ambient
Album review: Jim Wallis & Nick Goss – ‘Pool’: immersive, ocean-going, pastoral ambience
MODERN NATURE might be flying under your radar, but the Bella Union band who’ve just one full-length and one-mini album to their name – 2019’s How To Live and last year’s Annual, respectively – are someone you should be wrapping your head around, especially if the post-rock pastoral brilliance espoused by Mark Hollis and Talk …
See: If your android’s paranoid, The Boy From Space’s ‘Positive Affirmation For Robots’ may be just the seasonal tonic
ALTHOUGH nominally hailing from the Wiltshire city of Salisbury, The Boy From Space – the trio of cosmic travellers Marshall Ward, Frant, and SuperDave – have far less earthbound concerns. They’ve just released a new digital EP, entitled Positive Affirmations For Robots, in which they look to provide a little holiday season musical relief not …
Track: Brisbane’s Lite Fails evokes an electronic pastoral bliss with double single release ‘On A Clear Day’ and ‘What The Bellbirds Were Saying’
Lite Fails is the solo work of Australian musician and historian Henry Reese, and the new double singles ‘On A Clear Day’ and ‘What The Bellbirds Were Saying’ are two sides of an ethereal and pastoral soundscape that crackles and bubbles with an extraordinary ambient clarity. ‘On A Clear Day’ has an animalistic sinewy crackle …
See: The ghostly soundtrackery of The Arteries of New York City’s ‘Capable’; the album’s on its way to a full release
NO, AND you’d be forgiven for thinking it with the name they trade under, but the experimental ambient duo The Arteries of New York City isn’t some semi-psychogeographical project arising from dérives across that city from Queens or Yonkers or somewhere in the Five Boroughs; the project instead has its roots our side of the …
Track: Spanish ambient explorers Suso Sáiz and Menhir combine for the deep, pristine drift of ‘Alike’ ahead of their album for Spirituals
HE MAY Not be quite as familiar a name on these shores, but in Spain Suso Sáiz is something of an Eno figure; a pioneer of ambient and minimalist music in the country, he’s released something like 28 albums of beautiful and exploratory music since his 1984 debut, Prefiero El Naranja (‘I Prefer Orange’). He’s …
Album Review: Fluxion – Parallel Moves
Overview: Fluxion continues to carve his own musical path, taking us all together to a personal journey in his inner world, moods and moments, showcasing the importance of being influenced by none other than real life moments, people, expectations, joy, dreams and disappointments. Expressing what comes from the inside, instead of the outside.Creating a more …
EP review: Shida Shahabi – ‘Alvaret (Original Soundtrack)’: Stockholm composer soundtracks a short film of domestic tragedy with drone warmth and acuity
WE LAST encountered that Stockholm-based talent Shida Shahabi in these pages just over a year ago, when she released the soundtrack EP for Jennifer Rainsford’s subtle sci-fi short Lake On Fire; and rather a lovely thing it proved, seeing Shida step away from the piano with which she recorded her 130701 debut Shifts in favour …
See: Matchess invites us to embrace meditative drone and transcend the flesh in the practise of ‘Almost Gone (Excerpt)’
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums exploring really gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound for a number of years now as Matchess. Her journey in this guise 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 …
See: NONEXISTENT pull you below the surface in the ink-black ambient murk of ‘UNTITLED 3 (AUBURN VACUUM)’
NONEXISTENT is the three-waters-meet of exceptional leftfield talents Astrud Steehouder, otherwise of Opal X and Paper Dollhouse; Alex Tucker, whose work as MICROCORPS and Grumbling Fur we’ve had occasion to be beguiled by elsewhere in these pages; and Mancunian-in-London Luke J Murray, known for his work as and with Grimescapes, Iceman Junglist Kru and Stonecirclesampler. …
See: Grammy-winning Swedish producer Olovson steps into the Satiesque with the airy ‘Paloma Blanca’
A MAN who’s made his name and his fortune behind the scenes as one half of the world-bestraddling production dup Jarami, Jacob Olofsson is a name to be reckoned with behind the faders; but he’s stepping out behind a slightly retooled surname these days, entering the placidity and the calm of the modern compositional solo …