Ramblings of Altus

By request, “24 Hours” and “Only One Earth to Destroy” are now available to download in FLAC format.

Download 24 Hours
Download Only One Earth to Destroy

Silvercord and Altus – Lullaby

I’m happy to announce the 2006 collaborative release with Silvercord (Geoff Nostrant) has finally been given a proper home at Earth Mantra.

This re-release contains higher bitrate MP3s, as well as lossless FLAC. So if you already have this release and it’s one of your favourites, it’s certainly worthwhile to replace those old files.

Black Trees Among Amber Skies

The latest from Altus is now available to download in MP3, and FLAC for those who rather to burn to CD.

Ambient music for night-time Winter walks in the city.
Originally planned to be released in early January, this album was put aside for other projects. Hence the reason it’s an out-of-season theme. Even if you’re not a lover of Winter, don’t let that stop you from enjoying the album.

Full-length previews are also available at last.fm.

The schizophrenic release Macro from 2008 is now available in FLAC.

Even after two years, this is still my personal favourite release. If any album needed to be heard in FLAC, it’s Rapid Eye Movements.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a large number of people never heard it since it’s only available in the OGG format. OGG is excellent compression technology (better than MP3), but not supported out-of-the-box by the two most used players (Windows Media Media and iTunes). Of course, neither is FLAC, but my FLAC releases are for a specific audience.

If you’ve not heard Rapid Eye Movements yet, please take the time to either install another player, or the codec to work with your music player of choice. There’s details on the download page.

You can also check it out at last.fm, but keep in mind that they are heavily compressed and takes away from the experience.

The Earth Mantra netlabel has been a great help to reach my goal of having all my releases available in FLAC.

You can now download both Excursion releases (MP3 & FLAC) directly through their site.
http://earthmantra.com/excursionone
http://earthmantra.com/excursiontwo

If you click on the “Release Mirror Site” link on those pages, you can directly download just the FLAC files if you prefer.

Mister Vapor & Altus – Falling Out of Orbit
is now available on Just Not Normal netlabel.

And if you think we’ve heard the best collaboration works yet, then let this one surprise your ears. Mister Vapor (aka the extremely prolific Mystified) joined up with Altus (one of the ambient great netlabel artists). Well fitting in some of the other ‘deep sea dives’ of this months JNN releases this album takes you deeper. Where the wonderful string-drones of Altus meet with the dark-drones of Mister Vapor this is a clash of experimentalism that cannot be missed. We are proud to host this for your ears.

FLAC download available at altusmusic.ca

You can now download the 2005 release Autumn Breeze in FLAC format.

I’d also like to send my best wishes you all for a happy 2010. I’ll be posting my yearly “what’s to expect from Altus this year” fairly soon.

This week brings you Artifacts of Distant Memory in FLAC format.

Creating these FLAC files is a good test of my audio CD masters. I’ve discovered the master for this release was full of bad sectors after only three years. The moral of this story: Always have redundant backups!

While I was outputting a new audio CD from my data files, I found the following blurb amid the wav files.

Long lost thoughts emerge to the surface, brought up by sight, sound, smell or touch. At times it brings a reflection of happiness… a longing to return to a past event. Perhaps a haunting memory, dulled by the passing of time.

Altus invites you to explore your mind, to remember memories long forgotten.

Now available to download in FLAC are all three Winter Embrace releases (including Winter Embrace II). Anyone who purchased Winter Embrace II through Blue Water Records will receive an e-mail on where to download in the next couple of days, as well as those who donated money directly to me.

You can learn everything you need to know about FLAC here:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Happy holidays!