ambient
News: Kato Hideki & Kramer search for ‘Tranquility’, set album for August
The visual accompaniment for the first taste of Kato Hideki and (Bonner) Kramer‘s collaborative album pictures someone sitting at the end of a dock, gazing wistfully out into the sea. It’s that sort of meditative introspection that ‘Tranquility’ taps into, a quietly moving ambient piece that’s easy to get lost in and over far too …
Album Review: Qoa – SAUCO: The Argentinian sound artist’s ambient hymn to a living landscape.
LA based, Argentinian Qoa (aka. Nina Conti) is a digital sound artist and illustrator who focuses on tuning in and responding to the non-human world. That involves the composer’s serious engagement physical and imaginary, with plants and animals, streams and undergrowth, winds and weathers, and from this starting point developing a musical connection with the …
Track/Video: Icelandic composer/multi-instrumentalist Davidsson previews his emotional debut album with the restorative ‘On Thin Air’.
Revered Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds’ new OPIA project (a part festival, part musical community, part record label kind of thing) is adding another artist to its roster to keep emerging Costa Rican pianist Sofi Paez company. They’ve just announced that Icelandic composer and musician Davidsson will release his debut solo album ‘Lifelines’ through their portal …
Album Review: Ezra Feinberg -‘Soft Power’: sensational music of gentle persuasion from the New York guitarist/composer.
There is a cosmos of ambient instrumental music out there, so finding something with a distinctive sparkle, which really adds to the dimension can be time consuming. This is where Ezra Feinberg, the Hudson Valley multi-instrumentalist and composer often sidles into the picture. Founder member of San Fran new age psych band Citay, where Feinberg …
Album Review: Jeff Mills – The Trip: Enter The Black Hole
Since the beginning of humanity, man has always wondered about what lies beyond the Stars. The relevance to what and who we are, but also what we will eventually become and where we need to go. And to exercise our minds for such possibilities, the storytelling of impossible adventures can help us with understanding how …
Track/Video : Illusive and illustrious shoegaze duo Belong return to announce new album ‘Realistic IX’.
New Orleans ambient shoegaze duo Belong might come across as determinedly illusive, maybe even deliberately opaque. Their music seems to arrive from nowhere, marked by increasing time voids between each release and then, almost as succinctly, Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones (a.k.a Belong) disappear. Their debut album, the underground classic ‘October Language’ emerged in 2006, …
Album Review: ‘Go-to’ guitarist and collaborator Alessandro ‘Asso’ Stefana delivers a distinctive and tender solo album in his own name.
You could use up a whole review word count with guitarist/producer and multi-instrumentalist Alessandro Stefana’s illustrious CV but some snapshots and name drops will give the flavour. He’s played on albums by Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton (Mondo Cane), Micah P Hinson (I Lie To You), Penguin Café (Rain before seven) and Calexico (El …
Track/Video: Revered multi-instrumental improviser Colin Fisher previews upcoming new album with the spectacular, guitar sculpted ‘Acts Of Light’.
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Colin Fisher has been energising the Toronto music scene and beyond for around two decades now. A virtuoso guitarist, acclaimed sax player, drummer and more, a brilliant interpretive improviser, a boundary pushing electronic artist, Fisher’s work confounds easy definition. He’s played alongside Jamie Branch, Joe McPhee, Braxton, Laaraji and Frith as well …
Track/Video: Exquisite ambient music for a living city – Hong Kong based composer Olivier Cong announces new album ‘Tropical Church’.
A label with discernment is what you need to help you navigate the oceans of ambient electronica. Lawrence English’s Room40 provides such a service, “a beacon of sound…ringing out from the deepest south” as it’s strapline goes. So any transmission coming in from them is reassuringly one to tune into. Cue the news of the …
Album Review: Simon Bailey’s elegant instrumental album ‘Moonscapes’ etches beautiful shapes in the firmament
Simon Bailey used to be in early 2000s band Pony Face – a band that also had Anth Dymke, a regular on our review pages from his solo work and collaborations with Golden Fang and Jo Meares. Through his label Pony Face Records, Bailey has just released an exquisite collection of instrumentals in his new …