Posted by Budgie at November 2, 2005 01:26 PM

Ambience from Sweden Via Lithuania...

Way back in June I featured a track called "Otnemem" by Octex (the post can be found here). It was taken from a great compilation of dubby electronica and techno entitled "Flow:ers" and it was available for free via the Lithuanian internet record label Sutemos.

I had been meaning to do another Sutemos post a couple of months back when I had noticed that they had released another great, and again free, compilation entitled "Red, Green, Blue And Other Summer Feelings". Though still ambient and electronic in nature, that compilation focused more on a Post Rock sound and has many a droney and feedback filled moment amongst it's mostly vocal inclusions.

One band / producer stood out on that album as he managed to get 2 of his tracks onto it. He is a swedish producer who goes by the name of Stockfinster.

The 2 tracks on that album were "All Becomes Music" and the beautiful vocal track "A Crack In Time", and that word "beautiful" is going to crop up a lot when I mention his music....

I hadn't decided which one of those two would get put up on The Pipe, but I had made a note to put at least one of them up. When I finally did get around to doing so, I then spotted that Sutemos had put together an album length compilation of Stockfinster's work. The album "All Becomes Music" was then duly downloaded and for the past few weeks I have been having my ears caressed by it's beautiful mix of electronica, ambience, live instrumentation and choice spoken word samples.

According to Sutemos, Stockfinster has been making music for quite some time and after venturing over to his own site I saw that there are 3 free albums worth of material to download. It's from these 3 albums that the "All Become Music" compilation is collated from.

And what a compilation it is. Both of his tracks from Sutemos' "Red, Green, Blue And Other Summer Feelings" make a welcome reappearance alongside some other truly beautiful moments. The sad, but uplifting, John Hannah / Four Weddings And a Funeral sampling track "Dismantled" is stunning, "Last Report" with it's rhythmical and spacey darkness shows a different side to Stockfinster and "Clark Kent" shows that he is as accomplished a producer as Ulrich Schnauss in creating that sort of shimmering, warm, electronic, shoegaze sound.

In fact, if you like your electronica and ambient in that Ulrich Schnauss mould then you'll love Stockfinster.

Track : STOCKFINSTER - "ALL BECOMES MUSIC"

This is the opening track on the album. It's initial dark atmosphere is soon lifted with the appearance of some fine Eno-esque treated piano and then when the spoken word piece appears, possibly Bjork, the track is set adrift on a slow motion beat accompanied with some beautiful Cocteau Twins / Slowdive style female vocals.

Track : STOCKFINSTER - "IN TRANSIT"

I plumped for the last track on the album as I really like it's fragile, almost invisible quality about it, which is backed up nicely by the use of the sample "I simply am not there". Very simple chords and tones make up the track and create plenty of space over a non intrusive rhythm. It does build up, but not to some sort of crescendo. The appearance of some barely there strings towards the end finishes the tune off nicely.

Beautiful!

If you like what you hear, then both links below feature his work either in zipped album format or as individual tracks.

Go Visit : Stockfinster
Go Visit : Sutemos

Feel free to leave a comment about these tracks in The Pipe section of the forum.

Ta,
Budgie