I’m still pinching myself that Bandcamp’s editors took a listen!
Chilling ambient music with mournful tones and barren textures, perfect to score and abandoned cityscape.
Queen City Sounds just gave Evil Gima a wonderful review:
One has to imagine that Evil Gima conceived of the song and video for “IT/AM” in some sort of creative tandem. The sounds themselves suggest spaciousness and texture like the snow and water droplets depicted in the video. The piano figure drifts while plinks of metallic sounds like processed windchimes or stringed instrument plucking and slowly resolving drones convey a languid atmosphere. It’s like the analog of natural processes unfolding like the accumulation of snow depicted in the video as it forms and melts into water and fills into ponds then evaporates and the cycle begins again. It’s a little like an orchestral piece Anthony Braxton might have written around the turn of the 70s if he had access to a robust electronic palette of sounds. That organic improvisational way of arranging noises in abstract, conceptual fashion that made him a rebel then and a style outside orthodox music making that ambient music and abstract free jazz aficionados appreciate now.
Pulling disparate threads of sonic traditions, Evil Gima creates a cinematic experience with the audiovisual project “IT/AM”. In the Jorge Martinez directed video for “IT/AM” the trailing melodies of Evil Gima’s forlorn piano arc across an alive sound palate of evolving drones and mechanical, almost bird-like musicbox percussion. Fans of dark ambient or deconstructed neo-classical music will find a lot in “IT/AM” and Evil Gima’s work to sink into.
Directed by Jorge Martinez:
Listen to IT\AM & Evil Gima
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Preorder Alluvion by Evil Gima
Advanced Press for Alluvion
“Listening to Evil Gima’s Alluvion is a singular experience. Its implacable currents of sound pull from two worlds. The first is a place mythic and terribly old, an ancient corridor where monsters lurk with the unknowable thing inside you. The other is an echo of our own voices, captured from some unimaginable future; deranged and waiting. It’s the only music I have ever heard that conjures the cosmic terror/wonder of the world unknown.
Evil Gima and Alluvion are a genre unto themselves, a separate universe from the familiar and predictable undulations of horror than can only speak to the surface of things. Alluvion peels you open and seizes that unfathomable reality within... then sets it churning.
Rejoice, human. Music is not dead. And you are called to obliteration.”
Imagine three pianos recorded one at a time, and each of them was improvised. The pianists could only react when they heard a note. The result? This is the most ridiculously chill piano song.
To me, this record has a nice, sleepy feeling to it. Something to relax into, something to take a nice nap listening to (dare I say even on repeat?).
Evil Gima's ulu is a tour-de-force in ambient experimental sound. The songs themselves have no melody, no harmony (Aak And Quack excepted), and in many cases no sound that is recognizable. It was created using a number of different sound design modules and hyped to sound good at 85dB.
This isn't your suger-coated candy pop, feel good, I'm-the-king-of-the-world type of music. It's an adventure for those sonic searchers that are willing to listen to music with scruity and stoicism. Are you one of the few and proud?
Let’s keep this re-releases going!
Today's re-release is AES by Evil Gima. Evil Gima is a catch-all moniker for my ambient, dark, and experimental music collages. They tend to be great for staring out into space and relaxing into the textures.
After I moved to Santa Fe, NM, I was really hit hard by the epic cloud formations, the beautiful art, and also the cultural and historical amnesia. Read about the history of the city, and you'll be quietly freaked out.
Anyhow, AES always reminds me of that time of the ceaselessly changing skies of New Mexico.
I've also included the full liner notes of the record AND five Ableton Live screenshots of the projects. Perhaps you musicians would like that?
Deep, dark, and nightmarish, IT\AM is sure to enthrall you with an intense wall of sound and epic piano. Checkit!
You read that correctly... This album is not sugar-coated candy pop. It’s a full expression of the complete sonic spectrum of your listening station. I designed the music to sound excellent at 85db. Enjoy!
$4.99
Evil Gima — AES
This album consists of five songs without any rhythm but roll by like thunderstorms. I managed to capture a cloud formation in Santa Fe, NM that naturally fit the mood of this particular song on the record:
All five songs on AES are roughly the same: Ambient, without rhythm, and exactly what it feels like to lazily watch thunderstorms:
Evil Gima: AES
$6.99
Field Spectra — Austin, TX
Austin, TX by Field Spectra consists of five field recordings of nature in Austin. Recording locations included Shoal Creek in downtown Austin (the audio is posted below) and various spots in South Austin including the Golden Dome of Pure Knowledge. That's a really neat building.
If you're an Austin expatriot, this is the album to get:
Flutters by Dave Wirth is an exclusively acoustic full length, divided to 13 arrangements of improvisative/super-contemplative string strumming. And there is a lot to be heard indeed, as frequencies demand full attention as they are finally given due time and real estate to claim their full share of murdered silence on.
"Technically" speaking, the artistic aim behind the disc is to showcase how awareness moves within an unrelenting type of layered existence which IT creates in the process, leaving behind traces of sounds, but now documented in larger-than-life proportions, courtesy of recording equipment entirely devoted to paint a very precise picture of audible stimuli. Read on to know more.
Wirth's music is deeply introspective, self-reflective, imperturbed, and dangerless. It has a concept of motion, even an ability to move, but it does not have any urge to do so on a constant basis. Instead, the album first and foremost is prone to invite the listener to re-discover the fundamental intimacy of the concept of sound. Wirth won't try to convince you of any special-, Mad Sk1ll LevelzZz at guitar molestation, nor he will bring forth a constant urge to discover harmonies that aren't conceived on this earth - although he will have surprises up his sleeves. With songs like "Penumbra Nadir" or the titular "Flutters", increased levels of harmonic awareness and playfulness is observable, toppled by the fact that Wirth always manages to stay away from the act of shaking his own hand - which would be very hard to do while playing "tAh" guitar while holding a coffee mug, anyway.
As mentioned, the core behaviour of the record is reflective of an artistic stance that does not seek to impress at all, as its aim is to re-discover and worship the importance of sound, and indeed this very awe-, this very fascination towards the magic of sound created out of nothing/out of mere potential, is captured and delivered on the release. As such, the disc is a necessary success. I have zero doubt that Wirth captured his soul while playing this, and it is up to the individual listener to find out if said listener is able to identify the pivotal points of soul movements/activities lingering in this deliberate self-abduction.
This agenda, to capture the movement of the player's soul, is primordial, while the anatomical structure of the respective songs is only of secondary importance. In his review request, Dave Wirth wrote to me that he had to convince the producer to not use any after-effects and highly occult sonic-wizardry through the release, let everything stay natural, as it was upon the creation of the tracks. A noble and sane goal: these precedents were recorded with a myriad of microphones, and the production values indeed are top of the foodchain, as each and every receptor of the ensuing recording apparatus is directed into capturing the full register of the acoustic guitar. And there is a lot to be heard indeed, as frequencies demand full attention as they are finally given due time and real estate to claim their full share of murdered silence on.
A deeply intimate release, which openly emerges to fetishize the timeless charm of the acoustic guitar, and said instrument won't have a single complaint in store towards this relentless dynamic. A legitimate, thorough love affair for all acoustic guitar lovers. Listen at 4:03, at the end of the "Penumbra Nadir" song: is that a sound of digestion?
http://noiseshaft.blogspot.hu/2017/01/dave-wirth-flutters-review.html
Two songs, originally created years ago and found on a random backup cd. Imagine the surprise! Two gems of droney, rain weather music.
Cover art by Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942, photographer, Public Domain. Home of cotton picker.
Evil Gima: Cotton
$2.49
Evil Gima: Tres Pianos
$1.29
Tres Pianos is exactly what it sounds like: Three pianos that are all overdubbed without a click track. The result is fumbly, cloud-like, and feels exactly like a cool but dry Sunday morning.
Photo courtesy of Library of Congress. Public Domain.
Soloman House interior – piano, by Bain News Service, publisher. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2006010801/
Evil Gima: Syrup
$1.29
Syrup came from a simple idea: record a lot of ambient, textural piano and slow it down. This roughly twenty five minute song was slowed down by 75%, and is now available for your phase-out-and-stare-at-a-wall-for-an-hour pleasure.
Cover art is a derivative of A failure in fly-paper by Friedrich Graetz.