OndaDrops Vol. 2:

The first volume of OndaDrops centered on an intersection of planes revolving around words: those written by the singer-songwriters featured in that pioneering collection, and rightly pushed into the background in favor of the living substance of the music itself, alone capable of communicating far more than a thousand words ever could. Following the same trajectory in idea, though through entirely different forms, this second installment of the compilation of exclusive tracks, offered by OndaRock as a free download to its readers, largely does away with words altogether, letting sound take on their function instead — with its seemingly aphasic communicative code, yet one still dense with suggestion.

It is indeed the infinite possibilities offered by electronic music, understood in the broadest sense of the term, that take center stage on this second volume of OndaDrops: from the deepest ambient to pulses bordering on dance-music patterns, from droning torsions to graceful electroacoustic confluences, not to mention forays into post-classical territory, this new double collection — tellingly titled "Take The Sounds, Turn Them Into Words" — sets out to offer a broad cross-section of many fascinating musical explorations that in one way or another engage with ambient music and electronics in general, used here as the backbone of compositions built around synths and keyboards, there as an incidental or manipulative element within music generated by real instrumentation.

Particular attention, in this compilation, has been given to Italian artists, with the stated intent of showing how our country too is home to acts of real substance, with nothing to envy in celebrated international names.

Listening is believing: the emotions and words will follow on their own.

CD1

port-royal

No introduction is really needed at this point for what stands, without fear of contradiction, as the best-known and most acclaimed Italian act abroad. From Genoa to the world, from the shoegaze and vaguely post-rock legacy of their debut "Flares" to overcoming the fear of dancing on the more recent "Dying In Time", port-royal have shaped, with real character, their own formula of a deca-dance that isn't averse to forays into the deepest IDM, while never forgetting to translate into music their own weltanschauung and the spirit that has defined their identity since the very beginning.

Written and recorded by Attilio Bruzzone, Ettore Di Roberto and Emilio Pozzolini between late 2009 and the early months of this year, the track kindly offered as an exclusive for the second volume of OndaDrops, "Günther Anders", represents their first artistic statement following "Dying In Time". Besides showing further signs of evolution in the band's meticulously crafted sound, the track's cultural references stay true to their other two great passions alongside music: Eastern Europe and philosophy.

port-royal – Günther Anders

Illuminated Faces

Among the new talents of the Russian scene, Roman Tsepelev, with his project Illuminated Faces, brings electronic music back to the positive, brash spirit of its acid house origins in the '90s, of raves, and of new wave's transformation into unrestrained beats.

Rhythmic urgency and melodic sweetness merge in his music with a fresh spirit, able to reshape the intersection between synths and guitars into vibrant textures, which have already earned Tsepelev the positive acclaim given to his debut album "Roadbag", released in 2006, and to the following "Good Morning Light" in 2009. The same elements recur in "Difficult, Spain", combined with a crescendo of luminous trails that brings the recent work of M83 back to a spirited Eastern European flavor.

Illuminated Faces – Difficult, Spain

Not even on this occasion has Mr. 36 chosen to dispel the mystery surrounding his identity, about which no concrete information exists to this day, aside from a vague recognition of his background as a producer and electronic artist. Suspicions that the number conceals someone rather well-known were already fueled by his debut "Hypersona", a self-produced album that revealed, if nothing else, his skill in building highly refined ambient textures. That record, moreover, represents the first chapter of a trilogy that has just found its follow-up in "Hollow", from which further interesting surprises can be expected, as "Just One Night" clearly demonstrates, a track that immediately and decisively upends the little that has so far been gleaned about the English artist.

36 – Just One Night

Apart

Apart now officially represents the second artistic life of Francis M. Gri, moving ever further away from the dark galaxy that saw him take centre stage alongside All My Faith Lost.

A certain leaning towards vaporous, murky atmospheres could still be traced in the grooves of his recent double album "Winter Fragments", but dreamy pulses, reverbs and sinuous synth breaths already hinted at a more decisive mutation, which now, on "New Day" (a title that feels more emblematic than ever), takes a further step forward, grafting firmer rhythms onto a fabric now dominated by a vibrant, ever-shifting electronics. Gri's transition can now be said to be complete.

Apart – New Day

Ambidextrous

A trailblazer of Russian electronic music, Nick Zavriev has over a dozen releases behind him, split between numerous collaborations and his solo project Ambidextrous. His artistic interests are evenly divided between ambient-IDM, cultivated especially in the early part of his career, and his later discovery of more dance-oriented experimentation, which, together with his ongoing relationship with port-royal, has led him towards synthetic territories and a rediscovery of the sounds developed during the '70s and '80s.

"Grey's Noir Theme" can certainly be filed under this second category, its shimmering keyboards, backed by assertive beats, casting a thoroughly contemporary light on the fascinations of those pioneering days of dance-floor electronics.

Ambidextrous – Guy's Noir Theme

Dedo

"A guy in a room using a computer to make music": that's how Stefano Panzera, aka Dedo, describes himself — a Bologna-based artist devoted to combining liquid, rarefied atmospheres with a more straightforwardly electronic streak, not immune to overt dance temptations.

Electronic carpets and cadenced beats on one side, clattering guitar tremors and dreamlike shoegaze echoes on the other: they blend and recombine continuously in "The Wave", just as they did on his debut album "Solar Day", striking a balance between filtering and liquid synthetic gusts in a formula of direct sonic and emotional impact. The most overt dance influence is just a step away, but for Dedo electronics are above all an expressive tool, beneath which an artistic background rooted in Italian indie remains clearly perceptible — one that nonetheless knows how to look elsewhere too.

Dedo – The Wave

Elisa Luu

A multi-instrumentalist from Rome involved until 2007 in numerous artistic projects mostly within the jazz field, since then Elisabetta Luciani has shed her skin, transforming herself into Elisa Luu and devoting herself to electronic composition, without however forgetting her alto sax, flute and guitar, which continue to form the substrate of her compositions.

After an EP and a scattering of other tracks around the web, the album "Chromatic Sigh", released by Australia's Hidden Shoal, revealed Elisabetta's sensitivity in transcending the very definitions of ambient and electroacoustic music, through a wealth of vibrant nuances in which melodic twists coil around a bed of harmonies and measured noise-making. The same happens in "Piano 5-1", whose initial liquid calm is broken by decisive rhythms and acoustic fragments, a legacy of her jazz past now transmuted into this new context.

Elisa Luu – Piano 5-1

Puffin On My Side

Puffin On My Side is the solo project of Alessio Mecozzi, guitarist and founding member of Roman post-rockers Mokadelic. His music is defined by expansive atmospheres and engaging, minimal arrangements that fuse the delicacy of post-rock with the spatial reach of ambient and shoegaze. Dreamlike sounds in which guitar interplay, ambient textures and enveloping electronics come together in a poetically visionary dimension.

A soundtrack for giving free rein to one's emotions, well exemplified by this prayer from the underground, which moves from hazy vibrations of echoes and reverb before enriching itself with pulsing beats and a sinuous, romantic imagery.

Puffin On My Side – Underground Prayer

Bersarin Quartett

Little or nothing was known of Thomas Bücker at the time of the self-titled debut of his project Bersarin Quartett; now at least his identity has been revealed, though his appearances remain sporadic, as do his productions, which have been stuck at that splendid debut, slowly moving towards a follow-up that – in his own words – could still be years away.

For this reason, "Perlen, Honig Oder Untergang" represents a delicious break from the rule in Bücker's solitary artistic philosophy: his melodies, still built on the electronic filtering of loops originating from strings, slowly take on irregular shapes, layering themselves into dry rhythms and dissolving into lapping washes and swelling openings. Added to this here is the presence of piano, which brings contemplative romanticism to Bücker's cinematic bent and to his excellent ability to render autumnal brushstrokes in music, dense with austere, melancholy suggestions.

Bersarin Quartett – Perlen, Honig Oder Untergang

Un Vortice Di Bassa Pressione

Young Catanzaro-born musician Attilio Novellino, the sole figure behind the evocative alias Un Vortice Di Bassa Pressione, is one of the most interesting names among the now-numerous Italian artists who freely distribute their work online. After various collaborations, his debut mini-album, "Anonymous Said", revealed his sensibility applied to the juxtaposition of guitars, electronic filtering, samples and scattered piano notes: while the essential elements of his music are by now fairly common, their combination proves decidedly personal in its oscillation between cosmic post-rock legacies and intricate electronic modulations. A common thread running through Novellino's compositions remains a pronounced emotional side, which finds its means of communication in the sonic choices but also in the occasional field recordings chosen to accompany them. This is exactly the case with "Why Not", a track built on bare piano cadences, electronic underpinnings and distortive infiltrations, and shaped by a conceptual inspiration that the most attentive listeners will be able to grasp between the lines.

Un Vortice Di Bassa Pressione – Why Not

Teho Teardo

Teho Teardo is a force of nature. Just listing the projects he's been involved in is enough to make your head spin. Lately he's been busy on theatre and festival stages setting Claudia Castellucci's texts to music, with the help of Alexander Balanescu, Blixa Bargeld and Chiara Guidi. In the past he's played with many heroes of the underground world, from Cop Shoot Cop to Lydia Lunch, from Nurse With Wound to Zeni Geva, from Pain Teens to Mick Harris, from Girls vs Boys to Erik Friedlander. After years spent experimenting between rock, noise and electronics, Teardo has finally been recognised as a leading soundtrack composer. His early works remain in the shadows, but with Paolo Sorrentino's "L'amico di Famiglia" and Andrea Molaioli's "La Ragazza sul Lago", things start to change. In 2009 Teardo won the prestigious David di Donatello award for the soundtrack to Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo".

Teho Teardo – Waxed

Nimh

Nimh (Giuseppe Verticchio) was born in Rome in 1965.

A fan of ambient, experimental and electronic music, and a computer scientist by profession, he began producing this kind of music in 1994.

In 1996 he moved to Koh Samui, Thailand, for a year, and it was during this period that he developed an interest in traditional Eastern music, an interest that would gradually draw him closer to ethnic instruments and lead him to give them a prominent role in some of his works.

Since 2001 he has used the pseudonym "Nimh" to sign his work. His music brings together influences of various kinds, and his albums are often very different from one another, blending elements of experimental music, ambient, dark-ambient, industrial, electronic, isolationist and ethnic-ritual sounds.

Nimh – A Short Passage

Glen Johnson

Although Piano Magic is his longest-running and best-known creation, Glen Johnson's feverish passion for music has spilled out into many different offshoots and names, most recently in the new venture of the Second Language label. As he himself revealed in a recent interview with OndaRock, his extreme artistic prolificacy has him spending many hours a day at the computer, filling his hard drive with music for Piano Magic, Textile Ranch, Future Conditional, or countless other nameless projects. In particular, his electronic experiments have usually gone under the alias Textile Ranch and, more recently, under his own given name, which for the first time identified last year's album "Details Not Recorded". Along that same line of playful, spectral vintage electronics, as ever, sits "Nuit Paranoïaque", the track Glen Johnson decided to dig out from his hard drive as a gift for his devoted Italian audience.

Glen Johnson – Nuit Paranoïaque

con_cetta

The first and only Italian to have released a record – his debut album "Micro" – on the prestigious Moteer label, Sicilian artist Giuseppe Cordaro is a true sculptor of sonic miniatures, carefully chiselled through rigorously minimal electroacoustic inlays. The range of sounds and instruments in his solo project Con_cetta spans from nocturnal keyboards and piano notes to electronic crackle and synthetic loops. His whole universe is condensed here into the microcosm of "Glicine", a track that gradually takes shape from its initial ambient suspensions, building hazy clouds over distant lapping water and disturbances, soon thinned out by folktronic touches and vibrant electroacoustic grafts. Warm and enveloping, yet always subtly restless, the fragile balance Cordaro achieves here is a small gem well worth discovering in all its meticulously crafted facets.

con_cetta – Glicine

Dergar

Christos Garbidakis aka Dergar is a Greek artist who recently debuted with the free download album "Fraternity" and has managed to build a fruitful relationship with our own port-royal. The philosophical idea of brotherhood transcends the strictly musical aspects of his output, whose inspiration draws on nostalgia for childhood, a time of which Christos retains memories such as listening to Mikis Theodorakis's compositions in his parents' car. Steeped in a fragile, evocative warmth, his track "Our Warm Hearts" evokes both private snapshots and universal ideas, from a ray of sunlight to birdsong, the latter recorded live at dawn and used as a kind of anchor for the peaceful sketch of the lyrics and the electronic filtering of an instrumental palette that includes guitar, bass and even a Cretan pipe.

Dergar – Our Warm Hearts

Dollboy

A decidedly versatile artist, Oliver Cherer has steered his Dollboy project through significant transformations across four albums, from an early reworking of simple folk-based melodies into electronic form to the unprecedented foray into song-craft of "A Beard Of Bees".

In parallel, however, Cherer has continued to nurture his passion for capturing sound fragments and for unusual instrumentation, most recently channelled into the spectral underground journey described in "Ghost Stations". In partial continuity with that work, the new track "Sinister, Dexter" strings together all of Cherer's playful manipulations in what he himself calls a brief synthetic melodrama made with worn-out instruments.

Dollboy – Sinister Dexter

Emanuele Errante

A Neapolitan composer and multi-instrumentalist, Emanuele Errante is one of the most interesting and active figures on the Italian and international ambient and electroacoustic scene, as shown by the release of his two albums "Migrations" and "Humus" on the Apegenine and Somnia labels respectively, and by the forthcoming collaborative album with Dakota Suite. Particularly attentive to the visual side of music, Errante draws visionary, introspective soundscapes, enriching their modulations and latent pulses with acoustic touches entrusted to guitar, piano or harp, which add a warm, personal quality and highlight the Mediterranean roots of his enveloping compositions.

Emanuele Errante – Later, Earlier

AoyomA

Fabrice Mougin is a French composer specialising in soundtracks for films and television documentaries of various kinds. His personal project, operating under the alias AoyomA, is driven by the same narrative spirit, aimed at creating music capable of telling stories, painting pictures and conjuring atmospheres in which the scenes of an imaginary film can unfold. Here, the task falls entirely to the music, freed from any tie to images and thus reduced to pure essence.

Through piano and little else, Mougin shapes enchanted, fleeting miniatures, which so far have found their synthesis in the mini-album "Epilogue", released in 2007 by the netlabel Aerotone, of which "Jour Après Jour" is an ideal continuation, centred on the passing of time, on everyday life and on what Mougin himself, in presenting the track, calls "soft souvenirs".

Aoyoma – Jour Après Jour

Message To Bears

A multi-instrumentalist from Oxford, Jerome Alexander has built his project Message To Bears around a search for balance between ambient and folk, creating a sound flow with softened edges, whose fragile emotionality is expressed through extremely spare, measured melodies.

In his first full-length work, "Departures", Alexander wove serene, contemplative textures, performed solo on a wide range of instruments, from acoustic guitar to piano, from glockenspiel to electronic samples. To the graceful, dusky shades of that record, Alexander now seems to want to add melodies and fragments of what could soon become fully-fledged songs: and who knows whether the delicate arpeggios and vocalising of "New Beginning" might really mark the first step of an imminent shift in his expressive approach.

Message To Bears – New Beginning

Library Tapes

Still active under an ever-growing string of names and collaborations (Forestflies, Xeltrei, Le Lendemain and the brand-new Murralin Lane), the Swedish artist David Wenngren has nonetheless made his name chiefly through his main project Library Tapes, whose minimal piano-glitch formula has gradually grown in complexity and structure, bringing on one hand a stronger orchestral push and, on the other, a careful attention to the timing and cadence of the notes and of the inevitable small electronic disturbances.

In this latter direction lies the fragment "Terese", a preview of the upcoming Library Tapes album, whose few piano notes leave interstices riddled with increasingly crackling and irregular noise-based deconstructions, spilling out into a genuine final derailment.

Library Tapes – Terese

Absent Without Leave

Absent Without Leave is the project through which an enterprising young Greek, George Mastrokostas, first made a name for himself. Through prestigious collaborations, such as the one with Port-Royal, and a couple of solid releases under his own name (the EP "Bon Voyage" and the album "Postcards From Nowhere"), he has earned well-deserved credibility in that fascinating territory straddling post-rock legacies, electronic approaches and sprawling ambient landscapes. His range of stylistic interests is particularly broad, though focused above all on crafting slow, muffled atmospheres built from iterated guitar tones, only occasionally flanked or filtered by electronics. That electronic presence remains intact, though reduced to mere crackles and sonic manipulations, in "Not Enough" too, a track that finds Mastrokostas steering decisively toward slow-core textures, here featuring impalpable vocals for the first time.

Absent Without Leave – Not Enough

Shaula

The latest in a long line of electronic artists coming out of the Land of the Rising Sun, the mysterious Shaula made a quiet entrance onto the music scene with last year's album "Haze", issued in a run of 150 copies by the razor-sharp label Under The Spire.

Dreamlike modulations and fragile watery sensations mark the sprawling imagery and quest for stillness at the heart of Shaula's ambient music. On "Origin Of Mirage" she set out to capture a vision drawn from the story that inspired the track, centered on the dream of a mollusk living in the depths of the ocean. Shaula thus invites listeners to picture this mirage, closing their eyes so it might appear reflected on their eyelids, accompanied by her music.

Shaula – Origin Of Mirage

The Beautiful Schizophonic

Evanescent ambient compositions and modulations wrapped in a sinister allure define the monumental experimentation of Portuguese artist Jorge Mantas, who under the alias The Beautiful Schizophonic has already offered ample proof of his compositional class. Exquisite drones and field recordings, but also acoustic touches and romantic openings, populate what he calls his "neoclassical laptopia" — almost a blanket of filtered, slightly distorted cosmic frequencies, through which shifting snapshots and pulsing swells flow, magnificently captured on his last two albums, "Musicamorosa" and "Erotikon".

As in those earlier works, on "Dreaming In The Proximity Of Mars" too Mantas builds on the persistence of exquisitely refined drone modulations, in a process of gradual rise and saturation capable of conjuring dreamlike atmospheres with utterly alien contours.

The Beautiful Schizophonic – Dreaming In The Proximity Of Mars

The Cloisters

Better known under the alias Plinth, English composer Michael Tanner has, since the early 2000s, tried his hand at a long series of productions and collaborations spanning everything from the ancestral folk of United Bible Studies to the synthetic soundtracks of Cat Lady, a project pairing him with Matt Shaw.

The Cloisters thus represents the latest of his many artistic identities, and — judging at least by "Riverchirst" — it seems to fall in line with that fascination for spectral micro-sounds which has been Plinth's trademark ever since his "Victorian Machine Music", and which was recently reaffirmed in his collaboration with Glen Johnson on "The Rest I Leave It To The Poor". Distant voices surface over solemn, motionless atmospheres, carrying listeners off into a spatio-temporal elsewhere populated by ghosts and crystals that enclose a fragile, uncontaminated balance of sound.

The Cloisters – Riverchrist

Marconi Union & Giorgio Li Calzi

An English duo made up of Richard Talbot and James Crossley, Marconi Union embody a musical passion that is reserved and deliberately kept on the margins, well below the wider audiences their quality would deserve.

From the sprawling sound of their debut "Under Wires And Searchlights" (2003), poised between Mogwai and Talk Talk, to the more pronounced electronic bent that has crept into their music over the years, the band has always focused on crafting sinuous musical landscapes, combining guitars, synths and strings in a style poised between ambient and dub, one that doesn't shy away from forays into deep electronics nor from more subtly shaded jazzy tones.

It's the latter that take centre stage in "Blue Lights", a track born from a recent collaboration with Giorgio Li Calzi, the unorthodox Turin-based jazz musician whose trumpet lends vivid, imaginative tones to the Mediterranean nocturne generated by this meeting of souls, styles and modes of expression that turn out to be less distant than one might think.

Marconi Union & Giorgio Li Calzi – Blue Lights

OndaDrops Vol.2: Take the sounds, turn them into words

Cd1: download

Cd2: download

Cover photo: Annabelle Sallé©

A heartfelt thank you for their collaboration goes to Roberto Mandolini, to Alessandra Reale for the graphic design, to Giovanni Zangrillo for the mastering, and to all the artists who kindly agreed to share their music with OndaRock's readers.

All the tracks featured in OndaDrops have been made available by the artists for free download. OndaRock makes no claim of ownership over these tracks, which remain the exclusive property of their respective copyright holders, artists, record labels and publishing companies.

All songs included in OndaDrops are provided by artists and intended for free download. OndaRock makes no claims of ownership to any of the songs, that are sole property of their copyrights, artists, record labels and publishing companies.

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