ambient
ALBUM REVIEW: Eternell – ‘Imagined Distances’: fine, glimmering ambient drone
SOUND IN SILENCE is a label concerned with the liminal and ambient fringes of music. Operating out of Athens for nigh on a decade and a half, it can boast releases by artists such as blissed-back Italian shoegazers Port-Royal and out-hiphop producer and founder of Anticon, Odd Nosdam, among its catalogue of strictly limited physical …
Track: Erland Cooper – A Nightingale Sings Outside Our Window
To highlight Mental Health week; BBC Radio 6 Music’s Chris Hawkins invited composer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper to write a piece of music that highlights how music and sound can help our mental health. The finished track features field recordings by 6 Music listeners made whilst in lockdown, Paul Weller, Galya Bisengalieva (Solo Violin), Robert …
TRACK: bathe in the sun of PELA’s ‘South Of’
OFF THE back of their debut single, “You Got Me” last month, South London’s PELA have shared their second outing, “South Of”. It’s a beguiling, dazed bliss of a track, with an underscore of Rhodes shimmer and a lazy break shuffling forward, courtesy Olly Shelton; south-of-the-river chanteuse Hannah Coombes drips honeyed sun over the top. …
Premiere: Tristan Welch – Asset / Defect
Washington D.C. experimental artist Tristan Welch has returned with a new single Asset / Defect, out tomorrow and taken from the cd of the same name and we’re delighted to premiere it today on Backseat Mafia. Welch specialises in creating soundscapes using electric guitars and effects, and has active since the early 2000’s, his outlook …
EP: Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – I can hear birds
Written in the first weeks of Isolation, ‘I can hear the birds’ is the new EP from Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs’, aka Orlando Higginbottom. As can be ascertained from the title, Higginbottom was influenced by birdsong, louder than ever in the lockdown days, sending musical greetings cards to friends. Orlando takes up the story “….On …
Bob Holroyd – Hiding In Plain Sight
Composer and sometime collaborator with the likes of Coldcut, Four Tet, Francois K and Mogwai, Bob Holroyd has released his first new material in two years, a track called ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’, out now. Written about isolation and the loneliness people suffer even in the social media age we live in, it feels like …
Album review: Windy & Carl – Allegiance and Conviction
DEARBORN, Michigan, isn’t necessarily a name that trips off the tongue when you think of musical powerhouses; but this little satellite city of Detroit is a quiet mecca for fans of the more blissed-out, ambient end of the post-rock spectrum. It’s where you can find Stormy Records, the secondhand collectors’ vinyl joint run by husband …
Track: Jon Hopkins – Singing Bowl (Ascension)
Jon Hopkins has shared a new release – Singing Bowl (Ascension) from a new series of ‘Meditations’ which is available to stream now. The piece3 is part of a specially curated 24-hour long playlist for Spotify, designed with deep meditation experiences in mind, the piece perfectly fits into Jon’s transcendent selections. He created the piece by …
Album Review: Roger Eno and Brian Eno – Mixing Colours
Brian is unarguably the better known of the Eno brothers, mainly for his metamorphosis from priapic glam-peacock synth boffin to visionary producer and ambient music pioneer. Roger though has discreetly carved out a career as a creator of instrumental music with an impressive back-catalogue of over thirty albums. This album isn’t the first time the …
Album Review: The Orb – Abolition of the Royal Familia
When George Harrison wrote ‘It’s All Too Much’ after encounters with LSD, he was voicing that feeling of overwhelming-ness the drug induced in him. That same feeling would later be experienced by late 80s/early 90s ravers, and led to Alex Paterson inadvertently inventing the “chill-out room” to sooth their melting heads. One album that greatly …