ambient
Album Review: Jeff Mills – The Trip: Enter The Black Hole
Since the beginning of humanity, man has always wondered about what lies beyond the Stars. The relevance to what and who we are, but also what we will eventually become and where we need to go. And to exercise our minds for such possibilities, the storytelling of impossible adventures can help us with understanding how …
Track/Video : Illusive and illustrious shoegaze duo Belong return to announce new album ‘Realistic IX’.
New Orleans ambient shoegaze duo Belong might come across as determinedly illusive, maybe even deliberately opaque. Their music seems to arrive from nowhere, marked by increasing time voids between each release and then, almost as succinctly, Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones (a.k.a Belong) disappear. Their debut album, the underground classic ‘October Language’ emerged in 2006, …
Album Review: ‘Go-to’ guitarist and collaborator Alessandro ‘Asso’ Stefana delivers a distinctive and tender solo album in his own name.
You could use up a whole review word count with guitarist/producer and multi-instrumentalist Alessandro Stefana’s illustrious CV but some snapshots and name drops will give the flavour. He’s played on albums by Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton (Mondo Cane), Micah P Hinson (I Lie To You), Penguin Café (Rain before seven) and Calexico (El …
Track/Video: Revered multi-instrumental improviser Colin Fisher previews upcoming new album with the spectacular, guitar sculpted ‘Acts Of Light’.
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Colin Fisher has been energising the Toronto music scene and beyond for around two decades now. A virtuoso guitarist, acclaimed sax player, drummer and more, a brilliant interpretive improviser, a boundary pushing electronic artist, Fisher’s work confounds easy definition. He’s played alongside Jamie Branch, Joe McPhee, Braxton, Laaraji and Frith as well …
Track/Video: Exquisite ambient music for a living city – Hong Kong based composer Olivier Cong announces new album ‘Tropical Church’.
A label with discernment is what you need to help you navigate the oceans of ambient electronica. Lawrence English’s Room40 provides such a service, “a beacon of sound…ringing out from the deepest south” as it’s strapline goes. So any transmission coming in from them is reassuringly one to tune into. Cue the news of the …
Album Review: Simon Bailey’s elegant instrumental album ‘Moonscapes’ etches beautiful shapes in the firmament
Simon Bailey used to be in early 2000s band Pony Face – a band that also had Anth Dymke, a regular on our review pages from his solo work and collaborations with Golden Fang and Jo Meares. Through his label Pony Face Records, Bailey has just released an exquisite collection of instrumentals in his new …
Album Review: Harvestman –‘Triptych: Part One’ : a breath-taking opening to an epic drone-folk series.
Steve Von Till (aka Harvestman) has always been a deep thinker who aims to reach beyond the surface level with his music. Probably more widely known as guitarist/vocalist/lynch pin of seminal post metal pioneers Neurosis and their experimental avant offshoot Tribes Of Neurot, his wider creative intentions have necessitated the release of a vibrant catalogue …
Track/Video: Argentinian sound artist QOA announces new album ‘SAUCO’ with the vibrant detail of ‘LIQUEN’.
LA based, Argentinian QOA (aka. Nina Corti) is a digital sound artist and illustrator whose practice is centred on listening and tuning in. That doesn’t mean QOA’s attention is solely drawn to other conventional tunes or conversations but instead they seek out the auditory stimuli of the non-human world, plants and animals, streams and undergrowth, …
Album Review: Adam Wiltzie – ‘Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal’: The composer of definitive ambient music provides an album for your deeper thoughts.
You sometimes get the feeling American composer Adam Wiltzie, despite instigating so much proclaimed ambient classical music for the last three decades, prefers the shadows to the spotlight. Whether intentional or not, Wiltzie’s key artistic contributions have usually been as part of a prolific partnership. Firstly he formed the seminal Stars Of The Lid with …
Track/Video : Guitarist/composer Ezra Feinberg previews new album ‘Soft Power’ with the spellbinding flow of ‘Future Sand’.
NY based guitarist and composer Ezra Feinberg when talking way back in the mid-2000s about the music of his band Citay, was unapologetic about their surprisingly quirky reference points. Feinberg and Citay drew from AOR polish and MOR lushness, new age to pop polarities, without the pretence of needing to conform to what a San …