ambient
News: Hugar announce a new album, ‘Rift’, for January; come explore the delicate, glacial pulsing of ‘volt’
HUGAR, the Icelandic modern compositional duo of childhood friends Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson, who we last examined in these pages in regard to their arthouse film soundtrack The Vasulka Effect (read about that, here), are set to return in the first, budding days of 2022 with an album entitled Rift: an album written with …
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, an acoustic mini-album, Sketches and the full-length Resolve – we really haven’t heard nearly enough from Poppy Ackroyd in recent times; but then what with …
Album Review: Nigh/T\mare – Katharsis
Overview: From the depths of an ancient dark underworld, Nigh/T\mare has conjured a powerful offering of burning emotions that light the fires of one’s demons and invite thebeginning of an epic journey through the unknown. Via Thrènes Records from Switzerland, this offering is on point with their consistent releasing of top quality industrial/experimental techno. Entitled …
Album Review: Portico Quartet – ‘Monument’
I can still remember the kerfuffle Portico Quartet sparked off at Womad 2012…Where’s the hang drum? What’s this, loops? Is this dance music? For a crowd expecting the pastoral acoustic soundscapes of their first two records, the Mercury nominated ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ and follow up ‘Isla’, the sweeping electronica fused with upfront …
Album Review: JESSICA’s ‘With Reverie’ has a gorgeous ghostly presence filled with longing and loss.
With a delicate piano filigree dusting a series of gorgeously quiet and reflective songs, the new album from Sydney artist JESSICA has the elegance and enigma of an Eric Satie piece fronted by Dusty Springfield. ‘With Reverie’ is essentially a series of haunting vignettes deliciously encapsulated into (mostly) three minute interludes, filled with emotion and …
Track: Leo Abrahams’ ‘Harm Organ’ refracts solo guitar through a hall of ‘tronica mirrors
LONDON-based guitarist, composer and sonic manipulator Leo Abrahams has shared another track of out-six string journeying from next month’s album for figureight, Scene Memory II. it’s called “Harm Organ”, it’s a real hall of mirrors, and you can listen to it below. An alumnus of Marylebone’s Royal Academy of Music, and besides being one half …
Premiere: New Zealand’s enigmatic Birds of Passage gives us an exclusive listen to new album ‘The Last Garden’ before its official release
We are very honoured to provide you with an exclusive listen to the new album from New Zealand’s mysterious Birds of Passage, ‘The Last Garden’, ahead of its release on Friday, 5 November 2021 through Denovali Records. Other than being the nom de plume of New Zealand based poet and songwriter Alicia Merz, there is …
Premiere: Wade Jackson releases the electronic dreamy fugue of ‘Sensationalized’
Wade Jackson is a multi talented songwriter, musician and film director whose new track ‘Sensationalized’, which we are proud to premiere today, is a mesmerising soundscape that bubbles and flows along with an electronic thrum. Wild synth sounds ebb and flow over the circular undercurrent, before launching into an exuberant flange half way through the …
Track: John Thayer explores percussive ambience and field recordings on the beautiful ‘Kites’
NEW YORK percussionist, audio engineer and all-round musical polymath John Thayer, fresh from two collaborative, cassette-only albums last year – Untangling The Ghost, on which he sparred with reeds player Stank Zenkov, and Mountain Rumors, in tandem with Craig Schenker – is not about to depart this grinding year of our lord 2021 without dropping …
Album Review: Land Trance & Aging produce utter cinematic-sonic immersion with ‘Embassy Nocturnes’
Very rarely does a record manage to capture a spectrum of cinematic detail in it’s profoundly illustrative composition, spinning yarns across it’s runtime like neighbouring scenes. However – with far greater ambition and grace than any crassly conceived concept album – the new collaborative project between Land Trance and Aging does just that, envisioning a …