Ambient is like a river. You step into the flow and let the new waters ripple on past. Breathtaking ripples abound on this record from Hollie Kenniff. It might be more like a ripple in the clouds. A river of air, where for moments the sun breaks through to reveal a Jacobs Ladder.
Majestic hypnagogia
In ambient music we “Linger in Moments.” That’s the name of the opening song on the new album from Hollie Kenniff. Add all those moments up and you have For Forever. The sound design for this album is etheric and minimal. It’s shoegazey and, if I may be so bold as to coin a new genre, its shoegauzey. (Not at all like Fugazi — though they have a prime place in my personal canon!) The gauze is like that used in the film industry, softening everything, making it more impressionistic. That’s what shoegauze music is about, and that is part of what makes this shoegauze.
Other artists I might place in the shoegauze camp would be the duo who make Hammock, with their breezy, floating in the wind, guitar and synth-based ambience. The influence of Harold Budd is also all over my newly minted genre. Ethereal voices, muted piano, and guitar chords plucked in a minor key.
Shoegauze has the instrumentation of shoegaze, synths, guitar, voice, but more ambient, somewhat minimal, and probably lacks the drum kit, like this album does. So called beatless ambient. The gauze is in part the gauze used by the lighting crews in films to frame a face of gorgeous beauty, but it is also the gauze in the first aid kit used to place over the wounds we all share from modern living. In this respect my coinage is a nod to the late Bryn Jones and his Muslimgauze project, the gauze being the bandage he put over all the wounds in the Islamic world. The gauze and the wounds are the only thing this music has in common with the propulsive rhythm based music of Jones. Remember shoegauze is drumless, at least in nascent theory, and Muslimgauze was all about the drums. Since I am just making this all up as I go along, I’ll leave the idea open to further exploration and interpretation.
This music isn’t just escape, it’s healing. Listen, and bring some of that healing back with you out into the world. ~Justin Patrick Moore
I think the main feature of shoegauze is the evocation of a heavenly bliss tinged with melancholy. This is a music of our time. People searching for the good and the good life when ill will and acrimony plague the public sphere. Retreating into a private dream world, taking solace in family life, blanketing oneself in soft vibrations, in vibrations of light. These things are sometimes the only answer in a world where one predicament is heaped on another. I think that is in part a reason so many people are drawn to listening to this kind of music, and a reason so many people are drawn to making this kind of music.
Kenniff was one part of the electronic duo Mint Julep with her husband Keith. He has projects under the monikers Helios and Goldmund. Each of these different aliases feature as collaborators on key tracks. The family connections don’t stop with her husband as their eleven year old son also tinkles the ivories on the album.
This is ethereal music at its best ::
This is ethereal music at its best. Majestic hypnagogia. The tracks are short, pop song length, the longest being just barely over four minutes. These showcase the connection to the adjacent genre of dream pop. But here there are no lyrics. Voices, yes, but used as a wordless instrument to create angelic textures. So many releases remain ethereal by being only digital these days, but for this album Nettwerk has partnered up with Imaginary North, the latter of whom is releasing the album in its only physical format, a limited edition cassette. Better grab one of those analog puppies.
Ambient is like a river. You step into the flow and let the new waters ripple on past. Breathtaking ripples abound on this record from Hollie Kenniff. It might be more like a ripple in the clouds. A river of air, where for moments the sun breaks through to reveal a Jacobs Ladder.
Meanwhile, over in the meadow, delicate and plaintive tones spread out like the nectar imbibed from the flowers on the song “What Carries Us”—the ties that bind, the people we love, the commitments we have to others. The Kenniff family has vacationed off on Prince Edward Island and I wonder if that is where the cover art is from. What a beautiful place it looks. I can hear it in the next song “Over Ocean Waves.”
“Our family loves going there, and it’s so peaceful with the rolling fields of gold, and walking the endless shoreline in the north,” she recalls while discussing the song’s inspirational bent. “I wanted to mirror that feeling of tranquility in this song — something that was understated but beautiful.”
After the album is over, I am still standing in the river. Residual droplets of bliss remain, and the microdetails within each composition await repeated playback when I need some gauze to protect me from the infections of the world. This music isn’t just escape, it’s healing. Listen, and bring some of that healing back with you out into the world.
For Forever is available on Nettwerk (digital) and Imaginary North (physical/digital).
