Experimental Electronic Music
Marconi Union seems to have removed weight from everything, allowing only the emotional core of the materials to filter through: soft drones, slowly shifting harmonies, reverbs opening like irises, barely hinted pulses, melodic glimmers that surface and dissolve within the same breath.
A decade and a half hiatus since his last (Awash, 2012) brings new skin for the old ceremony with True Bypass on familiar ground yet with a sense of refresh.
Like Manual, Billow Observatory purveys work of delicacy and poise, and Resina is never less than engaging, frequently compelling.
Empusae and Maris Anguis have crafted a fantastic album that rewards repeated listening and offers a welcome step toward a more spiritual and cultural focus for their label Cryo Chamber.
Frisson is proof that Collingburn’s years in the club scene weren’t wasted. He knows how to build tension, how to pace a track, how to let moments breathe. But he also knows when to pull back, when to let the ambient drift take over. For an artist who’s spent nearly two decades navigating the underground dance world and another stretch exploring pure ambient, Frisson feels like the convergence of both.
Petites Constellations develops shifting and subtle soundscapes with a retro-ish feeling, emerging from analog keyboards and vintage electronic equipment. However, it also stands as a thoroughly modern album, filled with kinetic grooves and bold compositional ingredients.
Five tracks of somewhat dark atmospheric exposures, ranging from just over five minutes to almost eleven minutes in duration. Most of the action is perhaps within the realm of atmospheric drone arts but there are some shocking incidents that give an enlightening bump to the constant listener.
Cicadas does a beautiful job using an experimental musical lens to help focus our attention on an often overlooked yet fascinating creature who lives in a world completely different from ours, yet that is also exactly the same (a beautiful expression of German phenomenological biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of the Umwelt or life-world that is specific to the sensory perceptions of each kind of animal).
RL Huber of Eureka Springs, Arkansas has an orchestral sound, with abundant strings and pianos, and a classical-drone crossover feeling that is complex and subtle.
rust/wave, his latest, takes a different approach. The Hamilton, Ontario-based artist has compiled a beautiful piece of ambient work, and rather than introducing itself as some ambient drone or sounding like that, it’s actually really melodic and beautiful. A peaceful listen.
Passed Recordings thus signs one of its most mature operations: a collective, contemplative, rigorous work, capable of transforming C3 into a small sonic homeland, fragile and vast, familiar and remote, where time bends slowly and sound returns to being a form of attention.
Operating as Simon Pyke (aka Freeform) and various collaborative ventures, unveils Drift Works—twelve fractured post-ambient sketches unfolding in slow, seamless disintegration.
