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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: December 6, 2024

Dreamless Sleep EP – The Black Dog

The Black Dog have released this 4-track EP to further explore the concept they introduced in their full-length, Sleep Deprivation, that they call Neither Neither, but more specifically the deep, non-REM sleep where the brain restores itself and you lose conscious awareness.

Mosaic – Fennesz

This one got my off guard…new Fennesz? Christian Fennesz used a strict “9-5” work schedule in a new studio space to record this emotional album, without a break, from the end of 2023 to summer 2024.

Paris – Nils Frahm

Recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris, this is Frahm’s first live album. In a recent interview, Frahm called out most classical venues’ “arrogant attitude towards pop music,” how they focused on profit, and how they did not support artists. In contrast, he said the Philharmonie de Paris were verysupportive and charged reasonable rates.

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: November 29, 2024

Xerrox, Vol.5 – alva noto

NOTON · Alva Noto – Xerrox Vol. 5

The final chapter in Carsten Nicolai’s pentalogy, that started in 2007, is filled with slow strings, twinkling melodies, and gentle, granular mist

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: November 22, 2024

dawn – benjamin tennikoff

As a new father, Benjamin Tennikoff found himself having to be awake in the wee hours of the night/morning. To keep awake he started recording, which lead to this short film recorded on MiniDV featuring music he composed using a Roland Juno-6 recorded to an old Tascam 414 that he slowed down.

imagine a dolphin​.​.​. – Tony Rolando

Cassette release by electronic musician and Eurorack maker Tony Rolando, imagine a dolphin​.​.​. explores what it would sound if you put water in your synth. Well, he didn’t literally put water in his synth, but various samples of water sounds were run through Rolando’s modular synthesizer to help guide the compositional process. Shortly after the recording, Hurricane Helene devastated Asheville, NC, home to Rolando and Make Noise, his company. All proceeds of the albume will benefit Lamplight AVL: lamplightavl.org.

PLACE II – J. T. Boogaard & R. M. van der Meulen

J. T. Boogaard and R. M. van der Meulen almost scrapped the sequel to PLACE, their first collaboration. Like the sequels of Hollywood many times do, their work felt rehashed and forced (to them), so they shelved it, but they didn’t give up on it. After some time and tweaking, they ended uip with PLACE II.

PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LP II) – Bibio

I was eager for the release of Bibio’s follow-up to 2017’s PHANTOM BRICKWORKS, as the pre-release singles were one better than the other. A man of many hats, this collection of 10 tracks sees Stephen James Wilkinson exploring sites that are haunted by “human echos”, and exploring his ambient side

Tunnels of Egypt – André 3000

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: November 15, 2024

No Sound In Space – Blake Lee

Since 2011, Blake Lee has been most known for being the guitarist and a music director for Lana Del Rey, but he makes ambient/drone music too! This solo album is released on OFNOT, which is run by KMRU who appears on two of the tracks.

Essential Mixtape – Merely & Malibu

Malibu and Merely have joined forces for their debut collaborative full-length. The tracks to me sound like slick techno tracks that have been stripped of their heavy percussive and lower register elements, and what you’re left with is an ethereal sheen.

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: November 8, 2024

FA​Ç​ADISMS – Rafael Anton Irisarri

Interestingly released right after the 2024 US Presidential elections, the ideas for Irisarri’s latest LP started germinating in 2016 at a diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano”, or “The American Dream”, but literally translates to “The American myth”. The anticipated album was inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, which Irissari sees as a sort of an analogue to the cruel illusion of ‘freedom’ crafted by the American elites.

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: November 1, 2024

Forever Held – Jon Hopkins and Ólafur Arnalds

A surprise collab between two of the most lauded non-dance electronic artists, Forever Held is an emotional and cinematic string piece that simultaneously sounds at home in both Jon Hopkins’ and Ólafur Arnalds’ repertoire.

Sleep Deprivation – The Black Dog

A project started in 2006, Sleep Deprivation looks at how the lack of sleep (from gigging and traveling) affects every aspect of life, and sleep’s influence on the The Black Dog’s creative process.

Music for Bus Stations – Rod Modell

A name that references the reference of the ambient genre, with Music for Bus Stations Rod Modell wants you to be transported in a dimension where sound turns into background noise, and functionally, to be soothing music when waiting for the bus.

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: October 25, 2024

forge – KMRU

Joseph Kamaru’s releases on Seil Records are some of the more melodic of his repertoire. Melody is crossed with static, drone, and rhythm to create captivating landscapes that are at once natural and alien.

Eno Piano 2 – Bruce Brubaker

On his second EP exploring Brian Eno’s ambient music, Bruce Brubaker used a Steinway concert grand piano with electromagnetic bows to create sustained drone textures.

LLYN PERIS – Bibio

The second single from Bibio’s upcoming PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LP II) that releases November 22, 2024. Based on the sounds of the two singles, the follow-up to 2017’s PHANTOM BRICKWORKS is going to be a great release.

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: October 11, 2024

DINORWIC – Bibio

The first single and first track off of Bibio’s upcoming PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LP II), DINORWIC is decidedly more ambient than the sunlight-infused guitar-laden folktronica of his latest offerings. This longform track is lo-fi and muffled yet reverberated, like listening to subtle ringing guitar plucks and a soft choir behind an obstruction from the other end of a large church.

Virtual Dreams II – Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999 – Various Artists

A Music From Memory release compiled by Eiji Taniguchi and the late MFM cofounder Jamie Tiller, Virtual Dreams II explores the Japanese ambient tracks that frequented the “club chillout” rooms of the 90s.

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Music Videos

Great Music Videos: September 2024

A monthly post dedicated to (what I think are) great music videos. When I was a kid, music videos were important, or at least they seemed to be a more sacred thread in the cultural fabric. Whole TV networks were dedicated to music videos, and even the TV networks that weren’t seemed have at least one weekly show dedicated them. It’s odd that in this day and age where videos with music in them are all the rage and are creating scrolling zombies out of our mobile phone-equipped selves, traditional music videos don’t really get mentioned too often.

This month’s theme is artist names featuring abbreviations.

FKA twigs – Eusexua

It kind of made me think that almost every movie in the late 80’s/early 90’s featured folks in some job in a big corporate office that made them miserable. Great concept, great execution, great choreography, and an interesting future prog R&B meets Eurodance with a dash of Björk.

A$AP Rocky – Tailor Swif

This video is bonkers. There’s so much happening, and all those things happening are from some surrealist fever dream. It was also filmed in Ukraine!

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Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: September 6, 2024

Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom – Rafael Anton Irisarri

I really like this new track by Irisarri. It goes real low, real crunchy, and real wide. It’s the first track off of his upcoming LP, FAÇADISMS, releasing November 8th, 2024. It features Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals.

IV – Alessandro Cortini

‘IV’ is the penultimate movement from Cortini’s Nati Infiniti, a 40-minute piece based on an immersive audio installation that he created for the Sónar Lisboa festival in 2022 presented at the Museu de Lisboa’s Moagem.

th1 [evnslower] – Aphex Twin

New Aphex Twin! Well, not really, but this is the first time it is officially on streaming. Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edtion) will be out October 4th in various formats via Warp.

Migratory – Masayoshi Fujita

The Japanese vibraphonist and marimba player was inspired to create this new solo album by his return to his native Japan with his family in 2020, after 13 years of living in Berlin, fulfilling his dream of living and composing music in the midst of nature. 

Temporary Stored II – KMRU

KMRU created the original Temporary Stored as a response to gaining access to the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and reckoned with the collective inheritance of colonial (sound) archives. Temporary Stored II extends the original album by inviting other artists (Aho Ssan, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jessica Ekomane) to draw upon their listening experiences of museum archives holding recordings of African songs, traditions and practices.