A Strangely Isolated Place レコード& CD

Review: After two albums on A Strangely Isolated Place as Comit, James Clements returns under his ASC alias and does so with yet another brilliantly fresh and introspective approach. Original Soundtrack shifts focus to the piano and so invites you to construct your own interpretations within an imaginary cinematic framework. Known for his mastery across genres from autonomic and jungle to ambient, techno and IDM, Clements narrows his focus here with great results. Crafting eight evocative pieces centred on the piano is not something he has done before but it results in another deeply personal and immersive work that adds a new dimension to ASC's artistry.

Review: Icelandic musician Gunnar Jonsson Collider debuts on A Strangely Isolated Place with an expansive trip through six fictional environments, brought further to life through an accompanying video by artist Arna Beth. S.W.I.M. is an equal parts trip through space ambient and hauntology; 36 meets Pye Corner Audio if you will. Intense, low-centric 'Environments', 1-6, inspire hazily glimpsed vistas in the mode of ambient warmth. As if accidentally finding oneself witnessing celestial phenomena one isn't meant to witness - the space-trip from 2001: A Space Odyssey springs to mind - each of these tracks are almost like time-locked landscapes, slowed down by their lo-fi temperaments and subby pulses of feeling.

Review: Markus Guentner returns to his longstanding label, A Strangely Isolated Place, following the triptych of Theia, Empire, and Extropy, presenting eight inspiring collaborations on Kontrapunkt. The longstanding cinematic ambient artist adds to a string of collaborative records with a high-octane octet of dialogic fragments, all of which err towards ethereal. Karen Vogt, Arovane, Hollie Kenniff and Abul Mogard all star on the record, suggesting neoclassical music shouldn't be kept so anaclitically divided between artists; that the form of remixing and featuring should be borrowed from pop and dance music. Best among this supreme stock of sound-vapour has to be the naturalistic ablations heard on 'Ancestral Images' or the august drumrolls and big hits of 'Utopian Fragments'.

Review: A Strangely Isolated Place continues to be a vital source of intrigue in the broader sense of what ambient music can be in the modern era. Here they present the debut album from Liz Qun Wong, a classically-trained cellist and composer who has been releasing and recording as Lihla for nigh-on ten years. As you might well imagine, there's a strong electro-acoustic bed to the sound on this mesmerising full-length, but one of the real distinctions with this album is Wong's storytelling, which gently rests atop the nuanced, textural compositions and guides us into some intriguing, cinematic places.

Review: Despite the title sounding like an archive collection, 1994 is actually the debut album from OKRAA. It has an emphasis on live performance and makes for a gorgeously immersive and even evolving listen from the aways excellent A Strangely Isolated Place label. All four pieces are over with minutes but they are worthy of their playing time for the way so much unfolds in such engaging fashion. Synths are cold and innocent on 'Ola De Luz' while 'Heartless' is more textural, dark, heavy in its mood. The title track is another heavy and introspective one while 'Plasma' has a more optimistic feel that lifts the spirts.

Review: A Strangely Isolated Place has secured this second most captivating album from One Million Eyes. They impressed many with their magical debut album Drama back in 2021 and once again reach new heights in the world of ambient here with Iris. Their brand of ambient is relatively fulsome, with lots to focus on from the smeared and pastoral chords to the muted synth modulations, the vinyl crackle, distant vocal cries and the heavenly backlit glow. It is an absorbing and positive place to be with a sense of optimism colouring the airwaves thought.

Review: The first Quiet Places album, 2020's simply titled Volume 1, had its roots in a late-night, whisky-fuelled 'laptop jam' by three experienced British producers, progressive house legend Charlie May (most famously a member of Spooky in the 90s) and Dennis White and Dave Gardner of Bedrock-signed outfit Knives Out. We're not sure whether whisky was involved in the production of this similarly immersive sequel, but it certainly shares its predecessor's alluring blend of field recordings, outer-space electronics, pastoral instrumentation, undulating melodies and abstract sounds. This time round, they've taken us on four lengthy trips, each stretched across a side of wax, which bob, weave, rise and fall like the greatest early 90s ambient mixtape (or, if you're more academic, sound collage) that you've ever heard.