Tag: Net Labels

  • Topi Reta – Experimental Sessions #1 EP (Digital, 2025, Krnet083)

    Topi Reta – Experimental Sessions #1 EP (Digital, 2025, Krnet083)

    Listen at Archive.org

    Topi Reta’s Experimental Sessions #1 is a tightly focused EP of three almost six-minute explorations, each one navigating the borderlands between noise, ambience, and electro-acoustic space. The tracks are stripped of conventional melody or rhythm, instead tracing arcs of sound — phenomena unfolding in real time.

    The opening piece sets the tone with short feedback loops pinging across a deep, reverberant chamber. There’s a chill in the air here. Percussive bursts interrupt the void, while metallic hums seem to vibrate against unseen walls. It’s minimal yet alive, carried forward by the unstable energy of resonance itself. There are three parts offset with shimmering drone interludes.

    The second track continues the exploration. Here the electronics stretch out, buzzing and hovering in layers that overlap like sheets of fog. The spaces between the sounds feel deliberate—silences charged with tension, as if waiting for the next scrape or pulse to enter. It’s a captivating exercise in how much presence can be conjured out of sparse materials and subtle shifts.

    The final piece introduces tonality, and with it, human presence. Amid the electronics and echoes appear fragments of found voices, disembodied. At first, they seem frightened within the context of sound. Trapped within it. Caught accidentally in the magnetic field of the composition. The effect is both eerie and strangely intimate—but this gives way to a knock and the noise of a crowd. It’s a relief. Was this a performance?

    Experimental Sessions #1 doesn’t seek to comfort, but it does invite deep listening. Topi Reta takes familiar experimental tropes—feedback, percussive accents, metallic drones—and arranges them into compact, immersive environments. Each track is a small experiment in sound physics, yet the results are emotionally evocative, balancing coldness with an undercurrent of human trace.

    This EP feels like the beginning of a series worth following. If these are sessions, then they’re laboratories of sound, where accidents and controlled gestures coexist. For those drawn to the edges of ambience and noise, Topi Reta offers a concise but rewarding listen—chilling, cavernous, and quietly compelling.

  • Various Artists – The Path (Digital, 2017)

    Various Artists – The Path (Digital, 2017)

    DOWNLOAD @ ARCHIVE.ORG

    ARTIST/LABEL NOTES:

    The Path is a collective work based on a drone by Marco Lucchi. The various artists have contributed a personal interpretation of it, creating a kaleidoscope of materials, sounds and shapes. Photo cover courtesy of Paul den Hollander.

    Review by Bryan Baker:

    The Path is an ambitious and beautifully sprawling release: 35 tracks contributed by a wide circle of artists, each taking as their starting point a drone created by Marco Lucchi. The pieces range in scope from concise “song-length” explorations to extended album-length meditations, making this less a compilation in the traditional sense and more a sprawling, evolving landscape of interpretations.

    Lucchi’ himself’s work frames the compilation, bookending the set with two contributions. They act almost like gateways—setting the initial tone and then, at the close, returning the listener to the source. In between, the participating artists branch out into a kaleidoscope of sounds: some drift into shimmering ambient washes, others carve their path through denser, more abrasive textures. The connective tissue remains that original drone, but what emerges is a vast mosaic of creative responses.

    The label describes the project as “a collective work based on a drone by Marco Lucchi … a kaleidoscope of materials, sounds and shapes.” That description is apt: the album is at once cohesive and wildly diverse. One can hear how each contributor leans into their own sensibilities—whether minimalist, cinematic, or noise-driven—yet the whole never loses its tether to Lucchi’s generative spark.

    For listeners, The Path offers multiple points of entry. It rewards both linear listening—letting the full 35-track cycle wash over you—as well as selective dipping into single interpretations to appreciate how differently one seed can blossom. It is meditative, restless, immersive, and surprising in equal measure.

    As a document, The Path is a testament to collaboration and shared imagination. It honors Lucchi’s original drone while simultaneously becoming something far larger, an ever-branching set of sonic journeys.

    Media: Digital.

    Netlabel: Breathe Compilations

    About Marco Lucci

    Marco Lucchi is a quietly prolific presence in the world of drone and experimental music. Based in Modena, Italy, Lucchi has been composing since the 1970s, moving fluidly between post-classical arrangements, tape experimentation, and the meditative drift of drone. He often describes himself as “a mellow artist” and treats the act of recording itself as an instrument, placing as much value on texture and atmosphere as on traditional melody.

    The Mellotron is one of his favorite tools, though his palette also includes synths, pianos, field recordings, and analog/digital devices woven together into soundscapes that feel both intimate and expansive. His music often exists in that liminal space between the acoustic and the electronic, where the human hand and machine memory are blurred into something timeless.

    Lucchi’s discography is vast. Recent works like The Book of Dreams (2025), Lieder Ohne Worte (2024), and Venusia (2022) reveal an artist still exploring new forms of beauty in restraint. He has also collaborated widely, including projects with Swedish cellist Henrik Meierkord, and his long association with the Orchestra Eclettica e Sincretista reflects his affinity for collective, boundary-crossing music making.

    What sets Lucchi apart in the crowded world of ambient and drone is his sense of poetics. His compositions are less about sculpting perfect symmetry and more about opening a door into reverie, where time loosens and the listener’s imagination completes the work.

    For those seeking drone that leans toward the lyrical and contemplative—music that carries echoes of post-classical chamber moods while dissolving into deep, resonant stillness—Marco Lucchi is an artist worth discovering.

    Listen on Bandcamp: marcolucchi.bandcamp.com

  • The Modergrade – Начало спуска (Beginning of Descent) (Digital, 2012)

    The Modergrade – Начало спуска (Beginning of Descent) (Digital, 2012)

    DOWNLOAD @ ARCHIVE.ORG

    ARTIST/LABEL NOTES:

    The debut album of The Modergrade is a dozen of small plays in style of dubstep and chiptune. Dynamical electronic music, melodic and sometimes more aggressive, which can easily be imagined as a soundtrack for a computer game or a cartoon, minimalistic and charming in its own way. Composed by The Modergrade. All instruments programmed, music written and arranged, artwork by Dmitriy Troshkin.

    Media: Digital.

    [archive_visual_player album=”Начало спуска (Beginning of Descent)”]

Discover Sounds reviews sound recordings we find worthy of discovery. It’s published by Briyan Frederick Baker of GAJOOB (that’s me). Send bandcamp download codes, tapes, CDs, vinyl and other things. Read more…