Greifenkeil, who released their album Blood Mystery last May, have changed their name to GriffonVox. Along with the new name comes a boatload of new stuff:

Annual Christmas gift
It seems Greifenkeil/GriffonVox have made it their tradition to release a free Christmas song every year. Following last year’s NoChristmasSong, this year’s track is called White Christmas (Law of the Land), and it’s the very first release under the new band name. You can download the mp3 here, or if you fancy, a 45 MB .wav file here.

New style, new releases
Sometimes when a band changes their name, nothing else is different. This time, however, GriffonVox seems to be seeking to distance themselves from Greifenkeil’s “psycho-acoustic performance art”, as now GriffonVox’s sites tell us they’re an “electronic wave performance” act. Last time I checked, Greifenkeil’s music was a very interesting kind of ambient and psychedelic industrial, so it’ll be interesting to see just what this new direction means for the band. If the new Christmas song White Christmas is of any indication, the sound is a bit less crushing and industrial than before, and seems to have a touch of trance or something like that to it. Nevertheless, it’s really good.

To really drive home the fact that the band has changed, GriffonVox is releasing the album Blood Mystery again done entirely anew in the new style. According to their MySpace site, Blood Mystery - Electronic Wave Mix will be available for free for everyone who bought the original version of the album, or as Blood Mystery Kultbox which will have both the original Blood Mystery as well as the new version. Alongside the transformed original songs, the Electronic Wave Mix also boasts some older songs they performed during their shows, presumably played in the new style. Blood Mystery - Electronic Wave Mix will see the light of day at the Wave Gothik Treffen 2009 festival in early summer.

In WGT 2009 will also be released a brand new EP, She’s Lost Control. She’s Lost Control is a cover of Joy Division’s 1979 hit song, but the EP will have at least two other tracks as well. Whether these are remixes, other cover versions or completely new GriffonVox songs remains a secret. Also, not content with releasing this much stuff already, early spring 2009 something known only as Law of the Land will be available as a free download. I’m afraid there’s currently no information on this one. Keep your eyes peeled.

Most people probably don’t know this, but the new-age world music project known as Enigma is actually of German origin. Originally formed in 1990 by Michael Cretu, the band has recorded many incredibly successful hits over the years and has gone on to sell tens of millions of albums worldwide, making them one of the best selling acts to ever come from Germany.

15 years ago this week, Enigma’s second album The Cross of Changes was released, which included the single “Return to Innocence”. This song became hugely successful around the world after being featured in a number of movies and TV shows, as well as later in a commercial promoting the 1996 Summer Olympics. The band’s signature chanting in the song is often mistaken to be Native American, but it is actually aboriginal Taiwanese. The ethnic sounds are wonderful and reach all types of people, it’s just a great song. Let nostalgia take over for a few minutes and listen to the song below.

Watch Enigma’s “Return to Innocence” music video

Enigma’s new album Seven Lives, Many Faces
If you’re interested in knowing what Enigma is up to these days, you’ll be happy to know that they just released their 7th album called Seven Lives, Many Faces on September 19th in Germany and the 30th in the USA. You can listen to samples from all the songs on Enigma’s website (just click “Music” in the lower menu) where you’ll also see links where you can buy the album.

The German black metal band Nocte Obducta will be releasing a new album, titled Sequenzen einer Wanderung real soon on 5th this month. During its over ten years of musical adventures, the band has moved far from their humble black metal roots to encompass a wide variety of styles of metal, such as folk, ambient and progressive metal. A whole new direction has been achieved on the new album: Sequenzen einer Wanderung will feature a whopping two (2) tracks of atmospheric metal, both halves of the album clocking in at over 20 minutes. I have no idea of how credible the information is, but it seems as though this one might be Nocte Obducta’s last one for an indefinite time. If you have some concrete info on this, please feel free to comment!

The new album will be available as your usual CD, but also a limited vinyl version and a wooden box edition. Apart from the fancier packaging and very marginally bigger price, the box doesn’t hold any (other) wonders beside the album itself, but it is however limited to just 1000 pieces and also each one is numbered individually. Amazon.de has all the different versions for sale - 17,99€ for the regular CD, 19,99€ for the vinyl LP and 20,95€ for the box. If you order the box for 19,90€ at Nocte Obducta’s record label Supreme Chaos Records, you’ll also get a free poster and button.

You can catch a trailer of sorts for the album here, unfortunately that’s pretty much one of the only places you can get any sort of feel for the album. You can, however, listen to some samples from earlier records on their (horribly outdated) website.

Tracklisting for Sequenzen einer Wanderung by Nocte Obducta
1. Ende
2. Nebel II

We’ve reported on Thorsten Sudler’s electronic project Deep Imagination in the past, but now his other band Art of Infinity is getting ready to release their new album Endless Future. Art of Infinity’s music is similar to Deep Imagination in that it is largely ambient, but the electronics have been exchanged for more traditional instruments like the guitar, piano, saxophone, cello, and others. Several guest musicians have also participated on Endless Future including vocalists Eva Wolf and Alquimia.

Art of Infinity has made a 1-minute MP3 preview of “Warm Waterfalls” available to download here, and there are samples of the songs “Utopia” and “Endless Future” on the group’s Myspace page. You can also watch the album trailer video below.

Endless Future will be released digitally on September 19th and physically on CD (in an 8-panel digipack) a week later on September 26th. Both versions will have the same content with a total playtime for the 8 song album coming in at just over an hour. Links to pre-order the album in either format can be found in the Art of Infinity webshop.

Art of Infinity - Endless Future tracklisting
01. The Fourth Dimension
02. Endless Future
03. The Flow Of Time
04. Utopia
05. Tube Into Eternity
06. Warm Waterfalls
07. Age Of Changes
08. The Wide End

Endless Future album trailer video

An introduction to Resonator

Resonator is a duo from Münster, Germany, who makes some of the most unique and creative music you can find. Kai typically writes music for theater and works on film soundtracks, while Anja is a formally trained musician who plays the accordion for the Resonator project. Ambient electronic music mixed with accordions is certainly not a common combination of sounds, but I can assure you it’s something very special when you hear it.

Enter the Red Room Diner

Red Room Diner is Resonator’s first full length album, originally released in 2003. It starts out with the mysterious sounding intro “Avis De Securite”. Coming in at under a minute in length, the song doesn’t really give you much of a clue about what you’re in for. This could be the introduction for anything, it’s very abstract. What’s to come? It might surprise you…

(more…)

Dornenreich’s new album In Luft Geritzt is another album that got its release date pushed back. It was originally supposed to hit stores last week, but it’s finally on sale just now. Well, yesterday if you want to get technical. (I know, I still have to move the date in the releases page.)

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any samples from In Luft Geritzt. Their MySpace page only has clips from some of Dornenreich’s older albums. Not very good on their part, but I guess it will have to do for now. You can still get a pretty decent idea of how their “ambient black metal” music sounds. It’s actually nothing like what most people would consider ambient, but I’m coming up blank trying to think of a better term for it. What does it sound like to you?

Of course, if you are already a fan of Dornenreich, then you probably know what to expect and might not have a problem buying the album without hearing a bit of it first. In that case, AlphaMusic.de has In Luft Geritzt for the really great price of just 11.99 Euros. EMP.de is also showing a 2 disc limited edition version of the album, but doesn’t have a tracklist of it. If you know what’s on the second disc, please let us know in the comments section.

Dornenreich - In Luft Geritzt tracklisting
01. Drang
02. Unruhe
03. Jagd
04. Freitanz
05. Sehnlauf
06. Flügel in Fels
07. Meer
08. Aufbruch
09. Dem Wind Geboren
10. Zauberzeichen

Hecq is the artist name chosen by Ben Lukas Boysen, a Berlin-based musician who produces intelligent dance music (IDM) and, more recently, ambient electronic music. He is also fairly well known for his remixes for artists such as Haujobb, Black Lung, Snog, and In Strict Confidence (you may remember the Hecq Destruxxion remix album of ISC’s Exile Paradise which was released in June of 2007), but his latest work is all his own.

Night Falls is the name of Hecq’s new album and it is the fulfillment of his ventures into a more ambient sound that were started on his previous album 0000. Initial reports from his website put the release in March, but Infrarot.de has the release date listed as April 18th. Either way, you can now find the album there or on Ant Zen’s mailorder site (Ant Zen is in collaboration with Hecq’s label, Hymen Records, because they don’t have a mailorder site of their own).

You can listen to some of the songs on Night Falls at a number of different places. I recommend going to Hecq’s page on Virb or the page specifically for the album. You can also visit his MySpace page to hear some music. Just a note, though: He doesn’t use the standard MySpace music player. Instead, there’s a flash player in the left column underneath the name and contact buttons. Don’t miss it.

Hecq - Night Falls tracklisting
01. Night Falls
02. NeverLeave
03. Dis
04. Dis (Reverberation)
05. BendingTime
06. Aback
07. ComeHome
08. Giants
09. Magnetism
10. Redsky
11. Above
12. I Am You

Using the Radio Goethe podcast as his vehicle, Arndt guides us on a journey into the world of German music, taking us a little bit further each week. I have been listening to the broadcast for many years now but there are still so many musicians I have not heard of. We have some examples of these on this week’s program, as we head towards one of those poorly-lit corners that people often hear rumors about but have never quite ventured into. I’m talking about atmospheric ambient music, a genre that sometimes teeters on the edge of being music at all. It’s very ethereal and perhaps even a bit spiritual, so you may soon feel yourself become weightless and floating off into some unknown state of mind. Take a ride with Radio Goethe this week and enjoy this unique experience.

This week’s Radio Goethe podcast playlist:
Troum: Ahmateins
[‘ramp]: Ozone
Resonator: Theme from Morgana
ALP: Au Bout
Deep Imagination: Planetary system
Realtime: Sunlight reflections
Klaus Schulze: Death of an analogue

Deep Imagination is the electronic ambient project of Art of Infinity founder Thorsten Sudler. Yesterday, he announced that the project’s second album Gemstones has just been released. While there are only 4 new tracks, the album is built up with several live songs and remixes of older songs, bringing the total to 10 tracks that play for just about an hour. The CD also comes with a bonus DVD containing a music video for the song “Planetary System” and some concert footage from 2005.

The main feature of the album is definitely the “Gemstones” section which is made up of the last 3 songs of the CD. Inspired by a visit to a museum, the songs make you feel as if you are somehow floating through a massive cave structure, mysterious natural beauty all around you. You can download a full-length MP3 of “Gemstones Part 3 (Continuance)” from the Art of Infinity website.

You can also listen to more songs from Syngate.net where you can also buy the CD and DVD combo online. Or if you prefer, Musiczeit.com has the album available to download in both MP3 or FLAC versions.

Deep Imagination - Gemstones tracklist
01. Planetary System
02. Sunscape (live version)
03. Colourscape (live version)
04. Mountainscape (live version)
05. New Horizon-Medley (live version)
06. Moonscape (desert version)
07. Mindscape (remind version)
08. Gemstones Part 1 (Genesis)
09. Gemstones Part 2 (Growth)
10. Gemstones Part 3 (Continuance)

Even though my roots are in industrial and metal, I’ve had an increasing interest in ambient electronic music over the past couple years. This week’s Radio Goethe podcast really appeals to that side of me. As I sit here writing this, I am already enjoying the calm, atmospheric sounds of the synthesizers. They are drawn out here for your enjoyment, too. If you’re feeling stressed out, this podcast will help you relax. And despite what looks like a short playlist, these 8 songs actually slightly overshoot the 1 hour timeframe of the podcast, so there’s certainly no lack of good music here.

As always, you can download an MP3 of the podcast on iTunes by doing a search for Radio Goethe. Or of you prefer, you can stream the file by clicking the “Listen to the latest show” button at the top of the Radio Goethe website.

Digitalis: Basis
Digitalverein: Treppe nach unten
Philipp Weigl: Underwater Dancer
Krill.Minima: Apfelbaumgrund
Tomcraft: Broadsword calling Danny Boy
Tomcraft: People like them (feat. Xavier Naidoo)
Null.eins: Latenight
Falter: Taumelflug 2