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Hello,

Thank you for Reading. My name is Matthew Florianz and I have been making (dark)ambient and environmental soundscape music since 1995. I have so far released a handfull fo albums and recently finished a new one called Niemandsland. My ambient music is not centered around technology alone but does have firm roots in field recordings, sampling (of instruments) and studio manipulation which I consider my main instrument.

I find it best not and try to describe what ambient music is about, if you are interested you can discover the surroundings on your own. With the release of Niemandsland, GrijsGebied (unavailable since 2003) has also been re-released. I have included several samples and reviews:

NIEMANDSLAND
Sample Snoei & Herfst | Buy Album | More samples (requires flash) | Niemandsland album page

GRIJSGEBIED
Sample DageRaad | Sample Maalstroom | Buy Album | GrijsGebied album page

| REVIEW : Vital Weekly
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MATTHEW FLORIANZ - GRIJSGEBIED (CD by H/S Recordings)
MATTHEW FLORIANZ - NIEMANDSLAND (CD by H/S Recordings)
Although Matthew Florianz' work was reviewed before, it was part of a group work, and a long time ago; and not by me. So these two albums are introductions to his work. I assume he is Dutch of Belgium, looking at his titles, even when his name doesn't sound too Dutch. He plays ambient with the big A, and his music was used by various 'airline in-flight entertainment programmes... also been successfully licensed or corporate clients, including US Healtcare firm Remodulin' - yuck me thinks. Must be dreadful music, but 'GrijsGebied' ('grey area') a re-issue of a 2001 album is actually much better than aural wallpaper. A dark wall of synthesizer, feeding and looping through a bunch of sound effects, with an occasional tinkle on the piano. Nicely dark this album, thus defying the whole new age thing that we would find in elevators.
Florianz' latest album is 'Niemandsland' (nowhere land), and maybe things changed? They did, but not for the worse. Apparently Florianz is now incorporating field recordings in his music, which are hard to recognize as such (although the cover indicates them as streets), but the music is throughout a fine example of dark ambient music, with here and there quite a chilling moment, like the processed sound of a rusty wheel. But it's all embedded in this vast amount of truly dark music. Tracks flow into each-other and tell a story, the story of going to the nowhere land and back. Between each track there is the sound of traffic, transporting the listener to a new place. A nice album, again. For those who love their ambient a bit more daring and exciting, this is one to check out.
(FdW)

| REVIEW : E-Dition Magazine : www.e-ditionmag.com
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Except for a brief revival during the mid-nineties, real ambient has always been a rather marginal sub genre within EM. However, it has it's own icons, like for instance Brian Eno, Steve Roach and John Serrie, to name but a few. Many EM aficionados tend to neglect ambient, because they think there is not much going on in this music. Besides the fact that this is just what ambient is all about, I think that they are wrong in most cases. Of course there is enough rubbish to be found, but true lovers can, from the top of their head, name a lot of artists that deserve to be rescued from relative obscurity. One of them is Dutchman Matthew Florianz. As far as I've been able to find out from his well designed website, he has been releasing his beautiful, panoramic and quiet ambient under different names (including Liquid Morphine) since 1995. Sometimes on cd-r, mostly in very limited editions, so his oldest fans are most likely the only people to have all his collected works in their possession. Fortunately there are plans for re-releases of older work, but so far no dates are known.

'GrijsGebied' [GreyArea] from 2001 is the musical prolongation of his most recent stunner 'The Tone T(h)ree' (released in 2004, but recorded in 2000). On 'GrijsGebied' Matthew Florianz introduces a world full of warm, dark colors, and vague images, in which you can get pleasantly lost. The tracks unwind slowly, and at first they may sound rather static. But a closer listen reveals a large number of layers that whirl around each other like moths in the evening shade. Here you get immensely beautiful soundscapes, which slowly pass before your inner eye. The colors are a bit paler, and the atmosphere is a bit thinner than on 'The Tone T(h)ree', but there is no sign of eeriness whatsoever. Despite the fact that this music sounds very spacey, it has a very down-to-earth character. Perhaps because there is no coquette with extraterrestrial themes whatsoever.
Where 'The Tone T(h)ree' leaves every possible association up to the listener, with titles like 'part 1', 'part 2', etcetera, on 'Grijsgebied', Florianz takes you by the hand a bit more on your journey through his fairy-like universe. There is enough that you can still imagine by yourself, but titles like 'schaduwrijk', 'glaswind', 'maalstroom' and 'nakalm' (sorry, these are in Dutch, they roughly translate as 'shadowrealm', 'glasswind', 'vortex', and 'aftercalm') are at least alienating. In my opinion, individual reviews of the separate tracks are useless, because I think you should 'read' this 'sound story' from cover to cover in one go. The real fan gets comfortably submerged in a cool bath full of distant sounds and hidden depths for exactly 68 minutes. Very transporting and associative stuff. This is a masterpiece of contemporary ambient, and receives a full score of five stars. Well deserved!

On a final note (to convince even the last doubters) there's this: One of the biggest mistakes an ambient artist can make is to not make his music develop. A ten-minute tone remains a ten-minute tone when there is no (minimal) shift in frequency or intermodulation-invoked rhythm. By that I mean that some frequencies can interfere in such a way that a rhythmic structure develops in over- and undertones. When that happens, the physical presence of percussion is not needed. Once again, this works out great on this album. While there is no information at all about what instruments were used, I suspect that Florianz has a relatively small hardware setup (I know about a Korg o5r/w), and that he has full control over it. And I think the studio was used as a huge supplementary instrument as well. On his beautiful website you can find lots of interesting information, and even some exclusive music for downloading.

Rating: 5 STARS | MY CHOICE) | Max Delissen
E-dition Magazine www.e-ditionmag.com
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I am always interested in comments and remarks, feel free to post them,

Bedankt voor het luisteren (thank you for listening)

Matthew Florianz
More ambient/electronica releases | www.matthewflorianz.com/music.html