Stroom Belgium Vinilo y CD

Review: With an artist name like Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm, and an EP title of Murmer of The Bath Spirits, the fact at least part of this record features a narrative about spiritual awakenings in bath houses, set to an eerie, atmospheric ambient soundscape, will surprise very few people. A 15-minute trip into the ether, noises and tones are as wet as they are warm, and the experience like heading out to uncover a faery land mystery.
Things get a little less specific on the appropriately christened 'Track 2', which moves us on from the dreamy quiet into a place that's more forceful, purposeful, harsh, perhaps even darker. Hypnotic loops set above staccato beats, grabbing hi hats and other elements as the track grows in ear worm qualities with each second.

Review: Gajek's latest album takes his experimental sound even further than ever before. It finds him blending pop and jazz with distorted dub textures all inspired by memories of the Berlin Wall falling and old West German gabber. The album warps familiar sounds into something entirely new and tracks like 'Dig It All Up Again' mix deep bass with glitchy guitar and vocal snippets, while 'Until It Was Nomore' loops strange melodies over abstract pads. At times, it hints at Krautrock influences, but the result is more freeform and immersive. This is an album best experienced in full, multiple times, so its many layers are revealed over time.

Review: Michaelangelo Antonioni's name will always be synonymous with incredibly beautiful cinema, even if those movies can be challenging at times. Pablo's Eye takes some inspiration from the visceral aesthetic qualities that defined many of the great auteur's work, and then distills this into soundscapes that are uniquely spectacular, deceptively polished and yet effortless and raw. Whether you'd really call this ambient is a question for another time and another place - The List Was Sharp Our Eyes Were Open certainly creates ambience. We might be cast adrift on a small dingy, the peril of being stranded in the ocean subsiding into a strange sense of calm and quiet, motifs and tracks passing by like island in the endless blue. But when getting lost feels this good, who needs saving?

Review: Before becoming Belgian new beat and techno titans, Praga Khan and Chris Inger were collaborators in a new wave influenced band called Shakti. "Verboden Dromen" gathers together the best of the outfit's work recorded between 1987 and 1990, offering up tracks that join the dots between intoxicating synth-pop, moody new wave, hypnotic grooves and dark and sleazy dancefloor moments. All of the tracks have stood the test of time remarkably well, with highlights including the humid and exotic chug of "Kamasutra", the hallucination-inducing tropical fever of "Demonic Forces" and "Shanah", and the bustling, club-ready bounce of "The Awakening", which sounds like the Thompson Twins after one too many tabs of acid.

Review: Stroom has another great audio curiosity on its hands here with this 7" from Sonoko. She is a Japanese artist who works in the worlds of ambient and ambient, chanson and elevator, experimental and folk. Both of the cuts here are uplifting sounds that will bring some joy to the gloom of this season. They were made by the artist somewhere in the 90s with 'Meditation' a sensuous sound with hotel lobby piano playing and delicate vocals while 'Un homme et une femme' has a more icy and cold electronic sound with delicate keys twinkling like snow.

Review: For their new album Lust 1, Voice Actor's Noa Kurzweil joins Welsh producer Squu for a woozy, intimate exploration of ambient sensuality. Following the sprawling Sent From My Telephone, this 45-minute work feels more focused but just as dreamlike with Kurzweil's hushed, often unintelligible vocals hovering over Squu's glowing pads and dubby pulses. With additional glitchy textures, soft hits and melancholic drones, the work forms a world that teeters between erotic hypnosis and emotional exhaustion. Highlights like 'You' and 'Nekk' blend vague ambience with jolting detail while pushing the sung-spoke-whispered words to the brink of abstraction. This is an album rich in fleeting emotions, tactile textures and forgotten memories.