ambient
TRACK: Paradise Cinema – ‘Possible Futures’: exhilarating Afro-ambience
JACK WYLLIE, the musician best known to those of us with a deep and abiding penchant for the leftfield, the beautiful and the widescreen as a member of The Portico Quartet, has announced a new solo project under the nom-de-musique Paradise Cinema, a full album under which alias will be out on October 9th. Paradise …
SEE: Neil Cowley’s ‘Eureka Pulse’: solo piano grace from new triptych of EPs
NEIL COWLEY is someone who has lived and breathed music his whole life. He took on a Shostakovich piano concerto at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall at the age of 10; not so many years later he developed a reputation as a go-to pianist and keyboardist in British funk, working with Zero 7, Gabrielle and The …
TRACK: Ana Roxanne’s ‘Suite Pour L’invisible’: haunting and lush
KRANKY. It’s a label that this unerring step with beautiful and complex ambient music, one which it’s been plying now for a quarter-century and more. The Texan imprint has just unveiled its latest signing: and once more they’ve struck the proverbial gold. Los Angeles-based Ana Roxanne comes into the fold on the back of one …
ALBUM REVIEW: Ezra Feinberg and John Kolodij – ‘Ezra Feinberg and John Kolodij’: four deep acoustic atmospheres
YOU MAY know the names involved in this self-titled collaborative LP, brought to you by the twin instrumental and exploratory talents of Ezra Feinberg and John Kolodij; you may not. But if you have any interest in the more textured zone where post-rock has bumped into its good friend, post-classical, even out-folk; the world of …
ALBUM REVIEW: Fritz Pape – ‘From My Guitar At Homes’: inventive sonic studies for the ambient-minded
FRITZ PAPE began his musical journey under the alias Zijnzijn Zijnzijn!, under which banner he undertook to create impenetrable, even frightening, waves and barrages of guitar, right up in your face a la Swans or Boredoms. With an eye to the trail laid by Glenn Branca, he’s also been known to put together ensembles of …
NOT FORGOTTEN: The Irresistible Force – ‘It’s Tomorrow Already’: the loud, great finale of British rave-ambient
“IT’S TIME to lie down and be counted”: so goes Mixmaster Morris’s brilliant call to very relaxed arms for the 90s’ British ambient scene. It was a manifesto banner that he jointly flew with The Orb’s Alex Paterson in that era, 1991-95, when the appetite for strange interweavings of found sound, Krautrock washes, environment recordings, …
ALBUM REVIEW: Less Bells – ‘Mourning Jewelry’: absolutely affecting drone-post classical forged in loss
JULIE CARPENTER, who records for Texas’ home of boundary-pushing out-rock and drone beauty Kranky, has journeyed from musical academia at the University of North Texas, through session work as a violinist for bands such as Eels, to finding her own musical self as Less Bells. She released a graceful and beautiful set, Solifuge, for the …
ALBUM REVIEWS: Andrew Elaban – ‘Variegated Tributary’/Claire Rousay – ‘Tuufuhhoowaah’: by turns, handsomely dronesome and fiercely plunderphonic
WHITED SEPULCHRE is one of those loving little curators of out-musics that play nuanced and important roles in our lives: their guiding light is that these creations are out there, finding the ears of those who are receptive, who will swoon, who’ll gather little aural treasures to their chests. The label has been operating out …
Track: Soundwalk Collective With Patti Smith – Knowledge Of The Self
With their new album Peradam due for release on September 4th, 2020 via Bella Union, Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith have shared new track “Knowledge Of The Self” and an accompanying video that features editing and a visual collage by Anastasia Ivanova. Of the track, Patti Smith says: “We have to, in order to be free of all of the things that we are attached to, even ideas of ourselves, …
SEE: Less Bells – ‘The Fang’: fashioning beauty from grief for Kranky
YOU may well have heard Julie Carpenter, if you have not yet heard of her. A graduate of the University of North Texas, multi-instrumentalist and composer Julie has been called upon to add violins to work by the Eels and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, amongst others. But she has also been creating deep, ambient drone …