Articles
2008 Ten Favourite Labels
Ten Questions Celer
Ten Questions Deadbeat

Albums
Anzio Green
Ariel Abshire
Osman Arabi
Arastoo & AEMAE
Asymmetrical Head
Benoît Pioulard
Bohren & der Club of Gore
Matt Borghi
Celer
Cubenx
Anders Dahl
Davis & Roux
Deadbeat
Feu Follet
Formication
Generic
Stefan Goldmann
Gultskra Artikler / Lanterns
Hauschka
Hexes & Ohs
Koen Holtkamp
I Am Robot And Proud
Illusion of Safety
Integral
Koen Park
Akira Kosemura
Koushik
Library Tapes
Lineland
Mamiffer
Melodium
Moon
Oppressed By The Line
Pillars and Tongues
Rumpistol
Kamran Sadeghi
Sans Serif
Signal Deluxe
Skogen
Saul Stokes
Matthew Sweet
Tapage
Thursday / Envy
Windy & Carl

Compilations / Mixes
An Taobh Tuathail II
Chaos Restored 2
DFPRMX
Kuniyuki
Message Subatomic World
Pero es olor en el cuarto...

EPs
Canyons!
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Cubenx
Dokuro
Fraction
Lee Holman
Ikonika
King Midas Sound
Michael Lambright
Library Tapes
Lilienweiss
MRK1
:papercutz
Spencer Parker
Poratz
Spartak + John Chantler
Andy Vaz

Koen Holtkamp: Field Rituals
Type

Koen Holtkamp, perhaps better known as one-half of ambient duo Mountains , makes his solo artist debut with Field Rituals, a fifty-five-minute collection of ambient collages that more properly warrant the label “mirages” than “drones.” Creating the album's material with meticulous care, the Brooklyn-based producer melded field recordings with acoustic guitars, harmonica, melodica, found objects (seeds, metal bowl, paper, ice water), and electronics to generate the album's eight evocations. Both song titles—“Bee Change” and “Bear Bell,” for instance—and the field elements—children's voices in “Sky Flowers” and the bustle of crowds and transport in “ Walker ”—attest to the material's earth-bound design. Scott Mou drapes his vocal murmur over the insect chirp and electronic burble of “Night Swimmer” while Häpna co-manager Johan Berthling contributes double bass to “Bee Change”; though the track is short, his participation alone is significant, given how close in spirit Field Rituals is to the delicate, folk-oriented sound-sculpting Berthling and his brother Andreas and Tomas Hallonsten produce under the Tape guise.

The brief overture “Half Light” establishes the album's tone with pastoral splashes of acoustic guitar and electronically filtered colour. Exceeding fourteen minutes each, “Sky Flowers” and “Haus Und Spirale Im Regen” (House and Spiral in the Rain) make good on the opportunity such extended duration affords for organic development. The former languidly segues from an opening episode where children's voices dominate to a second where bird chirps and other environmental sounds intermingle with sparkling guitar lattices that swell into swirls of beatific shimmer. Much more psychedelic and drone-like in character, “Haus Und Spirale Im Regen” is boosted by the presence of Ben Owen's incandescent harmonium playing which gives the piece a vibrant, celestial shimmer that helps bring this fully-realized collection of meditations to a remarkable close.

November 2008