ambient
Album Review : Rumpistol’s ” Isola” is an thing of beauty.
It’s not very often that I partake in reviewing what could be traditionally described as ‘ ambient’ music. The word ambient should really be used to describe a texture, or a musical motif. I’m happy to disclaim that the latest album from award winning Danish producer, composer, film composer and pianist Jens B. Christiansen (aka Rumpistol) …
Album Review – Francis Harris – Thresholds
Beginning with 2012’s ‘Leland’ New York artist Francis Harris has been doing a deep dive into the sonic swells and contrapuntal granularities that articulate our most abstract, and sometimes slowest moving, virtualities. Through found sound, analog synthesis, and concise instrumentation Harris has delivered works that transcend the diagram-matic exposition often found in electronic music in …
EP: Grids/Units/Planes unveil the heady and mesmerising electronica of ‘Diverge And Coalesce’
The sounds of Brisbane project Grids/Units/Planes (GUP) are that of a cloudy, diffuse space that glitches and hums in a languorous rich texture: awe-inspiring and transfixing. I have always thought that the magic in effective instrumental music is the ability to tell stories and create images without words, and in ‘Diverge and Coalesce’, GUP have …
Album Review – The Allegorist – Blind Emperor
For one empire to rise, another must fall.For us to reach the highs, through dark holes we must crawl.For the vision in the deep, we need,we sacrifice and bleed, to make the leap. The Sacrifice – Poem Written by The Allegorist As a holistic artist, Anna Jordan (The Allegorist) encapsulates a myriad of her talents within her …
PREMIERE: Piers Thibault stuns with the brief and brilliant ‘Dusk’, announces debut EP ‘Ire’
If you’re reading this, we bet there have been times when you’ve wanted to completely lose yourself in a piece of music. French artist Piers – last name Thibault – is great at producing pieces that evoke that all-consuming longing. His debut EP, Ire, isn’t even 13 minutes long, but it’s an ideal refuge. If …
Track: Ambient explorer Earthen Sea previews the soulful ‘Rough Air’ from his soon come album ‘Ghost Poems’.
Jacob Long (aka Earthen Sea) has a musical provenance that inevitably draws you in to take a look. He’s been a member of the Dischord endorsed, post-hardcore agitators Black Eyes, injected sax and bass to the electro-dub, no-wave work-outs of Mi Ami and since 2014 released less abrasive sounds as Earthen Sea, probing ever deeper …
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 downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic stakes. Since that blissful …
Premiere: Brisbane icons Cloud Tangle and Fingerless release split single ‘Eve’/’Villanelle’ through 4000 Records in tribute to Season 4 of Killing Eve.
Ever the promoter of sonic innovation and taste maker extraordinaire, 4000 Records, has rounded up two of Brisbane’s most exciting artists (and perennial favorites here at the antipodean headquarters of Backseat Mafia), Cloud Tangle and Fingerless, for a limited edition split single. The inspiration for this momentous occasion couldn’t be cooler: the release of the …
Premiere: Michael Scott Dawson releases new visuals for the beautiful ambient soundscape of Campestral
Canadian sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Scott Dawson is building towards the release of his new album Music For Listening, out April 8th via We Are Busy Bodies. from it, he’s releasing the second single taken from it, Campestral, and we’re delighted to be able to premiere it right here on Backseat Mafia today. Following …
Album Review: Brisbane’s Noir et Blanc (Amber Ramsay from Cloud Tangle) unveils the ambient classicism of ‘Wallflower Pedestrian’: a beautiful immersive sonic journey.
Noir et Blanc is the new vehicle for Brisbane’s prodigious dream pop wonder Amber Ramsay from the ethereal Cloud Tangle. And ethereal is an adjective that’s going to get quite a run in this review. Where Noir et Blanc departs from Ramsay’s other work is that the music is solely instrumental – a sort of …