In The Mouth Of Madness

About Release:

This new cd contain unrealized material recorded by Alio Die in the year 2001, mostly around the time of the winter solstice. The tracks are characterized from the editing of old recordings produced in Milan in 1990, with Massimo Iadarola playsguitar and effects. The recordings were integrated with radionoise from an old Valvular Model. Some new sounds of flutes and percussions were added from Gianfranco Cualbu. The recordings were completed with a new track displays zither, muezzin voices from the shirt wave space and field recordings made by Alio Die in Notre Dame,Paris Sept 2002. The sound atmosphere of this release is close in some way of the really first CDs by Alio Die, with a light electronic taste, in the feeling of the dark thatpass before a new dawn. Label press

Alio Die - 2003 - Khen Introduce Silence

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 139 mb

About Release:

Taking basic improvisations only from sounds produced by Khen (mouth-organ from Thailand/Laos) and processed by different controls like filters, pan and multi-effects, Stefano Musso looks for a vibrational enviroment that is like a special point of view, where time changes his meaning and sometimes becomes absolutely relative, finding a place for contemplation, like being in the clouds and breathing with the sound of the spheres. Observe the circular harmony of seasons in his never ending flow, it speaks like old poetry that is familiar to the soul.

Label Press

Alio Die - 2003 - Il Tempo Magico Di Saturnia Pavonia

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 177 mb

About Release:

In this new cd Stefano Musso displays ten new tracks of powerful layers of both acoustic and real sounds. The sense of MAGIC inside the performing was invited and respected during rites of composition ,and as usual it has guides of the creative process. Then spirits of life comes ,inside a sensitive and creative SPACE, attitude is purified that which is deeply desired the focus of the soul,quiet and almost transparent is the mind. Ok, this is deep music to listen meanwhile you are looking in front of the FIRE, walking in the wildness , or when you need a deep and magic inspiration for poetry, painting ,research , LOVE and meditation, and in every activities in which you need to expand time and sensibility ,and to be really and totally present ! oh, ... surely, you would being the same time in different layers of consciousness , looking for some special gifts in order to magically convert this crazy time into a better one ! ALIO DIE!

Label press

Alio Die - 2001 - Leaves Net

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 142 mb

About Release:

"Leaves Net" presents short pieces, many of them recomposed from compilation appearances and other obscurities, in the third installment of his trilogy (started with "The Hidden Spring" & "La Stanze delle Transcendenza")of re-examined ambient music.

Giuseppe Verticchio / Oltre il Suono

Alio Die - 2001 - Incantamento

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 170 mb

About Release:

“Incantamento"provides two long drifting pieces of naturalistic ambience, adding the occasional pluck of guitar strings to the rich bed of aquatic sounds and droning loops. The packaging contains dried stems and flowers instead of a inlay card to underscore the organic nature of the music.

Alio Die - 1999 - Le Stanze Della Trascendenza

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 133 mb

About Release:

Second part of the ambient trilogy, combine old and new tracks with new techniques,melancholic, deep, ancient. "The tracks have great fluidity, and the sonorous research touch top of high intensity. The different sounds, from electronic treatments or from natural enviromental recordings, are casting on only one canvas, on that Stefano plays like sorcerer preparing his magic draught. Like a good alchemist, that know always the right ingredients, Alio Die carry us through stimulating and pictoresque landscapes without ever boring the listening.We can't speak really about 'melody' - although all the tracks have this quality well developed. It's the nature's melody itself that is presented here, with great ability. The recording is like usually at good standard, like say americans, high quality stuff ."Mauro Berchi / Ritual#2

Sunday, 22 August 2010

Alio Die - 1998 - The Hidden Spring

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Crowd Control Activities

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 152 mb

About Release:

Here's a collection of new (or at least "new" when this was released in '98) and previously released compositions from this interesting ambient soundscape artist. Many of the tracks seem to suggest watery landscapes, with thick, murky, wave-like movement. I can't tell what the abstract photos in the layout are, but they also appear to be underwater imagery. Droning low tones, eerie chimes, as well as slightly musical synths, samples, etc.all have their place. The recording is flawless, with easily audible layering and a complete range of sounds. Running times are generally very appropriate,with afew longer journeys or brief interludes throughout. This material is well done,there's a nice consistency between tracks without becoming redundant.These are fairly relaxing pieces, actually. The only obnoxious track is "The Hidden Spring", with overly obvious, loud samples that seem like bathing or something. An unfortunate end to an otherwise impressive effort.I really enjoyed this. Alio Die is definitely exploring something I've not heard in the past, and the originality is a plus.

Alio Die - 1998 - Password For Entheogenic Experience

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 148 mb

About Release:

I've been listening a lot to your new music. It seems so melancholy to me. I sometimes have thoughts about how alone we all are in this world, with no stability and surrounded by illusion. In these times the only sanctuary comes from the words of the spiritual masters, the only reality the underlying transcendental consciousness of creation. Anyway, I have these thoughts listening to your music. I love the bird and creature at the beginning, it reminds me so much of you and your place in the countryside. The way you have made the piece grow upward right to the end is very nice, I wondered how long could you sustain it for. MartinFranklin / Tuu

Alio Die - 1996 - Suspended Feathers (2005, Reissue)

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Silentes / Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 127 mb

About Release:

This reissue coincides with the tenth anniversary of Alio Die´s touchstone album, Suspended Feathers. Stefano Musso, the man behind pseudonym, created ambient music more in touch with its originator Brian Eno´s intentions than that of the concurrent "chill room" variant of ambient - beatless, self-effacing music that is there to be listened to or to be ignored. However, where as Eno chose to create imagined or "impossible" landscapes, Alio Die could be more specific, integrating easily identifiable natural sounds like running water or trilling birds. As such, he can also claim to have more or less invented "eco[logical] ambient". Alio Die´s music is vast and organic,slowly expanding, inhaling and exhaling, pulsing quietly with life. And although this is essentially a solo project, with Musso manning the samples, loops,processed tapes and treatments all by himself, he would also seem to begin what has become a long history of collaboration right here. The track "Ruins Garden Drones" incorporates the woodwinds of Gregorio Bardini, while the closing track, "Wings of the Firefall" is a full-blown collaboration with kindred spirit Vidna Obmana (who, coincidentally, released his landmark recording "The River of Appearance" the very same year). The latter, with its opening movement featuring a slightly off-kilter"string section", is emotionally majestic, and the entire track, in common with the rest of the album, is quite simply a thing of great beauty. Suspended Feathers was originally released in 1996 in a run of 1,000 copies on the Italian luxury label Amplexus, and has been sold out for years. Now another, newly-founded, Italian label, Silentes, does everyone interested in unique cultural utterings a great service by making it available a new, now housed in a simple jewel case, with new art but no other bells and whistles, no additional tracks, remixes or videos.They have made available an affordable version of an absolute classic of its genre. Stephen Fruitman - Aug 2006.

Alio Die - 1992 - Under An Holy Ritual

Release type: Full-length

Style: Ambient

Country: Italy

Label: Hic Sunt Leones

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 105 mb

About Release:

Ghostly incantations from the void, subtly shifting frequencies and moods... Stefano Musso has menaged to resurrect unsettling sounds from a pre-Middle Ages epoch and merge them into a pastiche of gripping, evocative pastures. One might be prone to labelling Alio Die as quasi-active ambient music, but that has become a words bandied around these days that in this case the meaning far from concise.Musso, Aka Alio Die could very well be Italy's answer to Jeff Greinke, as he shares Greinke's affinity for layered patterns and yawning, chasm-like sounds,but he also sprinkles tinkling chimes, sudden guts of vocal winds and other mysterious effects liberally into these eleven tono poems. Ambient meaning minimalist? Perhaps. But, like fellow alumnus Greinke, Vidna Obmana, and PBK,Alio Die's sepulchral offering demonstrates, in its passionate excellence, that there is still much left to be mined from so rich a territory.

Tuesday, 17 August 2010

Fjernlys - 2010 - Beyond The Undulant Quiescence

Release type: Full-length

Style: Modern Classical/Dark Ambient

Country: Germany

Label: Loki Foundation

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 154 mb

About Release:

The new album of FJERNLYS contains ten great and endless epic tracks to reach far beyond trepidation and tranquillity, it's not only welcoming with open arms but captivating slowly the listener and remainig breathless till the last sound. "Beyond The Undulant Quiescence" unifies the opposites when the frostiness of the synthesizer sound and the warmth of the melodies are melting one another. The spectrum ranges from melancholic piano compositions to complex and superior songstructures with an open commitment to slow motion. In every track there is this cryptical sparkling which is always shimmering but it almost stays in the background. It's the multilayered arrangement in all tracks which is constantly changing the colours and features an cineastic coarseness in an audible way. All sound material sculptured and vocals recorded at various locations 2007-2009 Guitars, viola and strings recorded at the Circulating North Town Final editing and mixing at Light Channel 2009. Mastered at secretlab.

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Fjernlys - 2007 - Within the Mind of Ghost

Release type: Full-length

Style: Modern Classical/Dark Ambient

Country: Germany

Label: Skogholt

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 98 mb

Within the Mind of Ghost' is the second manifestation of Fjernlys bringing warm, atmospheric and sensitive Ambientsongs with accented percussion elements, vibraphone sounds and brilliant viola supplements to set the electronic soundscapes into wonderfully concentratedand organic pieces. After the massive earthing from the moon Fjernlys leads you to points of light illuminated by gilded signs and the frozen sun is shivering in the inner journeys to places where the mystic dress of stars is surrounding the night. Clear homogenic sounds creeping deep organic rhythms with lovely effects have been incorporated in a poetic ambiance guided by brilliant vocals. This outstanding melancholic and elegiac recordings follow the first album with even an more accoustic input like the reverbating guitar sound and the stringed bowed instruments too and give an handsel of the things to come.

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Fjernlys - 2006 - Ascending Triads & Luminous Arcs

Release type: Full-length

Style: Modern Classical/Dark Ambient

Country: Germany

Label: Loki Foundation

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 213 mb

The songs layer cosmic and synthetic sounds and go on tracing according to the principle harmony in the music, their acoustic space seems very expansive, it is by no means over-crowded, voices creeping crosswise into sounds and effects to lunar spheres and solar places, exactly the correct nuance at refinement not only to remain in the ear but also simply very charming. Behind this project hides one of the INADE Masterminds, who recorded nine tracks supported from several musicians, those clearly possesses more songcharacter than the work which appeared from the Lightchannel so far, five remixes and interpretations of ANTLERS MULM, BAD SECTOR, FIR§T LAW and LOVESPELL on the second CD support the complex character of the whole release and expand the border to a new style of Ambient Songs. Ace - Clear - Pure. Released in May 2006.

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Sunday, 15 August 2010

Scarlet Youth - 2009 - Breaking The Patterns (EP)

Release type: EP

Style: Shoegaze

Country: Finland

Label: Homesick Music

Format: MP3@VBR V2

Size: 37 mb

MySpace

About Release:

Scarlet youth is a 5-piece band reigning from the frozen realm of Finland. They are an alternative shoegaze band. They really put those effects pedals to work here. The sights and sounds they potentially experience in the pristine stillness of a cold Finnish night is produced in their music. Breaking The Patterns is eerily atmospheric at times and yet retains a sense of serenity. If I lived in Finland, I know I would try to join this band. There is a darkened sense of hope emanating from their sound. There are just 6 songs on this album, but they're really more than just 6 songs. The album starts of dreary and atmospheric and by the end, turns eerie and upbeat. Overall, this CD is nicely polished and provides the listener with a dreamscape for the ears, while still being awake. It's like, "Hey, am I dreaming? What's going on?" and then you realize you're still awake and that this beautiful noise isn't just a part of your imagination. The echoing voices, the clear drumming and bass playing, and the symphony of guitar sounds create a very unique journey. The Scarlet Youth are for me and you.

Nordvargr - 2010 - Resignation 2

Release type: Full-length

Style: Dark Ambient/Experimental

Country: Sweden

Label: 205 RECORDINGS

Format: MP3@CBR, 320 kbps

Size: 99 mb

About Release:

Roughly one year after the mysterious debut release of Resignation ("1897") comes the second chapter, however this time under the Nordvargr banner. The reason for this is that Mr Ekholm, who made up the other half of Resignation, decided to leave the project in order to pursue new opportunities. Soundwise we have an album similar to the first album, but with a much more developed structure and added melancholy. This is the sound of music left out in the Arctic cold for a century, only to be thawed and patched back to life by a master of his trade...