Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: DJ F16 Falcon's music has always been tricky to pigeonhole, with the fast-rising French producer frequently fusing dub-wise rhythms and off-kilter beats with unusual samples, Tolouse Low Tracks style experimental electronics and melodic elements that doff a cap to tropical, new age and world music. Ici Commence La Nuit, his latest excursion, treads a similar sonic path, delivering unusual but wonderfully inventive and entertaining excursions. The most accessible and warming of the lot is colourful, melodious and bass-heavy opener 'Ici Commence La Nuit', though the sludgy, modular-rich pulse of 'Trip a La Mode de Quand' and thoroughly odd 'Clope Sucree' are equally as potent.

Review: Roy Of The Ravers takes a break from his mischievious outings on Acid Waxa et al to lay down some of his braindance tackle on Emotional Response. White Line Sunrise II.I (Le Roy Soleil) can rightly be considered a follow-up to White Line Sunrise II and indeed it represents a similar kind of spectrum of electronica. Roy's sound is edging further into the kind of 'artist' territory where slower, softer tracks, odd vocal diversions and some pop sensibilities merge with the acid, electro, breakbeat and other well-established tropes of his sound. It's the kind of record which could easily broach this quirky fringe operator of UK electronics to a broader fan base, and there's no doubt he's got the melodic, emotional heft on tracks like 'Versace 101624' to get everyone on board.

Review: In remembrance of Pete Birch, AKA Woosh, AKA The Peaceful Ones and founder of Spirit Wrestlers. Four ambient pieces, three of which were released as part of Pete's 52 Card Trick series on the Spirit Wrestlers Bandcamp site, plus another piece which was a favourite of Pete's but was never finished in time.
Collected together on vinyl for the first time, all profits from the sale of this record will be donated to the Spirit Wrestlers Foundation. Set up after Pete's passing, the Foundation promotes the belief that ""Music is the Healing Force of the Universe"", that ""Love Is the Most Important Thing"" and helps causes that were close to his heart. Nx

Review: Josh Dahlberg is The Valley and the Mountain aka TVTM and is an artist who has made a big move recently from the deep westside of Detroit all the way across to the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. He he arrives on Central Scientific for its inaugural release with Detroit-based producer and Akka & BeepBeep founder, Jo Rad Silver, taking care of the flip. Next to an array of hardware, there is plenty of improvisation with guitars in this EP - 'Experiment Obscura' is a widescreen and dramatic ambient cut with a meditative feel and 'Immersion Theatre III' is another empty but inviting piece with curlicues, wispy pads, distant guitar echoes and moodiness to spare.

Review: Originally released in the mid 80's on UK cassette label Bite Back!, this nearly lost gem finds new life 30 years later on Cocktail D'Amore Music. Steve has cobbled together a superbly melancholic electronic concept album. Wistful melodies often evoke sentiments of a lost childhood and hazy English mornings. Each song within remains untitled allowing full perceptive freedom as to what they all communicate, a language for the feelings that have no name. Untitled A1 - A6 leads one along intimate soundscapes of pattering drums and tinkering piano, a sense of closeness and trust develops with the introduction of each new idea much like the beginning of a bed time story. Untitled B1 - B3 then begin to breathe more openly awash in angelic colours before abruptly turning downward on B4, a wall of booming drums and atmospheres from the furthest reaches of the galaxy before the last trio of songs settles gently back on Earth.

Review: On his first album for the admirable Lontano Series label, Spanish ambient producer David Cordedo offers up alluring, immersive soundscapes inspired by his love of wandering through woods and forests. It's easy to imagine the sun peeping through a canopy of leaves and branches on sunrise-ready opener 'The Great Sadness', while the sustained chords, drowsy sound design and reverb-laden organ notes of 'Orma' evoke mental images of becalmed woodland clearings at nightfall. While the concept may be loose, the music - and especially the sublime, slowly unfurling 'All Your Silences' and the bubbling, Pete Namlook-esque 'Los Alcornocales' - is magical enough to both follow the brief and work as an enveloping, life-affirming ambient masterpiece. In a word: picturesque!

Review: Burnski's Instinct alias has given rise to two full-length albums and a swathe of EPs in just the past two years alone, and now he's heralding spring with the launch of a new label, Abyla, and his most delicate, ambient record to date. Happening is a far cry from what you might know of Burnski or indeed the Instinct project overall, focusing as it does on orchestral ambience with a preference for plaintive piano lines at the front of the mix and ample drone matter backing it up. These short vignettes glide between moods, hovering in moments of tender minimalism or bursting with effervescence depending on the situation.

Review: When it comes to creating musical soundtracks to contemporary urban decay, Gary Mundy has more experience than most. He's been releasing music as Kleistwahr since 1983 (though he did give the project a break between 1987 and 2009) and is a genuine master of creating heady, post-industrial soundscapes. 'Common Values', his 14th Kleistwahr album, is another masterclass in texture, mood and slowly shifting melody. There are moments of bittersweet, melancholic brilliance (see the immersive, reverb-laden ambience of 'Heaven Maybe Never') and pulsing, creeping minimalism (the brilliant, bleak and mournful 'Towards New Land'), but also fuzzy, guitar-laden soundscapes ('In a Blood Covered Land', 'All of Death To Lie' and the squally 'Common Values') and enveloping audio worlds subtly influenced by shoegaze ('Time To Realise').

Review: Ambient explorer Tapes & Topographies (real name Todd Gauthreaux) tends not to talk too much about his work. Instead, he's content to simply serve up new albums and let the music do the talking. 'Microtones', his latest full-length, is another softly spun, exceedingly immersive affair in which enveloping, dream-like electronic textures, sustained drones and slowly unfurling chords wrap around effects-laden instrumentation (we can identify pedal steel, piano and strings). There are subtle nods to neo-classical, jazz and cinematic soundtracks, but this is grown up, headily emotional, entirely beat-free ambient music of the sort you'll want to get lost in time and again.