Recenzie strom noir - luvyoo

www.vitalweekly.net

Autor: Frans de Waard

STROM NOIR - LUVYOO

Outside its raining - the typical March rainfall. Grey autumn like weather. Inside its warm and on the stereo we hear have Emil Mat’ko, also known as Strom Noir. He pleasantly surprised us before with his ambient drone music. He was a member of a down-tempo/trip hop band Mind Map and has its own label Black Orchid, which releases ambient, industrial and experimental music. As Strom Noir he picks up the six stringed instruments and synthesizers along with field recordings and electronics. Some of the pieces here were previously releases, but together they make a strong bunch of tracks that fit any rainy day. Slow, elegant guitar music, with an wealth, sometimes too much, of echo and reverb, and the guitar usually at the core of the music. Synths and field recordings are more ornamental in the music, they place accents on the music. Quite a lengthy release of lengthy pieces, all around five minutes of minimal changes, and its perhaps better to enjoy this as one long flow, one piece divided into various smaller bits. Not an earth shaking new release, but otherwise a fine one.

www.thesoundprojector.com

Autor: Ed Pinsent

Strom Noir also produces a species of ambient music, but does it in an ultra-slow way on his new album luvyoo (AMBSINE RECORDS). While his dense layers of treated and processed sounds may not be anything wildly innovative, I find the cumulative effect quite charming – heavy, dreamy, unreal, and suffocating. This Slovakian musician works best, I find, when he disguises everything through overdubbing, re-recording, looping and filtering; when you can occasionally recognise an instrument, such as a languid guitar pluck, it somehow breaks the spell. Note the cover art, where he has cleverly manipulated a landscape so that the trees spell out the title of his album.

www.gothtronic.com

Autor: Fabian

Strom Noir is the music project of the Slovakian Emil Matko. Musically, or this album at least, haven’t heard his other work, can be described as melancholic guitar-driven ambient, combined with field recordings. Perhaps akin to a project like Aidan Baker or Troum, only less dark.

The album is divided in eleven tracks and clocks at almost an hour. The tracks are presented as separate pieces (as a lot of times in this genre it the tracks flow into each other), but they do work as a whole together.

Though there may be more acts to deliver guitar-based ambient music, the melancholic touch of Strom Noir works really well with the music and makes for a somewhat own sound. It has its more abstract and darker moments, like in ‘Quiero Ser Santa’, but nice to listen to such work that does without the extreme darkness and here and there has a sadder feel to it.

We heard lots of this guitar-driven ambient before, but this is executed so extremely well that it doesn’t matter. A very beautiful release that all lovers of deep and droning ambient should pick up! Highly Recommended.

Grade: 8.3

www.cyclicdefrost.com

Autor: Chris Downton

Slovakian electronic producer Emil Matko has been composing music since he founded the downbeat / triphop outfit MindMap back in 2000, as well as running his own independent tape and CDR label focused on ambient, industrial and experimental music Black Orchid Productions, with more than 60 releases to date. Matko first introduced his Strom Noir alter ego in 2007 with his 3” CDR release ‘The Strom Ep’, and he’s certainly been prolific under the name – in fact, this latest release ‘Luvyoo’ represents his second full-length album and fourth release in just over two years. The eleven tracks collected on ‘Luvyoo’ sit somewhere between ambient electronics and post-rock minimalism, with Matko primarily relying on synths and treated guitar loops augmented with subtly deployed field recordings to create the hazily melancholic atmospheres here. Throughout completely beatless ambient landscapes like ‘Planet Catcher’ and ‘Za Chvilu Je Koniec Dna’, Matko treats the guitar elements to a point where the original source material becomes almost unrecognisable and merges with the synths to become a single mass of flowing melodic tones – indeed, when a familiar pluck or sound of fingers on strings does venture in at the very edges, it sounds almost alien in comparison to its surroundings. Think of this as perhaps slow-motion post-rock to watch glaciers flow to; this is easily one of the most understatedly beautiful ambient releases I’ve heard in some time, with the distant wash of field recorded voices on gorgeous closer ‘Heartland’ simply adding to the sense of inner cinema conjured up here.

www.heathenharvest.com

Autor: Henry Lauer

Strom Noir is a young – but prolific – one-man band from Slovakia performing a particularly emotive style of ambient music. Luvyoo is a subtle affair, an exercise in restraint and tasteful composition.

The music is woven from both the kinds of drones that do not seem to have a recognisable instrumental source, as well as a range of definitely organic musical tools and well-chosen field recordings.

The application of wind instruments in slow-moving swirls of music is deftly done; guitars drift seemingly aimlessly across the music, creating a feeling of both space and familiarity. The idea of using acoustic guitars in ambient music in particular deserves mention: this is not something one often hears and it adds a richness and earthiness to the proceedings. Likewise the airy electric guitar performances impart a genuine intimacy to the release.

Luvyoo moves through a wide span of emotions – some melancholy, some misty-eyed, some dreamy. It has a certain innocence, a certain openness: its very honest music, without pretence. I like the vulnerable pensiveness that it invokes – Strom Noir walk a delicate line of personal expression, and where ambient music often seems to be about grand ideas, this album invites the vistas and horizons of ambient music back into the realms of subjectivity.

The moods and atmospheres shift very smoothly as the album progresses, and it’s a very gentle, smooth journey. The tracks, though much more varied in instrumentation and feel than you’ll find on many ambient releases, nevertheless blur together easily, like water spilling across different colours of paint.

The average length for each composition is about five minutes, and this is also refreshing. There is quite a “30 minutes or more per track” cult in the world of ambient composers, and really, almost anything can get trance inducing and atmospheric if it somnolently rambles without variation for that long.

This release doesn’t rely on such chicanery and I rather like that. It is perhaps more connected to conventional music than most ambient releases and I think Strom Noir are onto a good thing by taking this direction.

www.hisvoice.cz

Autor: Petr Ferenz

Moc pěkné album ze Slovenska. Emil Maťko, jediný člen Strom Noir, je zároveň vydavatelem, na jehož značce Black Orchid vyšla nejedna kazeta temného ambientu či darkwave hudby. Svou vlastní tvorbu ale svěřil jinému vydavateli. CDR v barevné papírové kapse přináší příjemnou hodinku hudby na pomezí temných ambientních krajin, decentních terénních nahrávek a nálad, které se občas blíží například tvorbě Ukrajince Andrije Kiričenka. Trohu príliš štylového chtění, na druhé straně dokonale uklidňující poslech, který nezevšední ani při opakovaných seancích.