I feel rather limited in presenting Echodeck in a blog post. Their entire concept is built upon a total experience of sound and vision and also contains a large part of improvisation. I do feel, though, that the recordings they present gives an interesting insight into what they want to accomplish.

It’s about music that is built around an ambience where layer is built upon layer, often to an electronic beat. Melody passages is mixed with moments of pure ambience and sounds of normal instruments are interwoven with  electronic sounds.

It is very beautiful, and it would be very interesting to be able to see them live someday.
Enjoy two tracks with Echodeck:

Black Box
Ohm

Visit Echodeck on Myspace

I really should be the wrong person to write this post. Because, if I identified myself with anything in the eighties, it sure wasn’t synth pop. On the contrary I mostly found myself on the other side in the discussions that broke out frequently in the group of friends. Discussions that often was about the question if “real” music demanded “real” instruments or not, how music would sound in the future and so on.

So what could I do? Well, I had to dig all good synth songs secretly at home of course. Because it was rather difficult not to give in to all great pop tunes that constantly were delivered by Depeche Mode, Human League, Soft Cell, Vince Clarke, Ultravox and others.

During the nineties this genre more or less disappeared from the main music channels. But a few bands continued to do their thing and could rejoice in the new century when the renaissance of this genre came. One of these bands is Arachnophobias, who let their style of playing form during the big synth wave in the first half of the eighties. And they have kept their style. It may sound a little more modern, maybe a bigger sound, but in all main aspects this is good synth pop with a real retro feeling.

Well, for newer listeners it’s about electropop with catchy, direct melodies, a somewhat mellow ambience and distanced vocals and a lot of old analogue synths.
Arachnophobias will release a new album before this year is over, a 14 track record with the name “By the Shape of My Eyes”, which will be available on
Arachnophobias’ site.

Here’s a taste of the album:

New Years Eve
Two Arms & Four Wheels

Listen more on their Myspace page

Let yourself be swept away by the dreamy tones from Blicq. It fits perfectly a cold and gray November day like this. On atmospheric, beautiful backgrounds a little harder industry beat breaks in. It’s down-tempo, laidback and Ylva’s seductive, somewhat jazzy vocals paint melodies that drag me into the songs.

Blicq is a duo that consists of Anders Ekman and Ylva. They started creating music together in 2003. Sofar they haven’t released an album, but new recordings are underway, aiming for a debut album.

Here you can listen to and download three of their songs. On Last.fm you can continue to explore their music and download tracks. They also have a Myspace page you can visit.

Civil Pulse
Today
No Way Back

I like the analogy of composers painting with tones and harmonies, atmospheres, feelings and words. And if this is ever a true comparison to how a musician actually works, then it is with David Stiernholm’s project [Puie:]. His beautiful, acoustic, melodic ambient music is created from a belief in the spontaneous idea and he continues to paint with what he has at hand and what feels right.

This is how it’s described on Negative Sound Institute:
“Each piece on this release starts with a graphic idea, such as “what would it sound like if the soft oboe played a downward figure consisting of short notes, while the sharp nyckelharpa played a upward figure consisting of long notes bound together”. Then, David picks out some harmonies on the piano, just to have something to work with, like a handful of fixed colors with which to paint. He kick starts the motorcycle of creatitivity with the flailing boot of self-imposed boundaries. Then he proceeds to dismantle the boundaries and create new.”

Puie started as a collaboration with the designer Karin Gullbrantz in [Puie: Dsch], where they, in an iterative process, had images, structures and music inspire and affect one another all the way to a complete furniture design. The result was exhibited in april 2006 at Brand Design Center. You can read about, view and listen to this creative process on [Puie: Dsch]:s site, with comments by Karin and David on each step.

Another interesting collaboration is Ögonblick, where David works with Ken Peel.

Listen to three tracks with [Puie:]:

Ground
Jubel Tone
The Japanese Decision

Visit [Puie:] on Myspace and on the site
and on Negative Sound Institute, where you can also listen to and download the EP “Always-Ever”.

If you are interested in ambient and experimental music I recommend that you navigate through the artists on Negative Sound Institute. All the music there are released under a Creative Commons license, which means that you can download and share the music as much as you like, as long as it is under non-commercial circumstances.

Sara Culler feels urgent in what she do. She resides there somewhere between sparkling lofi electronica and acoustic music with a lot of variation. There is a nice tension in her music and her voice maybe is the main instrument to create this feeling. It’s emotional and sometimes she breaks out in outbursts that remind me about Sinead O’Connor, which catch my attention even more.

Sara has released a number of EP:s before, and she is now working on a split EP together with her husband David Fridlund (David & the Citizens), to be released this autumn.

On Sara Cullers site you can listen to and download her music and buy her EP:s. Below you can listen to “Are You Sleeping” from the EP “Miss Takes – Light the Night!”, “At Least Like Melissa” from “wolflike they are” and a brilliant coven that breathes some life into Madonnas “Who’s That Girl?”

Are You Sleeping
At Least Like Melissa
Who’s That Girl?

Sara Culler is also on Myspace