ambient
PREMIERE: Piers Thibault stuns with the brief and brilliant ‘Dusk’, announces debut EP ‘Ire’
If you’re reading this, we bet there have been times when you’ve wanted to completely lose yourself in a piece of music. French artist Piers – last name Thibault – is great at producing pieces that evoke that all-consuming longing. His debut EP, Ire, isn’t even 13 minutes long, but it’s an ideal refuge. If …
Track: Ambient explorer Earthen Sea previews the soulful ‘Rough Air’ from his soon come album ‘Ghost Poems’.
Jacob Long (aka Earthen Sea) has a musical provenance that inevitably draws you in to take a look. He’s been a member of the Dischord endorsed, post-hardcore agitators Black Eyes, injected sax and bass to the electro-dub, no-wave work-outs of Mi Ami and since 2014 released less abrasive sounds as Earthen Sea, probing ever deeper …
Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums that explore gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound as Matchess for a number of years now. She began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic stakes. Since that blissful …
Premiere: Brisbane icons Cloud Tangle and Fingerless release split single ‘Eve’/’Villanelle’ through 4000 Records in tribute to Season 4 of Killing Eve.
Ever the promoter of sonic innovation and taste maker extraordinaire, 4000 Records, has rounded up two of Brisbane’s most exciting artists (and perennial favorites here at the antipodean headquarters of Backseat Mafia), Cloud Tangle and Fingerless, for a limited edition split single. The inspiration for this momentous occasion couldn’t be cooler: the release of the …
Premiere: Michael Scott Dawson releases new visuals for the beautiful ambient soundscape of Campestral
Canadian sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Scott Dawson is building towards the release of his new album Music For Listening, out April 8th via We Are Busy Bodies. from it, he’s releasing the second single taken from it, Campestral, and we’re delighted to be able to premiere it right here on Backseat Mafia today. Following …
Album Review: Brisbane’s Noir et Blanc (Amber Ramsay from Cloud Tangle) unveils the ambient classicism of ‘Wallflower Pedestrian’: a beautiful immersive sonic journey.
Noir et Blanc is the new vehicle for Brisbane’s prodigious dream pop wonder Amber Ramsay from the ethereal Cloud Tangle. And ethereal is an adjective that’s going to get quite a run in this review. Where Noir et Blanc departs from Ramsay’s other work is that the music is solely instrumental – a sort of …
Album review: Group Listening – ‘Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol. 2’: essential ambient reworkings with a real sense of place
GROUP LISTENING is a pairing of two very fine Welsh musicians: Cardiff’s Paul Jones, a deft jazz and experimental pianist and arranger who first worked with his partner on this project, Stephen Black, on the latter’s fine and wonky Sweet Baboo project (and is there any kind of Welsh indiepop that doesn’t espouse those two …
Premiere: Michael Scott Dawson releases his love letter to skateboarding with visuals to the ambient guitar work, Two Solitudes
Out in April is the new album from sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Scott Dawson, Music For Listening, out via We Are Busy Bodies. Inspired by a conversation with his 95 year old grandmother, and her observations of birds outside her window. This led Dawson to investigate recordings made several years ago which featured birdsong, …
Premiere: Mat Andasun releases the beautifully evocative ‘Synthetic Bliss’
Taken from his forthcoming synth / spoken word album ‘Full Circuit’, out on January 21st 2022 via Pretty Decent Music, Synthetic Bliss is the new release from British composer and producer Mat Andasun, and we’re delighted to be able to premiere it right here on Backseat Mafia today. Of the album, Andasun writes “This album …
Track: Drew Smith – ‘Whose News’ feat. Isla Craig: the Toronto scene brings us another gem of blissful, ambient synthpop-triphop
BESIDES his other bow-strings playing in Toronto power-poppers Bunny and the heart-hookin’ bubblegum fun of The Bicycles, Toronto’s Drew Smith also fashions a lovely ambient synthpop under his birth name: dreamy, fun, blissful, and very much of an effect with Montreal’s Afternoon Bike Ride. It’s sorta candyfloss brittle and ice-melt pure and futuristic and just …