The ambient/IDM thread.

[Knuckledragger]

Good thing it wasn't Woob's 1194.

[Dusty Chalk]

(laughs in Blue Room)

[Dusty Chalk]

Sounds just like the sort of stuff you'd play on your show.

[Knuckledragger]

Holy balls.  So the second greatest ambient album of the 1990s (Woob's 1194) just got a vinyl release.  Any HC vinyl snobs who have an even remote interest in this, do NOT sleep.  There are people who have been waiting 28 years for a vinyl release.  

[Knuckledragger]

Substrata (Alternative Versions)

Nothing to see here folks, just alternate takes from the greatest ambient album of the 1990s(!)

[Knuckledragger]

Let's talk about zoomers and mid 90s "intelligent" drum n bass (a term reviled even at the time).  I saw this recently in a TF2 thread:

I said "you wot m8?" and asked for an explanation.  Peshay was "LTJ Bukem, Jr." throughout the 90s.  I was never a huge fan of his mixes (too heavy on the female vocals) but he definitely had his moments.  Mid 90s DNB is among my favorite bits of electronic music, ever.  The answer I got was that a YT video with that title blew up because of a viral meme (and many meme iterations) using the 1996 DNB track "Only You" by Intense. 

The original meme:

 

TF2 version 1:

 

TF2 version 2:

 

The full Peshay mix from 1996, uploaded in 2018:

 

2M views, most of which were in the last few months.  The Information Age is one weird roller coaster ride.  Also this phenomenon ties into my personal belief that humanity peaked in 1996.  The fact that I was young, permanently stoned and utterly immersed in drum n bass, trip hop, German hard trance and early goa trance has nothing to do with it.  I swear.

[Knuckledragger]

The official Biosphere FB account shared this link recently.  That eccentric looking fella standing on the rocks looks familiar. 

[Knuckledragger]

Neat.

[Knuckledragger]

An ambient artist I like named Palancar sent out an email this morning saying he shut down his bandcamp page.  Sad, but he's put all of his music online at the Internet Archive.  Careful listeners will recognize his track "Foss" which I have played on my radio show a few times over the years.

[Knuckledragger]

ABC of AFX.

[Knuckledragger]

I've been "following" the FB page of Finnish electronic trio Koneveljet for like 15 years and the updates have been ...sparse.  Their last album was 2005.  It was a staple in my record back in the 00s.  Unlike many of their peers from the frozen north who make either brooding techno or chilly ambience, Koneveljet got for a mouse upbeat and cheerful sound.  They do so while being exceedingly odd about it.  "Welkom" is a bouncy, almost goofy dance track with the strangest tourist guide imaginable:

I dropped it in a tiny but very ritzy club in the second half of the 00s and got asked by several of the patrons "What is this stuff?"

"Kompa" is similarly energetic with a guy with a (presumably) Finnish accent repeating the names of famous people.  To this day, I'm not sure of the name after Winston Churchill.  I love how they use Ringo Starr as poignant punctuation.  The whole thing is so genuinely odd yet completely effective.  Solid Finland/10.  

Since then they reformed briefly to do a live gig in 2017 (in Finland of course).  Most of their updates are in Finnish (even machine learning struggles to translate it correctly.)  Some things don't really require translation, like this photo:

I woke up this morning and was greeted with the announcement of a new Koneveljet album, the first in over 20 years(!)

Downside: the cover art is AI slop. 🤮 I hope the music is better.