Facts about Ferndance – Halluncinations (Album) – 2022
Artist: Ferndance
Titel: Hallucinations
Land of Origin: Australia
Format: Album
Label: Sine Music
Release Date: 03. Juni 2022
Genre: Ambient, Electronica
8 Tracks • 46m 11s
At qobuz available in Hi-res
24-Bit / 44.1 kHz – Stereo
At Apple Music available in Hi-res
24-Bit / 44.1 kHz – Stereo
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About Ferndance
Ferndance aka Blake Fernance is a multi-instrumentalist and ambient producer from down under, in Australia.
Ferndance has always been passionate about drone and ambient music, and has a particular fable for recording ambient sounds and nature noises with his field recorder and incorporating them into his songs.
In doing so, there is hardly anything about ambient sounds that he wouldn’t use to process the samples and use them to create organic textures for his works. Everything fits or is made to fit, alienated or adapted, be it birdsong or washing machine noises, the crackling of plastic bags or babbling brooks and rushing rivers.
He studied music production for a year in Byron Bay, Australia, and then set up a home studio where he is recording and producing his music. Blake is a true multi-instrumentalist and plays a variety of instruments including guitar, violin, cello, bass, piano, and synthesizer. He also composes and lays out his own string arrangements with multi-layered harmonic layers of violin and cello while soaring finely chiseled guitar runs are taking up space alongside.
In addition to field recordings, Blake draws inspiration from the works of artists such as Alex Somers, Nils Frahm and Jóhann Jóhannsson, to name a few.
Ferndance’s music is a very distinct blend of organic textures and ambient and electronic sounds. Dreamscapes that are often beautiful and haunting, but also finely structured darkly disturbing, yet always exceedingly expressive, full of tranquility, cinematic but also at times somewhat subliminally threatening. Sometimes like a view through a dusty old glass pane… The flowing soundscapes of Ferndance are like our life – multi-layered, with many small details, today beautiful, tomorrow however also disturbing in slow motion.
Ferndance has been signed to the ambient and chillout label Sine Music since spring 2022. His album „Hallucinations“ was released on June 3, 2022, and is available at all known download and streaming portals.
The album Hallucinations
Ferndance’s second album is a dark and experimental glide into multi-layered ambient dream worlds – captured from a completely different perspective. „Hallucinations“ could be assigned to the genre drone-ambient . Despite the heaviness of the sounds, the light and floating guitar sounds spread hope and joy.
The inimitable fingerprint of Ferndance can be heard in every layer of his music. The songs in the track list of „Hallucinations“ seem like the formation of a logically cohesive almost volcanic layered entity that one second seems to freeze into an evergreen continuous tone of minimalism, only to re-emerge in the next second into a slow motion life of infinite detail.
„Madrigal I, II and III“, the first three tracks on the album, form a sequential artistic unity. It is a spherical gently embracing piece of ambient music. With deep basses, like a heartbeat, and wispy strings, each song takes you to a different region of an all-unifying world.
The Bottom Line
Ferndance’s album „Hallucinations“ is literally a wonderful, but also subliminal „Close Encounter of the Third Kind“ for the listener. Truly impressive, soothing and somehow also poignant and liberating, as if driven by a very light alternating current. You see tiny flashes of light and kaleidoscopic patterns dancing in front of your inner eye while you let the gentle sound waves of Ferndance flow into your soul.
The sound quality is, as it has to be for a solid hi-res production in 24 bit / 44.1 kHz, beyond any doubt and scores with excellent sound characteristics over the entire frequency range.
Rating for Ferndance – Hallucinations – (Album) 2022
Summary
Max: 5 Points
Mein Testequipment:
Studio 1 (High End):
- 2 x System Audio SA Mantra 50 (front)
- 1x System Audio SA Mantra 10 AV (center)
- 2x System Audio SA Legend 5 (Rear)
- 1 x System Audio Saxo 10 (Subwoofer)
- 4 x Onkyo SKH-410 (B) (Dolby Atmos)
- Auralic Altair (Audio Streaming Client mit max. 32 Bit / 384 kHz)
- NVIDIA Shield Pro mit Plex, Kodi (max 192 kHz für Audio, Tidal (MQA Streaming Client)
- AppleTV 4K (Streaming Client) Dolby Atmos, HDR, Dolby Vision
- Amazon Cube 4K (Streaming Client) Dolby Atmos (restricted), HDR, Dolby Vision
- Panasonic DP-UB9004 (4K UHD Player) Dolby Atmos, HDR, Dolby Vision
- Oppo UDP-203 (4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player) Dolby Atmos, HDR, Dolby Vision
- Yamaha CX-A5100 (Preamp) 4K, Dolby Atmos, Hi-res
- Yamaha MX -A5000 (Power Amp)
- Sony KD-55A1 (TV) 4K OLED, HDR, Dolby Vision