Ilyas Ahmed - Between Two Skies / Towards The Night

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Brett on Thu 28 Oct, 2010.

I picked this one up 'cos the cracking sleeve's been jumping out at me on the pre-order pages ever since it was listed up there. I guess I was expecting it to be on a Grails or Muslimgauze type of tip but it's made a complete fool of me because it isn't. Instead it's got more of a guitar-based psychedelic folk thing going that reminds me of some Six Organs stuff in terms of sound but of Grouper more than anyone else in terms of how it's all put together since it's got that weird slightly ambient sort of feel to it despite the fact that there's always some sort of melody present. Anyhoo this is lovingly packaged combination of two previous, highly limited and now apparently pretty tricky to obtain, CDr releases. It's quite hypnotic, massively heady and really very, very nice. I just wish it wasn't making me want to go and find an opium den to drift away from the world in, Noodles-style, 'cos there's still a few hours of work to go..

• Pakistani-born musician Ilyas Ahmed traffics a sound that borders on the folk/drone/raga/rock axis, one that Scottish critic David Keenan has called “gone”.

• Currently residing in Portland, Ahmed has released recordings on Time-Lag, Digitalis and Root Strata.

• He is known to perform live with Honey Owens (Valet) and Jed Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged) and his recent recordings have featured Liz Harris (Grouper). He first appeared in 2005 with ‘Between Two Skies’ and ‘Towards The Night’, two albums that were released on CDr in editions of 50 copies. Even in editions so small these records quickly made waves and impacted anyone who was lucky enough to hear them. In 2007, ‘Between Two Skies’ and ‘Towards The Night’ were given a proper CD release by Digitalis.

• Immune Recordings are now proud to present the ultimate edition of these two modern classics presented as a deluxe gatefold double LP. ‘Between Two Skies’ / ‘Towards The Night’ is now available on vinyl for the very first time, presenting the first two full length albums from Ilyas Ahmed in one gorgeous package.

• Limited to 1000 copies pressed on high quality virgin vinyl at RTI and housed in an old-style tip-on gatefold jacket printed by Stoughton. Included is a coupon for DRM-free MP3 download.

• Featuring brand new gatefold collage art created by Ahmed especially for this release.

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