Feature of Altus

Altus: Elegant ambient/orchestral journeys

Date: Sept 1 2018 

In 1999 he got his first tastes of ambient music as he heard Pete Namlook’s “Silence III” which completely blew him away. Later, the music of Steve Roach would make an even bigger impression.

Right from the beginning as he started composing his own music, Mike was never interested in getting signed to a record label. He had heard so many horror stories about people getting screwed by record labels. It also angered him to have people making money from an artist’s hard work while the artist was getting only a small percentage. Also, he wrote music for his own pleasure, not to satisfy a crowd, so he figured that attitude would make most labels shy away from him. At the same time, Mike wanted to share his music with more than just family and friends. The internet, on which he offers all his music for free, was the obvious solution.

Before 2000 he made techno music using the moniker Goon. He wrote some music like “Perpetual Wonder”, Ode to Bambi (with Blair Vermette) and “Horizon” but by the third album Mike got rather tired of the beats. The Goon albums weren’t made available to the public as they were part of Mike’s learning process. For his next music “Moonlight” he experimented with much slower tempos and beats. The outcome really surprised him. He totally enjoyed the process of writing music where the beat didn’t lead the direction of the song.

One thing led to the other, as he composed his Altus’ debut album “24 Hours”, inspired by a train journey in 2000 during a time Mike Carss was “finding himself”. It The concept album consists of four contemplative tracks of approximately 13 minutes following the cycle of an entire day. The album starts nicely with the engaging awakening soundings of “Daybreak” before moving into the warm, meandering soundscapes of “Midday”, followed by the lofty “Nightfall” and quiet sonics of “Midnight”. This great relaxing music to enjoy the wonders and beauty of nature and let you mind settle down.

Carss only uses a pc to compose his music. He has no use for expensive hardware that can, in most cases, be emulated on a pc. For his host of his various VST’s he applies FruityLoops.

After “24 Hours” Carss absolutely loved the idea of writing a series of tracks based on an overall concept. He states that listening to a concept album feels like a journey instead of formerly just throwing a bunch of tracks together to fill a cd. This also has to do with his love for long-play albums. Altus 2nd album “Winter Embrace” was originally a 25 minute piece written after walking in a moonlit forest after a heavy snowfall. A few months after, Mike decided to extend it and expand on the theme to complete the 62 minute version. On the 2005 re-mastered version he used different string samples.

For his next project Mike Carss initiated the Elements series, in which he attempted to create images in the mind’s eye to the listener, using the track names as a catalyst. The four album cycle featuring the recordings “Fire”, “Water”, “Earth” and “Air” as such was a real challenge from the beginning as Mike wasn’t sure he would have the ability to finish it. For half the tracks of “Fire” he used old sampling sets he built himself. After getting some new tools and sample sets Mike wrote the 2nd Elements cd “Water”.

Mike Carss’ interest in astronomy and space exploration next to the idea of a possible alternate universe, e.g. being able to travel to it through a wormhole, led to the music of “Black Hole”.

The album “Autumn Breeze” was planned on being a fluffy, happy release, but turned out quite the opposite. Although melodramatic like his other albums, it’s overall sound and impact was much darker. Mike even felt it was riding the edge of depression. The album itself is also much shorter in length (45 minutes) compared to his former albums that made up for at least 60 minutes. Mike decided not to write a fifth track. A filler in the same style would be too much for one sitting, and next to that he felt he had told his story.

Altus’ release “Lullaby” is a collaboration with Silvercord, aka Geoff Nostrant, on which both musicians have created a lush and haunting album for drifting to sleep and exploring one’s dreams.
Mike: “Geoff led the show on this release, and included two space-pop tracks (that) I wasn’t expecting, but (that) sound great. It’ll be interesting to see what people think of it. The rest of the album is a very interesting blend of our ambient styles and worked out beautifully. Those who know our styles well should be able to pick them out easily. We’re both very excited to get this album released, and of course it will be available free to download”.
Although Mike says the project was an excellent experience, he does prefer working solo. If he will do another collaboration, it won’t be for many years.

Summer 2006, Altus’ next sonic excursion “The Wanderer” saw the light of day, featuring six beautiful soundscapes carrying his typical trademark. “Winter’s Embrace II” was the first, and probably only release that was not be available to download for free. All proceeds from purchasing this release were donated to the continued success of StillStream.com, a free ambient online radio site run by Darrell Wade Burgan.
With the concept album “Only One Earth to Destroy” Mike took quite a big step into the deep, as it is by far his darkest release to date. The dark overtones on it talk about this serious subject that concerns us all, pointing to the various ways the human race has been damaging and destroying the globe until now, the only planet we know until now that can sustain life as we know it. Mike didn’t get much response on it, aside from the few who are into darker ambient. But he didn’t think many people understood the ending (the screaming), which is unfortunate since it was his whole focus for the album.

With “Excursion One”, Altus returned to his usual, accessible melodic ambient style.It contains two long tracks that are very free, slow-moving, relaxing and having a overall positive theme. It was also his first release of a new series from Altus to be distributed freely at the Earth Mantra Netlabel.
“Singulus” is a compilation of Altus’ single tracks from various multi-artist releases in former years. However, it does contain a few oddities which probably haven’t been heard by many people, such as the tracks “Frequency Junction” and “Voice in the Machine” which reveal another side from his musicianship.

“The Grand Expanse” is Mike’s first foray into teaching himself to create a more symphonic/soundtrack sound. The outcome indeed contains lots of classic, orchestral elements blending with his distinct style.
In November 2007, Mike spread the word was aiming for new directions while not changing his sound completely, as he felt he was dangerously close to future releases being old hat, in that he was not trying anything new.

On December 1, 2007, Mike Carss performed his first live concert on Darrel Burgan’s internet radio show StillStream,com. The 57-minute concert was called “Toward the Winter Solstice”

Mike Carrs was offered the opportunity to performed a second live concert on January 26, 2008 on StillStream.com,
The concert was aptly named “The Grey Horizon” by Hannah Shapero (Altocumulus), as the music is in a melodic melancholy vein.

On April 13, 2008, “Rapid Eye Movements” was released exclusively through the Rain-net label. The music treads the darker territory between “Artifacts of Distant Memory” and “Only One Earth to Destroy. Mike Carss didn’t write the music as a sleeping aid, but more as a sonic voyage through one’s dreams and the secrets they can reveal.

“Macro” is the outcome of noodling around with different sounds, which after all were not appropriate to the project that’s been worked on. These “behind the scenes” sounds allow the listener to hear some of the things Mike ends up with. They aren’t simply raw ideas, as they have been expanded on the initial sound or idea and polished up for a enjoyable listening experience. The outcome on the album are a series of 22 short tracks covering a broad range of sounds, from melodic ambient to atonal soundscapes, and a few oddities inbetween. As Mike puts I, the music in the spirit of Aphex’s Twin’s “Selected Ambient Works II” and Palancar’s “Precis”

On August 22, 2008, Altus played his third live concert on StillStream.com: “Cinema Fantastique: Four scenes for a virtual film”.
Shortly after that, Mike took a break to do a complete overhaul of his music system, adding some new upgrades and software.

At the end of 2008, “Winter Embrace III” saw the light of day. It’s a long-form symphonic/minimalist ambient journey through white wilderness, and discovery of hidden vistas. The album marks the final chapter to the “Winter Embrace” series. Mike Carss originally had only planned on doing two, but in 2007 a number of people were asking when part three was coming. This made him decide to do one more.
Sonically, the music of “Winter Embrace III” is similar in style and theme, especially comparing it to part one, but this time Mike “limited” himself using only real instruments and the human voice. There are no synthesizers in this one. It’s still ambient in style, but there are a couple symphonic outbursts that would remind of the piece “Towards the Galactic Centre” (from “The Grand Expanse”).
As with the previous releases, the gracious music “speaks” for itself, reflecting the composers thoughts and emotions much more clearly than expressed through words.
Keeping in theme with the previous volume, “Excursion Two” offers two more long-play lush melodic ambient tracks to sooth the mind and make it wander. The album was released in february 2009 through the Earth Mantra Netlabel.

Mike’s next project was “City of Ashes”, which premiered on June 26th at StillStream.com for the Ambitar radio show, hosted by Allan Goodman. “City of Ashes”, an audio/visual project pairing the music of Mike Carss and the photography of Shawn Sintzel, features a mix of ambient and orchestral works. According to Mike, it’s by far his most cinematic music released to date, acting as a film-like soundtrack to Sintzel’s stark and austere photography. The music, meant for active listening, is a fascinating mix of ambient, orchestral and minimalism, having its lighter and darker moments.

End of July, Mike delivered the track “Trying to elude that dark place” to Mark Stolk’s Just Not Normal internet-compilation project “no-R-mal”, which presented the finest in what is available in experimental music these days.
Mike’s first reaction was he felt his music wasn’t appropriate for “Just Not Normal”, but Mark replied to Mike he had produced a bunch of more experimental music in previous albums, and something like that would be fine.
But things turned out otherwise when Mike started making music, a process in which he lost sight of the actual goal. While finishing “Trying to elude that dark place”, Mike realized the elegant, free form outcome was not experimental at all. The deadline didn’t allow to start another track, so Mike sent in the track saying he wouldn’t be offended if the piece was not included on the 4-disc compilation, but it did.

In the meantime, Mike also started to slowly release his entire catalogue in FLAC-format, the first being the 2004-release “Black Hole”. September 2009 saw Mike contributing the track “In the Company of Clouds” to the sampler “The Serene Files: Part One” by the net-label The Ambient Collective.
Shortly after that, Altus contributed the track “Rainmaker” to EarthMantra’s online compilation “The Hundredth Mantra”. Next to the music, Mike also put up a promo video on YouTube featuring some nice timelapse photography next to the music.
End of October, “Coma Cluster was released, a full-length release offering 74 minutes of soothing space music.

The next project Altus was involved in was Mister Vapor’s album “Falling Out of Orbit”, for which Mike remixed two original tracks. The outcome features the wonderful string-drones of Altus blending with the dark drones of Mister Vapor (aka Thomas Park).

On March 27, 2010 Mike Carss returned with “Black Trees Among Amber Skies”. Originally, it was planned to be released in early January of that year, but the album was put aside for other projects, hence the reason it’s an out-of-season theme. Nonetheless, “Black Trees Among Amber Skies” offers beautiful classic Altus music, ambient music for night-time winter walks in the city.
The next project Mike was involved in was the “Sonic Strata 2” compilation by The Ambient Collective, in which three different teams of four musicians were involved. This ambient album contains three tracks of 20 each each, of which the first layer of each track was created by the first person in the team. His output was then emailed to the next member who added his part and so on.

After this release, Mike finally focussed on something he wanted to do for a long time: Mike had been wanting to compose a beat-oriented album as he wrote them in the 90s, but he considered his beat programming was always lack-luster. Through the internet, he knew the output of Bulgarian musician trx (also known as TeeRexX), which had become his favourite IDM producer. Both parties agreed on a collaborative release, which ended up as “Crossroads”. For the clean and fresh sounding outcome, Altus provided the melodies, while trx was in charge of the beats. The long, drawn out leads combined with deep basses and addictive melodies featured on “Crossroads” takes inspirations from Planet Boelex and Esem and mixes them with the sound of legends such as Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis.
The album was released in December 2010 through the Kahvi Collective netlabel.

At the end of March 2011, Mike introduced “Sleep Theory Vol. 1”, the first release in a new series delving into deep ambient, overall sounding similar in nature to “Coma Cluster”. The goal of this new series was to fill the void of drone and texture-style ambient, without the foreboding/creepy elements usually prevalent in these music genres. Originally, Mike envisioned this to be a warm drone-style kind of release, a comforting blanket of smooth sounds to lull the listener to sleep. But after completing the first pass of the three tracks, he considered scrapping the entire project as the outcome created turned out to be overall tedious and boring.
Instead, he decided to re-purpose and re-design the existing elements of “Sleep Theory Vol. 1”, which is dedicated to Lucette Boudin, into tonally active yet hypnotic soundscapes. This head-phone music is best experienced at lower listening levels, and will require multiple listens to get the most use out of them.

On September 5th 2011, Altus released “Symmetry and Shadow: Singles Collection Volume 2” to tide his music fans over until November, when his album “Ecotone” is published. “Symmetry and Shadow” is a compilation of single tracks from Altus covering the time between 2006 and 2011, including five unreleased tracks. “Ecotone” was released on November 10th, 2011. It’s another highly textural work of art, utilizing rhythm, epic chords and gentle soundscapes. Alltogether, they transport the listener to an imaginary place far away from everything, a land where man can’t ruin.
On December 15, 2011, Brad Ross-MacLeod’s Free Floating netlabel put out its second annual seasonal celebration: “All is Calm”. Mike Carrs also contributed to this fine scintillating backdrop to end of year celebrations and meditations by means of the unreleased piece “Pinegrove”
In June 2012, Altus released the first album in a new seasons project, entitled “The Sidereal Cycle”. Put out on the Free Floating netlabel, the smooth evolving music series is something Mike considers he should have done years ago. The four “disc” project (that will be on-going into 2013) looks at the grand theme of time and the seasons in a different way, and also includes the fourth chapter of “Winter Embrace”. On closer examination, the third chapter in the series is more minimal than some of Mike’s neo-classical inspired works.
At the start of 2013, while looking back on the previous year, Mike decided to release less output in the forthcoming year. He felt a bit worn out musically speaking, having releases four solo releases and one collaboration in the span of 2012. Nonetheless, at the time of the vernal equinox, the final part of the “Sidereal Cycle” saw the light of day while Volume 2 of the (5-Volume) “Sleep Theory”-series surfaced in December 2013. It took until the end of Mai 2014 before Mikes next album came out: “Excursion Three”.

In April 2016, Mike released an album entitled “With You, Without” through the Burlorke-moniker, as he had been wanting to explore other genres for several years. The project, partly reflecting on Mike’s beat-driven 90s project Goon, features 80s synth-heavy vibe accompanied by leads that are reminiscent of late 70s Berlin school, but with a modern edge that doesn’t emulate either time period. Things were topped off with a few tracks that contain vocoded lyrics and end it with a cinematic climax. At the end of June 2016, Altus released “The Sun Will Rise Tomorrow” (Singles Collection Volume 3) which contains six tracks written between 2011 and 2015 that were contributed to various compilations along three unreleased tracks.

On November 5th 2017 Mike released his first factory-pressed cd: “Winter Embrace (15th Anniversary Edition)”. Originally released in 2002, it was rebuilt from the ground up in 2017. The long-play album begins in a slow-motion neoclassical minimalist structure, transforming into an ambient bed of sound over the course of 62 minutes. The music was created to accompany the sights and sounds of the first snowfall of the winter season.

“Pioneer”, put out in Mid-June 2018, saw the music of Altus return to the more active form of its past, as the last couple of Altus works had become “more ambient” in that it could easily become aural wallpaper. The concept music of “Pioneer”, a thoughtful blend of cinematic, dense, vast and ethereal atmospheres, is recommended to be played at higher volume and active listening is encouraged.
In August 2018, Mike launched his second side-project Loneward and its first album “Protection”. Loneward (like Altus intended to create a cohesive and consistent listening experience) will be the source of Mike’s purer ambient and drone works in line of recent examples such as “Innerspace”, “Komorebi” and “Coma Cluster”.

Starting the Loneward project was no easy task for Mike (plans for splitting Altus into Loneward actually had been brewing for years) although it was a path he had to take as the composer realised Altus would shift away from “more ambient/drone” style releases. There had been times where he held back where he wanted to go in an album because he felt it would alienate the listener, or it would cover too much ground, causing the overall experience to be jarring. In this respect and a perfect example of an album where Mike Carss didn’t hold back would be “Ecotone” released in November 2011. Here he accomplished everything he set out to achieve, but it turned out the album’s music didn’t make much of an impression to his fan base, assumingly because its sound was so varied.

Mike expected something similar for “Pioneer” but was surprised by all the positive feedback it received. Despite covering a lot of ground once again, “Pioneer’s” music may have turned out more cohesive in the end than “Ecotone”, but even after repeated and focussed listening that’s still hard to tell.

In retrospect, the 2017 Altus-release “Below the Root” gave another glimpse of the composers wish to dive deep into a darker world instead of going the bombastic route. Its Mr Carss current belief Loneward could become the “more popular” project over time as a lot of people do enjoy the more ambient/deep dive releases with “Coma Cluster” as a favourite in terms of popularity. To please his audience Mike tried many times to recreate the sound, mood and feel of “Coma Cluster” but failed each time.

So as it stands now, Loneward will be more familiar while Altus might turn into something different. Nothing is for sure. The muse is a strange beast, and Mike usually doesn’t have it under control. In a way, he likes that though. In Mike’s words: “It leads me places I couldn’t imagine, and that excites me…”

At the end of May 2019 Mike released his second Loneward- album “Home”. One of the worst fears a musician may have is to (nearly) lose music still in the works or not yet released. This is what happened to “Home” where the majority of the music was nearly lost to a severe hard drive issue (the mainboard in the NAS had died). Fortunately after a few weeks of troubleshooting and having the mainboard replaced, composer Mike Carss was able to recover the files and immediately backed them up. Needless to say during that time he was very upset and agitated at the prospect of losing all that work as he knew he wouldn’t have been able to recreate it. Like its predecessor, “Home” is an ambient drone work made up of six emotive, gentle unfolding and wavering soundscapes forming a cohesive, in-depth and meandering journey.

You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on his artist page

Website: www.altusmusic.ca

Discography:

The Elements part 1: Fire (2002, re-mastered in 2005)
The Elements part 2: Water (2003)
The Elements part 3: Earth (2003)
The Elements part 4: Air (2004)