ambient
ALBUM REVIEW: Various artists – ‘Ambient Layers’: a state of the art, 20-track journey on 7K!
Ambient Layers is quite a trip through the current state of the blissful/emotive sonic arts. There’s so much to burrow into here, experience deeply. Set it on repeat and let it guide you through a whole, amniotic diurnal cycle. It’s really very great.
TRACKS: Erland Cooper – ‘Landform’: a digital companion to the Orkney trilogy
ORCADIAN soundscaper and composer Erland Cooper has today released one final digitally streamed companion piece to accompany his beautiful Orkney Triptych. Take a listen below. Its a seven-track, 35-minute ambient accompaniment to his most recent album, Hether Blether with the tracks entitled “Cairn I” to “Cairn VII”, for which he collaborated with artist, producer and …
TRACK: Late Night Final – ‘Thank You’: J. Willgoose steps out from his broadcasting role
YOU ALMOST certainly know J. Willgoose as one of the bespectacled whizzkids behind the ever brilliant Public Service Broadcasting. But now he’s decided to invest in a little extra-curricular activity away from his six-string anchorman role in the nation’s favourite broadcaster, and has announced a solo album for Play It Again Sam in the guise …
Premiere: Cahill/Costello reveal beautifully ambient jazz in debut single, ‘lo II’
Two of Scotland’s most inventive musicians, classical/contemporary guitarist Kevin Daniel Cahill and drummer/composer Graham Costello (Graham Costello’s STRATA, AKU!, Corto Alto) have got together to record, and we’re delighted to premiere the stand alone track (and debut single) ‘lo II’, named after one of Jupiter’s moons, here on Backseat Mafia today. Mixing up elements of …
SEE: Caroline Polachek – ‘The Gate (Extended Mix) – ethereal bliss with stunning visuals
IN CELEBRATION of the first anniversary of her debut solo album, Pang, Caroline Polachek, former singer with the lovely Brooklyn lo-fi poppers Chairlift, has released a blissful extended mix of “The Gate”, one of that album’s standout tracks. Watch the blissfully ethereal video for the ten-minute new mix below. It unfolds at a blissful pace, …
NEWS: Bing & Ruth release digital remix EP of ‘Species’: hear a harp-laden take on ‘Badwater Psalm’
AS WE approach the end of this accursed year and begin to summate the best of it – and more than any year as a species, thank the good lord above for the human gift for creative abstraction and catharsis – it’s an absolute dead cert that Bing & Ruth’s wholly immersive drone study Species …
PREMIERE: See the video for Hedia’s ‘Quartet 1’ – beautiful, ambient viol resonance
ALBUQUERQUE-based Bryce Hample, one-third of future sampledelia explorers REIGHNBEAU, also makes beautiful post-classical ambience as Hedia; and today he’s premiering the nature-minimalist video for “Untitled 1”, a lovely essay in viola de gamba (or viol), and piano, in which Bryce explores the luxurious reverberation of that instrument. We’ve embedded the video below; fans of Rachel’s …
ALBUM REVIEW: Daniel O’Sullivan – ‘Electric Māyā: Dream Flotsam and Astral Hinterlands’: transporting and dazzling shortform art
Electric Māyā is a collection of short stories; of microfiction. Take your time and don’t breeze through; you’ll be peering through windows into 18 other little spheres. Dazzling shortform
SEE: RON – ‘What Can The Feeling’: ambient grace from the Pacific Northwest
SAM WENC and Carl Laukkanen, while resident in that cultural hub in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, got together and, sharing an interest in the textures and spaces of slow-moving ambient electronica, got together and laid down three albums’ worth of exploration of sonics as RON. Together they developed a language of sound at the interstice …
LIVE REVIEW: Erland Cooper, The Barbican, London: bringing the soul of Orkney to the heart of the capital
TO THE Barbican, that beautiful, brutalist residential and cultural hub in London EC2: for a gig. A gig! Livestream or not, it’s a red letter day in 2020. Ah … gigs. Aren’t they wonderful, beauteous things. Okay, it’s a livestream event, but look at it out there; am I in a position to choose? Are …