One of the traits of what is loosely dubbed as modern classical music is that the classical composition concept serves solely as the base, where other elements are brought in, coming from the musical ideas developed further elsewhere – it could be pop in all its shapes and forms or just a figment of the artists’ imaginations.
That is basically a manner in which Vanbur, a collaboration of Bristol-based composers Jessica Jones and Tim Morrish, seem to be building their music upon their (formal) debut album Of Becoming. Actually, the manner in which the duo were to develop their music could have already been visible/audible with their debut EP Human (2020), and its remix version (2022), including versions by Mogwai, Alexandra…
Category: ambient
The music is calm, the cover is calm, the effect is calm. After releasing four singles over the course of spring, Harbors (Hollie Kenniff & Goldmund) released When We Are Free in the heart of summer. But from what does one yearn to be freed? The answers may vary from person to person, from the physical to the emotional. Having unveiled the stellar For LA project earlier this year, the Kenniffs are keenly aware of the threats posed by prejudice, callous government and fire. Their music – whether solo or duo – has always promoted peace, but has seldom been so intentional. The liner notes suggest the music as the backdrop to everyday activities, while promoting the practice of mindfulness; and the moniker implies safe harbors. Nothing will hurt you here.
a sad song for A. brings together Stefano Gentile, Giulia Dal Vecchio, Gigi Masin, Fabio Orsi, Anacleto Vitolo, and the multimedia project Hiseka to explore emotional states through music, text and photography. Originating from an informal conversation about anxiety, the project evolved into a creative dialogue in which inner experience became shared expression.
Structured around four stages we may recognise – Panic, Anxiety, Light and Dream – each contributor shaped one phase in their own language. Gentile provided imagery, Dal Vecchio translated feelings into words, and the musicians responded with original works reflecting each emotional shift. The result is a thoughtful constellation of perspectives that invites listeners to…
According to Roland Barthes, the event of grief gives way to an absence that paradoxically fills us. “We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.” The oxymoron of becoming full with emptiness. The hollows fill with more empty space. When Richard Skelton lost his wife in 2004, he began to process the tragedy by composing music. He filled the empty spaces with sound. At that time he also returned to his parents’ home in Wigan, where, in his own words, he was “reconnecting with a sense of that childhood wonder, completely refracted through the prism of grief”.
Born in the UK and most recently based in Ireland, Skelton is a multidisciplinary artist: a musician, poet, filmmaker, and writer. He resolves to bury his ghosts and then exhume them,…
…Only a few months ago, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith released GUSH, a vocal synth set packed with perky, romantic, danceable club cuts, with an undercurrent of social commentary. On Thoughts on the Future, the artist returns to the instrumental realm, offering three extended ambient-electronic meditations. The first single, “I Miss the Way You Swim,” is rife with melancholy, easing the way into the new year. Bubbling at the center, the nearly ten-minute piece blossoms into a gorgeous glockenspiel suite. As the orchestral elements enter, one takes a breath and whispers, “Maybe the new year won’t be so bad after all.”
The title track is peaceful and melodic, with percussive textures increasing in density, relaying a feeling of forward movement. Wordless voice…
Having earlier issued ‘t Geruis material on Lost Tribe Sound, LAAPS, Line, and Quiet Details, it was perhaps inevitable that Daniël Jolan would one day do the same on Home Normal. After all, Ian Hawgood’s imprint is a natural fit for the kind of lo-fi ambient the music producer from Belgium traffics in. It’s not the first time Jolan’s brand of dusty music has entered the world, but The Kindest Encounters finds him bringing the style to an advanced degree of artistry. As the album plays, it’s almost impossible not to draw a parallel between it and the nostalgic feeling that sets in when faded colour photographs are viewed. Much as in that case, one feels in listening to his music as if the world presented is both familiar yet at the same time impossibly out of reach.
With For a Moment the Sky Knew My Name, Peter Knight extends his fascination with the porous relationship between body, instrument, and environment into one of his most personal and immersive solo works. The album takes its cue from extended fieldwork and improvisations undertaken near Yeerung River on Krowathunkooloong land, where Knight spent much of his early life. Each of the album’s pieces grew organically from direct encounters with that setting — the pulse of wind against brass, the crackle of heat, the buzz of insects — forming a meditation on sound as both a reflection of and response to place. It is a work of quiet fluidity, at once structured and spontaneous, where texture and tone gradually shape entire topographies of listening.
New Risen Throne (Gabriele Panci) does not release albums often, but when he does, it is an event. His work represents a quintessential sound in dark ambient music over the last two decades – the synths, the drones, and the atmosphere – that others have taken in new directions, such as leaning toward industrial or techno variations. But Panci continues to perfect his art, of which the double album Journey to Reach the Fathers is the latest instantiation.
Here, he combines sustained tonal layers, sweeping yet breathy effects, odd vocalizations (throat singing and chant), electroacoustic elements, and distant booming percussion to create echoing subterranean soundscapes. This produces a full, rich listening environment that…
When Eraserhead premiered in 1977, it didn’t just mark the beginning of David Lynch’s singular career — it rewired the language of underground cinema. A nightmarish journey through industrial decay, existential dread, and fractured identity, the film remains one of the most haunting works ever committed to celluloid. Shot in stark black and white, Eraserhead unfolds like a fever dream — where sound, space, and emotion bleed into one another in an uncanny, hypnotic dance. But what truly sets Eraserhead apart, even beyond its disquieting visuals, is its sound. David Lynch, working closely with sound designer and technician Alan Splet, constructed an aural landscape as vital and disturbing as any of the film’s images. The soundtrack is not built…
Sculptor, installation artist and seasoned improvisor Rie Nakajima has been friends with David Toop for many years, and the two became accustomed to their regular chats – on art, music and food – to the point that when face-to-face meetings were prohibited for a spell, the two transferred their musings to email. They noticed that the style of their back and forth had changed, forcing a level of creative thought that, in Toop’s own words, wasn’t “normal or natural”, and when they reconvened in the Spring of 2022, they realized their reality had shifted. Of course, if you’ve been following either artist you may have already stumbled across last year’s excellent ‘Music for Voilà’, and this set examines their interaction with mic-ed sculptures and small instruments…
Nils Frahm shares a new CD of solo piano music, Night & Day. The CD includes all eleven tracks from both last March’s mini-album, ‘Day’, and its companion collection, ‘Night’.
The album follows Frahm’s latest live release, Paris, which came out in December 2024. With this, he also responds to repeated requests from fans for another CD release.
The tracks on ‘Night & Day’ serve as a reminder that, although Frahm has become widely acclaimed for the intricately arranged, multi-instrumental approach of his most commercially successful albums, he first made his name through meditative solo piano works. These earlier pieces include collections such as 2009’s ‘The Bells’, 2011’s ‘Felt’, and 2012’s ‘Screws’.
In the same way that the legendary label, 4AD had their in-house collective, This Mortal Coil, a revolving door of music makers generally associated with it, so John Michael Zorko gathers around him many of the great and good who orbit the Projekt Records sun to weave together the sonic beauty of that defines his Falling You project.
And it is not just the form that draws comparison to that earliest of British independent labels, the music found on Metanoia, the latest album, could easily have been one of the 4AD stable, back in the day. Metanoia means to change, but more specifically, a transformation forged from adversity, an idea first found in the writing of ancient Greece, and specifically in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which this album takes as…
…This 15th anniversary remaster of ‘Gateway’ includes a bonus disc with eight additional unreleased tracks mostly from the 2010 era.
On Gateway, Erik Wøllo presents the kind of travelog predicted by Joe Meek with I Hear a New World, a soundtrack of a visit to an alien world. The roots of the release are more readily placed in late-’70s space rock and ’80s new age, though, and while Gateway is an enjoyable listen, it’s not very inspiring in feeling like a new launching point for both sound and style. The elegant blend of dreamy synth loops, deep bass tones, soft electric guitar parts, and more simply doesn’t break through into a new, striking synthesis. There’s no question that Gateway is both well-performed and arranged; it’s a lovely sounding effort…
At just over 30 minutes, Birds Drink My Blood makes a statement and then withdraws into the shadows. The second release under this moniker by Bulgarian Angel Simitchiev, the album explores dark ambient textures that are ominous, gritty, and cinematic. Yet, it is remarkable how song-like these tracks are despite being in a genre that typically employs improvisation.
Each piece features repeating themes and motifs – as well as a logical structure – that provide just enough intentionality and familiarity to keep the listener tethered.
As an example, ‘Godhead’ begins with drifting drones, with those in the foreground being harshly textured. As more voices are added, the piece becomes dense and suffocating,…
Sometimes an artist introduces us to a sound we haven’t heard before, and sometimes to a place we haven’t visited. On Sphaîra, Sara Persico does both. The album honors the aptly named Experimental Theatre, one of eighteen concrete buildings designed to showcase the Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli. Unfortunately, when civil war broke out, the project was halted, the buildings left to the mercy of the sea. A UNESCO Heritage site, the domed theatre continues to beguile, though entry is guarded, which makes Persico’s access all the more precious. If we cannot see the dome, we can experience it through her artistic vision. Sphaîra is not only a reflection of the present, but a tribute to history and a sonic story of what might have been.
For two South Londoners, Yawning Portal are oddly enchanted by the American Midwest. Their debut album Anywhere was originally conceived in and around Des Moines, Iowa: a land where AOR rock and country blast out of car speakers on drives across desolate Rust Belt towns and vast Corn Belt farmlands. Jess Mai Walker and Joseph Ware’s artistic and geographic origins seem like a far cry from this distinctly American form of vast nothingness. So why would they travel here to write an electronic album in response to, as they put it, “spending days driving around with no destination… just to get out of the house”? But as a young Ohioan born and raised just outside the Rubber City, these sentiments make perfect sense to me. A drifting odyssey…
Music for Roads is a cross-cultural collaboration between Nordic jazz and indie folk/americana players, including Finnish trumpet player Verneri Pohjola, Finnish americana/folk band Tuomo & Markus, Finnish drummer Jaska Lukkarinen, French saxophonist Sylvain Rifflet and American guitarist and multi-collaborator Marc Ribot. The album is, for us at least, best described as ambient-americana, a term that seems to translate as music for unmade movies that would require an americana-ish soundtrack. What kind of roads, though – and what genre of film – are two very valid questions. Certainly on the opening piece ‘Appalachian Landscape‘ there’s a sudden journey into a wide-open landscape, with folky guitar quickly brightened by expansive…
The artists on this edition are Council of Nine, Northumbria, Alphaxone, Atrium Carceri, Skrika, RNGMNN, Ruptured World, Neizvestija, Planet Supreme, Keosz, Dronny Darko, ProtoU, Gydja, Ugasanie, Burma Project, Primal Era Worship, Sjellos, SiJ, and Kristof Bathory.
…Thematically based on beings from the H.P. Lovecraft universe, these experimental ambient albums typically run roughly two hours as continuous mixes by the label’s artists. It is impossible to know where the work of one musician starts or ends, even as each recording is comprised of several distinct passages.
Ithaqua begins with chamber music accompanied by a sparse rhythm. Soon, however, it turns to slow, pulsing darkness, and segments that…
