Drone Islands - Land Raising
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Data
Tracks
- Ah Cama-Sotz: Crawling Death
- Satori: Blood of the Wolves
- Kammarheit: The Indefinite Vaults
- Ashtoreth: Elemental I
- DAIMON: Awash
- Stefan Klaverdal: Ambient Earthquakes
- SONOLOGYST: Indostan
- Instinct Primal: Passage
- Lars Brondum: Slow Movement
- Massimo Olla: toxic exhalation
- Nihil Impvlse: Malthusian Practices
- HLER: Lovi. Segment 1
Description
Pitchfork Media and Allmusic journalist Mark Richardson defined drone music thus: "The vanishing-point music created by drone elders Phill Niblock and, especially, LaMonte Young is what happens when a fixation on held tones reaches a tipping point. Timbre is reduced to either a single clear instrument or a sine wave, silence disappears completely, and the base-level interaction between small clusters of "pure" tone becomes the music's content. This kind of work takes what typically helps us to distinguish "music" from "sound," discards nearly all of it, and then starts over again from scratch."
Since LaMonte Young early experiments till today, drone music has come a long way. Eighth Tower Recors is proud to present an anthology featuring 12 projects from artists who work on classic and new stimulating paths for the drone music.
credits
released May 3, 2019
© Eighth Tower Records
Curated by Raffaele Pezzella (a.k.a. Sonologyst)
Artwork: Francesco Di Stasio
Mastering: Sonologyst
sonologyst.com
200 copies limited edition CD
© All rights reserved
Reviews
V/A: Drone Islands - Land Raising: Merchants of Air Review
Here at Merchants Of Air, we have been using the term "drone" for quite a long time. Oddly, this got us plenty of attention from drone hobbyists. You know, people who use those little aircrafts to invade other people's privacy. Here in our little corner of the internet, "drone" means something completely different.
As Wikipedia describes: "Drone-music is a subgenre of minimal music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece."
Who else than Raffaele Pezzella to curate an outstanding drone compilation like this one. For this album, he successfully attempted to showcase an overview of today's drone music scene. All twelve tracks here roam into these gloomy underground areas, some heavy and intense, others brooding and immersive. Yes, a drone album, but one that showcases the immense variation within this scene. Belgian long running act Ah Cama-Sotz has gotten the opportunity to open the compilation and he does so with an excellent dark ambient track. Satori's contribution is harsh, noisy and rough while Kammarheit does something gloomy with minimalism.
The vocal drones of Ashtoreth immediately pull you into his sonic habitat. This must be one of his eeriest tracks. But if you want eerie, you'll also adore 'Awash' by Daimon, another piece that excels in minimalism. That's five tracks into this compilation and already a wide variety of drone music, probably more varied than you would expect. Stefan Klaverda's 'Ambient Earthquakes' leaves the darkness and walks into brighter territories whole Sonologyst worships the odd and mysterious. I'll leave the other ones up to you to discover. All I will say is that none of them will disappoint the avid drone fan.
So, drones, minimalism and ambient, that's pretty much what you'll get when you get your hands on a copy of this outstanding compilation. I guess that's the most minimalistic thing I could write about it. Recommended? Obviously.
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