Fax+49

Peter Kuhlmann, aka Pete Namlook, founder of the FAX +49-69/450464 label, passed away unexpectedly in 2012, leaving behind an incredible catalog of hundreds of releases, composed by himself and/or collaborators from around the world, full of electronic music like no one had ever heard before. Namlook's passing is a great loss to the entire electronic music community and this is a tribute compilation worthy of recognizing the tremendous impact he had on the world of electronic music. The result is Die Welt ist Klang, consisting of 4 CDs of tracks from FAX +49-69/450464 artists, plus 4 CDs of tracks from fans, all housed in a handsome wooden box. Many of these tracks were written especially for this compilation, some are lost tracks which have never seen the light of day, while some have been previously released…

Fax veteran Tetsu Inoue and newcomer Jonah Sharp produced this 1994 album of the trademarked sound of Fax - soft and spacey rhythms. The album mostly depends on the 47-minute "Morphing Cloud" which is fantastic and epic but rather spacious and seems stretched out to fill its running time. Sharp's quirky electronic noises and Inoue's spacey background ambience are indeed lush and dramatic but somewhat light and thinned out, with some moments that disrupt the blissful mood and put you on edge. "Replay" is an eerie interlude with a back-and-forth melody that serves as a kind of purgatory to wait through before "Floating Sync.", the fully-realized effort of this collaboration, comes in. With rich melodies, bass, gorgeous ambient background and harmonized vocal samples, this is the only instance you'll get of the two putting their full genius at work.

Sad World I & II is a double CD of strange ambient space music from Dr. Atmo and Ramin. It is on Pete Namlook's Fax label, so the strangeness is not unexpected. Atmo and Ramin build very slow atmospheres from low drones. They weave those atmospheres around and through each other. They insert some outright odd voice samples in the middle of the whole thing. These slowly evolving soundscapes have just enough rhythm and structure to stay just outside of minimalism and just inside weirdness. This is a fun CD and a great listen. It will appeal to fans of Viridian Sun, Vir Unis, Pete Namlook, and Michael Stearns.

In its 1990's heyday the new-school ambient label Fax Records attracted some of the most gifted electronic musicians in the world. The Iranian-born, German-based DJ and composer Dr. Atmo (real name Amir Abadi) was one of Fax's brightest talents. As a DJ he was one of the artists who hung out at Frankfurt's legendary XS Club, a Sunday chillout event where many young e-musicians connected with the dance music scene performed and got to know each other. Atmo was a prolific composer during these years, though he much preferred collaborations to solo work. His collaborartions included some the era's most outstanding chillout albums with names like Oliver Lieb, Pete Namlook and Deep Space Network.

The legendary Chill/Ambient sessions on Thursdays at XS are the main subject of this CD. Dr. Atmo once had the idea to have Live Sessions at this club. The best and most "alive" recordings are gathered together on this CD. Mario Hana are Ambient newcomers from Frankfurt whose performance was very impressive through their postive melodic oriented style and sound. The Chill-Out-Possee (feat. Mark N-R-G & Nino Tielman)have their roots in German industrial-electro. This avantgardistic performance was an outstanding event. Deep Space Network just before they did their "Big Rooms" with live percussion let the audience freak out completely with a bundle of Digeridoo and Percussion players…

Pete Namlook was one of the most influential protagonists of ambient music during the 1990s. Inspired by Oskar Sala, one of the pioneers of electronic music, Namlook focused on the untapped potential of analogue synthesizers, often developed or extended in his laboratory.

Classically trained composer, hailing from Stockholm, Sweden. Started early developing an interest for synthesizers and computers, and has built some of the synthesizers used in his musical productions. He is also running the company Frost Network, which builds and sells music-optimised computers. Started Globe Studios in Stockholm along with old school mate Joel Mull and friends Adam Beyer and Jesper Dahlbäck, where all of them have their own studio. Releases ambient music under his own name, electro under the name FPU, and is also involved in a lot of collaborations with artists in the heavier techno genre - always aiming at doing something different with every new album.

Pino & Wildjamin come from Germany and they are also known as Analogue Silence, Basalt Boys, Ghost Train and Xangadix. Xangadix began as an ambient-trance outfit, with a line-up of Pino Shamlou and Benjamin Wild, but as their sophomore record was released it was evident that they had evolved into something more. Their ethereal and often quite complicated music was unusual for the early Fax label - even Namlook, the label's chief composer, wasn't working at this echelon yet. The music could broadly be referred to as downtempo, but it's got the mandatory electro beats and quite a strong groove throughout.

A condensed version of a six-hour composition premiered in Canada in May of 1994, Meloche's debut for the Fax label incorporates elements of city ambiance (buses, crowd noise, radio signals, etc.) and electronic feedback in organic, cyclical arrangements. Somewhat laborious over the course of its 72 minutes (let alone six hours!), Urban Myth, much as its source material, works best as aural wallpaper; a suggestive, subconscious soundtrack to other activities.