The Ambient Music Blog

Jon Bernstein, a San Francisco based musician, just released a new album called “1989” under the artist name Disparition.

“1989″ is about the revolution in Romania in 1989. This album is a masterpiece that you can both download or buy as a physical CD.

What the artist says:

A portrait of the last days of the Communist era in Eastern Europe, 1989 takes its form and mood from the dramatic decline of the Ceausescu regime that dominated Romania for over two decades. The album is structured around compositions written and performed on a Yamaha DX-11, samples of archival footage from the Romanian Revolution, and modern found sounds to create an aural investigation of national identity.

This is a really good release, it’s very dark and symphonic at the same time, the sounds and FX samples are adding a “real” feeling into it, and even if the tracks are relatively shorts you’re really into the story that this music is telling.

Really great !

If you’ve missed it, like me, please have a check because the KVR 2007 developer challenge results are in !

That makes a good 41 audio plugins / applications to download and test.

The winner is Xoxos for his “Sounds of Nature” a collection of VSTi for emulating common natural sounds (wind, rain, thunder, songbirds and insects), a very good one for your Ambient tracks.

I’ve just discovered DSK VSTi’s instruments recently, and there is a lot of good synths to download over there, some of them being more targeted to our preferred music: Ambient !

I specificaly recommend you:

• The Odisea (2 Osc, 5 waveforms, Octave select and micro-detuner, Amp. envelope, Filter, easy programming, Midi automation, Preset selector)
• The DreamZ (Experimental additive synths, LFO (osc controlled), 3 LFO assignables to cutoff, resonance, pan, sync…)

A few hours of playing and testing ahead !