PGM 385: NOCTURNAL VISIONS 5

A wintry ambient-space mix to convey a shadowy nightscape.

TIME / ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM-EP-SINGLE
00:25 / Remote Vision / The Mirror Pool / Hypnos
03:20 / Time Being / Architects of Silence / Hidden Structures
11:05 / AeTopus / They Know / Cup
15:35 / Eguana / Naked Ocean / Night Ambient
23:10 / Translippers / Mountain Spirits / Continuity
27:30 / deepspace / Arctic Sun and Weather Experiment / Vertical Landscapes: Retrospective
34:05 / Spacecraft / Twilight Rays / Skyscapes
39:00 / Arcane Trickster / Moonstar / Moonstar
44:55 / Germind / Mysterious Night Forest / Ambient Waves, Vol. 2
47:38 / ELEON / Slumberland / Hidden Kingdom
53:40 / TheAdelaidean & Steve Roach / Airspace Vista / Parallels

Album Review: Music Inspired by Middle Earth Vol. II by David Arkenstone

Review by Candice Michelle

I have long been fascinated by the life of J.R.R. Tolkien and his best-selling classic epic fantasy novel series The Lord of the Rings. If there is one composer who can most perfectly pay musical homage to the enduring legacy of Tolkien’s greatest works, it’s the creatively prolific David Arkenstone. A musical novelist in his own right, as well as multi-Grammy Award nominated recording artist and Billboard New Age chart-topper whose career spans more than three decades, Arkenstone is certainly no stranger to the fantasy genre. Having mastered a diversity of musical styles – including Ambient/Chill, Celtic, World and Classical Crossover/Pop – Arkenstone frequently draws creative inspiration from ancient folklore, mythology and natural places of wonder across the globe.

The second companion to Arkenstone’s 2001 album Music Inspired by Middle Earth, Tolkien’s epic story is sonically re-imagined once again on Arkenstone’s Music Inspired by Middle Earth Vol. II – a 14-track album spanning approximately 63 minutes – whereby the listener is invited along for another enthrallingly magical adventure.

Atmospheric symphony and haunting choral figures open “The Shadow of the Past” wherein the veil between our world and the enchanting one depicted in the novels is once again lifted for a time. “The Green Dragon” follows with a festive arrangement of Celtic rhythms and violin (courtesy of Luanne Homzy) as one might imagine themselves joining the lovely hobbits for some dancing, drinking and playfulness among the green hills and pastures. Subsequently, Jillian Aversa provides ethereal wordless vocals on the mesmerizing “Daughter of the River”, a delicate and flowing piece that feels like sailing down a sparkling river in a paradisiacal elven forest.

Other outstanding pieces like “Servant of The Secret Fire” and “Minas Morgul” make use of darkly dramatic orchestration, shadowy gothic choirs and thunderously cinematic drumming, recalling the darker neoclassical mood of Arkenstone’s 2016 album Beneath a Darkening Sky.

Two other notable favorites include the back-to-back compositions “Caras Galadhon” and “Fangorn Forest”. On the watery and crystal-like “Caras Galadhon”, gently whirling minor-key orchestration conveys a bewitching suspense that feels reminiscent of "Lothlórien" or “The Palantír” from the first Music Inspired by Middle Earth album. In gentle contrast, “Fangorn Forest” recalls some of Arkenstone’s more world-tinged albums (plus the classical symphonic touch) with its native flute, rhythmic shakers and clicking percussion.

For those who enjoyed the accompanying film scores by Howard Shore to Peter Jackson’s cinematographically gorgeous and otherworldly movie adaption of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, David Arkenstone’s Music Inspired by Middle Earth Vol. II is an absolute must-have for any L.O.T.R. novel, movie, music or memorabilia fan. Variably moving along its course from dramatic to dreamy, and suspenseful to serene, Music Inspired by Middle Earth Vol. II is another poetically magnificent musical journey that could be described as ‘atmospheric classical fantasy music’ – and sure to be a top contender in the genre for this year’s best album.  

~Candice Michelle for Journeyscapes 

For more information please visit the artist's website. Music Inspired by Middle Earth Vol. II is also available at Amazon, Apple Music and more.

PGM 273: Land's End 2

More space-ambient panoramas inspired by nocturnal seafaring!

Artist Name / Track Title / Album Title
Jeff Pearce / Opening / Archive 1: Songs for the Gatherings
Isostatic / Planetary Approach / Glacial Epoch
Chris Russell / Invitation / Destiny
Acheloo / Underworld / Debris of Nostalgia
Chris Russell / Tycho Crater / Elliptical
Jeff Pearce / Mist / Hidden Shores/Empty Beach
Hollan Holmes / The Farthest Fringes / The Farthest Fringes

PGM 265: Heliacal Rising 2

Another balmy cosmic soundscape inspired by summer nighttime skies! 

Artist Name / Track Title / Album Title
Halftribe & Spinnet / Cooking Up the Sky / Patterns of Sync
Ascendant / Solarium / Meridian [EX]
Solaris / Circular / Aeon V
Radiant Mind & Steve Roach / Sphere 4 / HelioSphere
Bart Hawkins / Bell Curve Blips / 21 Pulse Eclipse
DASK / Ascending the Giant Phase / Sol
Forrest Fang / Chiaroscuro / Following the Ether Sun
Billy Denk / Solar Wind / Starbound

PGM 263: Cavernous Worlds 2

Another organic ambient soundscape inspired by subterranean realms!  

Artist Name / Track Title / Album Title
Robert Carty & Brannan Lane / Hot Springs / Climatic Infusion
Jarguna / Water Memory / Fusion of Soul
Brannan Lane / Black Air, Pt. 2 / Lost Caverns of Thera
Steve Roach & Jorge Reyes / Spirit, Stone and Bone / The Ancestor Circle
Jarguna & Seetyca / Black Forest / Tales of Millennial Trees
Tom Larson & Brannan Lane / City of Tombs, Part II / Tribal Spirit
Zero Ohms & Brannan Lane / Land of Blue Mist / Soundfall to the Infinite
Sverre Knut Johansen with Robert Rich / Paleozic Era / Precambrian
Steve Roach / Soul Archaeology / Trance Archaeology

Album Review: temporal.Divergence by Peter Edwards Ambient

Peter Edwards, an ambient/dark ambient experimental soundsculptor based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, recording as Peter Edwards Ambient, landed on my radar screens only during the summer of 2018, shortly before releasing his third full-length CD album temporal.Divergence as the next chapter of dark ambient pentalogy. Available in digital formats since August 18th, 2018, the stunningly designed 6-panel digipak was released a few weeks later through Peter's own Caffeinated Monk Production label, the home of his previous two impressive CDs, suspended.Lucidity (May 2015) and binary.Abstractions (July 2017). To me, this was a huge discovery indeed!!!

Perfectly described as "ambient music for time travellers", this thrillingly immersing odyssey is ignited by the shorter "Prelude", which immediately sets the spatially tenebrous atmosphere. The 6-plus minutes long title track "temporal.Divergence" is fueled by bouncing cyber-tech pulses juxtaposed by industrial outbursts, razor-sharp beats, and heavenly hissing solitariness. A truly jaw-dropping introduction to distinguishably transporting realms by Peter Edwards!!! "quantum.Flux" at 7:33, the longest ride on the album, amalgamates massive drone reverberations with transcendentally helixing meridians and ear-tickling glimmers. Another aural spectacle! "revolution.Induction" masterfully merges hypogeally enigmatic stratums with perpetually ascending galvanic beacons and eerily rumbling fractals. Sonorously mindblowing! "gravField.Theory" dives into gargantuan depths, which are persistently illuminated by eternally galloping oscillations and piercing sci-fi narrations by Randy Savage, who also contributed his voice on the opening "Prelude". "dark.Matter" sails through unfathomably breathtaking realms, where intangibly thundering, yet tenaciously ambiguous magnitudes, commingle with inconspicuously emanating desolations and transmogrifying resonant vertexes. Beyond the gates listening splendor continues also through "causal.Continuum", when mesmerizingly barren heavy-duty beats collide with remotely roaring perplexes. "tempo.Kinetix", as indicated by its title, shifts into a vigorously driven scenario, perforated here and there by outbursting strikes, while immensely panoptic layers are guarding above. "time.Machine" merges abysmally engulfing murmurs with translucently flickering fragments and clandestinely arising oracular ephemerons. On "The Quantum Mechanics Of Time Travel Through Post-Selected Teleportation", mysteriously nuanced drones are reinforced by the narrations of a "quantum mechanic" Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Short epilogue "Gate.22180818" closes the album, but hidden also is a 4-minute untitled bonus track, which remains in fascinatingly enveloping monochromatic cosmic zones, percolated by gossamery evanescent traceries and ear-bending numeration.

Peter Edwards Ambient is a truly staggering exploration, which shifts each listener into magnificently adventurous portals, uniquely sophisticated, meticulously crafted and intriguingly rewarding. His 64-minute temporal.Divergence album is an all-inclusive magnum opus, both sonic and visual (design by Savage Internet Media), with deeply focused content and superb presentation. A vast display of artistic brilliance, which is, unfortunately, still hidden to a larger audience within the ambient drone soundscaping. On the science note, this must be some kind of a call I received only several months after experiencing the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, a Radio Astronomy Observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin in central New Mexico. I really wish I knew this gifted sound designer when passing by Albuquerque. Grab your headphones and immerse yourself into this exquisitely monumental futuristic journeying!!!

Reviewed by Richard Gürtler (Oct 20, 2019, Bratislava, Slovakia)

PGM 245: Shamanic Visions 5

Another foreboding excursion into visionary tribal-ambient soundworlds!

ARTIST NAME - TRACK TITLE - ALBUM TITLE
Louigi Verona – Darkening – Nocturnal Creatures
Frore & Shane Morris – Anima – Eclipse
Stephan Baer – Mwari (Initiation) – The Dark Frontier
Suspended Memories – Snake Song – Forgotten Gods
Forrest Fang – A River in Retrograde – Following the Either Sun
Byron Metcalf & Steve Roach – Big Medicine – The Serpent’s Lair
Kelly David – A Bend in the River – Meditation in Green
Steve Roach – Birthpulse – Trance Archaeology

Album Review: 21 Pulse Eclipse by Bart Hawkins

Created on August 21, 2017 during the total solar eclipse in Oregon, 21 Pulse Eclipse is an edgy and innovative ambient album of hypnotizing electro-shamanic soundworlds. Composed by Bart Hawkins on modular synthesizer and mastered by Spotted Peccary Music’s own Howard Givens, 21 Pulse Eclipse is comprised of eight darkly dreamy passages that span approximately 74 minutes long.

Warmly enveloping sound currents are gently propelled along by an underlying heartbeat pulse on the opening, “Dream Meditation”, an enthrallingly ominous piece that effectively paints mental images of a forest cave that is softly illuminated by the sun's rays. Organic and primal, yet digital and futuristic, indecipherably biotic field noise drifts among the gorgeously hypnotic listening space. The title piece, “21 Pulse Eclipse” ensues with a sustained buzzing drone emitting the similarly deep intonations of a didgeridoo, albeit considerably less earthy and much more electric sounding. Bestowing a harsh beauty upon the aural senses, this industrial ambient piece with its psychedelic flavors imparts an atmosphere of extreme heat, as it gradually morphs into dynamically sequenced pulsations. Throughout the rest of the album, Hawkins integrates harmonic distortion and strange signaling effects to create surrealistic environments, effectively conveying that of a communicative dynamism occurring between the sun and planet earth.

A musical invocation of solar consciousness, 21 Pulse Eclipse is a somewhat foreboding yet ever-fascinating listening excursion that bridges the primeval past with the technological present. I enthusiastically recommend it to fans especially of experimental mind-altering soundscapes! ~Candice Michelle


This album is available at Bandcamp, Amazon, iTunes and other music retail and streaming platforms.

PGM 242: HAUNTED WORLDS 5

A paranormal themed mix for All Hallows’ Eve with a spooktacular lineup spanning electronic grooves to ethereal soundscapes!

ARTIST – TRACK TITLE – ALBUM TITLE
Sonomad – The Monster – Sonomad
Doug Blair – Ghost in the Room – Horizon
Mike Oldfield – Sentinel – Tubular Bells II
Dense & Translippers – Witch Castle Party – Entitas
Polly Fae – Let Us In – Dreamwalkers
Shulman – The Unexpected Visitor (CBL Carbonator Rmx) – Quality Relaxation
Makyo – Erzulie (Phantom Remix) – Sky Dancing: Nada Masala 2
Mark Dwane – Cydonia Reimagined – Martian Apparitions
Tsode – Spirit – Innerity
Keith Richie – Grim Provocation – C/T/F/O
Delerium & Mimi Page – Dark Visions – Mythologie

New Release: The Still Guardian by Matt Borghi & Loneward

Collaborative duo Matt Borghi and Loneward (the latter being the recording project of Mike Carss who also records as Altus) have released an ethereally mesmerizing new album called The Still Guardian, which is comprised of spaciously haunting drone expanses!

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:

"Seven years have passed since Mike's previous collaborative work. Ambient guitarist Matt Borghi joins Loneward, and they journey together to explore lighter and darker colours, all the while under the watchful gaze of the still guardian."

Album Review: Beneath A Darkening Sky by David Arkenstone

Recorded by candlelight during the winter season, Beneath a Darkening Sky is multi-instrumentalist and award-winning composer David Arkenstone’s boldest foray yet into dark neoclassical and haunting ambient terrain. Comprised of seven tracks spanning just under an hour, the compositions vary from seven to nine minutes in length. Composed, performed and produced by David Arkenstone on electronic instruments and synthesizers, as well as old-world instruments, he is joined throughout by Luanne Homzy on violin and viola, along with Susan Craig Winsberg on flute and Irish pennywhistle.

“The Fog” opens with earthy drones and hazy choral intonations as the piece gradually unfolds throughout. Anticipatory and foreboding while perhaps hinting that one is making their way through the fog of a dark forest, a pulsing bassline and tribal percussion soon follow along with the medieval sound of a harpsichord. The composition's shadowy mood continues on “The Deep Desolation”, where deep metallic echoes resonant like that of old church bells. These enchanting elements are soon accompanied by what sounds like a cross between Gregorian chant and a male opera voice, interlaced with shimmering and suspended oscillating strings. Next is the “The Storm”, which picks up more dramatically, imparting an ominous feeling that someone or something is on the arrival, as windy gusts and crashing metallic tones mimic lightning and thunder. Beautifully chaotic and disorienting, powerful drums seem to signal a heavy downpour, conveying the sights and sounds of twisting and winding tree branches among the blackening mists. “The Moonless Midnight” alludes to the phase of the new moon, when the night sky is the darkest. This composition conveys a dungeon atmosphere, as low drones and vocal intonations reverberate throughout its ghostly halls. A humming rhythm with the accompanying sound of a hang drum follow; one perhaps feels like they’re making their way through a secret tunnel beneath a medieval castle – torch in hand and all – while possibly trying to decipher cryptic writings on the wall. A cold winter’s eve is conveyed on “The Ice Forest”, a piece that feels distinctly Celtic with its added textures of wind and string instruments. Appropriately dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien, “They Are Coming” boasts a cinematic soundscape of dark fantasy where mythical creatures populate a cavernous underworld. Opening with more windy gusts, “The Wind From the North” is the album’s final chapter. Swelling strings and minimal percussion lend themselves to the composition’s encapsulating suspense, until the eerie sound of a church organ signals its conclusion amidst swirling chilly timbres.

Magnificent and outstanding from beginning to end, Beneath a Darkening Sky is one of the most phenomenal albums I’ve heard all year, and easily sits among David’s finest works ever. He has incorporated many elements from both his Ambient.World and Music Inspired by Middle Earth albums – both of which are two of my personal favorites – while imbuing this latest masterpiece with an even darker, bolder sound. An undisputed genius at creating highly visually-stimulating and soulfully transportive concept works, Beneath a Darkening Sky is a must-have album for any Arkenstone fan, as well as those who love darker ambient, neoclassical and fantasy film music! ~Candice Michelle

For more information please visit the artist's website. This album is also available at Amazon and other retail & streaming platforms.