Shelter Press France Vinilo y CD

Review: Shifted in Dreams is the latest release from French-Swiss composer and sound artist Kassel Jaeger. The album features a mix of field recordings and electronic soundscapes, which are layered to create immersive sonic environments that in turn are rooted in themes of mountain exploration, post-apocalypse, and questing to find the 'deep causes' of music. With this in mind, the tracks evoke a sense of natural beauty and mystery, codifying an intense experience in which rare sonic entities both tiny and colossal grace us with their presence.

Review: Listening to Lee Okkyung doing her thing - or rather things - is real a delight. The South Korean-born, New York-based composer and improviser lays claim to an impressive formal education courtesy of the highly respected Berklee College of Music in the US. Specialising in writing and scoring, you can envisage the narrative potential of each arrangement here, where the serene and beautiful - informed in part by classical tones of the Far East - frequently dissipate into the experimental, cacophonous or accidental. The result is an album that can be traditional when it chooses to be, clearly the product of a formally trained musician, and yet is also surprising and playful, and at times somewhat challenging. Cellos, harps and pianos sitting front and centre, with a range of effects, white and found noises adding fathoms of depth and possibility to the mix.

Review: According to the release information for Halos of Perception, this frankly stunning collection of recordings largely centred on piano, cello and tape is best heard once you understand the experiences that informed its making. Stepping out from the pristine Australia of perfect tanned bodies, juice bars, and high dollar incomes, and into a wilderness that remains untouched but perilously close to what passes for civilisation in the 21st Century, this album is about exploring worlds that exist beyond our usual perceptions. But what exactly does that sound like? Well, for one thing it's staggeringly beautiful and powerful enough to stop-you-dead. Melodies and motifs focus the attention on white noise walls fading into the background like a passing breeze. Next, field recordings layer to build new moods, an organic listening experience that invokes imagined memories of watching evolution in action. Its ambient, experimental, classical, and just plain unique.

Review: Sunn 0)))) mainman and one half on KTL Stephen O'Malley is back with more of his signature darkside atmospherics, but this time focusing more on modular synthesis in a commission for the score of Paris based choreographer Gisele Vienne's performance. The haunting yet seductive soundtrack also features the efforts of Steve Moore, Daniel O'Sullivan, Peter Rehberg, Jesse Sykes, Bill Herzog & Randall Dunn. The sounds of metal tearing through ice, reverberating through the hall and accompanied by the most haunting and, quite figuratively; chilling instrumentation suited to such a concept.

Review: Claire Rousay proves that ambient can be radical. Her sublime style and surreal sonic scapes take up two sides of vinyl here on this new album Everything Perfect Is Already Here. 'It Feel Foolish To Care' is awash with mellifluous harps and found sound recordings, shakers and distant sounds of nature. It's a beautiful place to be, wherever it is. The second side is another 15 minute gem, 'Everything Perfect Is Already Here' that again finds Rousay as arranger and bandleader. Her strings here are more tortured and pained to start with before falling away to reveal twitchy synthetic sounds and abstract electronic textures.