Aural Holograms

Finnish ambient droners specialising in highly atmospheric soundscapes.

Listening to them is like eavesdropping on an ancient ritual.




More

• Aural Holograms website
• Aural Holograms - Before the great stone

Abul Mogard

Abul Mogard only started making music after he retired from his job working in a factory.

The songs that he created on his homemade instruments were a way of recreating the sounds that he had become used to hearing throughout his working life.

Mogard's pieces are typically gentle, electronic, tonal washes with warm, slowly evolving melodies.



Discover more

• Abul Mogard bandcamp
• Interview with Abul Mogard

Ducktails | Dolphins Into The Future - The Grosvenor, London, 23 September 2010

The grind. It’s what I call all the time I spend standing or sitting around at gigs waiting for bands to play. And there was some hard grinding to do tonight. Somehow I managed to miss Jason Urick's set. That meant grinding it out till 10 to hear some music.

Opening the night, for me at least, were Dolphins Into The Future. It’s just one man. A Belgian ambient sound-sculpter. It’s like bathing in aquatic twinkle. Whilst listening to the sea wash the shore and the beams of erratically creak. The sounds of a forest birds swim from the warm organ drift. Vaguely familiar sounds of animals and everyday life faintly emerge from the mix. If I close my eyes I can feel my hands running through wispy clouds. You can feel something but it isn’t solid. It’s immersive, fleeting, vaporous. Making you concentrate on that ever evolving single moment of ‘now’.

Ducktails plays solo for the first half of his set. It carries on from the same enveloping sound world that Dolphins Into The Future created. This one is more like a fairground. The music of some half remembered carousel ride. For the second half he’s joined by members of Spectrals. The sound changes. It’s more song orientated. Like listening to songs from the 80s played through the floors of upstairs flat. For me the familiar tropes of genre are duller.

Preferred drink: Bishops Finger

3 Seconds of Air, Theobaldus Chapel Brecht 20/06/09

So goeStajer arranged us an invitation for the album presentation (The flight of Song, out on Tonefloat) of 3 seconds of air. 3 seconds of air is a side project of Dirk Serries, an ambient/drone musician who's been active since the eighties and has gained quite a reputation worldwide. First as Vidna Obmana and since a couple of years with Fear Falls Burning, switching from (mainly) synths and electronics to (seriously treated) guitar works. With 3 seconds of air he and his guitar team up with Paul Van Den Berg (guitar) and Martina Verhoeven (bass). The album was recorded in a small chapel on the countryside and it's the place where the concert is happening. When we arrive, we're greeted by Serries himself and we quickly order some Oxfam Beer. Goestajer chooses the blond stuff, I try the brown one. A bit sweet perhaps but very smooth and it goes down quite easily. Before the concert there's some sort of speech from a dude, explaining the history of Brecht and the chapel throughout the centuries. He makes a bit of a confusing impression and has some difficulties with structuring his story - maybe he had already a few drinks. Oh well, somebody should bootleg this & release it as some sort of satanic spoken word performance or something.

When the three musicians start their set, things get quiet except for the birds outside who, at this time of hour, are still making a lot of racket. Especially a blackbird is doing his best and manages to interfere nicely with the soft drifting guitar sounds. 3 seconds of air is all about ambient, the dreamy stuff. The two guitar players, each one of them using lots of effects/pedals, produce lovely sounds that whirl and float through the chapel. This nice tapestry of sound is sparsely but effectively supported by the dry bass that carries the soundscapes very slowly through time & space. The first track has some vague melancholic feeling. Some of the Kranky stuff comes to mind (Stars of the Lid, Windy & Carl). The second track is a bit more voluminous with moments but it certainly stays firmly on the ambient side. In the third and last track my mind starts to drift off, maybe it has something to do with the bloody church chairs that just are not comfy to sit in. In the finale I manage to pick up with the music again and when the sounds finally drift away the three musicians are thanked with a warm applause. GoeStajer and I continue our enthusiastic exploration of the Oxfam beer and after lots of silly nonsense talk and half-drunkish laughter we leave the place, piss in the bushes and drive home well saturated.

Preferred drinks for listening to the cd at home: White wine.