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The new LP from Loess for n5md is a slowtronic gem, where machine rhythms encourage the dense, slow moving ambient clouds to part occasionally allowing glimmers of familiar sounds & melody to light up the sombre yet captivating soundscapes.​

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Loess is the work of Clay Emerson and Ian Pullman, two friends who found a mutual interest in music and a desire to create their own sounds. Guided by the environments they live in, Loess approaches their music with a strict focus on the source and character of sound. Though inherently ambient, Loess tracks typically feature a percussive element to guide the songs and foster a feeling of building and collapsing. Their production techniques attempt to blur the lines between rhythm, melody and sound. Loess released their eponymous debut album on their own Nonresponse imprint in 2001. Philadelphia became their home base in these early years and as their self-titled album gained attention, they released a couple of EPs by way of the second chapter of Toytronic's 3D Concepts and their installment of n5MD's early 7ransparen7 series of clear 7 inches. Their next full length 'Wind and Water' was released by n5MD in 2006 to widespread positive reviews. Having fully relocated into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, 2009 saw the release of 'Burrows', a compilation of rare singles, previously unreleased material, and a few new tracks which suggested a slightly darker direction. To the frustration of many of their listeners, the production output of Loess could be described as progressing at a glacial rate. 2017 brings their glacial period to an end with their new full-length 'Pocosin', an album that reflects the duo's collective anxiety and optimism.

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It's not often an artist comes along and shakes up a genre with hardly any reference to what came before but MADTEO is one. His new LP for Honest Jon's Records is a slo-mo deep, dark, wild atmospheric twisted house dive sounding like an ecstatic dance soundtrack for K-Hole exploring urban deviants rather than group hugging hippy 2.0s.

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Visceral, elemental, electronic funk, conjured from scraps of sound, breath, mutterings, dubwise remembrances, scuffling, sweat and blood, thin air - ‘crawled out of the slime’, as the opener puts it, self-engendering like the baddie in Terminator - all harnessed to cruelly grooving earthquake bass and b-boy drum science. 
​
Rhythmically it has ants in its pants and it needs to dance, with an improvisatory, streetwise nervous energy and uninhibited, purposeful rapture - akin to this guy, say, eighteen minutes in - crossed with on-song Pepe Bradock and stripped-to-the-bone, mongrel hip-hop. 

It’s unruly and edgy, a bit off its rocker, emotionally ranging - typically anxious, often nostalgic - and riveting dance music.

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Not many producers have been dropping lush laidback beats for as long or as reliably as J-Walk. In his latest LP cosmic soulfulness meets low gravity grooviness in this NASA approved synth soaked space station soundtrack. One for all you space rangers.

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Forget trying to be a city slicker....unless you just wanna be a hologram jam ...so go to a world someplace else...maybe catch the hypercruiser to an underworld galaxy and just chill bien...or ride the night machine for a winter moon rendezvous and an equinox desire...it's just fait accompli. 

Because someplace in the scheme of things, this world must touch another…a world where a mutant fantasy strange brew of street soul, electronic funk, slow motion disco and ambient rave can be found and heard…a place of perpetual twilight where the sun and the stars both shine bright… 

For further information, please listen. 

"Great musicianship....it's all really excellent....sounds like a lost pen-friend from Lille who moved to the Pacific Ocean and sent back paintings...." (Mark Rae)
CreditsAll songs written, arranged, produced and mixed by Martin Fisher 

Martin Fisher: synthesizers, electric guitar and drum programming 

Mastered by Joseph Reiser 
Mastering coordination by Rik Walker 

Artwork and design by Sarah Hardacre  
www.paulstolper.com/artists/71-sarah-hardacre/works/​

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Celebrating the rural idyll, Igor Yalivek plants his bucolic synth sounds with natural field recordings, in this most gentle & scenic ambient stroll for Polar Seas Recordings & reminds the world's increasingly cramped city dwellers another way is possible.

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Polar Seas welcomes Igor Yalivec to the label with his gorgeous new record “Still Life”. Igor has released several works as part of Gamardah Fungus, but this solo work is his most peaceful music to date. The album was inspired by the beauty of old villages in the Carpathian forests of Ukraine, with their unhurried pace of life, calming atmosphere and wild nature. Composed using modular synthesizers and field recordings, Still Life feels like music for plants as much as for humans, with its plucked tones and moving ambience. Released in an edition of 100 on clear vinyl. 

psr-057 

written and recorded by Igor Yalivec 
mastered by Ian Hawgood 
artwork by Dmitry Khabarov​

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Mindfulness is today's inner peace, but etymology aside the road is paved with uncertainty, distractions & temptations. A support network helps on any journey so Awakened Souls & From Overseas have teamed up with a fine selection of remixers in this dreamy ambient journey towards the light for Past Inside the Present.

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Los Angeles based ambient husband and wife duo, awakened souls join with Réunion Island native, From Overseas to create Keep The Orange Sun. 

After hearing each other’s individual music, a deeper conversation started about shared musical influences and inspiration leading to the creation of this album. 

Keep The Orange Sun guides the listener on a thoughtfully curated path. Starting with the certainty of life’s changes (Certainty of Tides) to arising self-doubt (Release/Adapt) and celebrating immersion in the present moment as the gateway to deeper connection with nature and one’s life (Keep The Orange Sun). 

The instrumentation present in each track channels elements of electronic, shoegaze & ambient with each artist’s distinct musical fingerprint highlighted.

Creditsawakened souls & From Overseas are: 

Cynthia Bernard: Guitar, Vocals, Vocal textures 
James Bernard: 6 String Bass Guitar, Piano, Drum programming, TB-303 
Kévin Séry: Guitar, OP-1, Effects 

All songs mixed by James Bernard 
Written and performed by awakened souls & From Overseas 
Vinyl / digital mastered at Schwebung Mastering (Germany) by Stephan Mathieu 
Compact disc mastered at Ambient Mountain House by James Bernard 
Artwork by Jason Akira Somma 
Design and layout by zakè 

Reworks by: 
r beny, marine eyes, zakè & City of Dawn, 36, Innesti, James Bernard, Taylor Deupree, From Overseas, and Patricia Wolf. 

-- 

© Past Inside the Present 
This is PITP-V047 | MMXXI 
PITP.bandcamp.com 
www.pastinsidethepresent.com​

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Pull up a stool in the Local Visions lounge bar with AOTQ on the keys & marvel at the smooth synths, easy electronic jazz, slow hop and lazy lounge mingling amiably, clinking lemon twisted Martinis and nibbling on salmon blinis without a care in the world.

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Original soundtrack for catnap. 
www.localvisions.net/catnap 
　Credits
systail 00 
instagram.com/systail00/ 
twitter.com/futureflavor_Hy 

AOTQ 
aotq.bandcamp.com/music 
twitter.com/aotqaotqaotq​

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The new Auf Togo LP for Sounds and Sons is a funk fueled, good natured, chugging & hugging trippy affair. Aimed at the head & slow moving hips, it sits comfortably in the middle of the dancefloor on a sofa nodding it's head with a smile waiting for the pills to work & the club to fill up.

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After multiple singles and EPs on Leng Records and SaS Recordings, including two collaborative EPs with the tentacular outfit Becker & Mukai, acclaimed by fans and DJs alike, most of their time has been spent writing, recording and bringing to life the 8 amazing tracks that form their debut album “Movements”. 

“Movements” follows in the steps of Auf Togo's previous releases and won't disappoint the early fans, but it also offers a completely new proposition. Their signature blend of slamming percussion, driving bass lines, psychedelic guitar hooks, fat analogue synths are expertly mixed with new musical ventures across the tracks: from the louche Hawaiian jazz of Along The Dotted Line to the psych-funk of Pan Con Tomate, the electronic wanderings of Mexico to the cinematic intensity of Radical Departures. 

The result is a spell-binding summer album, one to listen to on a coastline somewhere under the Mediterranean sun, and one that is not afraid to wear its many influences on its sleeve, from 70s psych-rock to Balearic Beat, Space Disco and Afro Beat. The scope of “Movements” is wide and proves a captivating and gratifying listen.

CreditsAll tracks composed and produced by Clement Cachot-Coulom and Sasa Crnobrnja. 

Artwork by Erica Russell.​

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Freeing himself of any traditional Brazilian music responsibility has really paid dividends for Fabiano Nascimento & Now Again Records. In a meditative free thinking mood he focused on sound rather than structure & crafted a more minimal, abstract, ambient leaning six stringed world for the thinkers & dreamers rather than the dancers & singers. Listen on Bandcamp today, streaming tomorrow I guess.

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Ykytu is Brasilian guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento’s fourth album for Now-Again Records. Produced by Nascimento’s longtime engineer Jason Hiller, this album is do Nascimento’s first solo guitar album and, like his previous album, Preludio, is reliant on do Nascimento’s own compositions, with a little help from like-minded musical travelers. 

In keeping with the trajectory of his previous albums, including Dança dos Tempos and Tempo dos Mestres, Ykytu follows folkloric Brasilian music, Brasilian jazz, bossa-nova and samba as experienced through the mind and able fingers of an expansive musician, this time in a minimalist, meditative manner. 

“Even though this album is a bit experimental and even abstract at times, It is meant to be a calming and easy listening experience,” do Nascimento offers. “I choose to keep the songs and arrangements intentionally very bare and stripped down. Just adding few layers and colors here and there.” 

The album came together during the Covid-19 pandemic, but one hears anything but isolation in Ykytu’s grooves. Do Nascimento performed the album almost entirely with a Strimon Timeline pedal, with a few loops and overdubs, and the result is a full-fledged, if quiet and subtle, conversation Do Nascimento has with himself, as he ruminates about this stage in his life, in his musical journey, and of his music’s place in the world. 

Ykytu means "wind" in the indigenous Brazilian Guarani language. In his own way, as he was quarantined in Los Angeles, Do Nascimento has succeeded in journeying outwards, in heeding the call of the open world. At the same time, he has remained true to the spirit and calling of his forebears, hearing their whispers, amplifying them, augmenting them, and allowing them to flow outwards. ​

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Chill hop & lo-fi are Gen Z's chillout music of choice, but it's hard to find the good stuff in the copycat playlist gold rush. Luckily there are producers like Blackboxx with his keen ear for calming sounds, an ability to give them a modern twist but also a deeper timeless quality.

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Throughout the last decade, Blackboxx has been a name synonymous with deep, emotive electronica. From his fledgling early releases that flirted with the cinematic appeal of future garage through to his more organic downtempo cuts of recent years, he has maintained a gift for effortlessly drawing the listener in to his intimate soundscapes. 

‘Parisian Windows’ sees the culmination of the Blackboxx journey so far, with an accomplished song cycle of meditative music that feels nuanced in it’s composition and contemplative in it’s outlook. Recorded over the past few years as the artist moved halfway across the world for a new start, it’s as much a snapshot of a life in motion as it is a musical document of his progress as an artist. 

Infused with a sense of melancholy and longing, the album expertly combines lush instrumentation with delicate percussion for a truly beguiling audio adventure that evokes hazy summer nights in far-flung places. It’s a piece of work that is in equal parts inward-facing and personal, whilst also intimating wide-screen vistas full of life and hope. As a listening experience it feels wholly restorative, eroding the accumulation of your daily anxieties in the wash of it’s calming sonic waves. 

‘Parisian Windows’ feels like a significant milestone in it’s author’s progress as an artist and musician, a love letter to the sounds and spaces that have helped inspire them throughout the years - and in turn, a beautiful gift to listeners to enjoy in perpetuity.  

Credits
Lyrics & Vocals on 'Lyova Dear' courtesy of Lylli​

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