Tag: ambient

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Cowboy Sadness – Billings, MT

Apparently the “sad cowboy” aesthetic is a thing, and while I categorically refuse to dive into TikTok to confirm this, I’m definitely interested in its musical manifestation. Cowboy Sadness is a project from some of my favourite musicians – The Antlers’s Peter Silberman, David Moore of Bing & Ruth, and Nicholas Principe of Port St. Willow – so even without the deliciously bait title of Selected Jambient Works Vol. 1 I was fully invested before I’d heard a note. Cue an hour of luscious pads, hushed drums and effervescent melodies evoking dusty plains and big ol’ skies as far as the eye can see.

https://cowboysadness.bandcamp.com/album/selected-jambient-works-vol-1

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aloisius, jaso – 2ndjune1

the unfolding rose is an ever expanding album mostly made up of improvised one-take songs, recorded, mixed and mastered by aloisius alongside various collaborators. If you’re in the market for an extremely challenging 4+ hour ambient/experimental LP, this comes highly recommended. Patience definitely required, but there are some truly extraordinary moments of beauty hidden between the sketchy snatches of conversation and – at times overwhelming – dissonance. This particular track also ticks the elusive ‘zero views on YouTube’ box, which makes me feel exceedingly niche.

https://aloisius.bandcamp.com/album/the-unfolding-rose

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Metro Riders – Rattornas Vinters

My favourite album of the year was a nostalgic reimagining of mid-90s rave with all the sharp edges removed, so it’s unsurprising that I’m similarly enamoured with Metro Riders’ backward-looking LP Lost In Reality, which examines 80’s proto-house through an extreme lo-fi lens. A project of Henrik Stelzer, this latest Metro Riders album aims to “map out an emotional geography of cities at night” and absolutely nails the sense of time and place, like a Roland-obsessed Burial for the Stockholm underground.

https://possiblemotive.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-reality

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Prins Emanuel – Ruach

For the next few weeks the newness of the music featured here will take a back seat as I trawl through the many (many) end of year list and discover everything I missed. But hopefully much of it will at least be as new to you as it is to me, so we can still be friends. Popmatters’ ambient selections are always especially strong, and so it proves once again as they’ve introduced me to this beautiful piece from Sweden’s Prins Emanuel, taken from him album Diagonal Musik II.

https://prinsemanuel.bandcamp.com/album/diagonal-musik-ii

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Traumprinz – extra life

Traumprinz / DJ Healer / whoever continues his annual tradition of releasing new music as we enter the festive season. This time it’s some additional material from 2022’s life, presumably recorded around the same time, alongside weltenbrände, which is an “associative prose poem” in German. So fairly niche, that one, but extra life at least is a welcome reminder that he’s still the undisputed king of emotional techno.

https://soundcloud.com/planet-uterus

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André 3000 – I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A “Rap” Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time

Who’d have thought we needed an ambient flute album from Outkast’s Johnny Vulture, but here we are.

https://andre3000.lnk.to/NewBlueSun

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Spencer Zahn – OST

Landing last week, Statues II is the culmination of a double album that began with his Statues I, released in August of this year, both of which follow his incredible collaboration with Dawn Richard on Pigments; one of the best album of 2022. Leaning hard into both ambient and jazz, OST is a fuzzy, celestial, faintly ominous delight.

https://spencerzahn.bandcamp.com/album/statues-ii

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36 – Blue Zone

Dennis Huddleston’s music has always been based around loops, and his latest album as 36, Ablyss, is the fullest expression yet of this obsession. The 21 tracks that make up the LP are not unfinished ideas, waiting to be fleshed out into fully formed tracks: they exist purely in their own terms, tools for drifting off and becoming completely detached. Or as he puts it: “Feel free to get lost in them whenever you need them.”

https://3six.net/album/ablyss

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Lukid – End Loop

I’m busy today, but this is lush and you should listen to it. For a more committed précis, see Boomkat’s excellent (as always) hype.

https://lukid.bandcamp.com/album/tilt

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Hinako Omari – stalactites

Hinako Omari’s debut album a journey… was one of my favourites of last year. Released last week her new LP stillness, softness… explores a new sonic range, and was mainly composed on her Prophet ’08, the Moog Voyager and UDO Super 6, an analogue hybrid synthesizer that creates binaural, 3D-simulating sound. The album is darker, more expansive and more overtly theatrical than her previous work, but still seems to exists in the liminal space between wakefulness and dreaming, with the brief but beautiful stalactites illustrative of its meditative tone.

https://hinakoomori.bandcamp.com/album/stillness-softness