Kodiak - Kodiak
The two track self-titled album from German band Kodiak is a involved excursion into minimalist drones and post-rock. The first track “Beginning” starts out with a lone cellist repeating a five note theme and is soon joined by blaring guitars that play a slight variation. The 18 minute result is an ambient track that is not all that ambient but is more of a minimal form of noise rock and post-rock. “End” goes on for 21 minutes with a similar drone-like soundscape peppered with singular guitar blasts. It is a beautiful but slightly abrasive work. The two tracks that make up this album are not what I would call entertaining but they have an unmistakable sense of artistry and should be experienced at least once.
The album is available on Denovali Records in 160kbps MP3.
The demise of Autoplate is a huge loss to the netlabel world. For seven years Autoplate has specialized in experimental electronic music introducing listeners to innovative artists like 
Bad Dreams of the Gloomy Girl by TD Black Sun is a good and fairly typical example of dark ambient mixed with a dose of industrial. What rises this album above the fray of similar ambient sounds are two tracks, “Belissimi capelli” and “Autumn” featuring the operatic voices of Zubacheva Elena and Marushkina Tanya. Both tracks emit an almost Schoenbergian atmosphere as electronic music and soprano blends together. The rest of the album is also quite good but I keep replaying “Autumn” especially. I would love to hear more from this beautiful pairing.
As much as I loved 
Simply put, 
Beyond Absence is an acoustic jazz duo consisting of pianist Gustavo Caldas and guitarist Mauro Longordo. This is jazz of the pastoral and serene. Their album titled Complacency is a peaceful improvisational journey that can be as light as a feather yet deeply moving. The melodies often move in slow motion yet the playing of this duo remain fluid and translucent. This album is an highly recommended listening experience for anyone who appreciate the art of music.
Chimney Fish is a musical project of Annie Culver. Her trademark is her solo voice, overdubbed and accompanied by viola and/or electronics. This is very melodic but basically ambient music. The feel is tentative, warm and cerebral. Her 39 minutes EP Drown, Sailor, Drown is a good example of all the various colors and emotion she can get from her deceptively simple arrangements. I especially like her compositions when it is nothing but layered voices as on the Judds cover “Love is Alive” or her original “Fourth Month”, Occasionally the beat becomes more pronounced as on “Marble Glitter” which has an early Enya sound but Chimney Fish is most original when the voices and electronics floats and seduces as it does on “Let our Hair Down”. This is odd, serene and addictive music.
Pianist 
Jopy’s meditative music is a cut above a lot of the ambient / electronic music that is freely available over the internet. The three albums on his web site are lush soundscapes that flirts with the lyrical but never quite surfaces into melodies. Long drones, found sound, and barely decipherable voices all play a part in these hard to resist ambient sound waves. There are occasionally some noticeable beats as on Bojihanga’s “Piti” but even then they tend to become lost in the layers of sounds. Bojihanga is a good place to start due to the quiet and spacey vibes it sends out. I’m not sure if it is intentional but there is an eerie similarity to the Indian devotional music called 
Drone albums are esy to come by on the internet. Good drone albums are difficult to find anywhere. Kalte has released The Lanthanide Series and it is an exceptional display of minimalist drone-based soundscapes. Kalte is a duo consisting of sound artists Deane Hughes and Rik MacLean who seem to like cold and icy tones that hang and echoes in your ears. Since they state that this album was inspired by the barren Canadian winters, it sort of makes sense. The overall mood is bleak and solemn but there is still plenty of beauty in this music. This may not ever crack Billboard’s top 40 but I suspect its haunting sounds will stay with you a lot longer than anything on the hit list.
Bosques de mi Mente’s Ruido Blanco is an album of melodic but slightly minimalist music. The mood is melancholic but distancely hopeful. The artist states he created this work at a lonely point in his life ” isolated in a new city, trapped in a room around a mess of cement and asphalt, far from everyone I knew”. Certainly if a musical work can define social alienation, this softly sad collection of track comes very close. This is a beautiful effort released by the 
The music on Moabi’s Sexe Bourgeois can be best called subterranean. It resonates from the deep earth, cavernous yet other worldly, Ambient yet restless, avant-garde yet barely merged with the tona. This 4 track EP is strange but unique. As you listen to the long tones and bell songs, operatic voices fade in and out and the quiet scratches of old vinyl decorate some of the tracks. This music is meant for quiet and attentive listening.
For the most part, the musical project S.N.O.W. is a quiet affair. Sound artists Federico Mosconi and Mauro Graziani creates sculptures of tones and noise. They describe the music as “sonic representations of experience and dream, expression of a moment, through life memories and towards an imaginary future” which gives a good idea of the complexity and drama that these seven tracks can deliver. Most of the music is ambient in nature but occasionally a track like “Crashing in The Snow” provides a good amount of industrial-like tension. This is an exceptional example of electronic experimentation that straddles the border between calming music and the avant-garde.
Cologne musician Julia Kotowski, who goes under the name of 
There’s no question that Canadian singer / songwriter Allister Thompson is greatly influenced by the 70s English folk scene. Traces of 
It took me quite a few listens to warm up to Divine Delusion by the dark ambient/industrial duo of 
In his previous efforts, flautist / electronic music composer Edoardo Romani Capello wrote music that felt a little like a travelogue. The calming 
Columbian sound artist David Velez aka 
Sceneslow may be the most accurately descriptive name of all the artists featured on Free Albums Galore. Hovering between pure ambient and shoegaze, the seven tracks on October 9 are slowly developing soundscapes of a calming nature. Sort of like a film in slow motion.. The instrumental arrangements, as well as the barely decipherable vocals on a few songs, are tentative and gentle giving a dream-like quality to the entire session. Only “Step Like a Circle” manages to build up any tension but the other songs all bask in their dream inducing quality. This is quite a beautiful album for quiet and reflecting listening
I usually enjoy ambient albums as a form of meditation or deep relaxation. However, as a pure listening experience the genre seems to be very limited and one deep relaxation album tends to sound like every other one on the market. 
Philipp Weigl and Michael Hoffmann’s album titled Elevate is a lush work of cinematic electro-acoustic arrangements and hypnotically introverted vocals. The seven tracks all have a similar sense of down-tempo and trancelike quality but it never gets dull. “Silhouettes” is an especially beautiful track but I also like the two mixes of “The Grass is Greener” and the 3 A.M. urban sound of “Confided”. If you are looking for something different in the electronic music scene or you like your ambient with melody and panache, you need to give this a try.
Based on 
Fiktion’s mixture of guitars and electronics can get addicting. Fiktion is the brainchild of Gustaf Erik Lundh. His music can be ambient yet intellectually stimulating, slightly poppish yet experimental and certainly relaxing to listen to. He has quite a bit of music to listen to; 3 full albums and three EPs. I decided to concentrate on the full albums and found them to be very enjoyable. Morfint is the latest release (2007) and is full of odd and beautiful sounds of a down-tempo and ambient nature. Gryning & Skymning is also from 2007 and quite similar in its music. I especially like the opening “Det Kanns” which has a reverberating guitars dreamingly floating over a series of electric pops and glitches. Finally, Leftovers features orphan tracks from 2005 to 2007. The quality is little less than the first two but there are still some splendid moments. These albums will please those people into a sparse ambient sound and calming but intelligent music.
