Michael Brückner - "Eleventh Sun" released on SynGate Luna

[Michael Brückner]

Already a few months ago (in October 2012) I had the pleasure and the honour to release a new album of spherical ambient on the (then) brand new sublabel of German classic electronica label SynGate, called Luna, which is dedicated to shades of electronica which are not covered by the SynGate main label, like ambient or more experimental music... (the Luna logo, by the way, also was created by me).

"Eleventh Sun" contains six tracks of slowly evolving textural drone / ambient, here and there enhanced and accentuated by distant melodies, atmospheric samples, sequences, bass lines or light rhythms.
I would describe the overall atmosphere as calming, sedate, introspective and spiritual, in some tracks with a slightly melancholic touch, while others are more lighthearted, and again others rather otherworldy...

It also received a friendly review from Uwe Sasse, a German reviewer of electronica - here's a translation:

"...and so we have our own Steve Roach...and his Name is Michael Brückner ;-)
"Pardon me..?!" many of You will think now. But it's true! When it comes to excellent ambient music, many think of Steve Roach. But listening now to Michasl Brückner's "Eleventh Sun" - hats off!
Of course - Michael has already produced many CDs, of which I know only a few, so to others this maybe doesn't come as a big surprise. But to those who are like me new to his work, I can only recommend to buy this album!
Six beautiful ambient tracks, all between eleven and eighteen minutes long, create a caress to Your ears :-)
Michael creates a very soothing atmosphere on this CD, he's taking his time to let the music unfold. There is enough space for minor shifts in style. Everything is balanced perfectly, and the sound quality and production are pristine.
This is ambient music as I like it! Congratulations, Michael! :-)"

- Uwe Sasse, Sequencerwelten, 2012 -

http://www.sequenzerwelten.de/brueckner_main.html

You can purchase the album from the SynGate store, and some assorted mail orders...

http://www.syngate.biz/Michael-Brueckner-Eleventh-Sun/en

For those of You who want to know more "behind-the-scenes" stuff, there's also a little story to it:

Actually, most of this album was already recorded in late 2011. However, at that time I wasn't aware at all that I was working on a new album.

I had been approached by a friendly ambient musician named Vlad Sickach from the Ukraine, who is also running the (exquisit!) non-profit label GV Sound (who for example have released the "Elements" compilation to which I also contributed a short while ago...). Vlad invited me to contribute a track to another compilation back then, entitled "11.11.11" - the gist of it was, that it was released at the eleventh of November 2011, and all the tracks had to be exactly 11 minutes and 11 seconds long (...they had done the same thing before on the 10th of October 2010 - of course those tracks were running exactly 10 Minutes and 10 seconds, and I just wonder if they will do another one this December...).

But I digress...

I started working on a track, and after the first track didn't seem to be exactly what I had in mind, I did another and - so on...
In the end, I sent them five tracks in two (very different) versions each (a "wild" and a "disciplined" mix), so they had ten tracks to choose from.

They picked "Agens (Disciplined Mix)" for what turned out to be a really mammoth compilation (it was divided in two main sections named "light" (8 CDs) and "dark" (10 CDs) - well, download only, but 18 CDs worth of music...). My track was put in the "Light" section, btw.

http://www.discogs.com/Various-111111-Light-Side/release/3263146

Only after I had submitted those tracks, I realized that I had produced (more than) enough music to fill an album. I had, at first, no plans to actually release the material, and just burned a CD-R with most of the "disciplined" versions for my private use. However, I soon noticed that I liked the material a lot (...more than while producing the tracks), and decided to share the files with some friends...

One of them was Kilian from SynGate, and he immediately asked me if I wanted to release the material on SynGate, right away.

I thought "Yeah..." but then hesitated, because that would have interferred with my plans with "100 Million Miles Under The Stars", the album that was planned to be my No. 100 and my first "official" label release at the same time.

So I decided to wait until later that year - and what a nice new devellopment it turned out to be that Kilian decided to start his new Luna sublabel that autumn (...originally, the sublabel was even planned to be "SynGate Ambient" - however, Kilian modified that, in a very interesting way, I think...).

So - the time was at hand to finally release the material, and I must admit that I had been looking forward to this moment all year long, not only because I like the project, but also because the wonderful Danish photographer Tanja Rasmussen did allow me to use one of her highly atmospheric photographs for the cover.

For the release I did modify, edit, enhance, remix and reshape three of the original tracks once more, and even produced one completely new track (...however using basic material, sounds and samples that I alrady had created while recording the original tracks last year...).

Well. And that's it... ;-)

[Michael Brückner]

Erm - I don't know why, but I can't find the options to correctly edit the blog post anymore, or rather the help menues to properly embed the images and links.. Can anyone help...? :-)