The Ambient Music Blog

Directly from Mike’s blog :

Please join Altus on June 26th at StillStream.com for the Ambitar radio show (hosted by Allan Goodman), who will be premiering “City of Ashes”. The show starts at 10pm EST. Join us in the StillStream chatroom and get first access to the new release. For those who are unable to join, full download access will be available on the 27th.

“City of Ashes” is a audio/visual project pairing the music of Mike Carss and the photography of Shawn Sintzel. A mix of ambient and orchestral works, this is by far the most cinematic music Carss has released to date, and acts as a film-like soundtrack to Sintzel’s stark and austere photography.

We hope to see you there.

So now you know what you need to do tomorrow !

Ambient and Electronica artist mon0 from Germany is back with a new release on NetLabel Test Tube called “Multifidus“.

As usual with mon0, the music is top quality featuring layers of analogues synths, drones with a very heavy and dark mood.

The record is a 5 tracks download from Test Tube, as well as a special mix of the 5 tracks all together for a seamless listening !

This is a free for all mp3 download under a Creative  Commons licence.

mon0 - Multifidus - Test Tube 172.

The Ambient Collective is back again this year with an excellent record of excellent artists !

“Zodiac”  is fully loaded with a lot of different styles of ambient music, performed by a lot of different artists who all have in common their talent !

You will find: usr/sbin, Phrozenlight, Jujigen, Steve Ganes, Silvercord, Zeitlos, Gregg Plummer, Michael Meara, Modulator ESP and Bluejooz !

What they say:

The Ambient Collective are proud to present… Zodiac:

An amazing collaboration featuring ambient styles from all the star signs. Ranging from Sublime Drone to pure Soundtrack; IDM to Ethereal… stunning tracks for your enjoyment brought to you by todays finest underground ambient producers.
Enjoy,

Bluejooz

Now go to the Ambient Collective page for Zodiac to download and listen to this great piece :

“Zodiac” on the Ambient Collective blog or “Zodiac” on the Internet Archive.

For this Week-end, another excellent Podcast to discover : Syndae !

Syndae is a fine EM (Electronica /Electronic Music)  to listen, discover some of the best EM artists out there :

syndae is an independent podcast on electronic music of ambient, space, new age, harmonic, traditional, progressive, and rhythmic style, not directly including electronic dance music. Well known artists in electronic music are (in no specific order): Klaus Schulze, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Ron Boots, Ian Boddy, Kraftwerk, and Steve Roach.

The goal of syndae is to make aware of fine electronic music, by providing enjoyable episodes with well known and not yet well known artists from around the world, and to promote events of the electronic music scene, by dedicating episodes to selected artists of such an event.

Stefan, host of the show, will guide you during 30 minutes into a fine music journey. The Podcast is quality, and the length perfect.

For example this week, Syndae N°38 will present:

Expect some of the most talented EM artists in tonight’s episode 38 of syndae! Brand new tracks by Christopher J. Wray from the UK from his upcoming album Retrospect, by Frank van Bogaert from Belgium from his June 2009 album Air Machine, and by Stefan Erbe from his soon to be live presented album Driver. Further on the show, an insight into Imaginary Soundtrack by Peter Beasley and hot stuff by jujigen a.k.a. Kevin Rees from the just released compilation Nucleolus.

Have fun !

“Moon Ritual” is the first record of Ephemeral Mists, aka Brett Branning. You can buy the CD from his website as wel as listen to some sample on his MySpace account.

The music of Ephemeral Mists is really a mix of electronica, down-tempo, world music and ambient :

Ephemeral mists began its musical journey during the end of 2008, when composer, Brett Branning (Abandoned Toys & The synthetic dream foundation), began fusing his cutting edge ambient electronics with the ancient musical traditions and instruments of the middle east and far east. The result is a stunningly beautiful ambient world of sound that goes well beyond the cliches of the genre and reaches for daunting new artistic and creative heights.

The mix between modern sounds and old and traditional ones is really good, and both blends perfectly for our listening pleasure ! My preferred track so far : “Eastern channels” because I love electronica so much ! “Awakening spirits” is also a great opener for the record, and a good sample of Ephemeral Mists music…

MusicRow, specialist in Arturia’s Synths soundbanks (they did banks for the MiniMoog, for the Modular and for the ARP2600), just released a new one for the Prophet :

The Heavenly Prophecy presents 200 extraordinary sounds for your Arturia Prophet V. This soundset takes the Prophet 5 and the Prophet VS to new extremes!

The Heavenly Prophecy is focused on delivering inspiring up-to-date sounds with the special Prophet flavor. The crystal leads will shine, the stab sounds will drill holes in your heart, and the fabulous mystic pads will make you cry. This is our prophecy!

A demo bank with 20 free presets is available for instant download.

Give it a go, as well as the others, for each bank you can download sample sounds…

Found via LifeHacker and Synthtopia, LMMS (Linux MultiMedia Studio) is a free music sequencer for Windows and Linux users.

Very similar to FL studio and Fruity Loops, LMMS is a very nice solution for those who can’t afford a full package but still want quality software to make their music at home:

What is LMMS?
LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio®, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.

Features:

• Song-Editor for composing songs
• A Beat+Bassline-Editor for creating beats and basslines
• An easy-to-use Piano-Roll for editing patterns and melodies
• An FX mixer with 64 FX channels and arbitrary number of effects allow unlimited mixing possibilities
• Many powerful instrument and effect-plugins out of the box
• Full user-defined track-based automation and computer-controlled automation sources
• Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and full MIDI support
• Import of MIDI and FLP (Fruityloops® Project) files

Come on and Download it to make some Ambient music this week-end !

For your Easter week end, to all of you ambient music fans, let me drive you to the new mon0 tune “Enantiodromie”.

mon0 is back to some ambient music, drones and space soundscapes for our listening pleasure !

mon0 - Enantiodromie mp3.

Help a little bit Mike by becoming a fan of his “Altus” group on FaceBook and make it grow… grow… 

Altus group on FaceBook.

Found via Altus, the “Sounds of Ambience” is a Podcast by George Smyth.

The show is featuring some of the best Ambient artists out there. Really good idea to showcase those artists via Podcast, and really good show !

Welcome George !

Sounds of Ambience Website.