After debuting on the second volume of "Some tunes", music producers Peter Rutten and Sanne Groeneveld finally produced their first official release. THE HORN contains six tunes and is available only as digital download. The opening self titled tune sees on vocals as guest Erik Walet and his deep vocals give a mysterious touch to the song which is a curious blend of Spanish melodies/guitars and blasting distorted bass lines with different stops and go. Great song indeed. For the following two tracks, "Pinky stinky" and "Sweaty stinky", we have Aischa on vocals and on these the music is more syncopated and influenced by dub reggae atmospheres and electro. The following "Come on" is a perfect electro dance tune with 4/4 rhythms, fat synth bass lines and catchy vocals. Next we have "Timpaner" an instrumental that sounds nice but doesn't really add something more to what we already listened. The last track is "The brick is in the air", an Aux Raus song remixed by Bronstibock. I don't know the original version but this one sounds like an 8bit electro pumping tune with the add of distorted guitars here and there. Nice and funny... You can check many of these songs at Bronstibock's myspace page.

It seems the sixth act of the whimsical ambient project Shadowdream by the eclectic black metal Serbian (from Novi Sad) musician Rastko Peri�ic aka Nocturnal has been composed during restless sessions of astronomical observations even if someone could imagine that it could derives from the musical reports of OOBEs during which Rastko's astral body wandered around the Solar System with a tape recorder to grab frequencies from objects that conventional space observers could just observe from cheap telescopes! I've to admit that when I saw the cover artwork I thought it was another psychedelic/goa/trance project and I also acknowledge my mistake when I listened to the very first seconds of the record which let me think about a contemptible restyling of Origami Galaktica-like diluted stuff... It's better not to be too simpleton as well particularly when you could easily get astonished by the accuracy of Rastko in dissecting microtonal pulses wisely interwoven with sounds (bodily bass hyper-tones, synthetic whiffs, seraphic choruses and hypnotic church organ's tonal webs as well as that mood which seems to be pervaded with deep sorrow and melancholy whirling inside every touchy moment of the record) which seems to be snuffed from necromantic black candles of the darkest side of black metal, a transition which you could imagine if you've already heard something coming from subterranean similar projects such as Vinterriket or Blut Aus Nord, but what makes this album different from the ones signed by the above-mentioned artists stands in some tricky compositional elements getting Part Of The Infinity very close to soundtracks and classical music, a sort of contemporary postlude (or arguably a nocturnal emission... ) you could listen after you watch the cosmic dances of planets and stars embellishing the darkness of a nocturnal sky. Some tracks are so impressive that you could even feel yourself enshrouded by sound; among them I've found really impressive tracks such as Planetary Rings of Saturn, Unknown Cycles of Venus and... well... I think you could agree with me that dark ambient anthems like A Trip Trough The Neptune Clouds could taste like laudanum... How many times in your lifetime could you say you've felt a Part of the Infinity?!?!? From the conceptual viewpoint, Shadowdream's last chapter (whose essence in Rastko's words could be summarized by the following adagio coined by Norman Douglas: "The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are desired when dying... ") seems to make a tribute not only to one of the most fascinating scientific branch (astronomy) but also to its historical father, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, one of the luminous mind of all times, and this dedication turns Part of the Infinity into the right record at the right time as 2009 - as most of you know '“ is the International Year of Astronomy.

According to the label, Ephemeral Mists "combines the best parts of the musical idioms of both contemporary electronic ambient music and the ancient, traditional musical landscapes of the middle east." Fair enough. Ephemeral Mists throws down some interesting ethno-ambient. As far as comparisons go, some include Loop Guru, Enigma, Deep Forest, and older Delerium (Karma, for example). The album opens on a weak note; "Awakeing Spirits" sounds much like every other world music album, complete with female chanting/moaning and "Eastern Channels" sounds like something straight off Delerium’s "Semantic Spaces." It really isn’t until "Transcendental Visions" that Ephemeral Mists seems to find their own voice. This track is a slow dirge with percussion that has a melancholy feel. For me, the standout track is "Where the Wind is Born," which has a good amount of variety and is a bit darker than some of the other material on the album. This is, for me, the most engaging track on the album. Overall, it isn’t bad, but I can’t shake the feeling that I have heard much of this 10 years ago. This album weighs in at 49 minutes.

OK, first off, I was a bit thrown off when I saw the name of the composer and the fact that it was part of the Radical Jewish Culture series. According to the label, this album is "Charming and imaginative music for a controversial film that follows the Jewish basketball experience from ash cans placed on the stoops of brownstones to the bright lights of Madison Square Garden" that "jumps from klezmer to classical, dixieland, pop, rock and back again." This is my introduction to the series (I did not even know that Cuban-Jewish fusion music existed) and I must say that it is a lot of fun. What first caught my eye is that the album crams 30 songs into just under an hour. Although the album is varied, it does not seem at all disjointed, flowing well between styles. After all, where else are you going to find songs like "Catskills Jump," which is a straight up jazz number next to "Kosher Rasta" with a nice slow off beat reggae groove next to "Jewish America Jump" which is just what it sounds like – Oy Vey, Sousa! – next to "Red Auerbach," which is a rocking little track with electric guitar that sounds like it could be played by any bar band followed by "Doina 1," which is a solo clarinet, and "The Jewish Suburbs," which is a kind of cheesy Latin lounge track that would be right at home on Lawrence Welk. And this is just one chunk of the album. The rest of the album follows a similar trajectory, which is to say that it is seemingly random. Is there Klezmer on this disc? Oh yeah – "Philadelphia Spahs" is a great spastic track; you can almost see the people dancing. This disc has everything, but unlike many albums that try to blend a million different styles, this one actually works, partly because some of the same musical themes keep reappearing in different songs, providing a kind of continuity. If you are looking for something different and want to expand your musical horizons a bit, this is worth checking out. This disc weighs in at 59.15.

Kodomo is the brainchild of Chris Child (according to Child, Kodomo means "child" in Japan, where he spent his childhood). This is his debut album. According to Kodomo, "The concept for the record was born of a series of photographs, each one serving as a springboard for the music. The album explores how images of environments, landscapes, people, and objects are used to evoke musical ideas; each image giving rise to various rhythms, chords, and sonic textures." In short, this is instrumental electronic music and thankfully Kodomo avoids the use of cheesy samples that most people who do this kind of music find obligatory. The bonus track, "Spira Mirablis" is currently featured in the MTV/Harmonix iPod video game "Phase." This seems fitting because the entire album would be right at home on a video game. All of the tracks have a tendency to kind of fade into the background of whatever else you are doing. However, this is a two edged sword, as I found the disc to be a bit on the sterile side and a bit too subdued. There is an interesting mixture of styles here and it is adequately done, but it doesn’t really seem to break any new ground. Some of the comparisons that the label gives in the press pack (which, incidentally was quite niceI thought that the art of sending a promo was dead these days) include Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. This is accurate as far as it goes, but I find that Kodomo lacks some of the experimentalism that these acts have. Perhaps part of this is a product of his training; Kodomo is a graduate of Berklee College of Music. As such, the music is cleanly produced and technically sound. Overall, this is a pleasant listen and it would be a good way to introduce electronic music to someone who was new to the genrecall it the gateway drug for more experimental electronica. If this sounds good, you can listen to the entire album at the label’s website and preview the tracks on Kodomo’s website. Also, you may hear it other places. I could have sworn I heard it as incidental music on NPR recently. The disc weighs in at around 51 minutes and comes nicely packaged in a digipak with a booklet containing the aforementioned photographs.