Susumu Yokota - Image 1983 - 1998 (2004)

Date Released: April 20, 2004
Origin: Japan
Genre: Ambient, Downtempo, Experimental, Modern Classical, Jazz

Label: Leaf
Site: http://www.susumuyokota.org/
Tracklist:
1. Kaiten Mokuba
2. Tayutafu
3. Fukuro No Yume
4. Wani Natte
5. Sakashima
6. Morino Gakudan
7. Nisemono No Uta
8. Daremoshiranai Chiisuanakuni
9. Kawano Hotorino Kinoshitade
10. Yumekui Kobito
11. Amai Niyoi
12. Enogu
13. Amanogawa
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This fascinating collection of wayward instrumentals reveals an entirely different side to this exceedingly talented experimentalist. Reaching as far back as 1983, Images draws on the most minimal of Yokota's decidedly minimalist canon, highlighting stark solo compositions that often subsist on nothing but a beautifully stated coda and some very pregnant pauses. With its carnivalesque strut and gauzy, distant tones, opener "Kaiten Mokuba" sets the languid pace; the impossibly delicate acoustic strains of "Tayutafu" follow and the broken-toy mangle of "Fukuro No Yume" comes after that. In accordance with the album's chronological sequence, Yokota's work becomes more intricate over time, but none of the tracks here ever veer from this album's implicit schema: deceptively simple melodies, Steve Reich-like repetition, and a penchant for organic, cloud-covered instrumentation. Intoxicating.
Review taken from: http://www.emusic.com/album/Susumu-Yokota-Image-1983-1998-MP3-Download/10914653.html

Download link: http://rapidshare.com/files/164102367/Susumu_Yokota_-_Image_1983_-_1998.rar

Susumu Yokota - Sound Of Sky (2002)

Date Released: January 30, 2002
Origin: Japan
Genre: Ambient, Downtempo, Lounge, Jazz

Label: Universal/Polygram
Site: http://www.susumuyokota.org/
Tracklist:
1. Sea Blue
2. Nothing Time
3. Three Ripple
4. Crash Marble
5. Wind Wave
6. Sky Blue
7. King Of Darkness
8. Form An Idea
9. Right To Be Free
10. Make Peace
11. Sky And Diamond
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Sound of Sky is filled with deep and jazzy house music. Japanese producer Yokota's album takes breakbeats and regular house beats and combines them with trumpet, vibes, bells and a few subtle vocals to create a very relaxing album. The opening track, "Nothing Time," is a great fusion of trumpet and breakbeats that proceeds at a mid-paced tempo. "Sky Blue" takes the voices of children and meshes them with crisp house beats, while "Crash Marble" bears an odd rhythmic resemblance to the Clash's "Rock the Casbah." Yokota has been producing music for many years, from techno to house to more experimental sounds, which can easily be heard in the piano work on "King of Darkness," and in the occasionally eerie synth sounds of the other tracks. As deep house goes, this is good material; he varies the tempo and the sounds he uses but still holds it together as a coherent album. It's also a very relaxing release that's easy to listen to at home. (Exceptional)

Review taken from:

http://www.exclaim.ca/musicreviews/generalreview.aspx?csid1=38&csid2=848&fid1=12177
Download link: http://rapidshare.com/files/164071251/Susumu_Yokota_-_Sound_Of_Sky.rar

Amiina - Seoul [EP], (2006)

Date Released (in UK): May 12, 2006
Origin: Iceland
Genre: Experimental, Modern Classical, Ambient, Jazz
Label: The Worker's Institute
Site: http://www.amiina.com
Tracklist:
1. Seoul
2. Ugla
3. Ammaelis
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Spending your formative years as a group backing one of the world’s most respected and admired bands isn’t too shabby, and for the girls in Amiina, it was their experience behind the enigmatic shadows of Sigur Ros that allowed them to eventually occupy the stage themselves with their own brand of twinkly, indie pop. The music they create is distinctly hard to dislike. Fragile, and twee to the point of nothingness, it’s sweet without being sugary, but unfortunately acts like a constant appetizer in a meal where the main dish never appears. This three track single for “Seoul”, following their debut EP AnimaminA is a smaller taste of what their ouevre has to offer. It took me multiple listens of this fifteen-minute affair before I got through it without distraction, but just barely. Yet, at the same time, I can’t say why I dislike it other than it simply didn’t hold my attention. There is a music box like quality to their songs that is certainly compelling, and “Seoul” does succeed in building up somewhat effectively to it’s closing melodramatic finish, but the ridiculously cutesy Casio-performed “Ammaelis” washes whatever good tidings were remaining right out. You can buy the disc, but don’t be surprised if the minute it’s over, you’ve forgotten about it completely.

Review taken from: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/31695/amiina-seoul/

Download link: http://rapidshare.com/files/138722173/Amiina_-_Seoul__EP_.rar.html

Amiina ft. Lee Hazlewood - Hilli (At The Top Of The World) [Single] (2007)

Date Released: December 18, 2007

Origin: Iceland
Genre: Experimental, Modern Classical, Ambient, Jazz
Label: Ever Records / !K7 Records

Site: http://www.amiina.com/

Tracklist:

1. Hilli (At The Top Of The World) ft. Lee Hazlewood

_________________________________________________

The lovely ladies of the Sigur Ros string section (and sometime support act) wouldn't seem to be the most obvious musical bedfellows with veteran US country star Lee Hazlewood - particularly as the latter died earlier this year at the age of 78 - but the combination works much better than you might expect.
Hazlewood's gravely baritone kicks off a bizarre fairytale experience, folding neatly into an enchanted forest of strings and electronic minimalism. There's a hint of Lemon Jelly amid the juxtaposition, a gentleness to the music that sits softly beneath the roughness of the vocals.
His last recorded work, this is a fitting end to his career but a great loss to music. A whole album's worth of this would have been more than welcomed - and it's a terrible shame that such a thing will never be forthcoming.

Review taken from: http://www.musicomh.com/singles/amiina_1207.htm

Download Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/138333873/Hilli__At_The_Top_Of_The_World_.rar.html

Amiina - Kurr (2007)

Date Released: June 19, 2007
Origin: Iceland

Genre: Modern Classical, Experimental, Ambient
Label: Ever Records / !K7 Records

Site: http://www.amiina.com/

Tracklist:

1. Sogg

2. Rugla

3. Glámur

4. Seoul

5. Lúpína

6. Hilli

7. Sexfaldur

8. Kolapot

9. Saga

10. Lóri

11. Bláfeldur

12. Boga

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Icelandic quartet Amiina conjure up dreamy, melodic soundscapes suffused with the fairytale mysticism and undulating landscapes of their native…hang about, haven’t we heard all this before?
Indeed we have. Iceland’s musicians – who seem, curiously, to number more than the actual population - seem fated to have their music endlessly described in terms of their physical and cultural landscape.
Intricate melodies are weaved by ‘mischievous elves’; abstract moods are ‘glacial’; anything featuring heavy beats or blistering basslines is like an ‘erupting volcano’ or a ‘tectonic rift’.
Yet to listen to Kurr, the debut album from Amiina - a talented all-female four piece who have been experimenting with music together since meeting at Reykjavík’s College of Music in the 1990s – is to be somehow transported to their homeland.
Part of the reason perhaps is that the album is reminiscent of other Icelandic acts we know and love. You may, on listening to Kurr, recognize the guileless experimentation of Björk, the melodic whimsies of Múm and the emotive introspection of Sigur Rós (whom Amiina accompanied on tour between 2005 and 2006).
But there are major differences. Kurr (revealingly, the Icelandic word for birdsong) holds no truck with rhythmic complexity, artful aesthetics, nor high, ineffable drama. Theirs is a pure, irenic vision that unfurls serenely via a veritable wonderland of instrumentation, everything from violins, guitars and keyboards to wine glasses, bells, metalophones, Celtic harps, water glasses, musical saws, glockenspiels and kalimbas.
The resultant sound is not, as you might expect, clanky kitchen-sink experimentalism; rather, Kurr is a gently rippling stream of enigmatic moods and textures. The individual tracks, though readily identifiable (“Rugla” is uplifting, childlike, “Glamur” is decidedly languorous, “Seoul” pretty and innocent) fit together so organically you’d swear it was one long soundtrack.
It might be tempting for some to dismiss Kurr as fey, maudlin even. But waging journalistic war on a record as tranquil as this would - to borrow a memorable simile from the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – be akin to putting on a full suit of armour and attacking an ice cream sundae.
A crime far worse, surely, than quixotic metaphor.

Review by Paul Sullivan (13 June 2007), taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/xpgb/

Download link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/138024274/Kurr.rar.html

Amiina - AminanimA [EP], (2004)

Date Released: December, 2004
Origin: Iceland

Genre: Jazz, Ambient, Experimental, Modern Classical
Label: Worker's Institute / IODA

Site: http://www.amiina.com/

Tracklist:

1. Skakka

2. Hemipode

3. Fjarskanistan

4. Blaskjar

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It's safe to assume that anyone coming to this EP with absolutely no foreknowledge about where they came from or what their background was would find themselves thinking, hmmm, there's something very familiar about this, and, once they'd been enlightened, they'd go, oh yes, of course.To those of us hardened hacks who are forearmed with such knowledge, it's difficult, nay impossible, to bring to this listening the kind of exclusive attention we'd bring to a completely new group coming out of nowhere - it's the kids hippopotamus conundrum - you know - you challenge the kids not to think about hippopotamuses, then ask them what they're thinking about.So - can a group of Reykjavik (clue #1) music students who had jammed together as a string quartet at college and were then asked to accompany on tour, as backing instrumentalists, a major Icelandic group (clue #2), two of whose members subsequently encouraged them to make this EP and contributed substantial studio, production, and mastering input really be considered as anything other than a bunch of superlucky young women who've (perfectly legitimately - and good luck to 'em) tried turning themselves from a session band into something else - let's not call it a Sigur Rós concession band, because that suggests something rather manipulative - but if not, what?The honest answer has to be - not yet.There's barely eighteen minutes of music here - four tracks - that begin, in Skakka, with the engagingly wry juxtaposition of a sample of a crackling fire with one of those Iceland-typical tuned-stalactite-sounding music-box-ey melodies that seems to say, ok, we all know the cliché - fire and ice, ice and fire, let's just get that one over with and get on with the music - before moving into track 2 - Hemipode - where an alt.folk tune gets sandwiched, on some double-tracked malleted instrument, in between the stretched tonal extremes of the string instruments - almost screechingly strained violin and abyssally-deep-plucked cello, before the rest of the strings enter to send the tune lilting off along some chilly sheep-track between lava-field and moraine. If the Northern Lights made a sound, it would be something like this third track - Fjarskanistan - an undulating curtain of Steiner-soft sound-colours gently wafting against a tinkling background of stars, and in Blaskjar, the final track, we're back to continuing that Hemipode alt.folk stroll through the meadow where we find ourselves discreetly accompanied by a particularly sweet song-thrush, or some native Arctic equivalent.Aminamina is something that all lovers of the Icelandic Princelings will have to have, as it represents (yet) another aspect of Jónsi and Kjartan's extraordinary capability- a kind of selective Midas Touch from which, for example, The Album Leaf benefited in bucketsful in last year's In A Safe Place. In reality, it's probably something so simple (O to be a fly on the wall at some of these studio sessions), a series of 'why don't we just try this' moments that accumulate into - well - something like this. I don't think it's being disrespectful to the four members of Amina to say this - they, after all, provided the base material from which this EP has been produced - but it's so obviously been touched with the kind of wand that transforms base metals into gold, and it's so obvious whose wand that is and who was waving it.Amina plan to release a full-length in the autumn. Aminamina is a delicious appetiser, meanwhile – simple, modest, unpretentious, undemanding, but as toothsome and distinctive as a plate of ceviche served with warm bread and a shot of firewater.

Review from: http://www.melancholyrhino.com/reviews/aminamina.html

Download link: http://rapidshare.com/files/137397937/AnimaminA.rar.html