library music
Album Review: The Offline –‘La grande évasion’: another compelling sonic journey set in cinematic-soul snapshots.
For Felix Müller aka The Offline, a journey is always as important as the destination. His instrumental music, rooted in yester year soul, funk and soundtrack, has an episodic quality, snapshots which compile to reveal an overall mood. It all began in 2022 with the ‘En Clair-Obscur’ EP, a set of sleek instrumentals mapping his …
Album Review: Prefaces – ‘Acqua Marina’: Cinematic surf rock and dream-state instrumentals from the singular Beirut trio.
If you thought the limits of surf-rock had been reached by Gitkin or Ribot or Khruangbin then the Beirut trio Prefaces have other ideas. Formed around the mercurial and prolific multi-instrumentalist Charif Megarbane, convener of the Cosmic Analogue Ensemble and more, with Fender expressionist Salim Naffah plus drumming dynamo Pascal Semerdjian from the mighty Sanam, …
Track: Let the glorious summer vibes of Jimi Tenor’s new single “Summer of Synesthesia” wash over you
Jimi Tenor’s “Summer of Synesthesia,” out now on Timmion Records, is a stunning blend of psychedelic soul and library music, resplendent with lush summer chords and an electronic sheen that radiates warmth. Over Cold Diamond & Mink’s steady, soulful rhythm, Tenor layers delicate synth textures, creating an intoxicating atmosphere where sounds seem to turn into …
Album Review: Wax Machine – Hermit’s Grove: An exotic blend of psych-toned Tropicalia and elemental jazz rock
When you hear the phrase ‘recorded in a small closet above a mortuary’ you’re thinking ‘I know where this is going’. Dark, experimental, doom shrouded and drone laden probably fits the immediate profile. Well Wax Machine’s ‘Hermit’s Grove’ defies those superficial impressions. It may well have been ‘recorded in a small closet above a mortuary’ …
Album review: Joel Vandroogenbroeck – ‘Far View’: a curated, cosmic library set from the Belgian psychedelic scion
A MUSICIAN who ventured far in both life and his chosen creative form, Joel Vandroogenbroeck is maybe not a name that trips with ease from your lips; unless of course, you’re a proper head of the deep psych persuasion. For Joel was both the driving force behind and ever-present in the hard-psych voyagers Brainticket, whose …
EP review: Deca – ‘Source Material’: mining the library crates for instrumental breakz
LIBRARY music. It’s the crate-diggers’ crate-dig, the study of the deep connoisseur; that (formerly) unloved, workaday, copyright-free realm of production music, originally only of use and interest to the makers of TV programmes – and a useful session payday to everyone from electronic originators such as Delia Derbyshire and Ron Geesin to Pentangle guitarist John …
Album review: Ben Chasny – ‘The Intimate Landscape’: Six Organs’ driving light delivers an instrumental fingerstyle masterclass
LIKE all of us, I guess, Ben Chasny, the man behind the psychedelic guitar explorers Six Organs of Admittance, is a person of many facets; forget the personal here, we’re concerned with the musical. There’s the more carefree, garagey Ben we’ve seen laying down frayed and wholly lovable tunes, sometimes teetering on the edge of …
EP review: Toronto’s The Luvmenauts release electro-jazz delight, ‘Extravehicular Activity’
Shapeshifting, genre defying and pleasantly eclectic; a true transcendental journey into space
ALBUM REVIEW: Richard von der Schulenberg – ‘Moods And Dances’: a fun, exotique library music trip
Moods And Dances is the sort of album you cheekily slip onto the deck at a very groovy soiree at about, ooh, midnight, to bring some bizarre and spacey dimensions to proceedings and during which at least two of your friends turn to you and say with a bewildered grin: “Wow, what is this?”
Hannah Peel announces March album: see the video for ‘Emergence In Nature’
HANNAH PEEL is a true renaissance woman and arguably the most musically multifaceted artist at work in the UK at the present time. She’s recently been curating and presenting BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks; her catalogue, stemming from folky roots back a decade ago, has grown to take in the solo electronic and pop work of Awake But …