In episode eight of the Lunar Flower Podcast�we have changed the format into a DJ style set. Artists on thes episode are Derrick Hart, Shulaka, Christopher Costabile, J. Marinelli, Ian Hawgood, Ten and Tracer, Jon7, Ric Tutlo, G.A.F. and Tanner Menard. Hosted by Justin Robert www.lunarflower.us

��� Intent on conveying a musical experience of complete immersion, the M. Persson: Sounds album, Strange Skies, envelops its listener’s body like a constantly-shifting aura. �
�� �Gorgeously represented by the cover picture of a barren field before a rainstorm, the opening title track sets the rustic mood of Strange Skies with subtle, lush string tones that gradually graze across the sonic landscape as if imitating a cloud formation.� Harmonies fade in and out slowly, coalescing into dense frameworks of sound, unveiling for the listener a homogenous yet ever-changing horizon.
�� �The album begins to segue into each of its compositions, and it becomes evident that M. Persson: Sounds has not crafted a collection of songs, but a soundscape series of unparalleled scope.� Although each of the individual tracks on Strange Skies embodies its own unique character, instead of viewing them as solitary pieces of music, it is helpful to imagine each one as a single movement of a grand, unified, and slowly-evolving work.� Every composition is like the still frame of a film — the essence of each piece, as well as the entire album, are only understood when experienced in a perfectly ordered sequence.
�� �Of all of Lunar Flower’s releases, Strange Skies is perhaps the most truly ambient in nature.� Comprised almost entirely of droning soundscapes, the album’s uniform quality prevents the listener from distinguishing isolated sounds within the music.� It is five tracks into the album, on “Before the End,” until we are able to identify a warm, romantically-performed piano gliding through the mix.� This unique virtue undercuts any superficial attempts to deconstruct the compositional methods employed by M. Persson: Sounds, allowing his music simply to cascade across the environment in which it is heard.
�� �At turns joyous and mournful, ominous and hopeful, the dense harmonies of Strange Skies by M. Persson: Sounds are like whimsical winds tossing through an open country field, offering to us all that we wish to carry of the earth’s many treasures.

1. In the only way that is real

Interrupted in our angular drifting
—the clothes line, leaned on by the wind, bending slowly—
parallel arches of a camera’s iris
closing as it revolves around us

2. Atum

we were borne from the nearest body of water,
deluded gods, re-birthed
as Atum, the self-creator—
Are we now complete, or merely
transported
by our newfound awareness?

3. Not so random a life

Our longing; our forgetfulness;
confused sorrow of senses;
we wander into a radiant tunnel
lined with angels

4.� Sun

to all at once
absorb these gold gradations of experience
and never wince

5.Wind

we are changing slowly with the earth,
spinning toward a metamorphosis
—a single sound—harmonious,
and fashioned from Nature.

6. Bleeding

Imagine the body tearing away at itself,
—nails clawing skin, teeth gnawing bone—
flesh becoming shrapnel,
flittering to and fro in the violent wind

7. Acceptance

—serpentine balance,
delicate as smoke—
Interlude and Singularity:
the mind rages toward infinity

8. Calm Water

absorbed in this casual drifting.
The oar breaks into waves like a chisel into concrete,
the frontier shifts
with the strength of an avalanche;
with the eternal forward motion
of an imperishable river.

Anomalies: Instrumental and Experimental Recordings, 2004-2007 by Chris Costabile is a collection of thoughtful pieces that range from musique concrete to atonal improvisation.� Basking in their diversity, these collected works somehow function as one cohesive body with growing appendages that fearlessly defy musical genre.
�� We enter the album, literally, with a series of hard-panned hinges creaking and various types of doors closing.� This opener is playfully entitled, "Shut-In" and was excerpted for Beardsley's upcoming indie-rock debut Fighting Strangers in the Alps.�
� � Then, Anomalies continues with "Michael's Theme", which introduces lilting acoustic guitar interplay. The organic chord voicing evokes western motifs of drifting sand and the faint smell of whiskey. In fact, "Michael's Theme" and the rousing call to action called "The Five Flags" (track 4) were originally composed for an untitled and independent western film still in development.
� � � This is followed by an equal temperament version of a brooding instrumental entitled "The Soothsayer" featuring otherworldly guitar tones, a decorative glockenspiel and a booming timpani track.�
�� "Migration" is an improvised interlude offering a handful of quivering guitar notes that appropriately resemble the flapping wings of migratory birds.
� � Costabile continues to explore atonality with "The Betrothed Girl" and "A Glance Overseas" which is performed by The Devil Sent Jesters - Costabile's side project along with aforementioned Beardsley members Brian Berry (drums) and Andrew Craven (keyboards).� Being the only track with live percussion, "A Glance Overseas" manages to function as the centerpiece of Anomalies. With three performers, it necessarily violates the Cartesian logic of Costabile's otherwise singular vision. In this way, "A Glance Overseas" is the sonic peak that precedes the somber falling action of subsequent tracks such as "Until They Exist Together" and "The River Turns".
� � "Snapshot" reintroduces tape music. Costabile has multi-tracked and looped himself reading seemingly random words that come to construct a paragraph of sorts around the concept of taking a picture or surmising a situation with a glance.
� � Other gems include "Rats in the Basement Blues" and "Projected Reflexivity". The former resembles its title with manic trips up the neck of an acoustic guitar that sound like scurrying rodents while the latter mixes musique concrete with a spoken story about "bad thoughts".
�The album closes with "The Porpoise is Evolving" - an ominous monologue in just intonation. The piece constantly compares the titular porpoise to a tortoise, and in so doing, calls to mind the unique dharma of all mammals.
� Costabile manages to wear versatility on both sleeves while retaining a customized brand of quality. Aficionados of classical music, minimalism, tribal rhythms, folk music, jazz, and rock 'n' roll will all find moments of transcendence in Anomalies: Instrumental and Experimental Recordings, 2004-2007.

-Jason Kushner

�

1. Shut-In

2. Michael's Theme

3. The Soothsayer (Equal Temperament Version)

4. The Five Flags

5. Migration

6. The Betrothed Girl

7. A Glance Overseas*

8. Snapshot

9. Until They Exist Together

10. Rats in the Basement Blues

11. Projected Reflexivity

12. The River Turns

13. The Porpoise is Evolving

---------The second release from Lunar Flower Netlabel, The Barometric Sun by Deepspace-------

With “The Barometric Sun,” Deepspace’s Mirko Ruckels invites his listeners on an epic journey from the beginning of our solar system, on to the farthest corners of the universe, and back again.� Throughout our expedition, this intensely visual album leads us into the sun’s corona via sparkling digital chimes, through the swirling galaxies of panning synths, and over a futuristic city composed only of glass.
��� Our unprecedented voyage begins on “Hymn 1" in the foundation of a warm, undulating bass tone that compliments the digital atmospherics perfectly.� On this track, we can almost feel the solar wind gushing past and the absence of gravity exerting its gentle control on us, lifting our feet from the ground.� As soon as we encounter the unreal sounds of a choir on “The First Glimpse of the Silent Revolving World,” our disbelief has been permanently suspended, and there is no going back until our expedition of the “The Barometric Sun” is complete.
��� Every third track on “The Barometric Sun” functions as a necessary interlude.� “Silent Revolving World,” “Sungliders,” and “Exit Procedure” are like the dark but peaceful spaces between complex galaxies populated by stars; in an aesthetic sense, they are the connective tissue of this album that work to make it larger than life.� These three compositions provide a delicate balance against the blinding sunburst of “Hymn 1" and the emotional intensity of “Crysanthenum Ocean.”� Given the immense subtlety of “The Barometric Sun,” the calming ambience of its interludes allows the rest of the album to inhabit brighter shades of color.� They cause us to feel haunted by the first dissonance found in “Endless Glass Metropolis,” and to fully realize the expressive search for greater meaning that is “The Faint Hum of Big Forever.”
��� The production quality of this album is nothing short of immaculate.� Every sound is pristine, crisp, and marked by a lingering beauty.� Because of its breathtaking timbres and endlessly reverberating drones, the traveler of “The Barometric Sun” never feels threatened by his or her surroundings.� We drift past the wondrous sites of our universe enveloped by a sense of comfort and grace, never wishing to return home, but knowing that even after we do, the experience of “The Barometric Sun” will have instilled in us the serenity of perpetual weightlessness.

1. Hymn 1 (Through The Barometric Sun
2. The First Glimpse of The...
3. Silent Revolving World
4. Crysanthenum Ocean
5. In The Outer Reaches
6. Sun Gliders
7. Endless Glass Metropolis
8. The Faint Hum�f Big Forever

9. Exit Procedure

10. Silence

11. Dream (The 49th sheep)

�

�

“Alone” is a personal expression in music that is as stylistically diverse as it is emotionally poignant. Channeling a Balinese field recording on “Placida” before delving into the melancholy acoustic folk song, “Ana Lucia,” Justin Robert is unafraid of reducing each composition down to its barest essentials. On “Alone,” the first in a trilogy of albums which are partially improvised, Justin Robert’s talents as a multi-instrumentalist are informed by his keen sense for letting the texture of each sound speak volumes. Every track on “Alone” is an exercise in restraint that results in a minimal masterpiece. From the solo guitar title track up through “Tuned to Love,” his intimate duet with Lili de la Mora, “Alone” is punctuated by brief silences and environmental ambience that allow its listeners to reach a state of divine contemplation.
Perhaps the most sonically complex of all these compositions is “Tones.” Beginning as a somber dirge only to evolve into raucousness, “Tones” functions as the album’s bridge, and carries us by way of Justin Robert’s virtuosic percussion toward one final revelation: the closing track, “Oh, Sunlight.” This piece is a lilting epiphany — a humble articulation of the wisdom that after each of life’s travesties, we must bear witness to a luminous light at the end of the tunnel, and soldier onward.
Far from being merely a fantastic late-night album, “Alone” teaches us how, with positive intentions and a little bit of focus, the sadness of solitude can ultimately become our transcendence.

-Christopher Costabile

Track List:

1. Alone

2. Placida

3. Water From Salt

4. Ana Lucia

5. Oaks on Douglas Ave.

6. Tuned to Love

7. Tones

8. Oh Sunlight