Epic, sublime, intimate and euphoric. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to describe Les Fragments de la Nuit’s album, “Musique du crépuscule”, and really, it can be summed up with those four words. The music is composed by a small band with cello, violin and piano, so it is very neoclassical in nature. But this is neoclassical in the most ethereal sense, and the music on “Musique du crépuscule” really transcends what conventions I normally use to describe beautiful music.

On the band’s Myspace page, they list composers such a Steve Reich and Philip Glass as…

I first saw The Dresden Dolls live in 2003 when they opened for The Legendary Pink Dots front man Edward Ka-spel. I saw Amanda Palmer standing around before the show with her face paint on and thought, “oh brother, what sort of crap is this going to be?”

The Dresden Dolls then proceeded to blow away my expectations and leave me standing with my jaw on the floor. I loved the chemistry between the two performers, the dramatic nature of the songs and the extremely charismatic performance. After the show, I threw down some cash to buy their CD,…

Thomas Nöla Et Son Orchestre is another tragically obscure band that deserves much more attention than they receive. This is especially true when you consider that Douglas P. from Death In June collaborated with them on one of their early albums. This mini CD, ” Songs For Children, Vol. 1″, is a bit different than their normal work, but still manages to fit cohesively into their discography in terms of tone and mood.

First, a bit about the disc. It is a hand made 3″ CD-R that you can purchase directly from the artist for $4. That $4 includes shipping,…

Continuing on the free album front, I recently discovered MONO ATRO on Myspace, accidentally. MONO ATRO, a Japanese artist, currently has two short albums available, “MDCCLXXVI” being the most current from 2007.

“MDCCLXXVI” is a really bleak album. It is dark ambient with a huge variety of finely produced sound textures. This is not just tonal ambient work. This album lacks the deep drones many dark ambient artists employ. There are washes and tones woven in the mix, but what makes this album so engaging is the usage of voices, environmental sounds, radio recordings, metal clanging and a…

I find it exceptionally irritating when I hear people argue that file sharing is killing music. There are quite a number of artists out there giving albums away as free downloads for this to ever be true. And it isn’t limited to just fringe acts. This giving away the album concept goes from obscure artists to popular artists as big as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead. Making money is not the only motivation for cranking out great music. Anyway, when I originally put this blog together, I wanted to focus on free releases exclusively, but decided instead to just…

As long as I am thinking about soundtrack work, I should write about Hecq’s new album. Hecq is normally known for highly atmospheric music with glitch, IDM oriented beats. “Night Falls” strips away the glitch (for the most part) and the beats and focuses on highly atmospheric neoclassical compositions. Most of the album sounds like it could work as a soundtrack for a movie like “Blade Runner” or “Alien“, I imagine something set deep in space. There is a lot of very atmospheric pad synth work that is very rich that works with the various sound design…

I suspect everyone on the planet has seen “The Dark Knight” by now, considering it has been a month and the astounding ratings the movie has received on IMDB. One of the striking components of the movie, a movie I absolutely loved by the way, is the brilliant score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. This is a surprisingly highly textured work that uses both a traditional orchestral score as well as some gritty sound design and guitar work. Like a lot of movie scores, this one contains a few orchestral themes, in particular for Batman in the…

Roseland is a strangely obscure collaboration between film score composer Tyler Bates (300, Doomsday) and Azam Ali from bands Niyaz and Vas. Both artists’ historical output is amazing. However, this album is quite a departure for both of them, though no less competent.

Roseland reminds me a bit of trip hop, think Portishead or Massive Attack, injected with a healthy dose of Siouxsie and the Banshees style gothic rock. It is a largely electronic recording with scattered riffy guitar work. There is a solid groove with a strong down beat, making this music a seductive dance…

Orion Rigel Dommisse’s album, “What I Want From You Is Sweet”, is a perfect example of an album that is so great, it makes it difficult for me to review it. I want to lavish praise on it for being highly original, emotive and wonderfully peculiar, but end up wanting to write, “It’s awesome, just listen to it”.

Of course, it isn’t necessarily for everyone, so I’ll describe it the best I can. It is a collection of depressing folk oriented songs. Dommisse’s vocal work remind me a bit of Melora Creager from Rasputina, but much…

Earth is a band that gets tagged with a lot of descriptions and genres that do not really apply to its current sound. I am constantly reading their music being described as "stoner rock" or "doom metal", which do accurately describe the bands style from many years ago. In more recent times, the band's sound has moved to a more ambient, old west styling, which is the case on the recent album, "The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull".

This album does not quite fall into any sort of true ambient territory,…