ambient albums Archives - Backseat Mafia

Album Review: Yann Tiersen – Rathlin from a Distance | The Liquid Hour; a immersive two part journey from solo expressive piano to urgent electronics

On Ninnog – out now via Mute Records, Yann Tiersen delivers an ambitious and deeply personal double album that journeys from delicate, introspective piano meditations to full-bodied electronic eruptions. Split…

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Album Review: Tapani Rinne & Juha Maki-Patola – Open: exquisite jazz electronica that restores and inspires.

Some records arrive that make you wonder if there is much value to writing about music. ‘Open’ by the Finnish ambient jazz partnership of reedist Tapani Rinne and composer/producer Juha…

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Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence

WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums that explore gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound as Matchess for a number of years now. She began in 2015 with the…

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Album review: Group Listening – ‘Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol. 2’: essential ambient reworkings with a real sense of place

GROUP LISTENING is a pairing of two very fine Welsh musicians: Cardiff’s Paul Jones, a deft jazz and experimental pianist and arranger who first worked with his partner on this…

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Album review: Jim Wallis & Nick Goss – ‘Pool’: immersive, ocean-going, pastoral ambience

MODERN NATURE might be flying under your radar, but the Bella Union band who’ve just one full-length and one-mini album to their name – 2019’s How To Live and last…

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Album review: Joel Vandroogenbroeck – ‘Far View’: a curated, cosmic library set from the Belgian psychedelic scion

A MUSICIAN who ventured far in both life and his chosen creative form, Joel Vandroogenbroeck is maybe not a name that trips with ease from your lips; unless of course,…

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Album review: Poppy Ackroyd – ‘Pause’: solo piano pastoralism excellently captures a life lived this past year

WITH four albums proper, so to speak, under her belt – Escapement and Feathers from further back last decade, and a brace for what’s now One Little Independent in 2017,…

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Album review: Afternoon Bike Ride – ‘Afternoon Bike Ride’: a magical future pop journey to soothe and seduce a frazzled mind

A MEETING of delicate pop like minds: musician-producers David Tanton (aka Rhoda/Tender Spring), Éloi Le Blanc-Ringuette (aka Thomas White), and Lia Kurihara (aka LIA) met on the fertile Montréalais music…

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Album review: Cahill/Costello – ‘Offworld’: contemplative dubspace, ambient and post-rock shimmer that steps gloriously out of time

KEVIN DANIEL CAHILL and Graham Costello, guitarist and drummer respectively, first set off on the path that would lead to them wedding as a musical act with an oblique and…

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Album review: Bruno Bavota – ‘For Apartments: Songs And Loops’: protection against those days of lockdown in warm piano vignette and glorious modular sweep

WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough…

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