Experimental Electronic Music
Human Music: Live Improvisations I serves as both a statement and a philosophy. What I hear is a collection of live performance recordings, each about 6-7 minutes long, one player/performer using layers and loop technology to play many instruments at once in a live setting, creating classical flavored music improvisations and instrumental expressions with haunting vocals that are entirely without word content, just emotional tones that bend and transmit.
In A Small Room, Decades Ago sounds like a return to the exact point where ambient ceased to be background and became consciousness. A warm, immersive, necessary record, engraved with the care of one who knows that certain machines, when listened to with love, still preserve the heartbeat of those who first switched them on.
Overall, Monoliths and Momentary Drifts stands as more than mere sequel to Syntheticopia, in line with ELM pioneers’ future basing, redolent not so much of machines of loving grace as of a sort of more beautiful human life, albeit ever anchored to earthly reality.
Selected Remixes reflects Zach Frizzell’s collaborative ethos and transformative ear, reworking tracks from across the ambient and experimental spectrum. With his signature analog warmth, chthonic textures, and spectral drift, zakè reshapes source material into a cohesive suite of deep-listening reinterpretations that reveal his intuitive sonic alchemy.
If you’re into sonic continuums and slowly evolving, reflective soundscapes, there’s no doubt that Arcadia will satisfy your need for emotional escapism and contemplative journeys.
A Trial of Distances is modern ambient music that sets a reflective mood. It combines subtle, functional, and therapeutic elements with a poetic human touch, making it perfect for moments of daily introspection.
If you, like me, may have been struggling to keep up with all the labels and artists you follow throughout the year, then compilations like Past/Present may come as some sort of godsend. Highlighting just about anything that Past Inside the Present have been pumping out in 2024, this compilation spans a lengthy three hours and showcases all the various shades of ambience that PITP specialize in.
Highlighting hundreds of releases in 2024 (and allowing December to set in), we’ve compiled a list of our favorites along with links to their corresponding Igloo reviews and release pages. Since the lists are arranged alphabetically by artist—and a snapshot of tracks are featured in our Soundcloud playlist along with selected Bandcamp tracks and random artwork selections—there are, as usual, no winners or runners-up.
You can hear a lot of pure ambience on See You Someday, however, most of the time it is infused with ambient pop aesthetics, some big string arrangements, and straight up psychedelia.
Reshape is a collection of remixed tracks forming an engaging and soothing collection of works. With sources taken from various releases over the last 15 years.
Double review for zakè’s B⁴+3 (Zakè Drone) and zakè & Benoît Pioulard’s eve (Past Inside The Present)—proceeding to windblown drones and bells tintinnabulating across the sound field.
