Elsewhereness revisited is an occasional feature documenting the drift at the margins: ambient gasbagging and blurb blah, ’tube-d, ’cloud-ed ’n’ ’camp-ed up, complete with new companion mix, Elsewhereness revisited #15.
The course of 2019 has seen Past Inside The Present slow-release eight vols of Isaac Helsen‘s Remnants. The end sees it assembled as Remnants Series Vol. I-VIII, music, photography, and writing from three distinct artists combined in exploration of the artist’s mental health struggles, also deconstructing album-as-concept in the sonic recon job created by assembling fragments of varying styles and stages of completion. Among the year’s most ethereal, it mirrors a decade decayed in 17 pieces; from shorts like “3347-00-8GA”‘s ambiguous tinkering to the quasi-orchestral aleatory elegy of “The Augur,” with the likes of “Desert Mirror” and “Maelstrom” designed to alter states in the realm of the senses steeped in deep listening. Meanwhile PItP founder, zakè (扎克), has more ambient sculpting in milieuxia, playing away from home for Texans, Aural Canyon (‘Deep listening for the new, new age’). Warm and cosy additional treatments and guitars on opener “Laudation” from regular colluder, Wayne Robert Thomas bid you settle in and let it all unfold. The lowlight presence of Zach Frizzell’s loop-finding ambient drone affords a sense of serenity, cementing his (self-conscious) status as ‘Healing Sound Propagandist,’ a designation now shared with new PiTP sublabel, whose fresh goods include buddy Wayne‘s Well Now You Know, Unfurled. Day 1, new decade (yep!), is marked by a collab between zakè and City of Dawn (his Elapsed is on HSP too), the first on Zakè Drone Recordings, outlet for zakè’s own and related projects. Written in winter when days linger, time frozen, Wander, with its three mesmeric dronescapes, is described as an expression of slowing down, both artists’ writing process and resolve under heavy influence from the colder and darker days.
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Shimmering Moods‘ brand new bag is a goodie, with anthéne‘s skyglow, Andrew Sherwell‘s Without, Mind over MIDI‘s Transit, Andrew Tasselmyer‘s Formosa, and Carlo Giustini‘s Sentinelle in it. That’s more than enough, but there’s already more in the SM pipeline—Stas Ostrikov‘s Traveling Bird, Evitceles‘ Somnambulant Fog and mpala garoo‘s Vaya Adelante landed too late for this update. To cherry pick two, Tasselmyer recorded the sounds that shaped his album from the back of a bus rumbling round the (once) eponymous island. The colonial Portuguese ‘Ilha Formosa’ (fair isle) coined on first sighting most apt, sonic traces of the endless mountains, gorges, beaches, and forests visible—ancient geological forms impervious to human forces. Giustini refers to the eponymous sentinel as a guardian, a protection, a primordial instinct of survival before going on to ponder deeply aloud: that the study of the paradigms making up so-called Reality, applied with precise criteria, can lead to a bewildering conclusion: that nature’s forms are themselves the result of precise laws, governed by a unique and essential ‘Thought’ (but modern science can only describe form, while Thought remains obscure, ineffable). Put simply, the concept behind Sentinelle is that nothing is truly knowable. Intrigued? Listen and learn.
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Berlin’s Sven Laux and Lincolnshire’s Harry Towell collude on Until We Fall for Fluid Audio, whose Dan Crossley curates articulation of concept—how both found their partners expecting the birth of a first child. Though 500+ miles apart, one inhabiting a country on the European continent the other a small island across the sea, they share the same humanity—anticipation, longing, joy. Billed as a ‘restful sonic story to play to their babies as an audiobook without words,’ light drones swell up and engage with the birdsong of a peaceful place. ‘Kites’ inhales and exhales, announcing a new soul to the world with the early rhythms of respiration. In the face of our kicking-screaming entry into this world, both musicians seek to welcome their progeny with a calming fanfare, a pillowed place to rival the womb of recent provenance. Field recordings, guitar drones, and string arrangements run through it, as does distant rain falling on Lincolnshire fields merging with city sounds of Berlin. An album of unity and dreams coming to fruition, uniting not only the two musicians, but parents to their children, and more besides.
UK ambient vets O Yuki Conjugate return after a hiatus of over a decade with a new LP, Sleepwalker (on Auf Abwegen but also digital), which documents their recent live shows, doubling as OST to an eponymous film by founder, Andrew Hulme. Formed in Nottingham in 1982 on the back of a wave of post-post-punk experimentalism, they moved on from early industrial and electronic dabblings to explore the then-unfashionable ambient genre—a furrow ploughed ever since. Now in a 38th year and 4th incarnation, Hulme and other core member, Roger Horberry, have 9 albums of wilful obscurantism behind them—from Scene in Mirage (1984) and Into Dark Water (1987), Peyote (1990) and Equator (1994) through to The Euphoria of Disobedience (2010) and Tropic (2017). Sleepwalker features 10 new tracks taken from 24 live shows in 9 countries across Europe, it captures OYC’s current musical direction, keening keyboards, abstract guitars and electronic rhythms, blended in signature style. The film, constructed round a loose dream-like narrative, developed in tandem with the music, has only been seen at live shows; an absence of clips is pretext for the above cut from the (1988 vintage!) VHS, Peripheral Vision.
Interludes (12k) is a companion to Upward, Broken, Always, Taylor Deupree and Corey Fuller‘s debut as Ohio, (named after a favourite song of theirs, Damien Jurado’s “Ohio,” a playful cover of which liberated them from their ambient comfort-zone, challenging them to new structures and directions). U, B, A‘s final editing sessions saw the seeds for these durational pieces planted; with the accidental muting of musical tracks, the interludes at the end of each LP side were born, fragments of preceding songs pared to a ghostly residue playing like those distant Ohio memories. Concept realized, they set out to create two more such “interludes” from full U, B, A tracks, these three providing closure for each side of the (3-sided) LP. The originals were quite short, but the languid abstracted nature of their compositions’ essence emerged in their opening out into long-form pieces. Interludes was thus spawned, each piece an exhale from the often intense and cathartic anima of the original, looping and trailing into vapor.
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Wolfgang Voigt (Gas) wraps up Pop Ambient 2020, studded with seasonal gems from veterans like Markus Guentner, Thomas Fehlmann, Andrew Thomas, Joachim Spieth and Klimek, alongside more recent adepts like Yui Onodera, Thore Pfieffer, Leandro Fresco, Max Würden. The 20th edition in Kompakt’s perennial series tends to a refined, woolly (cashmere?) blend of beatless drift and neo-classical lushness. 20 years of Pop Ambient have gone by—an anniversary come quietly, in a spirit of restrained pop-elegance; no cause to draw attention to itself with a big bass drum. In our fast-paced data-heavy age of constant forward movement, it’s felicitous to look back. What strikes most by putting 20 years of pop ambient in a row is the central theme holding together the dense aesthetic concept. Timeless. With all the conceptual unity and resolution. Pop Ambient wouldn’t be itself without the divide: a felicitous friction; the expansion of musical boundaries between tradition and innovation.
After several solo releases from each, Dauw hosts a first collab between The Humble Bee and Benoît Pioulard, I suppose I’m your future. The pair hold a special place in the imprint’s history, The HB’s Craig Tattersall, present from inception, leaving his mark on the musical aesthetic developed by Dauw over the years, with BP stumbled on a few years back via the Living Room Concert Series. A shared love for tape as medium and melancholic song meant a marriage made in Belgium (site of Dauw’s earthbound coordinates), if not in heaven, making invite to couple up inevitable. Linking artists to each other, as in Dialog Tapes or Illuminine Reworks series, is a Dauw specialism: ‘The beauty of collaborating is that we learn from having to give space to another creative force, working alone we fall back on what we know and what we have already done.’ (The Humble Bee). Heads up: special ed. offers original LP + split 7″ lathe cut title, I suppose I’m your past, includes a new piece by each. (absence of ‘clouds or ‘tubes of I suppose… justifies a sonically sympathetic clip from another Pioulard-related coupling above)
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Latest on Dronarivm is Swede Snufmumriko‘s Sekunder, eoner, explorations in texturally rich environments and dub-flavoured landscapes mediated through rhythm and subtle melody. And Denver’s Jason Corder aka offthesky with Fallow, definition: [verb] – to leave (land) fallow (uncultivated and un-sown for a period of time). ‘The songs herein are an ode to the still beauty of forgotten light, the smell of dust-covered memory, and time-stained fragments of abandoned space at the edge of winters past.’
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First Tone is a collab between New Orleans-based Turk Dietrich (half of Second Woman with Telefon Tel Aviv’s Joshua Eustis, and half of Belong) and Duane Pitre, previously on Important, Root Strata, and Kill Shaman. On Reactions (Spectrum Spools) the pair create a soundworld to lose yourself in, unfurling poignant flickering compositions with matter tuned to Just Intonation (of which Pitre is a long-time adept) in conjunction with various software and a single hardware synth. It issues in a set that’s both organic and alien, as layers of tone and texture build and dissolve from massive to ultra minimal, sometimes seamlessly blending both. Striking timbres wash languorously over each other, here sounding like organic instruments, there totally otherworldly. The approach to time and dynamics creates a perception of a 3D spatiality, the holographic effect created by sonic interstices mesmerizing.
Andrea Porcu, curator of ROHS! ambient sublabel, Lontano Series, proposes Treviso collageist Carlo Giustini‘s hauntologically-tinged Custodi. The spark that ignited his project manifested in a place heavy with memory, full of words, rich with contradictory emotions—the central bar of his locality, Sant’Angelo, at whose counter he happened upon the tale of the tragic end of the custodians of Villa Letizia, an ancient Venetian villa located in the national park of the river Sile, an 18th c. structure located in front of his house. Its two custodians, husband and wife, lived there at the start of the 20th c., probably passing most of their lives between the thick cold walls of the mansion, maintaining its beauty, learning to recognize its sound and voice, its hidden messages. Every day for years they observed the same landscape, enjoying the song of the birds, listening to the gurgling of the river Sile crossing the lawn. One morning, however, the husband, quite a mushroom connoisseur, committed a fatal mistake, picking what he thought were mere white mushrooms, when they were none other than Amanita Phalloide (or angel of death), a highly poisonous mushroom easily confused with other edible species. The two keepers unwittingly cooked and ate the Amanita, dying the next day with excruciating liver pains. Dedicated to this couple linked to a specific place, Giustini seeks to capture a ghost of their essence, their past movements, capturing most of the field recordings in the gardens of Villa Letizia, hoping to find traces of the memory of what once was. Teeming with field recordings, organic drones, and microsounds caught with contact mics, micro-cassette recorders, etc.
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Seriously plugged-in swells and billows of Buchla drone from Canadian synth maven, Richard Smith aka Shasta Cults, Configurations (Important) marks the end of the first decade of intermittent releases. Parts remind of slow-moving clouds parting to make way for the sunlight, synth dips undulating without resistance. For all its elegance at first listen, deeper focus reveals a freighter whisking close by. Towards the midpoint of its 8 tracks the long stretch becomes increasingly more mesmerizing, wavy synths and obfuscated atmospheres at once tranquil and edgy. The space you find yourself may feel as if somehow stretched. Thither as well as hither. Part vibration, part cloud cluster and choral cadence. A romantic sense of remoteness comes in ending, as if looking back at a memoir or the horizon line as it moves towards dusk.
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James Murray presents Embrace Storms, a first multi-format split release between London’s Slowcraft and Milan’s KrysaliSound. Its two long-form sound collages seem to parallel our current world/climate in their state of conflict, the midst of a prolonged storm. “In Your Head” contrasts and compliments its Heart counterpart—at 20+ mins afforded space to access synapses, its oneiric harvest delicately toned, near-invisible in detail. Then “In Your Heart” has introverted notes turn in on themselves, borne into a vortex at its heart. KrysaliSound also has Nāda Mushin’s Mono No Aware; named after Nāda yoga (नादयोग), an Indian metaphysical system premised on the notion that the cosmos consists of vibrations, with sound and music considered media to achieve deeper unity with both the outer and inner cosmos; and ‘Mushin’ (無心 “no mind”), a state of pure consciousness achieved by Zen and Daoist meditators. Milan’s Paolo Iannantuoni enlists guitar, electronics and field recordings in service of sound research aimed at sonic landscaping to chart a 2-year existential journey—initial improvisation then embroidered in protean patterns. “To Flow Like Water” is a typical track, slowly imploding in washed out shimmer amid a spectral dying-star radiance.
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John Daniel’s Forest Management has left a visible mark on the ambient world in recent years with 40+ releases, incl. previous on Polar Seas and Constellation Tatsu. His first for Vaagner, Below Sky, unfolds a downcast brittle set of saturated loops through a series of spectral corridors, always blurred, just out of reach. And out of Debrecen, Hungary comes an arresting debut from Adam Erdei under his Megcsillan alias. The artist chose to disclose little about Ösvényről other than its provenance from a minimal set up of acoustic instruments, delay pedals and field recordings. In six parts, each seemingly building on the next, it starts with gusts of ominous reverberation, tranquil and static, before delicate spillage into grandiose movements, clangorous flurries, billowing sonic tides, between a sense of overarching serenity and undercurrents in dark water.
After 100 releases and map points eilean rec. curator Mathias Van Eecloo commemorates fulfillment of his earthly mission and release from the release schedule routine with Various Artists (eilean 100), a 6-hr 5-CD 82-track sprawl of all involved over the last 5 years since eilean’s inception, incl. Andrew Tasselmyer, Arovane & Mike Lazarev, Ben Rath, Bill Seaman, Dag Rosenqvist, Daniel WJ Mackenzie, Danny Clay, Darren Harper, Francesco Giannico & Giulio Aldinucci, Ian Hawgood, James Murray, Josco & Spheruleus, Monty Adkins, Moss Covered Technology, Ruhe, Sonmi451, Stijn Hüwels, Sublamp, Uwe Zahn | Porya Hatami | Darren Mc Clure, and Pascal Savy, an extract from whose contribution to the recent Corpora Aliena is best in show here—pretext to tube you the whole shebang above.
Final frontiers: Superama 3am and a first ambient entry to Dusk & Waves, Save as... LP, blending healing sound landscapes, warmth and chill with emphasis on recursive tone and immersive texture; Ivan Smoka‘s layers melt and outfold, up close atmo billowing over submerged pulses. Sydney AU: Oxtail Recordings hosts Kyle Landstra—whose longform synth wrangling has taken him from Michigan to Chicago to Portland, with Unifactor, Muzan Editions and Inner Islands—and Dominic Coppola, whose guitar loop-scapeism have seen him move from Michigan home and his Boudoir to a wider world via Alien Passengers, Moon Myst Music and Sequel. Fine bedfellows they make on a Split which channels betwixtness—morning/evening, light/dark, intimacy/distance—in classic ambient modes. Montréal CA: Gonima takes on the emotional threads of fragmented tone set in previous works on Nine Objects Through Open Window for Michiru Aoyama‘s Bullflat3.8. More subdued here, Evan Magoni explores synthetic environments via digital timbres and bright melodies with a sharp palette thrown sparsely at the canvas to highlight negative sonic space. Somewhere else entirely: idiosyncratically turned out Whettman Chelmets, whose ‘ambient drone shoegazey composed. Confrontational, uplifting, and silly’ sprawl of Long Read Memories (Aescape Sounds) is an 8-track cycle of catharsis and reconcilation. Nearer home: self-styled ‘artistic manifestation expressing a message of creativity and emotion through sound,’ Scotland’s Flying Tulpa, exhibits Painting with Emotions, though earlier creative splurge, Life is an Ocean, is more ear-piquing.
