Stellardrone - Between the Rings

As usual, I've discovered this music completely by chance. It has everything I've ever asked from a Psybient release: cosmic spatial atmospheres of a journey to the stars, beautiful melodies, deep and dynamic instruments... you name it.

Just listen to this album at maximum volume, go kiss the sky and tell me about it later.

See you in limbo.

Stellardrone - Light Years

Welcome to the quantic core root of hyperspatial cosmos. The great cycle of life continues on and on, and Psybient makes a comeback, as rapturing as ever.

I let Youtube choose the next album, just once, and I discovered Stellardrone's music, which became an instant favourite. Rich atmospheres, voluptuous soundscapes, a sound that plays hide and seek, even better with headphones... so many musical elements that come together to form a tranquil mass, like a giant water bubble floating through space...

Ok, enough said, just listen to it, then buy it all, then travel to the other side of the world, come back, go back, then we'll talk some more.

Bioscape - Shaping Seasons

It has been a LONG while since I posted anything starting with "psy-" but the summer lights of this beautiful month of July told me to do it again, and I had to comply when I discovered that Bioscape had produced a couple of new albums right when I wasn't looking !

You can really feel the evolution of the quality of his work. Driving basslines, beautiful melodies, an atmosphere that will take you from the core of the Earth to mystical jungles, and ultimately to outer-space, of course, because which Psydub album doesn't send people in orbit ?

But all the while it does so, the musical feeling shifts from season to season, and ends beautifully with winter.

Needless to say, I was chilled to the bone.

Enjoy this master-crafted piece of psychedelic music.

Nibana - Shūmatsu No Tani

Shūmatsu No Tani is the third album from Nibana, and comes in a double album divided into two distinct parts. The first one is more of a downtempo mystical and epic odyssey that culminates in the impressive 'Orchestra Electronica'.

The second part is driven by Bass Music, psystep and glitch-hop, the whole with influences as various as Tipper, Whitebear, Koan Sound, Suduaya and Solar Fields, among others.

Enjoy !

By the way, you can buy the album free priced at Bandcamp, but if you want to download it for free, consider going to Ektoplazm.

State Azure - Phantoms

A seed of light turning the web into a firefly-filled dream, during eleven beautiful tracks, showing that psybient does not always mingle with psydub, sometimes it stays on its own, brilliantly.

State Azure is true to his unique style, take us on a nostalgic trip, juggling with lofty and dreamy atmospheres, building palaces in the clouds, where we end up, tiptoeing amid columns of vapour, to sit quietly and enjoy a bit of music.

Still self-published, still free-priced, and still British. An excellent album that is not reserved to eagle-headed connoisseurs.

See you again soon, best regards.

Narcose - Panda Eyes

Taking its roots at the threshold between Swamp and Psybient and sprinkled with dubby dust, Panda Eyes is what you need to give back their psychedelic side to places wronged when called sinister. Between a marsh buzzing with fireflies and a mystical crystal fountain.

I am currently reading the classic Lord of the Rings and played this music while the book describes the climbing of a high, dark and never-ending stair, flanked by chasms at the bottom of which you can see a corrupted and dead city, encircled by weird flowers and prickly mountain bushes.

I hope nobody is going to mistake the fact that I deemed it very à-propos for such a scene...

And I say this to you: whenever you get the chance to find a free(-priced) album at Mystic Sound Records, you can buy with your eyes closed, there's a 99.99% chance it's going to be excellent.

Also, you'll appreciate the music better with your eyes closed, of course.

Well, see you next time !

Kupuri Music - Organic Wave

Crawling and twitching like a swamp filled with musical snakes, this collection of tracks from various artists outing their creations at the mexican netlabel Kupuri Music will leave you rumbling with strange vibrations and in the mood to travel to the moon.

Soulular - Moments in Time, Vol. 2

Amid vapours of hang drum sounds and sitar ticklings, enter the ancient tree in which Soulular has decided to live, and listen.

A swampy atmosphere takes you on gurgling basslines to another world, another dimension, between dream and waking world. Between now, then, and later.

This collection of tracks made between 2015 and 2016 are meant to be warm and intimate, and it's even more evident when listening to them with headphones on.

Enjoy.

Tentura - Beyond Illusion

Psy psy psy, here's an exciting and astonishing album. Produced by Tentura at Sentimony Records in 2015, Beyond Illusion contains an original and masterly crafted blend of deep-trance and psybient. The kind of album that takes time colouring the walls and putting up an atmosphere.

To speak more clearly it's been in my 'to write about' folder for months but I only found time today to listen to it in its entirety. I immediately felt as if in a goa festival chillzone. Had there been some chai tea and random smiling people around me, that would have been it...

A well-crafted album without any undertone from beginning to end, a music that makes one want to know more about Sentimony Records' catalog and also about Tentura, who seems to be such a master in the arcanes of electronic music.

Boy do I like free music, could it be the sense of life I was looking for ?

bioLuMigen - ...ua.ka.r.ak.au...

From the depths of California, bioLuMigen returns (ok, he was already back since may) with, as usual a very small but precious album, with this time a name that's hard to read and pronounce !

Back with his particular style and sonorities which, even with thorough and hard research I could not find anywhere else. It's like a journey at the speed of light between the death valley and medieval China countryside, side to side with Lao-Tseu pleading the cause of bees, trees, whales and snails.

An album from bioLuMigen is something quite rare and beautiful, so do not hesitate to feed him a little donation, to add it to your collection of dream music, to share it with your friends, it's really one of a kind.

If you need more (I know I do), go visit his Soundcloud.

VA - Resonant Heart

Resonant Heart is the follow-up compilation to Resonant Mind, which is also free-priced. Where the first one concentrated on thought, spirit, their immortal nature and the infinite which only them can hope to touch ; this present one goes back down to earth, to the core of the planet and human beings, to shake our hearts and make them resonate with strange rhythms, and melodies that go back and forth between the skies with thousands of stars, and the pools of mud with thousands of tadpoles.

The talent of all these artists combined creates a unique atmosphere, a blend of styles. Desert Dwellers welcomes us, chanting from far away, Kalya Scintilla plunges us into mystical swampy grounds, Mr Squatch digs for spices that titillate our nostrils and enable space travel, Gibson lets us try his laser harp, Biolumigen bids us farewell with his peculiar style...

This album found while looking for more free music from Mr Squatch has a lot of good surprises in reserve.

I only found one little thing I did not like, but so small it serves no purpose to talk about it.

Focus on what is good.

Kalya Scintilla - The Remix Archives Vol. 1

Hi !
I'm taking a break during the month of august.

See you in september with lots of music !

Tetra Hydro K - Labotomie

It breathes heavy, it breathes fresh. A delicious magical electronic potion, a blend of dub, of psy, of electronica, very refreshing, if I must repeat myself during those days where we can but claim our right to more sun.

Dr. Kanay and Dr. Krilong invite us to discover the new advances about biochemicomusicology they recently made in their secret lab, conveniently named Tetra Hydro K. Shuffling between live instrumentations and electronic components, the two MDs discovered it was possible to cleanse a human brain using only the finest ingredients such as basses, organic rhythm, far-reaching melodies and strange out-of-nowhere samples.

Out at ODGProd, the netlabel whose name I barely manage to write correctly, Labotomie is a surprising album, to be listened to without any moderation, for all the lovers of music, be it electronic or not, but like, still more yes, you know...

Download the album directly on ODGProd's website by following this link (and by clicking "download").

Subaqueous - ReCreate

Hear hear ! Gentle people of the Internet. I present unto you, ReCreate by Subaqueous, a journey deep into swampy soundscapes, phosphorescent algae-ridden mountaintops at the bottom of the ocean, crashing waves and the songs of whales.

ReCreate is actually a remix album of track by Subaqueous made into something fresh by friends with mucky names such as Moon Frog, Bogtrotter, Yaima, Skytree and a bunch of others. A great occasion of discovering Subaqueous' sounds through other minds and also to get a number of new names in the free music world.

You wouldn't believe, sometimes you just have to type in "artist name + Bandcamp" and then you only need to name any price you want.

Note : It does not work with all the musicians in the world.

Let's listen and go to far away places now.

Kalpataru Tree - Preverberations From The Infinite Future

Today and once again I want to share with you an album from a very inspiring artist of whom I've already spoken before, but whose art makes me float in the air with each and every step forward it takes.

Kalpataru Tree has become one of my favourite artists, and is, in my opinion unavoidable in the psydub scene today, of which he successfully makes himself the avatar with a blend of tweaked up instrumentals, rhythm boxes, deep layers of bass to sustain the whole and dreamy velvet melodies floating in space, faithful to his own style.

Preverberation From The Infinite Future, with its impossible to pronounce name and its cover reminiscing of an episode from Ulysses 31 unleashes long threads of psydub able to calm down the most reluctant souls, to make the laziest among us able to touch the stars.

Listen without moderation is all I have to say in the end.

See you later.

Love.

Lost In Sound - VA Compilation #004

It's quite hard to write a little review on this profuse and rich release of 45 tracks (yes, 45, you read right) in such a variety of styles... There is a bite of everything, glitch, techno, electro, piano, dub, dubstep, psydub, you name it... There are also killer bots with laser sight, but you'll hear them soon enough. I better warn you though, that their unique eye can cut through about any material, so watch out.

This compilation was put into being by the Lost In Sound collective as a means of celebrating the comeback of their website and online musical catalog in 2015 (in spring, as you can guess). After contacting more than a hundred artists, they were sent those fourty-five pearls of musical craftsmanship. And there goes a collection of tracks shifting gracefully between up and down, light and dark, bounce and flow. Trippy, futuristic, strange, shwifty...

And entirely free of charge !

You can spot some names we already talked about some times like Mindex, Pericles, bioLumigen, Erothyme and Kalpataru Tree. So much tracks to add to my playlists I cannot even begin to think about it clearly. Ah, if playlists could talk...

Well I'll leave you on this very interesting thought. See you next time.

Oh and don't forget to take a look at LIS's website, there are many a musical pearl to find there. Not all is free, because they do not specialise in that field, but there are some very good things to find. I've just begun to dig the vein myself...

Chronos - Technologia

Here is an absolutely flawless album, perfect, sublime. I just cannot get tired of it although I'm really trying. And I will probably add each and every track that composes it to the psybient/psydub playlist, because they are so... You know.

Chronos is one of the few artists at Mystic Sound Records who puts his albums at a free-price, whereas in fact his talent really has no price.

I'll let you judges.

Special mention to the tracks "Planetarium" and "Swinging Satori" that make my humble mortal soul shiver.

Various Artists - Ethneomystica Vol. 1

First and foremost, to all those who would say "hey ! It was psydub last week too !" I'd like to answer "Thank you for following" but also that I'm but a man, and when I'm handed a compilation full of groovy trippy psybient/psydub I just cannot resist. I listen, I download, I listen again, I share and I share again.

So here's Ethneomystica, the first volume. If you like free music as much as I do I'm sorry to say that volume 2 and 3 are excellent but not free.

They are out at Mystic Sound Records and compiled by Maiia, who seems to have an excellent taste in music. In this particular compilation you'll find well-known names such as Globular, Yechidah or Mahaon (a guy that makes wonderful music but that I cannot share efficiently because of technical issues with his Bandcamp page).

Enjoy yourself, it's on the house. 

bioLuMigen - ..:tao:..

Each time I listen to this tiny album, I bite my fingers because there isn't more. These are my four favourite tracks at the moment.

Deep, finely crafted, dedicated to the old Laozi and his universal principle of balance, everywhere and nowhere at once, always invisible, yet always there, the Tao, these four compositions reach the summits of quality in terms of sonority, rhythm and musical science. A blend of psybient and traditional chinese music.

You'll see, when you'll have listened to these four, you'll want more, for sure. Unfortunately right now there is nothing more by bioLuMigen on Bandcamp. That is why I recommend visiting his Souncloud page, where you'll be able to find a couple of beautiful mixes among with some other tracks, most of them are available for free downloads. I just can't get enough of it.

VA - Down The Fractal Dimension

If you love those hour-long psybient/psydub compilations containing lots of tracks from various artists as much as I do (and I bet you do), you will have the sudden need to download this one and put it in good place in your "must listen daily" folder.

This release is the result of two Greek netlabels, Irrespective Music Minds and Liquid Seed, colliding into one musical rimless cube of psychedelic dark matter. Ten tracks worth of psybient and psydub.

You can get the album on Ektoplazm.
Feel free, feel the music.