On Su Shaw’s self-titled debut as SHHE, the sea seemed to flood into her songwriting unbidden, imagined as it was by the water at her home in Dundee. When Shaw moved on to the ambient suite of DÝRA, set around the fjords in Iceland, she welcomed the water in.
At the same time, Shaw picked up a somewhat nomadic existence as an artist, moving from place to place, capturing field recordings and establishing environmental installations that flowed with the very currents and tides of the water itself, finally ending up in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, where THALASSA took shape.
Its six movements chart an ambient seascape that is heightened and alarmed. Processed voices mimic breathless gasps and sharp intakes,…
Category: ambient
For fans of electronic music, 1977 represents a sacred frontier. It was a time when synthesizers were massive, unpredictable walls of cables and knobs, and live performances were high-wire acts executed entirely without a safety net.
Among the most legendary documents of this era is Tangerine Dream’s performance at the Place des Arts in Montreal on April 9, 1977, during their iconic first North American tour. Performed by the definitive “Sonic Trinity”- Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann- this breathtaking two-hour set captures the absolute zenith of the Berlin School of electronic music, serving as the final, radiant hurrah of their classic lineup right before Baumann’s departure.
Originally broadcast by Montreal’s CHOM-FM…
The collaborative projects of Austrian experimental double bass player, guitarist, and sound artist Werner Dafeldecker (of Polwechsel) and Australian sound artist, composer, head of the Room40 label Lawrence English, have consistently concerned themselves with processes of transformation. Their new sound work, Fathom Tides, is made of English’s field recordings collected from diverse coastal environments, with some preparations, later treated extensively by Dafeldecker, who added subtle layers of electronics.
Fathom Tides is an LP of incremental change. Best heard as a single, slowly-developing piece, the album reflects the pace of nature over that of humanity. The earth is in no hurry; the trees are not multi-tasking; the streams do have…
Virga III continues the series established in the early 2020s by two of Eluvium‘s most purely ambient releases. Virga I was created following a temporary evacuation from the artist’s home due to a snowstorm, and Virga II emerged from a dream sequence during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to escape all the unspeakable horrors of the world, Virga III takes refuge in small ecosystems and other natural spaces. As such, it’s a lighter and more calming effort than Virga II, though it still has its haunting moments.
“The Fires at Night” feels like a safe space far away from danger, with a supremely calming melody drifting in and out. “Remains” is desolate and forlorn, however, and “Hallucination II” revisits the lurching malaise of the opening…
It’s no knock on SUSS’s excellent music to admire the strategy behind their success. Their first savvy move was to embrace the kind of pat labeling that many artists try to avoid. Self-branding as “ambient country,” they made the tradition of diffusing American roots music through a new-age filter sound sexy and modern and algorithmic. They played to the playlists and got results, and were branded as pioneers in the process.
SUSS expanded their brand under the rubric Across the Horizon, which consists of a podcast; a compilation series featuring fellow travelers like Mark Nelson of Pan American, William Tyler, Marisa Anderson, and Chuck Johnson; and now a revolving all-star jam at the Big Ears Festival, a booking that’d be a feather in any upscale…
The combination of tabla (tuned Indian hand drums), santur (Iranian dulcimer) and harp does not pop up often, but hearing them together on the new trio album from Montreal’s Shawn Mativetsky, Amir Amiri and Sara Pagé, you’ll wonder why it’s not more common. Though hailing from different countries and traditions, the santur and the harp have intriguing tonal similarities, the former bringing out the latter’s metallic tactility, and the latter bringing out the former’s gossamer ripple. The hopping, polyrhythmic bounce and ricochet of Mativetsky’s drumming emphasizes the percussive nature of both instruments, adding to the music’s harmonic breadth, while the resonance of the strings bring out the more melodic aspects of the tabla. Metamorphose, as its title…
Gabriella Smart introduces listeners to the term Parasymbiosis, asking if two separate organisms can share a living space. The parable can be applied to many situations, but Smart concentrates on the earth and the universe as a whole
…Parasymbiosis was recorded live at 2024’s Music Meeting Festival in The Netherlands. Smart plays the Electric Cristal (which creates amplified sounds through manipulation of glass rods), and is joined by Kasper Toeplitz on bass and electronics, and Didier Casamitjana on percussion and electronics. Toeplitz and Casamitjana’s contributions do not become obvious until later in the album (gritty and menacing, no less), though they may have been present throughout.
Across eight numbered and self-titled tracks…
Midge Ure released A Man of Two Worlds, a new double album. His first album of new material in 12 years sees the former Ultravox frontman divide the offering into two parts. The first half, World One: Music, consists of eight instrumental pieces, while the second half, World Two: Songs, features eight ‘proper’ songs (with vocals).
This concept is said to be partly inspired by the time Midge spent during lockdown listening to instrumental music, and some of the work he heard whilst presenting THE SPACE on Scala Radio. He began writing what became a selection of instrumental pieces — “music shaped by reflection, uncertainty, and a strange kind of quiet”.
The eight vocal songs which form the second part of the album, are described as…
Despite its somewhat generic name, jazz trio The Setting have created something striking and quietly astounding on their self-titled debut album. The band, consisting of bassist and composer Eivind Opsvik, keyboard player Elias Stemeseder, and guitarist Will Graefe, have brought to fruition Opsvik‘s love of 1970s and 1980s synthesizer music, ECM solo guitar albums, and experimental art pop. But as the saying goes, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
While there are certainly touchstones of previous subgenres and legendary artists – ranging from Brian Eno to Joe Zawinul to Ryuichi Sakamoto – all over this beguiling record, the result is a sound that is unlike anything else most ears have heard. The overall experience is decidedly…
A tribute to a tribute? During the final mix sessions for Peggy Suicide, Cope invited some musicians to Ramport Studio to celebrate the album’s completion. He called this late-night-party recording session E-Man Groovin’ – a tribute to the Jimmy Castor Bunch song of the same name, and the album’s mascot. Since Cope’s old digital tapes were damaged, this new tribute was created using recycled loops and samples from the original. Fifteen grooves imbued with the distinctive Peggy Suicide spirit – Kraut, Baggie, On-the-One – rescued from the archives of Oblivion! Yowzah!
Tracklist shows 15 tracks. However, CD only has 14 tracks. This is due to two of the tracks segueing together as one track. Track 12 is 5:55 long. “Rizla Deutschland” actually lasts…
Arcade Fire’s Open Your Heart or Die Trying, released for Record Store Day 2026, is a cinematic and ambient reimagining of their 2025 studio album Pink Elephant. Produced as a “score to an unmade film,” this experimental project strips away the band’s traditional indie-rock anthems in favor of meditative, synth-heavy soundscapes.
The centerpiece is the sprawling 8-minute “Director’s Cut” of the title track, which sets a vaporous tone for a record focused on atmosphere and hypnotic loops. While critics remain divided on its necessity, the album serves as a deep-dive companion piece for fans, leaning fully into the quiet, restrained creative direction the band established during their collaborations with Daniel Lanois.
Ana Roxanne‘s second Kranky release is far more personal and emotionally direct than her previous recordings. While her earlier records could easily be categorized as ambient or perhaps new age, and had a certain element of playfulness along with their meditative qualities, Poem 1 is stark and unobscured, doing nothing to disguise Roxanne’s heartbreak and vulnerability. Nevertheless, her music is still highly hypnotic, and the arrangements draw the listener in and make it easier to focus on her lyrics.
On brief opener “The Age of Innocence,” she expresses the desire to travel and find home over glacial synths and mournful strings. The piano-based “Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45” is so intimate that it sounds like…
Yu Su’s spidery path across the globe has shaped her work at every step. First there was the humid downtempo she started making in the mid-2010s in Vancouver, inspired by the house music of that city’s legion of stoners and terminal chillers. As the fog lifted over the next few years, you could hear hints of her Chinese upbringing in tracks like “Little Birds, Moonbath,” with its shimmering textures and pentatonic melodies. Su’s debut album, Yellow River Blue, made the connection explicit, inspired by a tour across her home country playing the music she first discovered and developed in Canada. A breakthrough in popularity led to bigger rooms and bigger tunes, Ibiza gigs (and cooking residencies), and an eventual move to London; her DJ sets gradually took a slightly…
To truly listen is not a passive gesture but a radical, embodied act of attention. Christina Vantzou’s The Reintegration of the Ear offers a slower presence: one rooted in care, intimacy, and reflection. Composed by the Greek-American composer between 2023 and 2025 after being commissioned by INA GRM as a multi-channel acousmatic work, The Reintegration of the Ear unfolds as a durational electroacoustic suite, meticulously arranged by Vantzou and performed with Irene Kurka (voice), John Also Bennett (flutes, synthesizers), Roman Hiele (double bass), and Oliver Coates (cello).
…Their play is fluid and instinctive, requiring each performer to listen to each other for small cues and inspired turns. Glissandos rise as waves crash against shores; the tides reflect…
On her latest album, Delphine Dora is concerned with temporality, its pace and pressures it produces. L’ineluctable pulsation du temps finds the French pianist, composer and improviser summoning a gentle collection of piano cycles with drone undertows. The record took shape during a time of intense touring, while Dora was simultaneously busy engaging with writings on acceleration and alienation by Hartmut Rosa, a “sociologist of speed”.
According to Rosa, capitalist societies are programmed for constant economic growth, which forces us into a rat race, approaching the world instrumentally and as a competition. It may sound too esoteric for a German sociologist, but Rosa proposes a different mode of…
Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin are kindred spirits, with their musical inclinations leaning towards improvisation, experimentation, and the testing of the limits of musical forms.
Branciforte, based in New York, constructs and produces process-based music – often implementing electronic keyboards – through his prolific label greyfade. Dumoulin, from Belgium, is recognized for his role in redefining the Fender Rhodes electric piano as a 21st-century instrument through extensive electronic manipulation. A chance meeting more than a decade ago led to the two of them recording what would become ITERAE, a record that brings together their passion for imbuing the Rhodes with electronics and processing.
Browse the live listings in Tokyo long enough and you’ll inevitably stumble across a party themed around modular synthesizers. Whether it’s an annual event at a multi-level nightclub (Festival Of Modular) or an intimate set at a cozy neighborhood venue (Modular Wednesday at Shibuya Otto), the itinerary remains the same-artists plugging away in the moment, tinkering ad hoc for a live audience.
Ephemeral & Fleeting: Modular Music of Japan celebrates the transient nature of the country’s contemporary modular scene. Curated by accomplished modular artist Yumi Iwaki, these 10 songs are a chronicle of the diverse sonic approaches taken by synthesizer aficionados, and the creative rewards that await those steadfast enough to master…
There are so many ways that musicians can currently cooperate, without necessarily having to be physically together in the same studio, room, basement or whatever, and we got a clear example here with Developments, the album that is, well, developed by Six Missing & Patrik Berg Almkvisth.
Behind the Six Missing moniker is Austin, Texas-based ambient composer and sound designer TJ Dumser, while Almkvisth is a musician/pianist and actor from Stockholm. To create this seven-part set of ambient movements, Almkvisth kept sending improvised solo piano pieces in their raw form to Dumser. Then, as their PR notes, Six Missing then expanded each one into a fully realised scene, cycling them through tape machines, routing them into modular systems, and…
While it sounds like it might be the work of some mysterious intergalactic orchestra, Unbalance is the work of two musicians performing with little to no advance direction. Brazilian experimental guitarist and composer Carlos Ferreira and Korean performer and composer Dasom Baek combined their adept skills in ambient/drone, avant-garde, musique concrète, and free improvisation to create an album of four pieces entirely through uninterrupted improvisational flow.
…In addition to the electric guitar, Ferreira uses live electronics, working with an open-source software program called ppooll, which enables audio signal processing, performance, and routing. Baek, meanwhile, performs on traditional Korean wind instruments – jungju, daegum,…
Fans of the darker side of modern musical forms, particularly Swans, have Jarboe somewhere in their minds and surely in their music collections. As a solo artist, Jarboe has made a series of career-defining recordings, 15 in all, before Sightings, her latest. Yet, it took her some eight years between The Cut of the Warrior (2018) and her latest offering, so what is there to expect?
Well, the musical direction is the one Jarboe followed from the beginning of her career, and in that respect, there’s nothing new to report. Yet, what did change is that the quality of her songwriting and performance has grown for the better as time passes. There is a sort of assurance that comes along with experience that exudes here, with practically no lapses in…