Once again: good news for ambient freebie hunters!
While traditional distribution for ambient music gets more difficult than ever, the artistic quality of netlabel releases only seems to increase. Here's one of the latest proofs of that.
"Marea", released by Gastón Arévalo, is my first acquantance with the Passage netlabel.
Passage is the ambient music division of the Fragment netlabel presenting minimal techno, glitch etc.
Marea is Passage's fourth release since september 2009.
Gastón Arévalo (Uruguay, 1981) began playing 'real' instruments, but over time developed a passion for electronic music - especially for digital artforms re-creating fundamental aspects of nature.
His music resembles fractal images: organic yet diverse in detail.
Each of the eight tracks on Marea comes with it's own digital artwork which, like the music, are digitally created natural structures in itself. Like the music, the images are diverse yet clearly from the same root.
Musically, Marea presents an impressive set of drone-based music, the base drones subtly enriched with lots of electronic detail.
You may have to listen closely to unlock the details however. The unobtrusive rhythms in Hielo Norte, the washes of warm guitar sounds on Maritim, the environmental field recordings (Delta) the 'echospace'-like hiss in some of the tracks... all of these details effectively immersed in electronic layers that are deep but never 'dark'.
Combining the best of a lot of his peers, Arévalo delivers an instant classic for this young and promising Passage netlabel.
Get it [here]
More info:
http://www.garevalo.info/
http://www.myspace.com/gastonarevalo
This sounds quite well and balanced – and – most importantly – not boring, as sometimes can be the case with ambient music.