Fredrik Jonasson has activated his side project Silencio Stampa again and a couple of days ago he released “The Red Album”.

It’s about instrumental electronica and first of all I get retro vibes from the analogue synths and drum machines of the eighties and sometimes even from further back from  Vangelis and his friends during the seventies. Maybe then not so much from the bombastic varieties, but rather from the ambience building kind, with sweeping, beautiful melodies and figures that catch the listener.

A beautifully built album you can listen to by checking out Silencio Stampa’s site. Here’s the opener “The Red Pony”:

The Red Pony

It’s time to spread som Christmas ambience here on  Meadowmusic. We wish you all a most pleasant Christmas.

If you’d like to explore earlier Christmas gifts here on Meadowmusic, you can find the songs from 2009 here and the ones from 2008 here.

First up is a wonderful collaboration between Pär Edwardson (composer and the performer of the song), Johan Strömberg (composer) and Tobbe Möller (lyrics):
Let Me In For Christmas

Next it’s time for a Christmas boogie with BFM. Armed with their recent debut album they have followed this up with a Christmas Single:
Rock Around The Xmas Tree

Art Acoustic, which we presented during Autumn, invites us to celebrate Christmas in the woods:
X-Mas In the Woods

Finally we slow it down a little and go for some Christmas ambience with ad dios. The band (which recently released the album Avalon Revisited) has a tradition of interpreting an old English Christmas carol every year, and this year they have also crossed the channel and invites us to some French Christmas ambience:
Il est né le Divin Enfant

Merry Christmas!

I got a mail from The Faux Noise that they had produced a new song, “We All Know That Someday We Will Die”. Apparently it’s a cover of a song from a Taiwanese band called Come On! BayBay!. It’s hard to find any pages about them but a Google search showed me a nice pop/singer-songwriter band on Youtube.

But in the hands of The Faux Noise it becomes something completely different. This time a 7 minutes somewhat epic work in the same ambience as before. Fantasy stimulating, dynamic and grand. I can imagine a large conceptual work from these guys in the future, where they really make a journey, or whatetever they will come up with next.

We All Know That Someday We Will Die

Stillheten (the tranquillity) is a very suitable name for David Videfrost’s music project. He has released two EP:s, “I ensamhetens kapell” and “Requiem For a Loving God”, two records with different character but with tranquillity and contemplation in focus. On the first one a 12-string guitar has the leading role in both harmonies and melodies, while the second one is more ambient; exploring sound spaces and emotions. To me it gives a feeling of being close to nature, like walking through a still wood.

You can listen more and read about Stillheten on his Myspace page. On the netlabel DNA’s page you can download both “I ensamhetens kapell” and “Requiem For a Loving God”.
Here are two tracks from “I ensamhetens kapell”:

I det gryende ljusets bleka sken
När skuggan saknas

Today we continue with more electronica, but this time of a more ambient kind. Dr. Sounds is the artist, he has released a number of albums and you can listen to and download some of them on his Jamendo page. The latest album, an extended version of “Aquasphere”, is a real mastodon with 31 tracks and over 6 hours of music.

It’s minimalistic and ambient, but with different characteristics between the albums. From “Aeroball III”, which explores melodies and sounds and feels more experimental, to “Aquasphere” which is truly ambient in it’s nature with beautiful and peaceful soundscapes.

It’s also interesting when Dr. Sounds tells us about the healing power of this type of music. And then in the context of helping children with concentration difficulties, where there have been studies which indicates that continuos sounds of low volume can help children with ADHD to focus. Since he’s been one of those children himself he writes about this on his site, how the music has helped him to concentrate better.

Here you can listen to a couple of tracks, “Aquamon” from “Aeroball III” and “Fundamentals of Sexuality” from “Aquasphere”:

Aquamon
Fundamentals of Sexuality