Product Description
2 Spirits
3 Cosmic Serenity
4 Forest
5 Sky Blue
6 Reflection
Genres: Ambient, New Age, Drone
Buenos Aires-based Gustavo Denouard joins Projekt with Mysterious Wind. His luminous, relaxing and contemplative atmospheres float upon minimalist and hypnotic ambient drones.
“Sometimes life behaves like the wind,” Gus reflects. “It pushes and destroys. He whispers something, but it is not understood. The mysteries of life and wind have much in common: cold, hard, strong and swirling. On this album I take the listener to meditation and reflection. These six tracks show a moment in my life where I had to lock myself in to think. Reflection, serenity, forest, mystery are words I used in the track titles to represent that disconnect from everyday life.”
After growing tired of years of playing synthesizers in rock and pop bands, Gustavo decided in 2020 to venture into electronic music, “to immerse myself in something more personal. For me at 49 years old, making music is something liberating. It is medicine for the body and soul. I like the way my music develops intuitively and almost organically like a tree with multiple branches stemming from the same roots.”
“I conceived these pieces during a time when I was living in my country house — a small house far from my home city of Buenos Aires. In the country everything is silent and calm. The forest that surrounds my humble abode lets the sun in in the morning, and this is my favorite time to compose. The cold days and strong wind dominated as some ideas arose. The creative doors opened in that place. I was there for three months and developed the sketches and recordings that took shape later in my home studio. Everything that happened in that place helped me to be calm with myself; that peace is in every detail of my new album.”
PRODUCTION NOTES:
Mysterious Wind was created with hardware and software synthesizers. The instruments used were Korg Wavestate, Nord Lead 2x, Behringer Deepmind 6 and some Arturia VSTs. Gustavo reflects, “In the composition and recording process I recorded layers over layers. Always playing each synth line. Every time I sat in front of my equipment I had to be in tune with everything going on around me in this beautiful place. That made every sound have meaning on this album. Every tone, noise and frequency has a personal meaning. These show tension, calm, mystery and also reflection. I needed to express my inner feelings with music, with sounds and I think that every detail describes this instant in my life.”
CREDITS:
Recorded between July 2023 and February 2024, Mysterious Wind is the 7th studio album by the Argentine ambient artist and his first on Projekt Records. All music composed, arranged, performed and produced by Gustavo Denouard (Microscope White Noise).
Reviews Editor –
From Il Circolo Italy
The newest addition to the Projekt Records stable is Argentinian Gustavo Denouard, who makes his debut for the label founded by Sam Rosenthal with his seventh album. The direction of the six tracks that make up the record is identifiable already in the title track placed at the opening: minimalist, rarefied, ethereal sounds like a “mysterious wind” that envelops, lifts and lulls the listener, while maintaining a concreteness that in certain passages recalls the unreachable Popol Vuh.
In fact, to tell the truth, the general approach seems to be definitely oriented toward the original canons composition of the German band, which already in the late 1960s had delineated the boundaries of what was more or less realized a couple of decades later as “New Age.” Denouard’s proposal, however, shows itself to be far from the products pre-packaged for moneyed freaks that characterized most of those productions, emphasizing instead the deep reflection of the 49-year-old musician who, after years spent playing in Rock and Pop bands, called his landing on this kind of compositions “liberating … a medicine for the body and the soul.”
To be listened to at dawn, with the sun’s rays and the morning filtering through the leaves of a forest.
Reviews Editor –
From Chain DLK
Oh, Mysterious Wind, how you slyly breeze in, promising serene reflection but leaving me with the unsettling sensation that the cosmos might be too vast for my petty human concerns. Gustavo Denouard’s foray into ambient drone on his 7th studio album is as personal as it is otherworldly – offering an experience that feels like staring into the void, with the faintest hope that the void will politely look away. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
After spending years tinkering with synthesizers in rock and pop bands, Buenos Aires-based Gustavo finally ditched the middleman (aka structure) and let himself sink fully into electronic abstraction. And thank the ambient gods he did, because “Mysterious Wind” finds him delivering exactly the kind of album that Projekt Records was made for. It’s filled with expansive, atmospheric drones, where each note feels like it was extracted from some haunted, wind-tossed forest in the rural Argentine wilderness. As far as metaphorical isolation goes, Denouard has set the bar high. But is this a sonic meditation on nature’s quiet power – or the soundtrack for getting lost in it? Maybe both.
The opening title track, “Mysterious Wind”, clocks in at 8 minutes and 40 seconds and is pure, uncut drone. The first few moments feel like the aural equivalent of stepping into thick fog. Denouard layers his synth lines with the precision of someone who’s spent countless solitary hours letting the silence speak, and in doing so, he creates an atmosphere that balances perfectly between calming and ominous. The wind metaphor is potent here – gusts of noise swell and recede, always just on the edge of being comprehensible but never quite resolving. It’s like the wind has secrets, and it’s not inclined to share them with you anytime soon.
And then, there’s “Spirits”, where Gustavo shifts gears – or rather, refuses to. The track glides forward with slow, sweeping synth pads, almost mocking the listener’s desire for anything resembling a melody. It’s hypnotic in that “let’s-get-lost-in-the-vibes” way that ambient music junkies crave. Think Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” but if the airport was located in some spectral forest where no one ever boards a plane.
“Cosmic Serenity” is exactly what you think it is – except for the serenity part. The track’s soundscapes feel vast, like staring at the night sky and realizing you’re less than a speck in the universe. There’s something cold here, a sense of endlessness that’s both beautiful and terrifying. This is Denouard at his most cosmic – synths float by like distant planets, and every sound feels suspended in a sort of anti-gravity. It’s gorgeous, but don’t be fooled; there’s an emotional detachment that makes you feel eerily alone, like Gustavo composed this while floating in space, and you’re just catching fragments of his transmissions.
The real surprise comes with “Forest”. You might expect a nature-inspired track to feel grounded, earthy – maybe even peaceful – but not here. Denouard’s interpretation of the forest is haunted, with deep bass drones that rumble like the earth shifting beneath your feet. It’s both ominous and introspective, as if the trees themselves are watching you, silently judging your every move. And as you lose yourself in the murky, dense layers of sound, you can’t help but feel small and insignificant.
“Sky Blue” comes as a bit of a reprieve after the darker moods of the previous tracks, though “reprieve” might be pushing it. The tone is lighter – more open – but still drenched in a kind of somber, meditative calm. It’s like the moment just before dawn, where the sky is just beginning to turn blue, but the weight of night hasn’t quite lifted yet. Gustavo plays with tension here, offering a glimpse of peace but keeping it just out of reach.
The album closes with “Reflection”, a track that feels like the sonic equivalent of an emotional sigh. It’s quiet, contemplative, and feels like Denouard is taking stock of everything that came before. There’s a gentle sadness here, as if the wind has finally stopped blowing, leaving nothing but silence in its wake. And maybe that’s the point – after all the sound and motion, all that’s left is you, alone with your thoughts, staring into the endless expanse of whatever Gustavo wants you to call home.
If you’re looking for hooks, melodies, or any semblance of traditional song structure, Mysterious Wind will leave you out in the cold. But if you’re ready to confront the vastness of sound – and maybe yourself – then Gustavo Denouard has created something that’ll resonate deeply. The album’s emotional and sonic palette recalls the likes of Tim Hecker, Loscil, and even Harold Budd, but with its own distinctly personal undercurrent.
Denouard’s music asks you to sit with it – to take in its hypnotic drones not as background music, but as a mirror for your own inner landscape. And while that may sound daunting, it’s also what makes Mysterious Wind so compelling. It’s a reminder that sometimes the wind – like life – blows hardest when you’re trying to listen. -Vito Camarretta
Reviews Editor –
From Loop
Gustavo Denourd is an Argentine electronic musician based in Buenos Aires who began in music playing the synthesizer in several pop and rock bands. It was in 2020 when he decided to compose and produce his own music.
Mysterious Wind was recorded between July 2023 and February 2024 and is the ambient artist’s seventh studio album and the first one for Projekt Records, an American dark wave, ambient and neoclassical label, founded in 1983 by Sam Rosenthal, aka Black Tape For A Blue Girl. This record company is home to renowned artists such as Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana, Lycia, Alio Die, among other artists.
While Mysterious Wind was recorded, Denourd was living in the countryside, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and it was there where he found silence, and the ideal place to concentrate, reflect and be close to nature. Although the album cover reflects a furious wind, the album – which consists of six tracks – is gentle and navigates through the ambient waters and drones. It reminds me of the synthesizer waves of Will Long, better known as Celer.
This album proposes an immersive journey in which the ambient synthesized lines expand endlessly, generating textures and calm atmospheres that allow the imagination to fly, create stories, evoke memories and images. The drones that hover over the space in which we find ourselves keep us still, observing and appreciating the melodic pads that hypnotize with their dreamlike aura. Especially “Reflection” is a good example of this when its uplifting melodies make this journey more enjoyable. -Guillermo Escudero