New releases this week: Ambient/Drone

Review: French outfit Chateau Flight have spent two years in the studio making music, playing around and experimenting and now the fruits of that work are presented on this new album La Folie Studio. It is full of the sound of analogue machines conversing and the artists themselves speaking through their darkened basslines or eerie pads. Occult worlds are crafted, ambient soundscapes are cooked up and leftfield cosmic explorations occur throughout a journeying album full of a wide range of emotions. This lovely record features guests on the odd track such as Johnny Nash on guitar, Cosmic Neman mumbling on 'Mange', John Cravache playing 'his special organ" and Bony Bikaye singing on 'Esika Molimo Ezali'. It's an occult world of left of centre sound that will keep you coming back for more.

Review: Blissful Balearic brimmers from the artist known only as Basso, whose longstanding efforts as a record collector, label head, storyteller and all-round obsessive all pay off with this latest record via International Feel. Keeping the curation short and sweet, Sitting In Trees is an eight-track rendezvous to the Island; it follows, in a well-timed fashion, on the hot heels of his very own label Growing Bin, whose releasing of music in this vein knows few bounds and is by now probably more than overflowing. Sifting through the reams of dusty but still golden trance tapes, private presses, and smooth jazz obscurios to find the cuts - by Peak Of Normal, Patrick Jahn, Erobique et al. - to make up this short but sweet LP’s worth.