“We really wanted to try something very different,” Harper said. “Something that respects the sanctity of these holy places, while allowing them to be filled with new sounds—sometimes in opposition to the words and songs once rendered there, but still meaningful.”
“More like a spiritual pilgrimage than a typical music tour.” ~Ross Harper
The road is legend: vagabonds on parade, hobo lifestyle meets bohemia, meets a boot full of tangled wires. Load in, set up, play, break down. Repeat. From a distance, it looks ideal—glamorous even. And it is, both in the moment and in hindsight. But it also reminds me of wilderness canoe trips, with endless portages, setup, breakdown, and steady paddling. It’s intense and presents unique challenges.
Ross Harper is a Brighton-based electronic music producer, known for his techno output but also for the ambient work he releases under the Ambient Girl moniker. He runs the City Wall label, which maintains a steady stream of releases and hosts regular events across the UK. I’m apaull, a Dutch-Canadian producer with roots in techno and with a tendency to veer into downtempo and ambient territory. My music often reflects—and sometimes revels in—the chaos of the world.
Harper and I have played together before, in Amsterdam and London. This time, he wanted to build a tour around his ambient work. Listening to the Ambient Girl trilogy, one immediately feels the spiritual undertones—abstract and shifting, like the liminal spaces in which spirituality itself evolves. This inspired the idea to play in ancient English churches, birthing the Ambient Girl Tour. (Check out free downloads at end of the article). I came on board to help organize and support the concept.
“We really wanted to try something very different,” Harper said. “Something that respects the sanctity of these holy places, while allowing them to be filled with new sounds—sometimes in opposition to the words and songs once rendered there, but still meaningful.”
Roots in older spiritual traditions ::
The tour’s spark came from a 2024 UK festival called Sun & Moon, where Harper performed an impromptu set of Ambient Girl tracks. “People told me the music made them feel grounded, enlightened, and loved,” he said. He’d also made contact with the Churches Conservation Trust, which manages disused but not deconsecrated churches—some over 1,000 years old and with roots in older spiritual traditions. “So I figured I could just do a really simple tour,” Harper explained, “take my portable deck, some speakers, and bring ambient music into these sacred spaces.”
We spent six months organizing the tour, finding the venues, refining the concept, developing the necessary logistics. Over two weekends in May, we toured six English cities and towns: Brighton (twice), Cambridge, Bristol, Glastonbury, Oxford, and London—playing late afternoon or early evening sets in ancient churches.
Harper’s set included various tracks from his Ambient Girl albums, punctuated with storytelling about the Ambient Girl and how those stories came to be. They featured handing out copies of renowned artist Iva Troj paintings that depict several of the Ambient Girl Stories.
My own sets leaned on early downtempo tracks like “No Dimension,” “White LeBaron,” and “Honeywagon,” inspired by KLF’s 1990 album Chill Out, a continuous ambient journey that remains criminally underrated. I built my performance aesthetic around that and Skinny Puppy’s cEvin Key. My sets had more of a dystopian edge questioning the world and the listener and asking them to ask more questions. Ross’s sets brought peace and light.
Each of the churches offered something unique aesthetically and sonically. They provided stunning backdrops remarkably enhanced by our very simple lighting. Sonically it was a roll of the dice with each church and the ghosts within essentially playing the role of additional band member(s?).
Brighton’s St. Peter’s in Preston Park was hidden in woods and urban din. It was peaceful yet foreboding, dark even by day, with a traditional layout. One attendee, who claimed to be a ghost, told us he’d stay as long as the music was “suitable for a church.”
Cambridge’s St. Peter’s sat alone, pretty and sunlit, surrounded by a city that had grown around it. We hauled gear up a laneway, over a wall, and through long graveyard grass to get inside.
Incense, crystals, full-on hippie energy ::
In Bristol, we played in the crypt beneath St. John’s Church. The space was dank and mysterious. A wooden door along the crypt wall, unlocked with a six-inch medieval key, drew many curious passersby who came in to sit for a moment—or to stay.
Glastonbury’s reputation precedes it: incense, crystals, full-on hippie energy. As a scientist, it made me twitch, but Ross was right at home. At the edge of town sat St. Margaret’s Chapel, once a place of pilgrimage. Still active, it welcomed visitors in quiet prayer. It felt very sacred and alive. It was the only venue we played where worshipers came for quiet prayer and introspection. Here, I was a bit nervous because I didn’t want to defile the sanctity of this active space of worship. It resulted in my best set of the tour.
The All Saints Church Courtenay-Nuneham in Oxford was just otherworldly. The 17th-century classical building stood on the site of a medieval church, surrounded by white trees and deer. “It was probably my favourite venue to play at.“ says Harper. “It seemed out of place , but resonant and welcoming at the same time.” Though faded with age, its acoustics were transcendent—particularly for the bass.
We wrapped at London’s St. Ethelburga’s, a medieval church rebuilt after an IRA bombing, now a peace centre. We played inside a Bedouin-style tent on a Sunday afternoon. The calm inspired me to drop my BPM by 5–10, shifting the entire tone of my set. We played for the souls in stone—unmoved, unbothered. We played for living visitors who wandered in and out. We told stories about light and dark. And we left fulfilled, knowing we had spoken to the past, the present, and perhaps the beyond. “In some ways,” Harper reflected, “it felt more like a spiritual pilgrimage than a typical music tour.”
