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, along with new companion mix, Elsewhereness revisited #18.
Documenting the (ambient) drift at the margins
Four cassette/digital releases that put r beny, project of Bay Area-based Austin Cairns (seen in ER#17), on the electronic ambient map are collected under a single title, Seafoam & Dust by Belgium’s Dauw. Blending delicate melodic sensibility with timbral depth, Cairns draws on a sonic palette made up of modular synths, samplers and tape loops, quavering drones and broken tones. On the verge of renouncing music out of frustration with the guitar and personal issues, he was introduced to modular synths and found a connection he’d never had with guitar; having set up a youtube channel under the name r beny (after photographer Roloff) to exhibit use of his gear, his modular synthesis prowess led to his being persuaded to release (via bc), ‘r beny’ going from placeholder to index of quality ambient electronics. For those not wanting the full monty, cascade symmetry, eistla, full blossom of the evening and saudade are reissued separately.
Bristol’s finest purveyors of boutique ambient/neoclassical, Fluid Audio, hosts offthesky for Psalm of Solum. Billed as ‘an ode to earthen things’, recorded while tending the earth—tilling, gardening, shaping, and ‘scaping; glistening ambient sounds float around, as a river of watery wellbeing runs through it. Notes unveil and gently swell, Nature-tuned. Seabuckthorn’s Other Other meanwhile focuses on the European travels of a distant past-consumed family longing to return home to a familiar place only to find themselves swept away by the rivers of time. Long drawn-out weathered strings and dusty tones unfold as if lately unearthed, as Andy Cartwright illumines the distance—family, times shared, trips to great cities, markets, churchyards and sprawling fields. Once-familiar roads blown away, parts of the landscape unrecognizable, years eroding features, as distortion devours contours.
Further north at the kindred spirit hibernate label, good to see a flurry of activity after a fairly inert 2019. Main driver is the 2.6 challenge, a charitable initiative, aimed at filling the void left by COVID-caused cancellation of the London Marathon (one of the world’s biggest 1-day fundraising events last year). With participants to come up with fundraising ideas involving 2 and 6, a nod to the marathon’s 26-mile length and projected date, 26 April, hibernate has issued no less than 26 nyp releases, proceeds going to charity. Among them capo Jonathan Lees contributes Ambitious Fragments as half of The Sly and Unseen with Katie English. Best in show are Andrew Tasselmyer & anthéne‘s Distant and Andrew Sherwell‘s The Working of Dust, the latter continuing from his Home Diaries 04 (entry in Whitelabrecs project covered in ER #17)—a drone-fuelled meditation on solitude—with three caliginous tracks evoking abandonment and reclusion.
Past Inside the Present hosts Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea’s Alpha, a remake/remodel of selected ambient works from the s-t debut album of Marc Ertel and zakè’s project, augmented with guitar, piano and textures from new member, Damien Duque. It blends rich layers and slow-mo cascades into low light ambient tableaux. Two artists with PITP previous collude on Anon 1, a split EP of bitter-sweet Basinski-esque cadences from two artists with PItP previous, anonymized to ensure listeners ‘go in blind, without ego or expectation, with the sole focus on what truly matters: the music’—till the vinyl sold out, that is. All now revealed: #1 from 36, #2 from Isaac Helsen, #1 + #2 = #3, making for 19 x 2 expansive minutes. LA-based Jonny Radtke aka Polar Moon‘s As Above, So Below proposes a set of short meditative piano vignettes with a raft of rethinks by PITP types like Isaac Helsen, Tyresta and zakè. And the abovementioned r beny presents more ‘sagas for the brokenhearted, for those lost in the glow’ on The Dashboard Cast a Spectral Glow.
36’s latest, Wave Variations, is minimal in its deployment of a purposely limited synth-predominant palette, each circa 3-minute track directly influencing the next. Inspired by a conviction that ambient music can be unduly extended, he eschews long build-ups and crescendos for ‘short tracks that take you straight to Elysium and then dissolve into the ether.’ Another inspiration, the ocean tides, of which it’s observed: ‘we’ve all felt that sense of longing and wonder while standing at the beach, staring at the waves and gazing into the endless horizon.’ Like waves, tracks recede even as they arrive. Limitations become a creative spur, forcing deeper digging into available resources. Last, the latest Tapes and Topographies, A Pulse of Durations (after a line from Scott Walker’s “Angels of Ashes”), following Ubiquitous Clouds. He’s sought to ‘strip things down to find the beauty of each core idea instead of hoping to find it through further embellishment.’ Nods from Gautreau to Tarkovsky and Resnais for the atmosphere and dreamlike qualities of their films as influences in the period of production.
PITP affiliate, Healing Sound Propagandist, hosts Eric C Larson and Stephen Kolter aka Wounding of the Bright for natural soundscapes and electronics on Dendrones, whose roots run deep as synaptic fingers splay to connect with the empty otherness. As below, so above, all infinitely alternating between earth and sky. MO-based Kellen Perry aka Wife Signs brings Beneath the Weight of Care, inspired by the bright haunting sounds of Ethiopian tezeta. A set of stately piano and subtle synth improvising Ethiopian scales, chopped up and processed into meditative ambient ‘scapes with field recordings, other deft sonics, and a nostalgic lo-fi patina. Elisabeth Pixley-Fink, Fiona Dickinson, Jeffrey Neimeier, Christina Mrozik, Samantha Cooper, John Hanson make up MI-based Saltbreaker, whose Snowblind is ‘an abstract look at winter’s power to isolate and the struggle for balance while living through it.’ Berlin-based Dovlet Shyhmyradov aka XI-N, Micro, brings a liminal suite of attenuated tones whose subtle tweaks seek ‘to explore an unknown beautiful side of microelectronics by synthesizing and blending together various frequencies that create ambient spaces together.’
There’s a long-form loop-work of vst synths, string machines and field recordings from Funeral Fog man, Jurko Haltuu, A Sea Of Change, ‘a forever changing soundscape reflected by the specific season in the listeners’ life.’ And the Atlanta-based Swede’s Cloudland for his homeland’s Purlieu Recordings is just as good for daydream believers. Montreal’s Francis Tremblay aka Grandbruit looks to ‘the banalities of everyday life and his city’s landscape’ to inspire his creative work, wrought from field recordings and guitar loops. And Sédum is memorably trailed as ‘an ode to survival. It is only once everything is destroyed that nature is reborn through the ruins. This record transcends time and seasons, like the perennials.’ His Rivière Rouge (Midira) is full of nostalgia-drenched ambient drift—navigating an imaginary landscape of a kind to bring to mind these days ‘[…] because in the worst of times, it is important to remember the best of times.’
The stately ambient drones of Aaron Bianchi’s 1964 are said to have been produced as a coping mechanism to create a sense of calm in difficult times. A heady half-hour of harmonized white-out, slow-mo drone cloudbanks rolls over the horizon in the shape of Amaranthine from shadowy Forma Sensory. Spanish producer and founder of El Muelle, Pepo Galán, brings Fragments, improv-based effected guitar tracts that create a cavernous space in which to get lost. And found. Last, PITP/HSP-related Zakè Drone hosts Vision Transmissions, a split involving zakè, his mate, Tyresta, and Christina Giannone; blurbage about its being ‘written during desolate times, where social isolation became the norm of everyday life’ is, with all due respect, de rigueur; of more interest is that of its 5 tracks 1 & 2 are written/produced by Giannone, 3 & 4 collaboratively written / produced by zakè and Tyresta, and 5 produced by zakè with Giannone’s source material.
Something from the Pink House is a product of one of Bill and Dick’s excellent adventures, an archival oddity from when William Basinski + Richard Chartier happened to be visiting visual artist James Elaine’s bungalow (aka The Pink House) in Venice CA on a summer’s day, June 2004, as afternoon turned to twilight. A live recording of a private improvisation, some elements of which were later reformed for the Aurora Liminalis (LINE, 2013) collaboration, sounding fresh otherwise.
Somewhere between soundscape, drone, and avant-garde electronic lies Peel from producer/sound artist, KMRU, Joseph Kamaru to his Mum, leading light of a group of Nairobi-based experimental music likeminds. A diaphanous work of field recordings and slowly emergent melody. The title perhaps alludes to the removal of layers to expose more, or perhaps other. Spectral melodies slowly swell till almost all-consuming, then retreat from focus, only to rebuild from within; minimal synth lines appear only to vanish, shrouded motifs emerge, subtle bass prods from below. An overall tranquil yet uneasy tenor removes you from the quotidian world into another of fascinating detail.
China calling, and Wuhan-based Brit Ryan Blankley, who makes ambient music as Slot Canyons and runs Field Ring Records with fellow musician, Da Fei, to support local electronic/ambient artists. Months in isolation out of his usual setting forced him to restrict hardware and experiment with his sound. The outcome can be heard in Sketches, a quiet riot of degraded tape loops and warm synth wooze. The previous Field Ring Split #1, a split with Beijing-based space drone duo, Cloud Choir, deploys field recordings, fractured electronics and dense drones to create an enveloping wall of sound in a reflection of the winter moods in their respective environments.
Japan-related: Fresh from the gorgeous slowdance, lowtide (‘endless drones & gently undulating layers of sound weave a weighty & reassuring ambient comfort blanket for tired minds and lazy arses,’ TheSlowMusicMovement), Hirotaka Shirotsubaki returns with Music for Artificial Island 1989. His music tends towards the impersonal, enabling the listener to sonically customize music-memory linkage for the spaces of their life. And Japan’s Shuta Yasukochi is joined by Carlos Ferreira for Quiet Reminders on Archives, with remixes by Hilyard and label capo, Warmth. And prince of prolificity, Michiru Aoyama, is still releasing like there’s no tomorrow (he’d find a way on a phantom day!). Too many to enumerate, so token hat tip to Goods and Structure.
Omaha’s Neologist Productions has several, incl. Head Dress‘s modular, field recording and DSP work, Belt of Eight Ranges, Nihhus‘s Nose of Wax, Visions of Emptiness‘s s/t and the ear-piquing Red Clouds by MS-based Nicholas Maloney aka Blanket Swimming, who also self-releases his tape and radio pieces, Sundial, and has Starlooms in Flashes of Reddening Ends out on St Petersburg’s ‘Temple of Eternal Music,’ ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ. Other notable releases in the pantheon include On the Sense of Loneliness by the cipher July in January, purporting to explore facets of lockdown-driven quotidian routine and loss of the sense of certainty that tomorrow will differ from today. ‘Caught in a cycle of repeated days, nights, thoughts, feelings, going through memories, always lacking something essential. Eventually trying to cultivate it inside your own self. Yet, at some point the void starts ringing, it almost sings, answering the call of hope and giving the spiral a focal point once again.’
A proper vinyl release from n5MD for Gimmik‘s Entre Les Chambres, first issued on by his own Hidden Reality. Those familiar with Gimmik from his early-00s IDM outings on Worm Interface and Toytronic will be surprised by his first new publicly released material since the MD8 (n5md, 2004), particularly its beatlessness, though adepts should spot Martin Haidinger’s signature synth work, which these two long-form tracks bring to the fore sans grid.
Kyle Bobby Dunn continues to pursue his life’s project, viz. ‘boring you to tears all these years,’ with Selected Ambient Expansion Pack, a collection and expansion of rough cuts and demos or pieces geared towards albums, archived then largely overlooked. Some have shown up on odd comps and small batch releases, but Dunn’s dig through the archives yielded some, for him, surprisingly quiet and clean works, making for ‘a memorabilia item of sorts as we all struggle through the intense emotions of these dark times.’
KrysaliSound’s Francis M. Gri has three releases, all somehow COVID-related. Of most note is Tucson-based Jesse Anderson, whose Ephemeral deploys tape loops, eurorack modules and other outboard analog and digital synths for his electro-acoustic project, Flow Control. A meditation on the process of the wind moving through human settlements in the AZ desert outskirts, stirring up sandy grit that conjurs a melody from the natural-artificial collision; dimensions underexposed at first bloom are revealed as evanescent melody fades into distorted images of the original windblown tones. For the rest, Cull/Machine Choir is outcome of Nashville-based Robbie Elizee’s approach to music, which starts from cheap pawnshop-bought instruments and ends as laptop processing output. And Bar-Do (from Tibetan=stuck between two conditions of overlapping reality conceptions), contains music for the first and second part of experimental short film dilogy, Bar-Do – Im Zwischenstand der Dinge, an archive of an old 2012-recorded work found by German Sascha Rosemarie Höfer, edited and completed during isolation.
Ambient electronic cipher utem kaure’s movements were logged in ER #17, looking suspiciously like cover for ER favorite, oliviaway, under which to put out more stuff! Waterberry was billed ‘an album that you can’t understand by listening to it once. Each of the tracks has its own special atmosphere and unexpected turns of events.’ Since then we’ve had Resonate, A I R, flowers, and Blueberry, then Mysterious Wetlands, Miracle and Mountain Salt ‘to surprise you with various sounds and experiments with synthesizers.’ Meanwhile oliviaway quietly marked her 200th release, It’s A Feeling, with Stillness and Immersion before and after, thanking followers: ‘When I started writing the ambient, I could not even imagine that so many people would be with me! I want to thank you very much for your support and kind words, you make the little girl happy.’ Aww, bless. Before that Morning Awakening, Spite and Malice, Through the Valley, Escape From Abyss, Shimmering Lights, and Sorry seems to be..., etc. etc. etc.
Miscellany in brief: Polar Seas hosts Swede, John Roger Olsson aka Havenaire, formerly on Glacial Movements and Constellation Tatsu, for his latest Nordic noir, Movement. Dane, Henrik Laugesen, aka Lauge has a well turned environmental ambient full-length, Oceanography, out on Spain’s Faint. Boston’s Devin Powers aka Sinerider releases Moonflower, an ambient electronic set exploring repetition and organic sounds with decayed and delicate time-faded harmonic fragments via Dronarivm. And Italy’s Carlo Giustini channels a sense of timeworn familiarity with rudimentary instruments and techniques on Gli Spiriti Della Marca (Vaagner/Vaknar), four pieces blending weathered tape loops with domestic ambience created in isolation in Treviso.
Stop press: news from Oakland spiritual adventurers, Constellation Tatsu, of a soon-come small Fall batch: Anthéne and Andrew Tasselmyer with Progressions and Loris S. Sarid with Music for Tomato Plants.
