The Breath Of Forgotten Places
There was a time in the near past when you had to buy something from the label to get this seven tracks sampler CD. But now that they're giving their whole stock away, you can get free CDs and ask for this one too. It's a free for all. They'll all be gone by the time you read this, but you can tell your grandkids that when you were a lad labels would give you stuff for free.
Psychic Space Invasion are the biggy on here and they do the 'hum and blop' thing very well, creating a soft tonal moodiness that resonates with memories of early ‘90s industrial-ambience while remaining a thoroughly modern Millie. Others on here are Jebus, Directive 4, Green End Listening Station, Swn (it's always a pleasure to hear anything by them), Ulysees Girelle, and The Buff Monkey Ensemble. Loops, scraped strings and samples play a large part of their collective work and, put bluntly, it sounds ineffectual. But I'm being overly picky. It's a freebie and useful to introduce you to new artists you haven't heard before. -HM, Adverse Effect vol 3/3
Here comes a weird and interesting label, a visit on their website is recommended: just give a look at their link section to know a bit more about what I mean with "weirdness" (or I'd better say "open-mindness"?). Let me say both the music and the cover of this sampler give you the feeling you're dealing with a bunch of visionaries; without any doubt the most of these cyclic loops may induce to a state of trance: Jebus, Green End Listening Station can be good examples of it. Some other songs have a strongest "space-ambient" feeling (Distinctive 4, Ulysses Girelle, The Buff Monkey Ensemble), while let's label the last category of tracks as the "deep-space-with-no-light" one (Swn, Psychic Space Invasion). If what we have is visions: here it is! A deserted lunar landscape far away from home, another dimension based on odd feelings and no words. This sampler is somehow homogeneous except for a couple of tracks and notwithstanding the fact not all of the musicians have the same "modus operandi", probably the thread joining the most of the songs included in "The breath of forgotten places" is the celebration of the new "Utopia". The fellow countrymen of sir. Thomas Moore are not less mystic, or at least that's the impression you get while experimenting "The breath of forgotten places". - Andrea Ferraris, Chain DLK
A journey into the psychedelic, experimental and ambient is this compilation, Earthman. It sounds like Jebus caught a Voyager space probe, recorded the sounds therein and chopped the whole bunch of Sounds Of Humankind in a tremolo. Like Directive 4 recorded the sounds of their own dark and ill-tempered planet. Like Green End Listening Station turned your Human guitars into dervilish (that is half-devil, half-dervish, Earthman) hypnotic devices. Like SWN made melodies with a broken toy piano, beats with whatever analogue was left in the toxic waste and drones with 1-an amphibian Mesozoic heart 2-lots of reversed metallic sounds 3-glassy synths. Like Ulysses Girelle sugarcoated their surround stereo effects with high-pitched textures. Like The Buff Monkey Ensemble psychopomped the mind of a long-dead Wendy Carlos dreaming of guitars. Like Psychic Space Invasion recording the music of Dromers in the alkali whirlwinds of Jupiter in a Simak novel. This compilation gives but a glimpse of the excellence contained in Elvis Coffee Records, Earthman, and you should rush visit their website and buy their stuff. - DDN, Empty
If this is all too much to handle, then the compilation 'The Breath Of Forgotten Places' might be the place to start. It has the aforementioned Jebus and Psychic Space Invasion, but also Directive 4, Green End Listening Station, Swn, Ulysses Girelle and The Buff Monkey Ensemble. Various angles of experimental music, including a Glenn Branca wall of guitars by Green End Listening Station, ambient music by Swn, garbled computer noise by Ulysses Girelle and drone-rock from The Buff Monkey Ensemble. A fine selection of underground music with no particular stand out tracks, but also no bad ones. One to investigate. - FdW, Vital
7 projects for 7 tracks merging ambient and experimental ideas all together. Projects like Jebus, Directive 4, Green and Listening Station, Swn, Ulysses Girelle, The Buff Monkey ensemble and Psychic Space Invasion didn’t exactly sound familiar to me and I’m afraid only one had been able to really catch my attention. The dark crystal-like ambient style of Swn contains a part of mystery and hidden secrets I simply enjoyed, but that’s not enough for an entire album! The other pieces are rather insignificant, thinking to the ambient experiment of Jebus, the flamenco-like experiment of Green End Listening Station or the ambient fields of Psychic space Invasion where less things happen. That’s definitely not enough to incite you to purchase this album. Cedric, Sideline
This seven track compilation kicks off with Jebus’s ‘Hole in the Wall’ – it’s noise, Jim, but not as we know it. Tinklings and whooshings and bleepings. Leaping into a lake of ice cold Um Bongo. WHAT does it all mean?! Directive 4’s ‘Neijfk 1’ is like being lost in an underground cave, with bats stalking your every desperate move. You can shout for help and hear it echo forever. No one’s coming. Green End Listening Station’s ‘DD2’ actually features a GUITAR! Wow! It’s an acoustically strummed going-round-and-round-in-circles affair with odd, unsettling sounds creeping up behind, so you don’t get TOO cosy round the campfire. Swn’s ‘Exponent 13132’ (do these titles actually have any significance or are they just there to be arty and weird, I wonder?) has the ambient gift of the non-gab. It flounces around the house in it’s silken nightie, dropping cigarette ash on the stairs. An icy piano weeps in the other room. Ulysses Girelle offer up ‘Sugarcoated’, which entertains us with confusing logic puzzles and silly hats. Actually, it’s a rather nice ambient track, as is the BEST track here, The Buff Monkey Ensemble’s ‘Pheonix Ninety Six’. It ALSO has an acoustic guitar providing the heartfelt strums and – gasp – even some VOCALS, coming in all ‘Songs of Praise’ like near the end. The early fade out to all this gorgeousness comes as a shock. I could have done with ANOTHER five minutes of THAT! Finally, it’s those crazy Psychic Space Invasion kids again. Their tune, ‘Drowning in Heavy Water’, pours the ambience over hot coals and finishes the compilation off with the recorded sound of the heart murmurs of a dying cat. Probably. - Mark Ritchie, Sniper Glue
