Four-Point-Seventy-Five Star Review: "Floating Signal" by Simon Balestrazzi, Max Eastley, Alessandro Olla, Z'EV

(Yes, I'm doing this again. Fingers crossed it'll last for more than today.)

There sure is a lot of music that sounds like "Aumgn," isn't there? Off the top of my head I can only name that one piece on Yoko's Fly and, iirc, the entirety of Günter Schickert's Samtvogel, but you know you've heard them. A lot of it lies all in the echo. Floating Signal makes no bones about being consciously informed by "Augmn." It's there in the drone, it's there most blatantly in the violin and it is, naturally, there in the echo.

This album of electroacoustic improvisation manages to better embody the ultimate distillation of the spectral essence of dark ambient than anything other than Lustmord without even being in that genre at all! But it possesses a very refined sort of velvet/95% cocoa chocolate darkness devoid of any whiff of cheese or Halloween cosplay. But even saying that overstates the moodiness of the album - it shines its beacon of radical experimentation so brightly that it remains a simple joy to listen to for adventurous ear. And, given the presence of Z'ev, there's going to be an industrial edge to the proceedings but this is the chaotic good to "Hamburger Lady's" unlawful evil. More Faust than Faustcoven, y'dig?

Marco Cappelli adds a brief blast of fuzz guitar on track 4 (and an even briefer bit of non-fuzz six-string on track 9) but this doesn't  push the album closer to rock territory in any way being merely another element in the album's refined primordial sonic soup,

Did I mention that the production's like Dr. Buzzard's debut good, which every bam and thwack all resonant and crisp? Well, it is, and that's where the album really succeeds: it's an astonishing piece of sound art, almost as brilliant an exercise in pure texture and listening pleasure as Favorite Beijing Sounds or Balloon Music (almost.) Whether you're traipsing through the underbrush of the music blogosphere or digging in the crates at Goodwill, remember: if it sounds good, rate it.

Bad and Burbujee

dang, I can't believe this Burbuja album isn't Japanese! It's like introverted pico pop meets pop onkyo in a Xtoyourmilkyhair-meets-Smile Down Upon Us-meets-Synapse kinda stylee! Still futuristic and creative af! It's also sometimes creepy like Jon! I guess they have Japanese people in Spain, right? That explains it! It's a masterpiece!