Middle of Nowhere

 

We are now a few weeks into 2025. There is snow outside and minus 10 degrees makes me shiver. I'm just not made for winter and I'm already dreaming the tropical dream again. Even though I like to admit that there is something magical about winter landscapes. But also from inside, with a look back.

A few wonderful releases didn't make 2024 a wonderful year that took a lot of getting used to, but at least these releases enabled a certain conciliatory view of things.

In the last few days of the year, Abstrakce released this wonderful release by Vladimir Karpov, who I certainly don't admire. On 2 vinyl sides, accompanied by a 90-minute mixtape with some unreleased material, Vladimir continues to work on his ambient visions, which always fit me very well, but also right now, at this moment.

“middle of nowhere” was once a track on the compilation LP “Miracle Steps - music from the fourth world 1983-2017), a kind of class reunion with artists like Jon Hassel, O Yuki Conjugate, Jorge Reyes, Jon Keliehor, David Cunningham, Susann Deyhim/Richard Horowitz, Ariel Kalma and so on. I don't think anyone had anything against Vladimir Karpov aka X.Y.R. to join this illustrious group. At this point he had already released some fantastic releases.

Well, the journey has long since continued and more highlights have appeared since then.

Abstrakce are now releasing this visual gem, released in the last days of 2024.

- ? -

Peaceful electronic ambient and tribal echo environments. Music that explores feelings of calm, spirituality, and ceremony. Long-form voyages to temple meditations, “trips in search of something,” looking in as looking out.

The artist himself says: “This is an attempt to look into the heads and souls of "unnecessary" people, inconspicuous people, but striving to make the world a better place. People who have lost the horizon and the outlines of reality are desperate and stuck in the middle of nothing... people who cannot accept the rules of this world and unpleasant aspects of daily life, boring and unfair into unreality, other existence... it's all about escapism, rethinking their inner world, and discovering new facets of the soul.”

"Soft brushes of undefinable sounds and tropical field recordings that almost create ASMR-inducing vibrations in the minds of the listener" - Simon Eliasson 

X.Y.R.'s latest offering delves into the depths of human experience, exploring themes of escapism, introspection and the search for meaning in a world that often feels chaotic and unfair. The album opens with the expansive 'Lost Horizon', setting the tone for a journey into introspective soundscapes and contemplative melodies. 'Melting Shapes' continues the exploration of inner worlds, with its shifting textures and ethereal sounds evoking a sense of fluidity and transformation. 'Despair' confronts the darker side of the human psyche, its melancholic melodies and haunting sounds reflecting the struggles of those who feel lost and disconnected. The B-side features the epic 'Invisible Lifeforms', a twenty-minute odyssey that delves into the hidden realms of consciousness. With its blend of ambient textures, tribal rhythms and meditative sounds, it creates a truly immersive experience that invites deep listening and introspection. X.Y.R.'s music is both calming and unsettling, offering a sonic reflection on the complexities of human existence.

-Juno-

Middle Of Nowhere Mixtape:

Super Expanded edition, including extra unreleased tracks for a continuous 90 minute mixtape trip. Packed on an embossed cardboard box. Only 50 copies.

Written, Produced and Recorded by Vladimir Karpov using Formanta-mini and Korg M1, pedal effects, Boss RC-20, Roland TR-626, mic and field recordings.

Mastered by Jose Guerrero at Plataforma Continental.

Graphic design by Democracia.

Owl Island

Hunter P. Thompson leaves his acid/ambient house project Akasha System 

continue to rest and will release his 2nd album as Tegu in 2024.

“Forest Hills” brought sunshine to my personal start to the year.

I would have been only too happy to accompany the tour for the album (together with Wave Temples and others).

But travel expenses and time were disproportionate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT9f_EAB_WU

So now “Owl Island” and with colleagues I admire like Wave Temples and X.Y.R. Hunter P.Thompson brings the smile back to my face, and the lack of sun and temperatures just above 0 degrees suddenly don't matter anymore.

The tracks move between meditative sequences and expectant moments, always permeated by a slightly mystical, mysterious aura. The combination of organic and electronic elements creates a unique atmosphere that is both calming and captivating.

„The second outing by Hunter Thompson’s tribalist dub alias Tegu skews more spectral and simmering, a canopy of cascading keys, hand percussion, and swells of everglades bass: Owl Island. Recorded in early 2024 on the banks of a Floridian canal, the album’s 11 tracks roll in like shifting fog over an ancient marsh, swaying with low end and loops of humid synths.

Across 53 minutes, the music moves between séance and visitation, alternately transient and expectant, bathed in a sheen of starlight and streetlights. Fellow voyagers Wave Temples and X.Y.R. join for a pair of smoky, cosmic cameos, but otherwise this is a solitary affair – locked in, looking up, mapping new constellations in the expanding void.“

• Not Not Fun -

„Tegu, the tribalist dub alias of Hunter Thompson, has released his second album, Owl Island, under the label Not Not Fun. The album, recorded in early 2024 along the banks of a Floridian canal, contains 11 tracks with a total duration of 53 minutes. The music on the album is characterized by layered keyboard patterns, rhythmic hand percussion, and deep bass tones that create an atmosphere reminiscent of the Everglades. The sound is described as both spectral and environmental, evoking a sense of immersion in a natural, yet otherworldly setting.

The album includes contributions from Wave Temples and X.Y.R., who appear on the tracks “2×12” and “2×11,” respectively. Despite these collaborations, the album largely remains a solo endeavor, exploring themes of solitude and introspection. The music transitions between various moods, from séance-like environments to more tense and anticipatory moments, all enveloped in a mix of natural and artificial light.

• retrofuturista -

Café a la Cardamome

 

In times like these, ambient music is never a bad idea about hatred, hecticness 

and racing hearts not to let it come into play in the first place.

Ambient music is actually always a musical companion in my life,

And the term is also flexible. But that's probably something like a pill box for on the go. 

Just much healthier.

Atlantea Records are Tom Lievens and Anthony Asher Yates.

Both of them have been making my world a better world with their projects Atmosphere and Balsam for years. The fact that Vladimir Karpov (or Xram Yedinennogo Razmuwlenuja, based on a novella by Nikolai Gogol published in 1842), who I also admire very much and is busy, recently became a member of the Atlantea Family makes sense and was perhaps even overdue. 

A release with track names like “Café a la Cardamome”, “Blue Lagoon”, or “Coconut Pickers”  

is very likeable and interesting per se. A Volume 1 in the title name also suggests a subsequent release. The album is full of X.Y.R. References from previous releases,

Compiled here from a different, but not entirely new, perspective.

Fruity Loops. Sit back and enjoy.

„such a beautiful album from the very first notes. very well crafted with a lot of details and with big care to the every sound. you may think that this album is already exist in your memory because a lot of sounds you already listened possibly every day and it works pretty well, because your brain thinks that it's just another day in your life and when it's over then you press repeat because the day was great „

• Go4awalk Music -

Music by Xram Yedinennogo Razmuwlenuja 

Audio mastering by Tom Lievens 

Cover artwork by Anthony Asher-Yates

On Sea-Faring Isolation

 

European Election 2024.

& Sunday Service. Today with Lieven Martens Moana.

It's been about 10 years since I discovered Lieven Martens' music.

At a time when the climax of his project Dolphins into the Future had been reached and all the concerts had already been played. The band had packed up and moved on, you could say. Of course this is nonsense for a laptop based project. Afterwards he continued to make music and sounds under the many of his pseudonyms, but without achieving the presence of the dolphins for me.

Hmmm. I can't even properly express what this music meant to me and what it triggered in me and how important it has become to me since then. That was just something completely new. In addition to well-produced music, with crystal-clear sound, with well-balanced highs and lows (albeit more lows), I've always had a soft spot for lo-fi sound ala Lou Barlow's Sentridoh or the early Folk 'Implosion.

This was somehow lo-fi, electronic, and yet completely deep and took me away to far-flung atolls and deep rainforests. Together with the oceanic meditations of Wave Temples, Hybrid Palms, Vladimir Karpow's X.Y.R., Fluorescent Heights, Magnetophonique, Les Halles, Monte, Komodo Haunts and so on, I found myself in a completely new musical world. When you hear the word Lo-Fi, many people will probably wave you off, but perhaps this term doesn't do this music justice, just as many terms tend to lead nowhere. I felt comfortable here, but it was difficult for me to get out of the water or leave the tropical rainforests again.

“…on Sea-Faring Isolation” was released in 2009 by Britt Brown’s Great Not Not Fun & is Lieven Martens masterpiece for me and contains two killer tracks, “Lone Voyager” & “Memory of Self”, which always really get me and which are always played on repeat. Time for a new experience? Let's go!

Dolphins Into The Future 

„... On Sea-Faring Isolation"

On The High Seas (06'43")

Lone Voyager (08'36")

Onset ~ Beyond Clouds (02'34") *

Memory Of Self (07'05) **

Lapse ~ Dream (05'40")

Aftermath ~ Isle Of Self (05'21")

All sounds and music by L.R.J. Martens.

Recorded in isolation by automatic writing at the Cetacean Nation Studios, Nowemapa ~ Kekemapa 2008.

•   Outtake from a radio play, aired Inuali 2008 during the programme Tyfustijd on Radio Centraal.
• * Originally created for Bolderplaats, a theatre play written and performed by Wietske Van Gils.

This long playing record was originally created as a tribute to the Seafaring Isolation writings of Cetacean Nation founder John Cunningham Lilly M.D., in which he describes the case of lone ocean dwellers past - future ~ present. What happens when an isolated mind roams around the oceanic world by itself, only surrounded by this vast system of overwhelming natural elements? Its ego-entity lodged in a non-human framework. Its human biocomputer committed to process all the ones and zeros in the framework of a giant Seven Waves Octave four-dimensional isolation tank.

At Gaia's Pond, the Oceanic Octave is the only comprehendible code-system up in the ether. All reproduced input digits energise through ocean, through sky, through sun, through wind, through clouds, through rain, through various ocean inhabitants. Thus creating myths through these elements. Everything is, coloured by strict human solitude, writing a new script. Your Dreamtime in this realm is one that radiates by a nonhuman current. Pushing your mind to create a whole different story. A creative ego puzzle with its new truth and reality. An ecstatic truth which could be frightening couid be bliss. A hallucination which might be closer to reality than our own waking-sleep visions of the specific "now".

This Dreamtime of solitude, is the myth of the Seven Waves Octave.

This album is a linear story.

Revealing the Dreamtime from its departure.

Materialising the onset ~ lapse ~ aftermath of the actual thought (de)construction.

As being the aural registration of an alien myth conceived by a human source and consciousness, filtered through the Seven Waves Octave.

As being an evocation of the ocean that is your yetzer ha-_ov, your lover, your mother, your god, your center.

AH! AH! AH!

This is a Cetacean Nation Communication, Nowemapa 2010.

Produced by Not Not Fun Records, Los Angeles, USA. This is a second edition of 300 copies.

Vinyl label drawing by Jessie Schietecatte.

„Timely digital reissue of Dolphins Into The Future's sublime 2009 NNF release. The man also known as Cetacean Nation Institute For Environmental Sounds, Wildlife Tapes Portal Jams, or Lieven Martens to his friends, pillow dives into a semi-conscious ocean of improvised New Age loops, field recordings and pitch-refracted, Riley-esque synthline wanderings, webbed-fingers navigating the way across the keys. Like a saltier Monopoly Star Child Searcher or JD Emmanuel shored on a pacific desert island 'On Sea-Faring Isolation' plays through nonstop with a delightful mystery and dawning narrative with a quiet, serene contentment and enough humour to keep it buoyant. Highly recommended." (Boomkat)

"Returning to the shore returns us to the sure, allowing us to fit this Dolphins Into The Future release into a sonic context that includes Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds (and in particular John Elliott’s Imaginary Softwoods project), Brian Eno (connections nautical and ambient), and the nature recordings of Chris Watson. Martens’ work exists in a world that has all these in it, but it sets itself apart with its insistence on the possibility of “cetacean trance” and its commitment to the life aquatic. Well worth a lengthy immersion." (Tiny Mix Tapes)