Ambient / Minimal / Drone

Piano, handmade electronics, tenor sax, couple strings. I was after something tangible. Sounds you could roll around in your palm and consider different, complex, and flawed textures. Feel the weight, maybe even smell them. This desire is probably a reaction to the dissociative nausea from the constant simulacra of these early 2020s. Like deliberately going barefoot to feel yourself grounded in a real place, as I read Andrea Needham did when facing charges for disarming a warplane. Anyway, my methods to achieve these sound "objects" was to use a healthy amount of acoustic instrumentation with all its familiar sonic unevenness, to free sounds from rhythmic or thematic structure, and to give plenty of blank space around each note so the ear can reach in and pluck it out. A berry from a bush, an eyelash from a friend's cheek. Really though, a lot of the time now I just want to listen to the birds. There are plenty on here. Mourning dove, titmouse, helicopter. KF, Dec. 2021

Substrata was the third studio album by the Norwegian electronic artist Biosphere, released 25 years ago by All Saints Records in London. In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it at number 38 on its list of the 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time. Here are ten alternative versions picked from the Substrata recordings sessions that took place between 1995 and 1996. David Stubbs´review of the original album in Melody Maker ,July 12th 1997: Biosphere, aka Norwegian Geir Jenssen, is transmitting from a cold, polar outpost of the imagination. "Substrata" is the best ambient album I've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty, the music of a man who's stared too long and too hard at the Northern lights, a music of distant rumbles, tremors underfoot, stray radio signals, yawning chasms and indistinct, grainy images in the half-light when the mind begins to play tricks. "Poa Alpina" reminds me of recent, frightening TV footage of vast chunks of iceberg cracking and falling away into the sea under the duress of global warming. As for "The Things I Tell You", imagine what Oasis would have sounded like had they been born Eskimos. "Sphere Of No Form" is shot through with a frantic peal like the Mayday song of the world's last whale and, best of all, "Kobresia" looms with a vast, mournful, symphonic motif, like the ghost of the Titanic. Chill out has never been this chilling.

On June 3rd Gondwana Records present ‘Next Time Could Be Your Last Time’ – the debut album by Forgiveness, AKA Jack Wyllie, JQ and Richard Pike. Described as “not really jazz, not really new age, not really ambient or electronica”, instead they welcome you into a synaesthesia-inducing technicolour fantasy, full of wondrous emotive beauty. This genesis began with the sharing of music, burgeoning friendships, and the mutually-inspirational benefit of the collective power of a group dynamic, with each spurring the next on to heighten their already expansive skills. Intertwining the acoustic, electric and digital, utilising instruments and tools from across the decades, their synthesized Shangri La is a place where craftsmanship meets musicianship, even including sections notated on sheet music. The mood whilst recording, however, was one of loose freedom and enjoyment, with parts displaying a light-hearted playfulness. A world where shiny electronics meet flute and sax motifs, subverting them into something new. Jack Wyllie is best known for his work with Portico Quartet, Paradise Cinema and Szun Waves as well as collaborations with artists such as Luke Abbott, Adrian Corker and Charles Hayward. Whilst JQ has released on Boxed and Lo Recordings, with his music also remixed by Loraine James, Sun Araw and Foodman. Richard Pike has had multiple records on Warp as a member of PVT, collaborated with Modeselektor and Ital Tek, recorded under his alter-ego Deep Learning, and founded the tape label Salmon Universe, all whilst composing scores for TV drama. Wide-ranging influences on the LP include 70s era ECM and Miles Davis, Spencer Clark/Star Searchers, Ansel Adams, Steve Reich, H Takahashi, Don Slepian, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’, Michael Gordon’s ‘Rushes for 8 Bassoons’, Sir Simon Rattle’s documentary ‘Leaving Home’, Horoshi Yoshimura, Ulla Strauss and Disasterpeace, plus new developments in vaporwave and software experimental. Hitting the centre at the ven diagram of these interests, the record converges the trio’s individual sound worlds into something singular. Primarily purveying a sense of endorphin-flushed tranquillity, they build synthetic, bucolic, lysergic landscapes, which although imbued with processed plasticity also contain multi-stranded depths of textural field.

Substrata was the third studio album by the Norwegian electronic artist Biosphere, released 25 years ago by All Saints Records in London. In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it at number 38 on its list of the 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time. Here are ten alternative versions picked from the Substrata recordings sessions that took place between 1995 and 1996. David Stubbs´review of the original album in Melody Maker ,July 12th 1997: Biosphere, aka Norwegian Geir Jenssen, is transmitting from a cold, polar outpost of the imagination. "Substrata" is the best ambient album I've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty, the music of a man who's stared too long and too hard at the Northern lights, a music of distant rumbles, tremors underfoot, stray radio signals, yawning chasms and indistinct, grainy images in the half-light when the mind begins to play tricks. "Poa Alpina" reminds me of recent, frightening TV footage of vast chunks of iceberg cracking and falling away into the sea under the duress of global warming. As for "The Things I Tell You", imagine what Oasis would have sounded like had they been born Eskimos. "Sphere Of No Form" is shot through with a frantic peal like the Mayday song of the world's last whale and, best of all, "Kobresia" looms with a vast, mournful, symphonic motif, like the ghost of the Titanic. Chill out has never been this chilling.

AOTN proudly present a new solo outing from long time friend & contributor to Athens of the North, Other Lands aka Gavin L.Sutherland. Channelling his considerable improvisational skills to evoke notions of island life, his concept was to create something that could work equally well in the wilds of the Western Isles as in the sunnier spots of the world that we all yearned to escape to at that time. The more he played with this idea of groups of islands, of archipelagos the world over, the more it also became about people themselves experiencing isolation as individuals, while still feeling a sense of togetherness with others in the same boat. Working a little at home but mainly here at Athens of the North studios, he would come in each day over the course of a few weeks and just hit record, playing at times almost without mind. Sometimes the mood would call for keys, strings, or drums through delays for days and days. Often, the music would happen by chance as much as by design. One rule he tried to adhere to was to not overthink things, capturing moments honestly with minimal editing or digital processing. What we’ve ended up with is a beautiful, spontaneous, timeless and honest meditation on what it is to be at once both alone and part of a larger whole.

AOTN proudly present a new solo outing from long time friend & contributor to Athens of the North, Other Lands aka Gavin L.Sutherland. Channelling his considerable improvisational skills to evoke notions of island life, his concept was to create something that could work equally well in the wilds of the Western Isles as in the sunnier spots of the world that we all yearned to escape to at that time. The more he played with this idea of groups of islands, of archipelagos the world over, the more it also became about people themselves experiencing isolation as individuals, while still feeling a sense of togetherness with others in the same boat. Working a little at home but mainly here at Athens of the North studios, he would come in each day over the course of a few weeks and just hit record, playing at times almost without mind. Sometimes the mood would call for keys, strings, or drums through delays for days and days. Often, the music would happen by chance as much as by design. One rule he tried to adhere to was to not overthink things, capturing moments honestly with minimal editing or digital processing. What we’ve ended up with is a beautiful, spontaneous, timeless and honest meditation on what it is to be at once both alone and part of a larger whole.

Black Sea was the follow-up album to Venice (Touch, 2004), and was originally released in 2008; Stylus Magazine's Nick Southall wrote: "Fennesz does with sound what Stan Brakhage did with film, altering its very fabric and texture, employing disorder and error as forms of communication and expression. He forces you to learn a different method of perception and interpretation, to look beneath the chaos that seems to govern the movements of life and find the patterns beneath." Fennesz's career has come a long way since Instrument, his debut for Mego in 1995, and his first solo album Hotel Paral.lel which followed in 1998. Endless Summer (Mego, 2001) brought him to a much wider audience and Venice underlined his mastery of melody and dissonance. His songs usually embody the skillful application and manipulation of dense sonic textures with a genuine feel for the live, and real-time. Black Sea features guitars that rarely sound like guitars; the instrument is transformed into an orchestra. Fennesz lists the elements used to make the compositions: "Acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, electronics, computers and live-improvising software lloopp." On "Glide," Fennesz duets with New Zealand's Rosy Parlane, whose work is also released on Touch. Fennesz also teams up with eMego artist Anthony Pateras whose prepared piano features on "The Colour of Three." Fennesz pushes his work into a more classical domain, preferring the slow reveal to Venice's and Endless Summer's more song- based structures. Jon Wozencroft's artwork makes visible this carefully hidden world resting beneath the surface of "the first impression." A series of shots, taken in quick succession as the tide recedes, reveals a world of specific activity only visible at a particular time and place, histories appearing and disappearing.

"Minimalism meets rave pentatonics"
★★★★ – The Guardian - Experimental Contemporary Album of the Month

"A fiercely focused electro-acoustic masterclass, full of life-affirming zeal." ★★★★ – MOJO

"Akusmi crafts an often-jubilant, forward-thinking sound from a vocabulary of past futures" – The Quietus

"Delightful pointillist songs from this London artist where sound appears in short tonal bursts to create musical constellations." – New and Notable, Bandcamp

Akusmi is the new project moniker of French-born, London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Pascal Bideau, who signs to the new Tonal Union imprint for the release of his album ‘Fleeting Future.’ With its hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences, and in its quest for optimism in the face of unknown and limitless possibility. ‘Fleeting Future’ stands apart as an inventive and inspirational debut.

The creation of the album’s richly colourful and multi-layered sound world was originally inspired by Bideau’s journey to Indonesia, where he immersed himself in traditional Gamelan and gong music. Many of the themes, motifs and melodies on ‘Fleeting Future’ seed from the ‘Slendro’ scale, one of the essential tuning systems used in Gamelan. However it is not musical scales, but scales as in the size or extent of things that most fascinates Bideau, specifically he explains; “the compelling way things dramatically change when you shift from any given scale to another.”

The album connects directly to nature and the wider world in its evocation of perceptive shifts and transitions from microscopic to macro scale, as evidenced by the opening title track ‘Fleeting Future’, on which a simple dotted saxophone line morphs and billows into synths, brass and strings, indicating the musical voyage that lies ahead. Like the start of a journey or adventure it is full of anticipation, its arborescent growth conveying the optimism of the unknown and of limitless possibility. The album centrepiece ‘Neo Tokyo’ is a vibrating, ebullient mass of colliding elements which feels like zooming in to the electron level, as it teeters on the edge of chaos. The title is a reference to Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, a dizzying work of art set in a sprawling futuristic metropolis.

‘Yurikamome’, meanwhile, is an imaginary soundtrack inspired by Bideau’s yearning to visit Japan which he fuels by watching Youtube videos of drives and rides through Japanese landscapes and cities. “It’s amazing” he adds, “that we have the ability to access almost anywhere in the world and see what it’s like, that people document it and upload it. It’s never going to be any replacement for the real thing, but with places that really touch you, it works.” The track is named after a Japanese monorail train line which rides from Shinbashi to Toyosu, a last journey that feels like a new beginning.


‘Fleeting Future’ was composed and recorded by Bideau between 2017 and 2019 in his North London studio and features additional contributions recorded in Berlin by Florian Juncker (trombone), Ruth Velten (saxophone) and regular collaborator Daniel Brandt of Brandt Brauer Frick (drums / electronic percussion). Having been living through uncertain times, one thing that keeps spiralling into the unknown is the future, about which Bideau leaves us with a final thought:

“The future is fascinating: It is constantly readjusting to new events. I feel we left a linear approach to the future to enter an arborescent one where all the data and information we have about what could happen is exponentially ever-growing. Following a branch might allow you to glimpse into what it may become, but the evolution of the whole picture might very well render the prediction totally obsolete, and even meaningless. In that sense, there is not one future but innumerable ones all cancelling each other. That’s what makes it fleeting.”

‘Fleeting Future’ will be the first release on the new London/Berlin based Tonal Union imprint, founded by Art director and curator Adam Heron.

Akusmi — ‘Fleeting Future’ is released on Tonal Union Records on June 24th 

Second outing from Jaeger and O’Rourke following the release Wakes on Cerulean on Editions Mego in 2017. Covering a vast terrain with delicacy and poise this new release unveils a spectral showcase for all manner of deep abstraction. The first side positions itself somewhere between stoned komische synth and more nuanced electroacoustic tactics, all weighted by a melancholic undertow. The second side builds on the tension of the former as an undulating drone teases all variety of matter to rise and fall amongst the foreign space it inhabits. The effect creates an enormous sense of deep space before subsiding into a smaller more anxious flickering world. All manner of machines fold into play; digital machines, industrial and analogue machines. The seemingly random yet ordered nature of events is reminiscent of the behaviour of the natural world providing this machine driven release a convincing organic feel. Whether invoking mirrors, distant galaxies or a pond of frogs it is a delightful challenge to focus and locate what is nature and what is nurture. To play this loud is to immerse oneself in a fascinating journey which carries the listener through an array of dizzying emotional states.

Delivering the long overdue follow up to their brilliant 2015 outing, Arco, the duo of Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke return to Die Schachtel with Immanent in Nervous Activity. Understated and elegant – enlisting the contributions of Eiko Ishibashi and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto – across the album’s two sides Di Domenico and O’Rourke slow time, deftly weaving tension into restrained sheets of tonality, texture, and harmonic dissonance, producing a startlingly beautiful intervention with the temperaments of experimental sound practice that shifts the borders of electroacoustic music and high minimalism. Issued on vinyl in a limited deluxe edition of 400 copies, housed in a sleeve with an original artwork by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano and complete with a large format poster, Die Schachtel is thrilled to deliver another defining statement by one of the most exciting partnerships in the contemporary landscape of adventurous sound. While less than a decade apart in age and equally diverse in the range of practices they have embraced over the course of their respective careers, Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke each represent the creative high points and ambitions of two very different generations. Initially emerging in Chicago during the late ‘80s and based in Japan since the mid-2000s, for more than three decades O'Rourke has carved a relentless path through the field of experimental sound, creating a body of work - hundreds of albums deep - that refuses any form of stasis and obligation to genre or idiom. He is an artist driven by a singular quest, his endless curiosity driving him to constantly forge into uncharted, visionary realms. Italian born and Brussels based, since his appearance on the scene during late ‘90s and early 2000s, Giovanni Di Domenico has constructed a striking solo practice that bridges numerous forms of improvised and electroacoustic music, all the while rigorously working within various ensembles - Abschattungen, AufHeben, Bonjintan, Cement Shoes, etc. - and intimate collaborations with Akira Sakata, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Chris Corsano, Joe Talia, and others. Di Domenico and O’Rourke have retained a regular and fruitful working partnership over the last decade, collaborating within the groups Bonjintan and Delivery Health, as well as a handful of jointly billed ensembles, but their 2015 LP, Arco - an investigation into waiting and patience as means toward musical form - was the first to encounter them as a duo, and marked an unquestionable high point within this collaborative body of work. Seven years on, their latest outing, Immanent in Nervous Activity, picks up where its predecessor left off; a second chapter informed by the territories of creative exploration that each has traversed since. Immanent in Nervous Activity rides the razor’s edge between bristling electroacoustic wizardry and the constrained structures and harmonic interplay most often encountered within musical minimalism. Begun in a studio not far from O’Rourke’s home in Japan with Di Domenico simultaneously playing piano and Rhodes organ, as the sessions gathered steam - O’Rourke’s deft hand processing and delivering electric interventions - the duo was joined intermittently by Eiko Ishibashi on flute and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on snare drum, radically expanding the pallet of sound sources at their disposal. In its final form, produced via a rigorous and lengthy process of mixing, Immanent in Nervous Activity operates in two movements. The first rests largely in acoustic realm, with Di Domenico’s fluidly percussive piano and organ lines offering structure and harmony to the delicate textural interventions of Ishibashi, Yamamoto, and O’Rourke. Together they collectively weave a hypnotic tapestry of tonality and texture that inexplicably bridges the challenges of avant-gardism with the pure pleasure of pop. The second movement - constructed by O’Rourke from the material generated by the sessions - shatters form to an elemental and sprawling state, slowly distilling the remnants into an otherworldly, sonorous ooze that fully departs the earthy zones for pure, electroacoustic abstraction. Over the glacial evolution of its side-long duration, tension builds as material sources and the presence of each artist’s hands draw in and out of focus, droning and abrading within a vast expanse of pointillistic nature that renders itself subservient to the sweeping force of the whole, seemingly rethinking the terms and possibilities of electroacoustic music in real time. Joining the conversant vision of two of the most striking voices within the field of contemporary sound, Immanent in Nervous Activity is issued by Die Schachtel in a very limited edition of 400 copies on high quality black vinyl, sleeve printed in Italy in deep black and metallic silver on extra matt white heavy cardboard, including a black/silver limited "zepelin" 30x90cm poster, original artwork + design by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano.

Amid massive global paradigm shifts Dave Hartley (aka Nightlands) became a father twice over and left his native Philadelphia for Asheville, where the pace of daily life is slower and it's easier to maintain a zoomed-out perspective on modern life. From the newfound refuge of a studio he built using the bones of a barn attached to his hundred-something-year-old house in the mountains, Hartley has tailored a collection of well-crafted pop rock, pointedly titled Moonshine. Guided by some of the harmonic sensibilities that have helped make The War on Drugs a force in modern music, Moonshine combines immaculate-yet-dense vocal stacks and billowy clouds of effected keyboards with classic songcraft, revealing previously unseen acreage in the unfurling dreamscape that is Nightlands. The surrealistic album art by Austin-based illustrator Jaime Zuverza depicts an archway opening to the stars over the surface of an idyllic sea flanked by both moon and sun. Similarly, Moonshine reveals portals within portals leading to ever deeper places in Hartley's vocal-centered labyrinth. Hartley lays out the narrative of Moonshine on its masterfully sparse opener, "Looking Up." "Take your family to the mountains," he sings, "Hide them safely; pray for mercy, and easy fictions..." Throughout the album, there are plenty of buoyant high moods where the pitter-patter of drum machine and humming digital organ hints at Hartley's low-key tropicalia streak, but lyrics such as these anchor the dreaminess in real-world sorrow and resignation. Nowhere are these sentiments more apparent than on the title track, a nearly acapella recitation of "America the Beautiful" that poignantly hovers over a mirage of soft keyboards before dovetailing into Hartley's own words about the hypocrisy of the American dream. "This was never intended to be an overtly political record" he admits. "I have so many friends who are able to process the frustration of current events gracefully or with wisdom or in a nuanced way, but I often find myself just consumed with anger about it all. I decided to just let that come out, and it manifested itself lyrically." Moonshine's wide-eyed, utopian instrumental backdrops provide sharp contrast to Hartley's lyrics, which sting even harder within the sweetness. "With You" follows with full-on pop romanticism, as a rolling synth bass line and a decelerated drum machine ground the breezy arrangement. The track departs after an accumulation of warbling keyboard textures give way to "Blue Wave," an angelic instrumental vignette that deepens the mood while allowing the listener to reflect on Moonshine's earlier chapters. The slowly anthemic "No Kiss for the Lonely" takes poetic aim at xenophobia beneath a canopy of chiming bells, kalimba-like textures, glassy vocoded passages, and a massive chorus derived almost entirely from Hartley's own voice, exemplifying the nucleus of his creative process. "I spend ninety percent of my studio time building these vocal stacks with sort of endless vocal layering and lots of speeding up and slowing down of the track, overdubbing at different speeds and with different microphones," Hartley details, "and I really perfected that, I think, on this record." In terms of instrumentation, Hartley pared things down as much as possible, choosing to allocate all of Moonshine's density to his vocal harmonies, the layers of which number in the hundreds on some songs. "People sometimes ask me what's in my vocal effects chain, gear wise" he muses, "but honestly it's just a matter of having put in thousands of hours obsessing over the blend of these stacks, honing the craft." Even in light of the album's vocal emphasis, Hartley's history as a bassist brilliantly beams through Moonshine, giving effortless and sprightly movement to songs like "Down Here," which also features an extended section of saxophone lent by his Western Vinyl labelmate, Joseph Shabason. In addition to Shabason, the album hosts a short list of remote collaborators including four of Hartley's bandmates from The War on Drugs, Robbie Bennet, Anthony Lamarca, Eliza Hardy Jones, and Charlie Hall, as well as exotica virtuoso Frank Locrasto (Cass McCombs, Fruit Bats), and producer Adam McDaniel (Avey Tare, Angel Olsen). Hartley was forced to keep the guest list small out of the necessity of pandemic isolation, coupled with his move to a smaller city, all of which challenged him to do most of the album's heavy lifting right down to the mixing duties, resulting in the most independent effort of his career. By that measure, Moonshine is also the clearest image yet of Dave Hartley as a person and creator.

From 1970s Hawaii on to modern day New Jersey, Don Slepian has enjoyed a reputation as one of new age’s most respected and technologically-advanced synthesists. Slepian’s 1980 landmark Sea of Bliss is frequently cited as one of new age’s greatest albums, and is one of the genre’s most legendary tape-only recordings. Two side-length Alles synthesizer tracks transport listeners to personal paradises for relaxation, rest, focus and reset.

Both a marketing firm and metaphysical mission, Valley of the Sun synthesized style and spirituality to produce an extensive catalog that at once defines and defies new age music. Founder Dick Sutphen worked with tireless devotion to spread a message he believed could change the world for the better. This 18-track overview of VOTS’ fertile 1977-1990 period includes music from Upper Astral, Robert Slap & Steve Powell, David Naegele, David Storrs, Steven Cooper, and Gloria Thomas, a 24-page booklet with extensive liner notes, J-card scans, and a hint of Sedona sand. Subliminal hypnosis likely.

The diminutive Peter Barclay was that guy in early ’90s Oakland, the eccentric with the most style, the most talent, the local magician. This self-taught musical wizard recorded at home and produced two barely-released albums, 1990’s dreamlike Acceptance and 1992’s synth pop What Kind Of World, winning over the few who heard them. But fame outside his small circle was not to be, and Barclay was lost in the late-’90s crest of the AIDS epidemic. Rediscovered for a new generation, this is queer music at its finest… Welcome to the world of Peter Barclay.

Inspired by the infinitely numbered harmonies transmitted by Vista, a benevolent being from a distant dimension, Iasos broke ground for a new age of electronic sound manipulation. His was pioneering work—done from a bohemian boat-slip home office—on some of the first commercially available synthesizers and, on stage, into the kaleidoscopic heart of psychedelic-era concert visuals. As life-affirming and attuned to spirit as Iasos' soul portraits were, prestigious psychology departments heard in them the tones humans hear at the precipice between life and death. Before ambient and New Age were so named and codified, the “Paradise Music” of Iasos (represented here by 13 selections transmitted between 1975 and 1985) brought Earth-transcriptions of a vast and galactic soundhealing to a planet much in need.

A unique dialogue between the electronic textures of Saint Abdullah with the live drums of Jason Nazary (Anteloper).

Saint Abdullah consists of Tehran-born brothers Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh, who have been exploring a diverse palette of sounds over their releases to date, including collaborations with Eomac on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label, and Model Home on Purple Tape Pedigree, as well as their own duo album on Important Records.

Jason Nazary is a drummer and composer from Atlanta and based in Brooklyn. Fascinated by the intersection of acoustic and electronic music, Jason has been a force in New York's creative music scene for over a decade. As well as his own solo work he also co-leads a number of ensembles, among them the dystopian electro noise duo Clebs with singer Emilie Weibel, and until recently Anteloper (International Anthem), an improvising modular beat shredding duo with the much-missed Jaimie Branch.

Malcolm Pardon Live at Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor (The New Black) Documenting his captivating performance for Semibreve Festival, Malcolm Pardon presents a live EP and accompanying film featuring songs from his 2021 album, Hello Death. Semibreve is amongst the highest regarded experimental festivals in the world. Taking place in Braga, Portugal every October since 2011, the event has a strong focus on ambient and classical approaches to electronic music presented in astounding settings. Malcolm Pardon was invited to perform at the 2022 edition, on a Saturday afternoon in the unique 20th Century Catholic architecture of the Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor. With an upright piano, a loop pedal and a small set of synths, Pardon delivered pensive, plaintive renditions of compositions from Hello Death which seemed to draw from the solemn surroundings and rise to the expectation of a musically engaged, attentive audience. On ‘Unsettled Beginnings’, the undulating loops of Pardon’s piano work unfurl with patience over time before teasing energetic crescendos, while the electronics provide subtle embellishments around the edges. Elsewhere the grainy tension of ‘Blood In Water’s opening or the evocative climax of ‘Silent Rumble’ see the synths taking precedence as Pardon explores the wilder edges of his sound. At all times, the music moves with poise and poignancy, truly a product of the moment in which it is played. Music from Pardon’s performance will be released on The New Black as a five-track EP in digital and cassette editions, while a full high-definition concert film hosted by Semibreve Festival will also be available to watch online.

Tenderly propelling and full of haunting melodies: Studio Mule re-issues Sakura Tsuruta’s so far digital only, self-released debut album “c / o” from november 2022. An evocative first long player by Tokyo based artist, who was trained in classical piano during childhood, played with brass instruments, studied music production, and is today active as a composer, live performer, and versatile dj. With “c / o” she expressed her personal history in a fluid, around 43-minute long light flooded, yet dark-ish musical vision. eight profoundly composed tracks, melding complex rhythms with emotional airs, tripping arpeggios, and ghostly sounds, slightly influenced by some of her fa-vorite artist like björk, holly herndon, or kaitlyn aurelia smith. “c / o is a love letter for the experiences, people, and memories i had in the last two years that i spent producing this album. i also like that the letter “c” looks like an incomplete circle, whereas the letter “o” is a full circle.

Anthony Naples grounds his sound in more elemental and emotional components with expansive effect on a sublime 5th album certain to stoke hearts of Echospace, Ulrich Schnauss, and The Orb. Part responsible in the past decade for bringing a gauzier feel to US club music with his 12”s for Mister Saturday Night Records, TTT, and his Proibito and ANS labels, Naples grasp of loose but insistent house templates were instrumental in reshaping perceptions of the sound toward lo-fi, indie-, and ambient musics alongside peers such as Huerco S. ‘orbs’ , as the title implies, is a logical step farther into lush sentiments of ambient music in the long, glistening contrails of The Orb and their early ‘90s ilk. It smudges cues from new age, dubby, and shoegazing strains of interest into a satisfyingly weightless and slightly grubby trip where one can practically feel finger grease in the grooves and strings and the day’s sun on its neck. The salted soul lope of ’Moto Verse’ and chiming, fuzzed-out keys of ‘Orb Two’ channel Alex Paterson & Thomas Fehlmann via the eternal charms of N.o.W., before it really begins to melt outwards in ‘Morph’ and along proper lines of shoegaze melancholy in the utterly gorgeous, thrumming baseline and mind wipe chords to ’Silas’. Shimmers of Ulrich Schnauss abound on ‘gem’, and leave us heart-in-mouth like Echospace’s precious works with Modern Love on ‘Ackee’, where he takes on a dub-house lilt that carries thru the slow-disco of ‘Scars’ and the album’s most club-ready treat ’Strobe’, before signing off with the perfectly humble yet idyllic tones of ‘Tito’ and ‘Unknow’.

Sacramento, CA duo Blank Gloss’s third album, Cornered, is an exquisite statement of pop ambient starkness, an album that oscillates between lush beauty and spare melancholy. It follows from their 2021 debut for Kompakt, Melt, an album that saw Morgan Fox (piano, synths) and Patrick Hills (guitar) aligned, loosely, with the cosmic pastorale of the ‘ambient Americana’ movement. Cornered feels like a significant step forward, though – by peeling back the layers of their music, they’ve revealed both its restful core and its solemn gravitas. It is unendingly lovely, but with something disquieting at its centre. Cornered was recorded quickly, over two days in December 2020. There’s nothing rushed or haphazard about the album, though; everything has its place, with each sonic element contributing profoundly to these nine miniature dioramas. It signals change, quietly but perceptibly, through the way the duo sculpts their material, building out of loose improvisations that morphed into songs. While there was no plan in mind when Blank Gloss settled into the studio, Fox recalls that “right away we realised that things were sounding and feeling a bit different than any of the sessions we had previously.” That difference can be heard in the increased amount of space Blank Gloss gift to their sound sources. Some of the most moving moments on Cornered come when Fox and Hills strip everything back – see, for example, “Crossing”, which sets pensive piano across a shyly humming drone and quiet arcs of guitar, recalling the driftworks of Roger Eno. Curiously, the album’s distinctive shape and mood develops, at least in part, from a change in instrumentation, with Hills using a MIDI pick-up on his guitar. “This resulted in making things happen a lot quicker,” Fox says. “It also helped create what I think is a bit more sombre, dark feeling to some of the songs.” Elsewhere, on songs like “Salt”, the piano tussles with flecks of guitar, single tones sent out to mingle with the stars, like Morricone at 16 RPM, while Cornered’s centrepiece, the eleven-minute “No Appetite”, lets long arcs of electronic texture breathe and sigh, tangling together in a cat’s cradle of bliss. Throughout, it feels as though the music is blossoming as you hear it, like watching time-lapse footage of flora in bloom. But perhaps the most seductive thing about Cornered is the sense you get, listening, that the music was something unexpected, a visitation. “It almost felt like we weren’t dictating where the music went and how it sounded,” Fox agrees. “We were just there in a room together in December and these sounds were happening, and we were lucky enough to be recording the process.”

Time bends for Imaginary Softwoods, the solo guise of producer, songwriter, and synthesist John Elliott. Though he’s working on new recordings daily, Elliott’s process for the construction of his albums moves at a much different interval, stretching out over months of considerate listening, revision, and waiting patiently for the right combinations and clashes of elemental forces to materialise on their own. The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods continues Elliott’s practice of zeroing in on what he wants to say with an album over the course of countless sessions that span multiple years, this time paying even more attention to locating the emotional through-line that connects the various pieces. The eleven-piece album vibrates at a low, unbroken cycle through all of its articulations. The bubbling neon dots of “North of Roswell,” double vision stumble of “Mr. Big Volume,” underwater music box trickle of “Portable Void,” and clear headed Arctic daybreak drones of “Diagram of the Universe” are all linked by a gentle, fluid hum. The brief moments of anxiety and long stretches of calm both feed back into the same center of gravity, becoming conjoined reflections of one another as they cycle through. After bending to find this specific universal frequency, time evaporates altogether, and longer zones like the glimmering “Almond Branch” become indistinguishable from Elliott’s signature miniatures, some of which stick around for less than a minute. The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods is a document of the universe as we comprehend it, designed to vanish as soon as it is felt.

Let yourself go with the overwhelming musical output of Argentina’s very own Melopea Discos, in a selection of songs that explore fusion with an air of mystery and a side of exquisite sensitivity across 11 carefully curated leftfield synth pop, experimental folk and ambient tracks. “Viento Sur” has been compiled by Argentine DJs and collectors Bárbara Salazar and Alejandro Cohen (dublab) based in Buenos Aires and Los Angeles respectively. Most of the songs are reissued here for the first time and many of them were previously unavailable on vinyl. Includes a 4-page insert with liner notes and photos. Remastered sound.

He has collaborated with such giants as Ry Cooder, Vampire Weekend and Moses Sumney. Sam Gendel is one of the biggest talents in the current L.A. independent scene and has become a very popular saxophonist, who has also sketched his own unique sound in his jazz trio Inga. Sam Gendel is one of the biggest talents in the current LA independent scene, and is now a very popular saxophonist, blending keywords such as fourth world, hip-hop, jazz, psychedelic, ambient, and meditative, and cultivating a new world in the free air of LA. The album was recorded in his hometown in California with two guest musicians, Gabe Noel and Philippe Melanson. The album features jazz standards such as Miles Davis' "Freddie Freeloader" and Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," arranged in a psychedelic, outsider's world. It's an unorthodox sound that would be out of place in New Jazz, which is probably one of the most interesting forms of music today.

Before I’m gone I’d like to see us turn the corner and give up being spoilers of the land . . . In 1975 Wallace ‘Wally’ Smith Broecker published a paper that popularised the term ‘global warming’ and against a backdrop of change and environmental uncertainty, a musical concept album was commissioned. ‘Wilderness America / A Celebration of the Land’ - is a musical exploration of our place within the cycle of living things. All compositions were specially commissioned for the album and blended with natural sounds recorded in the wild – lending the entire project a conceptual air that still feels fresh today. The journey begins with the sun rising in the atmospheric haze of 'Dawn' - a track composed by new-age innovator Iasos. Gospel singer Walter Hawkins soon drops in with the soulful but ever so funky 'Metropolis' backed by a heavy array of session musicians with Patrick Gleeson, Ed Bogas and Tom Salisbury all adding their own misty magic to the album. David Riordan is the sorcerer conjuring up many of the compositions and also takes vocal duties on the evocative 'Mountain' and the climatic 'Before I'm Gone'. ‘Wilderness America / A Celebration of the Land’ was born when environmentalist Emily DeSpain Polk assembled a group of California residents to participate in a groundbreaking conservationist project. Christening the group SWAP (Small Wilderness Area Preservation) Emily needed funds and began a project to produce a promotional nature based music album. To acquire the financial backing Emily would need to source a musician of some calibre. Contacting Cliff Branch from ‘Warehouse Sound Co.’ she was told the man she was looking for was David Riordan. David Riordan had been around the music business for several years, first with The Yankee Dollar, then Sugarloaf and then Sweet Pain, he saw huge success with the single 'Green Eyed Lady'. David had worked on Cliff Branch’s 'Warehouse Sound Co. & Friends' albums and then released his solo album, 'Medicine Wheel'. But bored of touring he made the move to more concept-driven albums. First with ‘Christmas in San Francisco’ and then, in quick succession, 'Wilderness America, A Celebration Of The Land'. Riordan, along with Peter Scott, a music producer friend in San Francisco, began piecing together an idea for the album. They brought in Ed Bogas to do string arrangements and Tom Salisbury to conduct. David had also asked his friend Patrick Gleeson if he knew of any R&B/Gospel singers in the Bay Area, and they soon added gospel singer Walter Hawkins into the mix. Other than the track ‘Metropolis’, which was recorded in LA, the rest of ‘Wilderness America, A Celebration Of The Land’ was recorded and mixed by Richard Beggs at the San Francisco studio of Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was filming ‘Apocalypse Now’ at the same time – so in between studio sessions, the musicians were able to view the seemingly never-ending film rushes arriving from the Philippines. Eventually, the record produced by David Riordan and Peter Scott drifted onto the radar of vinyl obsessives and selectors as several of its key tracks began popping up on mixtapes and sales lists. It wasn’t long before this privately pressed, art-funded masterpiece became something of a holy grail for collectors. At long last, a re-issue of this masterpiece is now available on EBALUNGA!!! Records. Paul Hillery - May 2022 Paul is a heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one, who’s handpicked compilation albums have been released on the labels BBE and RE:WARM - he is also the curator at Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours