Hypnos

Based on recent email communication, it looks like the label and their store are done for good now.

I bought what I could during their final sale but would like to hunt down a few more releases later on when I can.

The label put out plenty of good stuff while they were around.

Hypnos was a great label. Look at it now. Nothing released for two years. I don't know why they keep pretending they are still running it. Lots of promises of projects that never happened. Most of the recent releases have been of little interest to the hardcore ambient crowd.

Anyone who thinks Hypnos releases "New Age" music is off their rocker. Such a preposterous statement.

One of the leading light labels of today's new ambient scene. Though their output has slowed somewhat in the last few years, Hypnos has more than justified its reputation by releasing some of the finest pure ambient releases of the last decade.

The label's output (aside from certain early releases) could hardly be called difficult or purely experimental; most CDs fall along the ambient spectrum that could be appreciated by both fans of deeper Hearts of Space or Fax style music and more rigorous experimental ambient work. That said, much of Hypnos' catalog can be considered equivalent to the best among the lighter style of ambient music.

In my personal opinion, Hypnos was never more vital than in its 1998-2001 period. Recent releases of the last two years have largely tread along the safe lines of purely vaporous synthetic ambient atmospheres and have suffered from a lack of depth as a result. It remains to be seen if the label will stretch out again with more varied and dynamic releases, or if it will remain within its current comfort zone of innocuous tone-float ambient.

I have to disagree with the comment above. How you can define new age or ambient as a genre. Using only the classifications in store is not a good idea, I went to many store where hypnos releases are under ambient and not new age. If you want new age you got Yanni, but in no way hypnos releases are new age, though I think that new age is a subgenre of the ambient music. In most of the releases of hypnos you have to think and search about gears used for the releases and you'll find out that the gears used there are also used in other ambient productions from other artists from other labels.

This label seems to try to convince people that they are a ambient label, when in reality they are another New Age Hearts of Space.
Many artists on this label are in fact New Age artists. Arguments against this are that stores/distributors are the reason why most of these artists are placed in the New Age section (to try to move more product perhaps??). I tend to agree with this to a certain extent, but in the case with Hypnos I feel that this is not the case.
They have a good selection of music to offer and by all means I salute and respect their work. But New Age / ambient is a fine line that seems to be crossed constantly with this label, and mostly ends up on the New Age side.
One of their greatest releases, and now I hear it is out of print, is a collaboration with former Silent Records artists Rod Modell and Michael Mantra.