Summer highlights

After a rather wet July the recent week has finally seen a return of the heat, and with it the damp grey clouds floated away to the east. We are once again blessed with a nightsky that is filled with both colours and stars. It is nights like these you never want to be turned into day. Dreams and thoughts collide on a smell of wild flowers and the calls from the young Grebes nearby. We celebrate summer with two new albums.

[gterma047] : Mathias Grassow - The Darklight Quest (out now)

One of the strangest and most fascinating aspects of ambient music is the way it can sometimes morph from sonic wallpaper -where it basically functions as a soundtrack- into an agent of transformation, allowing the reshaping of the perceived world around the listener. Some of Mathias' albums have had this effect on me before, and the Darklight Quest definitely falls into this territory. gterma is happy to shine a light on this now mostly forgotten treasure, originally released as a DIY CDr in 1998.
 

[gterma049] : Sergey Gabbasov & SiJ - Perseides (out now)

Welcome along on another trip into the forgotten hinterlands of the Eurasian plateau. Sergey and Vladimir once again skillfully guide us through the dusty backwater trails of the Mongol steppe, along the winding mountain roads that slither through the steep valleys of the Central Asian mountain ranges past crumbling old villages where hardship and beauty go hand in hand. No manmade light disturbs the eternal slumber of the starry nightsky and every cave, every hill, seems under the influence of some forgotten deity or spirit being.