Rvng Int'l Us 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Tin Iso and the Dawn has been a four part journey from the New York based composer and puppeteer Tristan Allen. It has brought to life a whole world of fantastical characters who share "universal longings" with us mere mortals. The opening part of the fine series showcases some meticulous sound design and alluring leitmotifs that all try to make sense of loss and what comes after. The album is loosely based on Wagner's three act opera Tristan und Isolde and was written over the course of seven years from 2105 with plenty of field recordings and a mix of acoustic instruments that were processed and arranged electronically. It's a transfixing listen, for sure.

Review: Hybrid Vigor is a privately pressed album from 1984 by the legendary Myles Davis and Ray Herrmann. It is an outlier that sits up there with fellow greats of its ilk such as the likes of David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts or Laurie Anderson's Big Science. It is inquisitive and enchanting, with clean melodies and gentle rhythms sinking you into a mindful state. Tunes like 'Romantic History' have inquisitive monologues stitched in next to the drum breaks and 'Break A Match' has gentle rock riffs next to new age ambiance. Lovely stuff.

Review: Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind.

Review: A concept album in the truest sense, not that you'd necessarily assume that from the outset, Kate NV has quite literally thrown her toys out of the pram for this one. Taking the bits and pieces, sounds and sonics from her 2020 album, Room For The Moon, Wow feels like she might have scattered the parts on the carpet like an eager child emptying a chest of fun they've not opened in years, then started to see what might be made anew from those once-familiar elements.

Fittingly, the result of that approach is very, very fun, but also pretty serious. There's plenty of innovation at work here - leftfield, alternative electronica messing around with assumptions we make about structure and order, at times almost sounding like a cut and paste project. In other moments, we step from staccato rhythms and percussion into rich brass movements. Quite unlike a lot you'll buy this week.

Review: There's clearly something in the water in Colorado: a hotbed for alternative electronic tones. The obvious answer would be all the weed the place is now famous for, but we prefer to think it's the stunning and seemingly-never ending natural landscape that hits you the moment you look up. No stranger to music making, local one M. Sage presents his latest interpretation of those surrounds, with Paradise Crick a deep dive into sounds at once manmade and natural. A gentile trip through floating noises and hypnotic fragments of time, it's blissful, instantly captivating stuff, quickly locating the part of the brain that makes you feel immersed and making itself at home. Meandering through the lot feels like time well spent, outside, listening to babbling brooks and gazing out on lakes reflecting beams of sunlight back into the world.

Review: Pauline Anna Strom was a revelation to followers of Rvng Intl, when the label gathered together some of the Bay Area enigma's finest moments from an obscure thread of tape releases for Trans-Millenia Music. They also helped facilitate an album of new music, Angel Tears In Sunlight, which was released in 2021 mere weeks after Strom passed away. Her legacy as a profoundly visionary ambient artist continues with this expansive box set, which gathers together her first three albums from the early 80s, remastered from the original tapes, plus a fourth previously unreleased album discovered after her passing. Glorious synthesis and a mysterious approach to composition make Strom's music so much more than her new age contemporaries and Rvng have done a fine job paying tribute to her half-hidden talent.

Review: Multi-disciplinary British artist Wayne Phoenix unveils his much anticipated debut album Soaring Wayne Phoenix Story The Earth and Sky after originally having the idea for it more than a decade ago. It was imagined as a project that encompassed music, film, and performance and is a record that is deeply personal and full of vulnerable expression. Phoenix's unbound creative mind explores with a real sense of mystery as he looks to break down the imaginary borders between us all and connect with his own voice. It comes in fragments, mutterings and musings with sparse synth melodies and grainy pads tho make for an experimental work of hazy ambient provocation.