ERIK WOLLO 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Electronic composer (and DiN Records founder) Ian Boddy has genuinely found a soulmate in Norwegian guitarist and electronic musician Erik Wollo. The two veterans have both enjoyed long careers, but it's only over the last decade that they've struck up a studio partnership that's resulted in a string of strong collaborative albums. Revolve, their fourth joint full-length, is another treat, with Wollo's glistening, Steve Hillage-esque guitar textures and trademark electronic melodies working on perfect unison with Boddy's gentle electronic rhythms, dreamy washes of sound and immersive chords. They describe the set as a "musical travelogue" that explores warmer climes than their previous work, and it's certainly true that the tracks flow, shift and evolve as if driving through vast, slowly changing landscapes. A genuine ambient delight all told.

Review: If you dig the kind of mid-1980s instrumental music that couldn't quite decide whether it was new-age ambient, deep synth-pop or horizontal, synthesizer-fired jazz-funk, you may well already be aware of Erik Wollo's 1987 album Silver Beach, an Andreas Wollenwieder style affair that's loved by many Balearic selectors. At the time of release, the album was described as "synthetic walkabout music" and that's a fairly accurate description; it's all gentle rhythms, bubbly melodies, colourful synthesizer textures and smile-inducing arrangements. This expanded reissue not only boasts the entire album in freshly remastered form, but also a second record featuring similarly attractive cuts recorded in the same period, some of which have only ever been available on CD.

Review: A multi-faceted composer, musician and producer with a reputation for adaptability, Erik Wollo is arguably best known within electronic music circles for his distinctively fluid, personal and emotional take on ambient music. There's plenty of examples of this kind of work on "Sources", a set that draws together mostly unreleased tracks recorded during the formative years of his career in the mid-to-late 1980s. It includes a number of sublime, spellbinding cuts, including the Terry Riley meets Tangerine Dream synthesizer hypnotism of "Swamp Land", the deep space electronics and intricate melodies of "Under Water", the Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe style exoticism of "The Movie" and the shuffling positivity of "Big Sky", a gently rhythmic piece just tailor made for sound tracking summer sunrises.