"Glassine I" was recorded live at the Ambient Ping in Toronto in 2006 and can be easily described as an organic space ambient, with very strong references to Pink Floyd (Ummagumma), Popol Vuh, Ashra Temple, Jackie-O Motherfucker, O Yuki Conjugate, AMP and Flying Saucer Attack or "Fourth World" ambient music! Four tracks of pure vibrant multi-layered psychedelic drone music from Aidan Baker & Co! Now, close your eyes, listening to "Glassine I" and start for your trip, even without the intake of any substances, waiting for "Glassine II". Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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CHRISTIAN MARCLAY / OKKYUNG LEE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'From The Earth To The Spheres Vol. 6' CD (A Silent Place)
Reissue of the ultra limited eponymous LP from 2005. Performer / turntabilist Christian Marclay and cello improviser Okkyung Lee's track is the result of a live performance recorded at Tonic NYC in December 2003. Lee's powerful cello's stabs interact with Marclay's waves of screaming sounds creating a unique, stunning scenario. One of their heaviest conceptions to date, MCIAA's piece is built on electric guitars' strings moaning onto walls of space drones and electronics like ectoplasmic presences emerging from the brilliance of the Void. MCIAA's need of a non-finite "space music & art" aesthetics research has led them to etch a ghost track (instead of the final lock-groove you can find on the original vinyl) to un-seal the sounds from their actual support. Digisleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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ECHRAN - 'In Offret' CD (A Silent Place)
Echran is the project of Davide Del Col (Molnija Aura), teaming up with Fabio Volpi, who has worked over the last few years with the Milanese audio / video collective Otolab. Starting in 2003, the project joins two different kinds of experiences: one is gloomy ambient oriented, the other is more noise-based with a psychedelic attitude. Echran's dark electronic soundscapes are not that easy to pigeonhole: there's a constant metronome-like pulse which could be compared to Pan Sonic or some minimal techno, but at the same time isn't really ambient or droning.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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FABIO ORSI & MAMUTHONES - 'The First Born' CD (A Silent Place)
"The First Born" contains four long tracks of dark, brooding modern psychedelia. Tthe whole album feels like an ancient sea ebbing and flowing on some distant alien shore, making for a curiously disjointed listening experience, at the same time peaceful and menacing. The ever-shifting sonic textures evoke both the starchildren krautrockers of old and more recent outer-world explorers but always keep a strong personal identity, firmly rooted in the current weird Italian take on space rock. Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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FABIO ORSI & VALERIO COSI - 'We Could For Hours' CD (A Silent Place)
"We Could For Hours is instability. It represents the will to open the gates of unknown. It is the dark, whispered sounds and hidden truths. Chaos. And now here it starts, everything takes form, sensations rise, objects acquire colours, distorted vision but still a vision of reality... Silence. Sounds follow themselves but always hidden in a veil of mystery, words are mute, everything is listening attentively to the enchanting melody of nature... Everything is nothing. Nothing is the time. Time becomes memory and memory brings us to happy thoughts that rise first, then fall in the end. Hallucinations. The precariousness feeling is overwhelming us, tollings of a clock without hands are molesting our ears and they scan the slow and endless flowing of life. Too late to be back. There's no possibility. We have to live desolate countrysides burnt by an August sun. Lysergic vision. Void." Krautrock, Drone, Experimental, Ambient. Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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FABIO ORSI - 'Find Electronica' CD (A Silent Place)
"Find Electronica" is a wonderful album full of fine lyrics, structured as a long drone / ambient suite divided in two portions which are the frames of the articulated central track. A strictly personal exercise on the "Weird Folk" theme, hypnotic and seductive. The "found" electronica meets the sonorities made by the six chords, projecting enchanted landscapes on a vibrant horizon, with an intimate sensibility. Abstract and emotional, deep and dreamy. Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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FARYUS & VADIM BONDARENKO - 'Quiet Songs From Misty Places' Enhanced CD (Silentes)
Frail and delicate ambient atmospheres, clusters of rarefied piano notes lying on discreet drones, soft and evanescent clarinet riffs, suggesting and catching natural sounds. Light and ethereal pastel-coloured musical plots over eight tracks. One hour of suspended and quiet sonic passages, flowing like a discreet background, or to listen/see in a passionate mood, dreaming in silence, lying in gloom. Wonderful ambient stuff from these two Russian artists in the same vein of some of Harold Budd's works. Faryus in the past has also crafted an album in collaboration with Robert Rich. Comes with a bonus video track 'Dancing In MIsty Places', directed by Alexander Sveshnikov.
UK 10.50£
Europe 11.50£
World 12.50£
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GIANLUCA BECUZZI & FABIO ORSI - 'Muddy Speaking Ghosts Through My Machines' CD (A Silent Place)
This is Alan Lomax reimagined by Spaceways Incorporated: folk songs hoarded as talismans from distant worlds... distant, that is, in time rather than space. This is a collaboration between Fabio Orsi and Gianluca Becuzzi (Kinetix). The unexpected encounter between these different forces, experiences, and visions of these two artists melts perfectly on this album. Drones and rumors, pouring between distant voices and centenary blues songs from the Alan Lomax archive, tow off shreds of ballads, guitars and old keyboards floating on the vibrant surface of a fairy river. Rapture and sweet loss are the main sensations. This could be listed as avant folk, or experimental blues, or ambient roots, or contemporary aesthetics and aching nostalgia. Digisleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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GIANLUCA BECUZZI - 'Nothing Is What It Seems' CD (Silentes)
Almost 70 minutes of music, nine pieces of a sonic mosaic full of ideas and inventions. More structured compositions placed side by side with more abstract numbers, built with a wide range of sounds, extremely variated both in timbre and origin. Elaborated electronic treatments applied to sounds and noises of a concrete nature, field-recordings, drones, electronic hisses, shaken metal, crackling, human and animal guttural cries, synthetic pads, ethereal and undecipherable voices, mechanical loops, noises from the everyday life. An incredibile and unpredictable sound universe without borders and without time...
UK 10.50£
Europe 11.50£
World 12.50£
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JENNIFER GENTLE & KAWABATA MAKOTO - 'The Wrong Cage' CD (A Silent Place)
Re-release of "The Wrong Cage", the superfreaky, acid rock album that introduced Italian psych-pop mavericks Jennifer Gentle to the rest of the world, leading to their subsequent Sub Pop signing. Originally self-released in 2002, "The Wrong Cage" saw the young Italian quartet join forces with Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple) for a live album that captured the band at it's most ferocious. Over 30 minutes of wonderful sonic carnage: two long, ultra-heavy guitar freakouts plus a eerily beautiful solo sarongi track played by Kawabata. All in all, a must for all fans of heavy, guitar-driven psychedelic avant-rock. Inlcudes a bonus track - an 18-minute long version of "Bring Them" from another night of that tour. Digipak.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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JENNIFER GENTLE - 'A New Astronomy' CD (A Silent Place)
Official re-issue of the ultra rare 2005 Sub Pop release (Ltd x 100 copies), now in a digipak. This album is dedicated to Giovanni Paneroni, amateur astronomer and misunderstood genius. "A new astronomy" is probably the most eccentric and out-there JG release to date. Recorded mostly in Marco Fasolo's bedroom on a 4-track cassette machine, the album was conceived as the imaginary soundtrack for some of their most bizarre, vivid dreams - obviously interspersed by the occasional nightmare. It's made by grainy, hallucinated musical scores trying to depict the beautiful, the scary, the annoying and the simply absurd inhabiting dreams. It runs the gamut from ghostly ambient drones to brain-damaged acoustic sketches, covering everything in between - furious guitar freak-outs and a homage to British 60's producer Joe Meek included.
UK 10.50£
Europe 11.50£
World 12.50£
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JENNIFER GENTLE - 'Concentric' CD (A Silent Place)
Better known as purveyors of quirky, semi-sleazy avant pop gems on their Sub Pop albums, Jennifer Gentle have also issued through the years a series of weirder releases, running the gamut from out-there psychedelic rock to “crunching and hefty slab of tripped out musique concrète worthy of Joji Yuasa, Kunihara Akayima or one of their equivalent early ‘60s greats” (Julian Cope). Concentric is the last and also their bleakest, most uncompromising and probably best experimental album to date. This time Fasolo took his and into his own studio, recorded them and then spent hours painstakingly editing the material, adding here and there the odd effect and generally directing what sounds like a nightmarish Surrealist movie perversely shot in lush Cinemascope, or a hellish version of Lumpy Gravy as played by a freaked-out jazz combo. Digipak.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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JENNIFER GENTLE - 'Live In The House Of God' SINGLE SIDED 12" (A Silent Place)
Recorded in an empty, deconsecrated church in summer 2003, this LP is another installment in an on-going series of records documenting the weird life of Jennifer Gentle in the foggy plains of Northern Italy. Basically the sound of JG's mainman Marco Fasolo going wild with an old, battered electronic piano and a bunch of sound effects, "Live at the House of God" is a side-long improvisation sharing the same spirit of those 20-minutes keyboard freak-outs Sun Ra used to record in the late 60s. Alternatively spacey and noisy, the piece is a dark, often unnerving exploration in sound, shimmering all the way through with a distinct Krautrock / early Cluster vibe. The new owners of the church were horrified and outraged by the sheer loudness of the performance, but God liked it a lot. Single-sided white vinyl in a deluxe spot-varnished sleeve with insert. Strictly limited to 300 copies only!!! LAST COPY - ACT FAST!
UK 17.00£
Europe 20.50£
World 24.00£
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JULIE'S HAIRCUT - 'Our Secret Ceremony' 2 x CD (A Silent Place)
"Our Secret Ceremony" is the fifth album by Julie's Haircut. The record lives on the osmosis of different styles and approaches, from pop to electronica, from psychedelic rock to experimentation, still never lacking in coherence and unity. The first disc has a more classically orientated song structure, accompanied by the second part which has a looser feel. In a way, it's as if there are the two basic aspects of the creative process and, ultimately, of the human existence, living side by side: light and shadow, consciousness and unconsciousness, reality and dream. Presented in a hardback cardboard 6-panel digisleeve.
UK 12£
Europe 13£
World 14£
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JULIE'S HAIRCUT with SONIC BOOM - 'N-Waves / U-Waves' CD (A Silent Place)
In late September 2005 Sonic Boom, (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3, Spectrum and Experimental Audio Research) meets Julie’s Haircut at Studio Alpha in Bologna to co-operate with them in the final editing of their latest album. Only a part of 3 days of studio recordings was released in the original 10" edition of this release (Ltd 524). "N-Waves / U-Waves" contains two takes produced in that session: 'Gemini, pt. 1 & pt. 2' presented here in its first take; and 'Scarfo Spanks DC' - another completely unreleased improvisation. Two more studio improvisations complete this CD release, with Sonic Boom playing esotic electronic devices such as the Raagini, Kraakle and the EMS Synthi AKS sinthetizer. CD slip with embossed outer sleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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MARC BEHRENS - 'Architectural Commentaries 4 & 5' CD (Entr'Acte)
The recording for this Architectural Commentary took place at Resonance FM, London, in June 2004. Patrick McGinley and Behrens recorded the studio equipment itself, the drive noises, ventilation, vibrations in the machines, the studio’s air conditioning, doors… This particular array of sound forms the sole and exclusive basic material for Architectural Commentary 5: Some Models for Resonant Behaviour and links the cycle to earlier music pieces constructed with sounds from computer labs. Loosely based on Luigi Nono’s idea of ‘isole musicali’. "...encyclopaedic variations of themes are generated and often highlighted by silent breaks, like islands, between the individual parts, all different in form and size, but topologically similar.” Ltd x 300 copies a heat sealed medical-type bag.
UK 11£
Europe 12£
World 13£
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / KEIJI HAINO - 'Cosmic Debris Volume III' CD (A Silent Place)
CD re-issue of the third installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.III sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Japanese cult musician and dark shaman Keiji Haino. Imagine a cosmic bomb exploding in your brain, and you'll have an approximate idea of this collaborative release. These two long tracks were recorded during live performances in their hometowns, respectively Torino and Tokyo. Haino's track is one of the highlights of his long career, and MCIAA's track is one of the brothers' most ass-kicking for sure! Digisleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / MATS GUSTAFSSON - 'Cosmic Debris Volume IV' CD (A Silent Place)
CD re-issue of the fourth volume in the ongoing "Cosmic Debris" series of split ART-LP releases set up by the Opalio brothers, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. This time the space improv duo from Torino, Italy, shares one side of the vinyl with Swedish radical saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. On his track 'I Have Not Set Any Time Limits For The Attempt' Gustafsson plays tenor and slide sax, weevil sax, and electronics. In MCIAA's 'Everything Burns Like Cosmic Debris' the space brothers play astral and cosmic guitars, vocals, mouth harmonica, space toys and burning percussions. Digisleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / STEVE RODEN - 'Cosmic Debris Volume II' CD (A Silent Place)
CD re-issue of the second installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. California visual / sound artist Steve Roden's contribution represents the unique experience of hearing him literally 'playing' guitar chords. MCIAA deliver another piece of 'cosmic debris', centered on multilayered echoes of voice, toy piano, space drones raising from a distant horizon, and their own physical gestures performed during the recording, which reproduce themselves through the air, re-play and give birth to echoes of real time that overcomes its own essence, becoming field recording itself, mirror and spectre of its immutability. Their track entitled also features Ramona Ponzini's Japanese bells contribution. Digisleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / TEXT OF LIGHT - 'Cosmic Debris Volume I' CD (A Silent Place)
CD re-issue of the first instalment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series. This volume sees My Cat Is An Alien (Maurizio and Roberto Opalio) alongside Text Of Light (Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, Ulrich Krieger and Tim Barnes). Text Of Light's track was recorded live at Centre Georges Pompidou in 2003 and mixed in dual mono by Ranaldo & Licht in NYC. MCIAA's piece is a conceptual ouverture to the whole series, performed in April 2006 at their secret recording space called Alien Zone, located up the Italian Western Alps. The CD comes in a textured digisleeve with reproductions of the original LP artwork. A Silent Place is a sub-division of Small Voices, Italy.
The energy, genius and intransigence of the music of the historic "cult" power electronics project Mauthausen Orchestra (Pierpaolo Zoppo), united to the original, eclectic, rigorous experimental research carried on for 15 years by Giuseppe Verticchio, mostly with his Nimh solo project. Disturbing images of unhealthy places, nocturne landscapes covered with fog, psychotic nightmares, tormenting and delirious, described with sonorities of great impact and incredible dramatic force. A dark and long itinerary, to be wrapped in the spirals of a time that progressively seems to slow down and stop, folded in on itself... suspended in the void, without offering any way out. A sonic adventure for brave souls. Digipak.
UK 10.50£
Europe 11.50£
World 12.50£
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PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 'Fallen Camellias' CD (A Silent Place)
Second full-length album from Italian brothers Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and vocalist Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope). 'Fallen Camellias' is a tribute to one of the greatest poetess ever, Japanese Yosano Akiko, whose work in literature in the early 1900's is considered as manifesto of the Japanese Romanticism. Imagine a Vashti Bunyan or a early Marianne Faithful singing sweet melodies in Japanese language, and you can have an idea of the musical and poetical universe of PPOPG. The songs of 'Fallen Camellias' are built on acoustic guitar melodies and are made of the same pure, melancholy of the legendary Nick Drake. Let 'Fallen Camellias' be your warm blanket, as well as the promise of a new future spring. 6-panel digipak.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND - 'Painted Shadows' CD (A Silent Place)
On "Painted Shadows", the Chicago group scales back the guitars just a touch in favour of vaguely tribal textures as on the hypnotic lead cut "I Feel Evils." There's a more cosmically devoted feel than past albums, touching on elongated Kraut-like soundscapes. But the group's trademark kitchen sink take on avant-rock - incorporating everything from Hawkwind space-rock to post-MC5 freakouts to widescreen Neu! aural landscapes - remains firmly in place.Digisleeve.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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PRAXINOSCOPE - 'Praxinoscope' Picture Disc LP (A Silent Place)
Praxinoscope is a project which unites the duo Roberto Opalio (one-half of My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini. Here Ponzini plays little Japanese percussions and wind chimes, creating a resonant texture over Roberto's alien wordless vocals and space electronics. The material comes from a whole session recorded in a mysterious location of the Western Alps, directly transferred to CD using neither overdubs nor outtakes. For the entire length of its 40 minutes, the piece will stifle your breath because of its pure essence and intimate mood; a mystic, suffocated chant reminding the silence of ancient rituals, the ultimate exorcism to avert the Infinite Pain. Ltd x 500 copies on a full-colour picture disc with psychedelic artwork in a printed PVC sleeve.
UK 13.00£
Europe 16.50£
World 20.00£
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RAMONA PONZINI & Z'EV - 'Ankoku' CD (A Silent Place)
Ramona's personal touch is certainly her own particular Japanese chant, together with the use of traditional percussion, bells and cymbals from Japan. Z'EV, enchanted by all those elements, asked Ramona for this cooperation. "Ankoku" is a Japanese word which means "deep darkness". For this debut Ramona's voice and percussion was processed by My Cat Is An Alien in their mysterious studio, placed somewhere in Western Alps, adding some field recordings. Those recordings were then sent to Z'EV who has processed them with some of his typical percussion. Z'EV deconstructed the sweetness of Ramona's chants, enfolding the pieces with a darker atmosphere. 5 obscure tracks, structured on charming vocal melodies moving out from a "haunted house". Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'The Last Night Of The Angel Of Glass, Vol. I & II' 2 x CD (A Silent Place)
Reissue of the acclaimed "The Last Night Of The Angel Of Glass, Vol.I", original soundtrack to the omonimous film by Roberto Opalio, plus the previously unreleased "Vol.II", representing the second half of a unique recording session. "There is no other cosmic traveller like Roberto Opalio. Best known for his work with his brother as My Cat Is An Alien, this feline twin is slowly building an equally impressive body of solo works. Opalio is on another plane entirely with "The last night of the Angel of Glass." Bypassing the cosmos completely and directing his aim straight to heaven. Using nothing but his guitar and his voice, Opalio sears the stratosphere into orbit. As his voice floats like a ghost into the empty celestial crevices, his guitar falls from the sky like a melted star. This is haunting and magnificent. Roberto Opalio at his best" (Foxy Digitalis).
UK 12£
Europe 13£
World 14£
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SLUMBERWOOD - 'Yawling Night Songs' CD (A Silent Place)
Debut album from this collective from the North Italian town of Padova, drawing inspiration from artists as diverse as Werner Herzog, Coil, Big Star and This Heat. From laptops to tree-tops - and mixing acoustic instrumentation with a twisted brand of psychedelia - Slumberwood developed their own musical language, brewing a weird amalgamation of sounds. "Yawling Night Songs" extracts nature’s many melodies and cacophonies to create a portrait of the heavily romanticised conception of an enchanted European wood as it exists for the youth of the 21st century. A dramatic interpretation of the woods' ambience, leaving a pretty clear sense of what’s hiding in the shadows, waiting to be found. Recorded and produced by Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle). Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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THE GOLDEN OAKS - 'The Autumn Testament' CD (A Silent Place)
And finally, unto the earth, The Golden Oaks are borne. Comprised of Brad Rose (The North Sea) and Keith Wood (Hush Arbors, Sunburned Hand Of The Man), The Golden Oaks are acoustic folk magicians springing forth candles from wooded sanctuaries. Composed by mail, "Autumn Testament" is a hymn to the season of red, gold, and orange. A canopy of leaves shelters the proceedings from the fog that threatens to obscure these sounds. This is a glorious combination of organic grace, blessed by the forests of past centuries. Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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THE NORTH SEA - 'Archaic Spines' CD (A Silent Place)
An interesting selection of both acoustic and electric instruments and a shimmering tension created by the juxtaposition of old song forms / instruments with new ideas and technologies from Brad Rose's project. 'Archaic Spines' may surprise even the most dedicated The North Sea fans, as we are presented with a fine selection of very sparse and lovely meditations for bouzouki. The sound is raw, apparently released as recorded with few (if any) overdubs or effects. The effect is mesmerizing and refreshing, one instrument played with feeling and an unerring ear for the folk rivers that feed The North Sea's ocean of sound. Digifile.
UK 8£
Europe 9£
World 10£
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WINTERBLOOD - 'Le Fredde Ali Del Inverno' CD (Frozen Landscapes Records)
Debut album from this Italian act, formed in Firenze in 1996, but on ice until now. 3 tracks (47 minutes) of pure sombre Dark Ambient, inspired by astral projections, initiations, untouched places, arcane geometries, solitude and frozen landscapes. "...their debut album meanders on its dark journey through crystalline streams and misty mountains utilising its dark ambient confines to noble and magisterial effect. The mood created is often one of immense loss and tragedy; time stands still while silent mourners stand, heads bowed in dark flowing cloaks, hands clasped in a futile bid to deny the cold. The synths never sound overworked, employed with the idea of giving each composition a life of arboreal quality - slow, noble, and wise. Obvious comparisons could be drawn with Vinterriket but Winterblood have their own quality and I feel hugely optimistic about their future" (Asgard Root). Ltd x 500 copies.
