Test Tube #154: monopole - Silent movie surround sound

What the Netlabel wrote:

«Monopole is Richard Sudney from Detroit, USA, but don't expect techno sounds from 'Silent movie surround sound'. Instead, expect some glitch-esque IDM mixed up with ambient electronica for good measure. Audio sources range from typical field recordings gathered around abandoned factories and old vacuum tube analogue equipment installed at Richard's basement. This small EP is apparently influenced by old theatre projections of silent movies from the 20's and 30's. The quirky programmings and out-of-line samples make up for a very curious and cinematographical, while interesting, release.»
- Pedro Leitão

What Stratosphera writes:
English: Beautiful patterns of music and atmosphere snatch the leasterners by hearing this intensive and dynamic compisition. The paradox of the album title continues into the music, which seems to get slower and faster at the same time.
Deutsch: Wunderschöne musikalische Muster und Atmosphären greifen nach dem Zuhörer während er/sie diese dynamische Komposition hört. Das Paradox des Albumtitels setzt sich in der Musik fort, welche gleichzeitig schneller und langsamer zu werden scheint.
Español: Calañas preciosas y ambientes preciosos asen por el oyente, mientras oye esta composición dinámica. La paradoja del título continúa en la música que, al mismo tiempo, parece más rápida y más lenta.

1 Silent movie surround sound / 2 Stereo-vision radio / 3 Main feature intermission
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Test Tube #125: uncle bart comes to have breakfast - some paradoxes about the human existence and its arquetips

Comment from Test Tube-Site:

«From fragments of some (other) space free jazz in ‘Interlude…’ to the perversion of a spoken word in ‘Metamorphosis…’, going through the post-minimalism of ‘Cyber Chaotic Zen Paradox’, it’s a whole universe almost cinematographic – which goes beyond transcending labels and classifications – the one that we are given to discover in this excellent work from ‘Uncle Bart comes to have breakfast’.
Deep spaces of deceiving sound weirdness, where the ripping of pseudo-narrative perspectives intertwines with timbric instrumental explorations, in the quest for a new and rigorous sound.
Music in which distant and disperse ‘ethnics’, permeate a never-ending journey of disturbing beauty, in an apparent noise amalgam.» - Carlos Zíngaro

Comment from Stratosphera:

This album is not as much music at it is art. The story you will here has been written about 80 years ago; it's "Die Verwandlung" (Metamorphosis) by Franz Kafka. Kafka was one of these author that couldn't really earn money with the writting - but what those people write changes the ways of thinking and the history of liturature. His stories and novels have often been discussed. Now "uncle bart comes to have breakfast" mixes up the text with sometimes strange audial settings. He cuts, breaks, returns back again, flips the story around - get's it all dynamic and slow if the text conducts it. And so I can't do anything else than announce the most aesthetic audial work this year so far.

01 Metamorphosis Paradox part 1 / 02 Interlude - Meditation Paradox part 1 / 03 Metamorphosis Paradox part 2 / 04 Interlude - Meditation Paradox part 2 / 05 Metamorphosis Paradox part 3 / 06 Cyber Xhaotic Zen Paradox

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Double One today

Test Tube #110: Shelter - Sleepyhead falls off the edge of the world

Comment from Test Tube-Site:

«'Sleepyhead falls off the edge of the world' is a hip-hop mini-epic for all the broken hearts out there. Love stories gone wrong... not you're typical theme for an hip-hop release, I guess... but Shelter makes it work really really well. 'Sleepyhead...' is a small gem of an EP, in fact, it's a reissue of the original which came out on Shelter's old weblog more or less an year ago. I kind of bumped into it by accident and almost immediately 'Sleepyhead...' became a regular on my winamp playlist since then. Musically, think of BoC-style nostalgia keyboards and electronics and Marshall Mather's style vocals and flow, but Swedish pop way - Shelter is from Sweden, and you're there. Excellent production, very good lyrics and an awesome sense of narrative throughout. This is the most perfect 20 minutes of hip-hop I've listened in a long time.
This release is also a good excuse to show off our new standard design for the cover artwork. Hope you dig it! Furthermore, keep your eyes peeled for a new EP to be released very soon on Shelter's own website.» - Pedro Leitão

Comment from Stratosphera:

Ok, this is special for Stratosphera. Hip-Hop isn't usual for this blog, as all you watchers know. But what made Stratosphera review this album is it's poetic side, as Pedro wrote before, this is a album about love an d getting emotionally hurted by people. It's just beautiful so sit back, relax and open your mind.

Intro / We like falling (feat. Balance) / Into the fog / Rhythm of the night (feat. Balance) / Keys open doors? (interlude) / What's underneath / My knee's weak / Sunny eyes (interlude) / The Swamp /Outro

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Kikapu #108: William Fields - The Ruby-leif

Comment from Kikapu (Archive.org):

We have here an amazing new mp3 release from William Fields, titled 'The Ruby-Leif.' It's a 5-track EP of incredibly melodic, beautiful electronics. It harkens back to many of our older releases from past years, and is a welcome addition to our catalogue.

Comment from Stratosphera:
First listening to this album I was quite astound. Clearly melodic, clearly experimentel, clearly veautiful but also abstract - I never thought a mix-up like this would work, but William made it work. A first-class audio experience!

Sunwire / Hakea/ Umber / Cairn / The Ruby-Leif
->Everything here

Test Tube #99: entia non - distal

Comment from Test Tube-Site:

«Another personal favorite of 2007 comes from the far away Australia. James McDougall a.k.a. Entia Non possesses the rare talent of putting together seemingly ordinary field recordings in a way that they sound to always have belonged together. If you enjoyed My Fun 'Idyll EP' release you'll love 'Distal'. James manipulates found sounds using ambient electronica techniques, tape reels and vinyl records into the most beautiful soundscapes you'll be able to hear. 'Watching the paint dry' is one of the best here, with sampled voices scattered amidst soft humming tones that sound like distant lost ships at sea. Beautiful stuff. 'A Winter Plateau' is another great track. A lot more into the 'nostalgia' theme than the previous ones - which is a recurrent theme when it comes to ambient music - but also very uplifting. Sparse real world here and there, but always embraced by a warm blanket of soft light. Makes us want to cuddle around a fireplace in a winter night with a cup of hot chocolate in our hand. Closing track 'Above' is a real gem. Runs for a little over ten minutes and covers mostly sci-fi soundtrack territory, which is something of a personal favorite around here. Could have been in Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' soundtrack and it would fit like a glove. James is a really talented musician who should not go unnoticed for he makes really amazing music capable of putting us into various states of dreamscape modes. With the perfect drug this can open portals to distant worlds too.
James released a previous album on the infamous CDR label U-COVER called 'Inter Alia'. If you enjoyed what you have listened here you should go and buy it immediately, because it is a limited edition. Also, keep your eyes peeled for another Entia Non album here at test tube, somewhere in 2008. Thanks for listening!» - Pedro Leitão

Upon arrival
Watching the paint dry
A Winter Plateau
A Burning back in vacant fields
Cultural Plagiarism
Isthismytea
Hinterlund
Above

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Test Tube #98: The Turtle - Hyper Riot

Comment from Test Tube-Site:

«Here's another one hailing from the United Kingdom. Jon Weinel is a native british musician and brings us this collection of tracks called 'Hyper Riot'. Jon reclaims his work to be mostly influenced by flashcore and breakcore, whatever the hell that is, but judging from his myspace there is a lot of stuff to be accounted for as well. It's not unusual to see Venetian Snares there on the list because that was one the few names that came to mind when I first listened to some of this tracks. There are a lot of threads to pick here, and they all connect to one another. There are references to Dubstep too, perhaps not on all of the tracks but I found some of the key elements both in the 'fast' tracks and in the 'slow' tracks. Speaking of which, the 'fast' tracks, the hardcore ones, are of course the shorter ones but they carry a lot of references inside them and sometimes they sound like two or three different pieces put together as they change tempo from start to end several times. 'Pacman's Psychedelic Meltdown' sounds exactly as it's called: a video-game soundtrack gone bad, too much bpm's resulting in the CPU's meltdown. A classic.
Halfway into the release and we get first contact with the ambient tracks, kind of like one of Jon's regular tracks stretched to its limits and spanned into five times the regular lenght. Slowed down hardcore for you experimental music lovers. 'At The Drive In Play Their Video-Games' is another electro pop classic, ready for the dancefloor. If you're into 8bit electro/techno and experimental psychedelic soundtracks, you'll love The Turtle and his 'Hyper Riot' release.»
- Pedro Leitão

Stalker
Pacman's Psychedelic Meltdown
Cake Basement
Speedbugs
At The Drive In Play Their Video-Games
Direct Telepathic Transmission From Mars
Trip To The Supermarket

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Test Tube #90: meta:human - the dark ages of technology

Comment from Test Tube-Site:

«Ok, time for something completely different. Meet meta:Human, a kind of an Industrial-Techno-Goth-IDM trio from Germany. 'The Dark Ages of Technology' is their own post-apocaliptic manifest. This releases is something of a 'best of', put together by the guys from 3 full albums of previously unreleased material.

We have deliberate anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation, anti... well... anti-human lyrics sung in a style not too distant from Peter Murphy's Bauhaus or Dave Gahan's Depeche Mode. We have programmed IDM/industrial beats with an old-school techno feel to them which fits very well with the singing and the post-apocaliptic mood. They call their own style 'Cyberdelic Electropunk', whatever that is...

The best moments (personal choices) of this release are: the opener 'Deadliest Species' with its dark-sci-fi mood and low-key vocals; 'Like Fire', the closest song to the Bauhaus universe, in my humble opinion; 'Rivers of Dawn' for its heavy dramatic mood; 'Catching Up' because it reminds me a lot of Depeche Mode and 'Magnitude' because it's a damn good track. There are plenty of great tracks in here. meta:Human and Esc.Laboratory (the group's organization) have plenty of other works around the web, like this one for Earth Monkey Productions.»

- Pedro Leitão

Deadliest Species
Motormusic
Ages
Like Fire
How We Love
Devote
Rivers of Dawn
Tree of Souls
Catching Up
Magnitude
Terminal D
Devils
Cured
Surface
Dusk

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Test Tube #89: clorofila azul - revistado (sem voz)

Flutuando em águas tropicais
Introspecção
Visita a General Magic
Ethereal Mood (in blue)
E lentamente o corpo deixa-se derreter
Fúlvido, Adj. Fulvo e luzente
As andorinhas chegaram
A very famous film
2 min e 10 na IP5
Tribo
Tema Sincopado
Slowly she falls down
Theme for a motion picture II
Funky Computer
Machine in deep sleep

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