’m here to tell you that are worse ways to spend three hours. For each release, Morris took elements from live performances from his “Atmosphera” radio show and melted them into “sound collages.” Or, more to the point, created thoughtful, long-form drifts that glide in and out of darkness while they blend spacemusic breadth and the pulse of tribal. While thematically connected, each release is definitely its own excursion.

Multiverse, the first release, wastes no time in taking the listener deep, and proceeds to escort us through a variety of feelings and spaces. After opening with a somewhat dark and spacey run, Morris cuts the sound way back and peppers the flow with little snaps of microsound. I really like this stretch. These ear-tickling bits work as light percussive elements as he bounces them around. He folds in the first of several manipulated soundbites, a nice unexpected touch and a sample (no pun) of how varied his elements are for this run. I found certain stretches to be reminiscent of Steve Roach’s Early Man, particularly in spots that feature a twanging, almost metallic sound that textures dark, droning backdrops. There are very distinct zones, if you will, as this piece moves along, and the borders between them are perfectly blurred and blended, to a point where often you become quite suddenly aware of a difference–even though you’ve been in it for a few minutes. In the closing moments, the sound is pared back to a sparse, whispering place where metallic clatters bang out an off-kilter rhythm; the sounds pare away to a windy hiss and crackling pops of static, then fade.

Omniverse starts in a darker, edge-of-tribal space. Groaning drones and metallic percussion provide the initial drive forward. But this is not where we’ll spend most of our time. Morris softens the flow after several minutes, then nudges it into a wider, sparse and minimal space, keeping a pulse of simple taps to mark time. He’s very comfortable in places like this, using a comparatively small sound-set and pulling ample amounts of imagery and feeling out of it, and this makes up the majority of Omniverse. One phase is built on a repeating pad that swells and fades while Morris coats the background with a hiss of wind and field recordings. It gives way to a slow sequencer segment with vibraphone tones jazzing up the flow. The last third of the piece runs from an energetic, sequencer-based rush into a deeper drone-space that coasts to a close. There’s a dissonant edge, particularly in the closing minutes, that delivers the feel of open-ended story, of some slightly unresolved narrative aspect. Omniverse seems to have more distinct delineations between its identities than Multiverse. The borders are more obvious, but the shifts still work.

Xenoverse breaks the trilogy’s long-form mold by offering three pieces–two in the 20-minute range and one under 10. It’s also the one that glides closest to a dark ambient sound.–although, again, on the two longer tracks, Morris keeps the work in constant flux so that just as you’re firmly entrenched in one sense, you’re guided into something different. Part Two is a shadow-choked drone that curls around you like cold fog. Part Three takes that and runs with it, its first section gouging out a very dark, groaning space. As Morris scrapes the sound down to a thin drone, vocal drops return (try not to jump),  giving way again to field recordings of birds and insects. Slowly, chimes fade into the mix. This is a point where Morris’ tonal shift is downright elegant, smoothly handled and seamless. It’s a shift from dark to half-light that comes on like dawn, but doesn’t quite deliver us there. Rather, we slip back to the murk as the trilogy comes to a close.

Considering that these are three separate live pieces culled from segments, the ease and consistency of flow in the “Verses Trilogy,” including across the series, is excellent. As noted, some transitions are smoother than others when looked at overall, but (for example) Omniverse‘s more obvious changes work quite well within the context of Omniverse. For live flows, even edited, there’s a distinct lack of the jumpiness that can occur in trying to keep a piece going live; there’s rarely a moment where you feel at all disrupted from the journey. (I confess to finding a couple spots; individual mileage will vary.) All in all, three very good, borderline-dark ambient chapters from Shane Morris.

Available at Shane Morris’ web site.

Ruxpin (aka Jonas Thor Gudmundsson) adds to the flow of good melodic electronica coming out of Iceland on his new release, This Time We Go Together. This is a perfect disc to unwind to. It’s got that melty candy quality to it, and the flavors smack of glitch and breakbeat in a downtempo shell. This is not a disc that plans to challenge you. It’s just going to sit down next to you and chill out with you and occasionally refresh your drink. Gudmundsson does a good job of mixing his styles. There’s a lot of glitch-style beatwork at play, but each track shows its own identity. “Here the Sun Hardly Sets” does an amazing job of creating and continuing a feeling using little more than a set of three repeating chords and a smooth backbeat. Gudmundsson fills the backdrop with dreamy washes and funky little treatments, including a processed voice. It’s superb in its relative simplicity. I like the whimsical rush and burble of “Cloud in My Space Suit.” Gudmundsson plays with a chipset sound throughout, pulling it into decaying strands late in the track. “Love Interest” is perhaps my favorite track here, a pure chill-room throwback, replete with a jazzy feel, percolating sequencer, and vocals from Olèna Simon. You may need a quick shake of the head to ensure yourself you’re not listening to a young, non-grating Bjork. Simon has the same round, girlish tone, with a little extra silk wrapped around it. A second vocalist, Chihiro Dunn, underscores the robotic angles of “With Our Hands We Form Contact.” I’ve had This Time We Go Together looping in my headphones for literally hours during my review listen. While it never manages to wow, it does manage to infuse its laid-back sense in the listener. It’s pleasant and cool and well-made, and seems content in not shaking anything up. A great disc for a shuffle, or for repeat play when you just feel like doing not much of anything.

Available from n5MD.