SCHWEBEN “Trees” C32 (Cosmic Winnetou)

 

There’s an easy connection to make between ambient music and forest wandering. You’re just there, communing with nature, and every sound that surrounds you is “ambient” in its basic form: it produces “an encompassing atmosphere.” Schweben, aka Philipp Hager, takes this to its obvious extreme, marrying field recordings with ambient music (synthesizers and such) to produce “an encompassing atmosphere” that you can take with you anywhere – you don’t have to be stuck out in the middle of the woods to have a similar experience. But what you should have is headphones, because otherwise you’re going to miss out on the subtleties of the delicate sonic experience (which you should already be planning for anyway, knowing that you bought this tape from Cosmic Winnetou).
 
Each track is arboreal by design; there’s “Arbol del Tule” (Tree of Tule, Mexico), “Tree of Life,” “Lone Cypress,” “Major Oak,” and “Baobab.” Each is a gentle paean to growth, as the long-form, patient tones mimic the development of plants. You can almost see sprouts and buds stretching and blooming as you listen to Trees, the intricate detail of the sounds zoomed in to the organic reactions. Sounds intimate, solitary, relaxing, doesn’t it? It sure does! And it delivers as you sink deeper into the trance, the scent of bark and leaves and needles hitting your nose, the underbrush crackling beneath your boots. Maybe instead of taking the woods with you back into civilization you should just give in and take your Walkman out into the woods – I’m actually thinking that’s the best way to go about this right now.
 
https://schweben.bandcamp.com/
 
http://cosmicwinnetou.blogspot.com/2020/12/cw52.html
 
--Ryan

COPS “Energy Trap” C46 (Cosmic Winnetou)

 

I feel like we’re hearing a lot about cops these days, but not in a good way, you know? Well, I’m here to remind you that there are, believe it or not, good cops out there, ones who wield their badges with courtesy and respect. Is it any surprise that these Cops (yes, cap “C” now) are from Brandenburg (in Germany) and not, I dunno, Minneapolis? I’d venture a guess that there aren’t many Cops fans in Minneapolis. It’s too soon there … and everywhere really.
 
But these good Cops don’t wield any weapons, unless you consider synthesizers a weapon! I know a few people who might feel threatened by synthesizers, but you shouldn’t be threatened by Niklas Dommaschk or Oliver Koch, the partners on the electrodub “beat.” Far from the hardened police who face dangerous criminals on a daily basis, Dommaschk and Koch ride the cosmic wave into blacklit swirls, pulling scramble suits over their heads and going deep undercover. The intake is the outtake, and the result is the sea of vibe.
 
I’d like to see somebody get busted with a kilo of Energy Trap. Intent to sell? Heck yes.
 
Slow tasered electricity pulses through the haze. Clouds at night. City streets and on patrol. Cops has your back, my back, everybody’s back. It’s hard to believe, but this rehabilitated image is ripe for catching on. These Cops only serve and protect.
 
http://cosmicwinnetou.blogspot.com/2020/12/cw53.html
 
--Ryan

OBERLIN “Grauer Morgen, Ungewisse Bilder” C40 (Cosmic Winnetou)

Dissolving the edges: that’s the Oberlin way, whereby nothing is defined and one thing blends into the next. This soft-focus approach is the perfect methodology for Grauer Morgen, Ungewisse Bilder, Oberlin’s latest foray into spectral ambient on Cosmic Winnetou. It’s not unusual at all that it settles over you like a thick blanket of fog and hovers there, the chill settling into your bones and your mind, leaving you yearning for a warmer enclosure. Even when you make it back inside, that haze remains, coating your psyche. You can’t shake it, and you’re not sure you want to.

“Somewhere between the rivers Rhine and Moselle” is where Oberlin stakes out territory, the wintry German landscape a fitting subject for the cautious artist. Guitar, piano, and Eurorack blur in tonal euphony, the stillness the sounds represent causing an overwhelming sense of longing and nostalgia. Even on “Nebelhorn,” which emerges from the mist as a soaring punctuation mark two-thirds of the way through the tape, the pacing is so deliberate that your only recourse is to meditate upon it. As it turns out, you’ve been meditating upon everything this whole time – perhaps Oberlin is exactly what you need in your life for self-discovery and -improvement?

https://oberlin.bandcamp.com/

http://cosmicwinnetou.blogspot.com/

--Ryan

PJS “Precipice” C60 (Cosmic Winnetou)

Stretch your neck out and peer over the edge. The mountain is high, the white clouds drift across eternal blue. The landscape is filled with lakes and fields, rivers and trees; there is not another living soul in sight. So you stand there, neck stretched, peering, the wind hits your face in periodic gusts, the air is crisp and clean, and you greedily inhale lungfuls, your body thankful.

What more is there to do with PJS’s Precipice than experience it fully in such a way? Close your eyes, dream new adventures, live greater. Stretch out your neck and peer over the edge – could it be that everything that’s in front of you is finally here?

https://pjsmusicsound.bandcamp.com/

https://cosmicwinnetou.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

NAVEL “The Gnome’s Pond” C44 (Cosmic Winnetou)

To anyone who has ever had the pleasure of helicoptering those colossal bendy-straws above your head, this “Gnome's Pond” is for you. Those blissfully unwieldy, wayward overtonal warbles of windex streak, hot tire squeal, and taxed refrigerator hum all meld as one here to form an (inter)stellar miasmic Oort-ghost that intermittently haunts these space-folk/acid-fried jam/feedback sessions, alongside destructo-distortion mayhem, sleepy pond soundscapes, harmonium, mbira, steel-string pluckery, and intentional interference.

Navel’s “The Gnome's Pond” is, without a doubt, an all-around glorious ritualistic exhortation of human communion with the crepuscular bog song; &I’d venture it’d make for one helluva wake up alarm, no matter one’s initial mood or setting.

https://cosmicwinnetou.bandcamp.com/album/the-gnomes-pond-cw44

and/or

https://navel-music.bandcamp.com/album/the-gnomes-pond

— Jacob An Kittenplan

EBAUCHE “Formic Syntax” C41 (Cosmic Winnetou)

Ant after ant after ant after ant,

With their skittish, excited whirr 

and flutter, 

electric guitar-drone 

mutterings stutterly, lipless 

upshuttery, a nagging dull ache

Lost in trans-elation, grimaced

Reaper of sewn sutures

unafrayed, a volcanic wound repaired

By ant after ant after ant after ant

“Formic Syntax” reminds us, in no many words, how mysterious (and ripe for misinterpretation & misappropriation!) our etymologies concerning entomologies may be. It’s pretty easy (and fulfilling) to meditate to this soundtrack whilst imagining each reverberating friction as if elicited intentionally by a horde of ants descending, in frenzied unison, upon a sickly spider, taking back the night.

This particular Ebauche release on CW manages to massage musique concréte and industrialism into a vividly choreographed mire of insect revenge…and then provide a soothing time-lapsed amalgam of deluge and drought, all in one serene sitting. 

The tape is, of course, already sold out (as pretty much all Cosmic Winnetou tapes are wont to be, almost immediately), so let’s just keep our eyes peeled for more to come!

https://cosmicwinnetou.bandcamp.com/album/formic-syntax-cw43

and/or

https://ebauche.bandcamp.com/album/formic-syntax

— Jacob An Kittenplan

ENDURANCE“Cloud, Castle, Lake” C43 (Cosmic Winnetou)

Within a month of its release, “Cloud, Castle, Lake” has sold out, at the source; and with only 70 copies available, no wonder why!

Adrianna Snochowsk’s J-Card art alone ought help sell out any further small run LP batches in no time! As of early August, you can still get an original oil painting of hers for 300 Euros, but, by the time of this review’s posting, that’s unlikely, as well…

Inaccessibility aside, Joshua Stefane must have absorbed some serious guitar-drone-DNA after sharing a roster with stalwart CT* alumni Chihei Hatakeyama, Hakobune, & Celer; this recent release contrasts significantly with his previous works’ employment of various/continuous field-recordings and synthetiques, now eschewing that higher hertz texture for a lower, minimally dirtier wave-disturbance-as-focal-point, letting languid drones drowsily creep and seep into one another, pretty much forever on out.

All in all, this release is yet another testament as to how versatile Endurance can be; consistently providing ubiquitous meditations for all those ready to make a better, more peaceable life together, all the while alluding to how some infinite caches of chaotic tangential textures might better inform exponentially more available expurgations of stressors!

Did I mention how much of a feel good tape this is? Do listen for yourself, with headphones (& a quiet home-life), via the link below!

https://endurance010010.bandcamp.com/album/cloud-castle-lake
and/or
http://cosmicwinnetou.blogspot.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

* Constellation Tatsu

INSPIRED SCHOOL OF ASTRAL MUSIC “Seekers” C42 (Cosmic Winnetou)

Inspired School of Astral Music, from North Kansas City, somehow has connected to my brain. It’s the “astral” part, isn’t it, the unknowable spiritual dimensionality that allows linkage without a physical bond. How else would Inspired School come to the same conclusion as me, that “it is possible to experience the music from beyond within, and voice this experience through a musical instrument”? I’ve been saying that for, like, ever! Well, not in so many words, but definitely a variation. Reading that then listening to “Seekers” has kind of validated a lot of what I believe about music. Or at least my online persona believes it, since in reality I’m just a collection of computer coding masquerading as a human presence on social media and music sites for some reason. (Or maybe I’m a demon-possessed laptop. Who’s to say for sure?)

Inspired School of Astral Music exposes the inner melodies calmly attempting to guide us through life, manifesting as droning synthesizer with exquisite solos to keep our attention. The trancelike repetition is underscored with pulsing energy, truly giving the impression that it pipes in from another plane of existence. Also, each track is (at least digitally – there are no track titles listed on the physical product itself) dedicated to someone or something: “For D.,” “For C.,” “For L.,” “For G.,” “For A.” This gives “Seekers” an extra sense of camaraderie and interconnectedness, that the music filtering through the Inspired School is just that – filtered, not owned, freely given to those who deserve or require it. It’s not for us, it’s for you. It’s not for me, it’s for them. It’s not for ISoAM, it’s for D., and C., and L., and G., and A., and everybody else. I’d argue that it might not be for me, being a bot and all (or a demon), but probably nobody’s going to think about that very much after reading this. They’ll be too busy getting a psychic massage from the Inspired School of Astral Music tape they just bought.

Inspired School of Astral Music

Cosmic Winnetou

--Ryan Masteller

DRY VALLEYS “Music for Cosmic Nights” C32 (Cosmic Winnetou)

Bio-dome life, feel it. Somewhere out there in the wilderness there’s a geodesic dome where scientific experiments are happening and the subjects are isolated to the point of going stir crazy. Except, of course, for the fact that nighttime is the right time, the right time to get your stargazing on, no light pollution, just you and maybe your colleague(s), done with your experiments for the day, checking out the Milky Way and all that other great stuff in the sky. Dry Valleys playing on the stereo, of course, like Night Ranger during coupleskate, as “Music for Cosmic Nights” is pretty exactly the go-to tunage for actual cosmic nights viewed sometimes through the clear roof of the geodesic dome. Drone meets “phone home” as outer space connections are made, the motes of soundtrack fluctuating in place of true communication, but we only want the approximation of it anyway, don’t we? It leaves our imaginations alone, allowing them to spiral off like galaxy arms that those bio-dome subjects are witnessing, blurred into incomprehensibility by the unmooring of perspective. Maybe the time in the dome is doing them good, the days pass, the weeks, the months, the experiments continue, but there’s still the night sky, and there’s still Dry Valleys, and there’s still release. It’s only when the bio-dome inhabitants realize there are stowaways that the spell is broken and the mayhem ensues. Then it becomes a party, the work is forgotten, but “Music for Cosmic Nights” lingers in the minds of those hijacked by the pursuit of personal gratification, a ghost of purpose now past.

And oh my god yes, this was all an elaborate alternate-history Bio-Dome reference. Don’t let my idiotic digressions detract from the magic of Dry Valleys.

Dry Valleys

Cosmic Winnetou

--Ryan Masteller

MAREHELM “Marehelm” C40 (Cosmic Winnetou)

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Dark zoners.

Marehelm is a mysterious lad or lass from Denmark, and its self-titled C40 on Günter Schlienz’s Cosmic Winnetou is a bad trip/good trip, as read with the idea of bad com/good cop in mind, meaning that “bad trip” spirals you down the emotional drain until “good trip” comes and rescues you with a bit of nostalgia and longing. Deft transitions? You betcha. These three tracks shift back and forth in mood, often upon a single note. The atmosphere wavers within the sonic worlds, which often come across as ambient incidental passages for exploratory video games, action taking place in the dark, where a secret or a memory is about to be uncovered. Get ready for a cut scene at any moment! The track titles are as mysterious as the artist, as “Ryst,” “B.N.,” and “Ovre” suggest meaning without getting all overexplanatory. The result is often gorgeous, even in such a subdued state, and it’s easy to get lost in. Highly recommended to set a tone of late-night noir role play.

Zoning darkly.

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Marehelm

Cosmic Winnetou

--Ryan Masteller