KYLE BOBBY DUNN
Bring Me The Head Of Kyle Bobby Dunn
LP049
Low Point 2012
15 Tracks. 121mins45secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD  US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Even to Kyle Bobby Dunn’s standards, Bring Me The Head Of… is a hugely austere introspective collection of soothing textural pieces. Recorded between his native Canada and Brooklyn over the course of several years, this double album follows A Young Person’s Guide To Kyle Bobby Dunn, also published on Low Point two years ago, which gathered rare and long unavailable material onto two discs, and last year’s excellent vinyl-only Ways Of Meaning (Desire Path).

A nudge over the two hour mark, Bring Me The Head is, like its predecessors, composed entirely of vast sprawling atmospheric compositions in between which slightly more concise pieces are inserted. Continue Reading »

GARETH HARDWICK
Of The Sea And Shore
LP035
Low Point 2010
02 Tracks. 36mins46secs

“Solo ambient/drone guitar pieces, played and recorded by someone you’ve never heard of.” This succinct introduction lifted from Gareth Hardwick’s myspace page tells a lot and not much at once. The founder and head of Low Point, a small imprint based in Nottingham, England which has been distilling some mighty fine electro-acoustic ambient music for almost half a decade now, Hardwick is before all an accomplished musician who, as a solo artist, has been releasing music since 2006, including a handful of split releases with Machinefabriek, Matt Rösner or Taiga Remains.

Of The Sea And Shore, Hardwick’s third full length, is split into two tracks, each lasting just under twenty minutes. Each track is itself split into sections of various lengths and shapes, some spanning quite a substantial portion of the track, others acting as short sonic interludes. Continue Reading »

NICKOLAS MOHANNA
Transmission Hue
LP036
Low Point 2010
05 Tracks. 38mins33secs

There has, in recent years, a strong revival of vintage electronic music as it was once used by pioneers of the Krautrock/Kosmische scene to explore totally unknown sound worlds. Following a string of low key releases as Vakhchav, Brooklyn-based musician Nickolas Mohanna has collected a handful of tracks built using guitars, vintage modular synthesizers and electronics, on his debut album, released on the rather excellent Low Point imprint. Clocking at just under forty minutes, split into five tracks, the album owes much to early Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultze records. Transmission Hue doesn’t quite share the celestial concern of the former or the post orchestral immensity of the latter, yet, there are in these five tracks undeniable similarities in terms of textures and overall approach.

Working primarily with evolutive drone-like structures, Mohanna opts in most parts for expressive soundscapes by adding peripheral noises and electronics, and makes extensive use of modular synthesis to bring richer textures into the mix. Continue Reading »

KYLE BOBBY DUNN
A Young Person’s Guide To Kyle Bobby Dunn
LP033
Low Point 2010
12 Tracks. 112mins45mins

Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD

Based in Brooklyn, Canadian-born sound artist and composer Kyle Bobby Dunn creates music at the complete opposite of the hustle and bustle of the urban metropolis he lives in. Working primarily from recordings of pianos, guitars, strings and brass, Dunn processes them into vast minimal sound forms, where sounds are blended into dense soundscapes to create superbly evocative atmospheric pieces.

The five tracks making the first CD were originally released as a download-only album, Fervency, on Moodgadget a year ago, and are now complemented by a second CD of previously unreleased material, and published on UK imprint Low Point. Continue Reading »