Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone April 2021

Review: RECOMMENDED
When is dance music not really dance music, but still makes you want to shake everything your were given at birth? PLO Man and C3D E provide a perfect example with 'Public Static V (Part 1-5)', the opening track here. While never committing to labels, the track moves through a number of different arrangements, peaking with a sense of real energy and rhythm despite still being a blissful escape into downtempo heaven.

It's one of the hardest balances to strike, but here it strikes twice, albeit the second side - 'Public Static V (Part 6-10)' becomes a darker and altogether less fluffy beast. Poised on something of a knife edge, 4AM rave vibes are omnipresent as 25-minute composition approaches its conclusion, having started life sounding like dawn breaking over another world.

Review: Since the mid 1990s electronic explorer and sound designer Ryoji Ikeda has amassed a vast catalogue of releases. Some of these, though, are either hard to find or were only released on certain formats - hence this release on Sahko. It gathers together two lengthy compositions from early in his career that were previously only available on CD. Our pick of the pair is gorgeous A-side 'Luxus 1-3', a stunning, 16-minute suite from 1995 debut album 1000 Fragments that fuses deep space ambience with the orchestral musical cycles of American minimalism and plenty of gently mild-altering effects. Flipside 'Space', which first surfaced in 1998, is a ghostly piece of haunting sound design in which distance sub-bass tones struggle to break through a dense fog of creeping chords and digital watch bleeps.

Review: RECOMMENDED
"Fun, hopefully poignant, definitely weird." Not our words, reader, but the words of New York indie rock heroes Pinegrove when describing their short movie, Amperland, NY, which this collection of often pretty, always emotional and expertly written tracks were created for. Definitely the kind of tonic many of us could do with in spring 2021, then.

Surprisingly, considering the brief running time of the film, the soundtrack comprises 21 individual songs, and while some come in at less than one minute long others come close to breaking the five minute mark, making this a genuinely complete album brimming with ideas. From the weeping steel guitars on 'Hairpin', through the emo grunge and pianos of 'Overthrown', fans of Ben Folds, Cymbals Eat Guitars and Gramercy Arms will no doubt be in their element.

Review: 'Holographic Prism' is the final chapter of The Sky Trilogy by Purl - a three chapter volume of works, exploring collective dreams of celestial origin. features mixes from SVLBRD, Lav, Slow Dancing Society, Coppice Halifax, Warmth, Deflektion, Innesti, & Svartholtet.

Review: By now, we should all know what to expect from the THESIS label, namely beautifully presented 10" singles featuring fresh collaborations between artists who have never worked together before. The label's latest missive brings together two long-established musicians: neo-classical composer Clem Leek and ambient/krautrock fusionist Mark Peters. The pair begin with the crackling, glacial beauty of 'Overhill', where twinkling piano motifs rise above stately ambient chords, before channelling the long-distance loneliness of the lockdown era on the wonderfully melancholic 'Loyola'. Glistening melodies and reverb-laden chords mingle with Leek's piano on 'Half Day', while 'Cawthorne' is a bubbly ambient treat.

Review: It's not just a clever name. Zake and City Dawn have come up with a record that genuinely sounds like the reflective moods that so often follow great loss, realised on record. Sweeping synth-strings on 'We Once Believed We Owned The Sky' only serving to reiterate the sense of lamentation that seems to pervade every corner of this album.

Sometimes looking back on what was but will never be again is the only real way of making ourselves feel better - by connecting to intensely emotional memories we can trigger an outpouring that's truly cathartic. As if following that pattern, Frizzell & Duque: A Sorry Unrequited is a strangely uplifting experience by the time we're listening to the closing bars of 'The Sparrow's Flight', even if that's only because of the sense that others have the capacity to feel the same as we do.

Review: Frizzell and Duque, better known as zake and City Of Dawn, further extend their already impressive catalogue of music with the sublime 'A Sorrow Unrequited'. The joy of ambient music is its ability to provide the listener with a pathway to quiet contemplation. These two musicians take the listener on an aural journey, a musical interpretation of the beautiful poem of the same name written by Julia Frizzell. A Sorrow Unrequited showcases the beauty of the modern classical/ambient genre, and the talent of these two artists is on full display. Music that is truly timeless and enduring.

Review: Many missed out on Sadha when it was first released in 2007, largely because it was self-released in very limited quantities by Celer's Will Long and his then life partner Danielle Baquet-Long. This, then, is arguably the album's first "proper" release. It's well-worth checking, not least became it remains one of Long and Baquet-Long's most magical and timeless joint works. For proof, check the heart-aching ambient melancholia of 'Sans Heavens, Hand In Hand', where processed choral voices and bittersweet, synthesized orchestral movements ebb and flow across the sound space, and the simply stunning 'The Once Emptiness of Our Hearts' - a 55-minute piece of immersive ambient whose emotional resonance is little less than stunning.

Review: Melodies In The Sand is another vital album from Melody As Truth. It collects together the works of Czech artists Irena and Vojt?ch Havlovi, a husband and wife pair who made music int he 80s as part of experimental collective Capella Antiqua e Moderna. Their style spanned various styles of European classical music and was never less than unorthodox yet beguiling. This record really shines a light on these talented artists and brims with an emotional honesty and vulnerability that will impact anyone who hears it. The delicate keys, the vocal whispers and way they drift in and out, the rippling chords -these are always empty, subtle tracks but they leave an inedible mark.

Review: Past Inside The Present marks the end of The Sky Trilogy by Purl with Holographic Prism. This triptych of works has sought to explore collective dreams of celestial origin. The ambient sounds are all deeply involving and here come remixed by SVLBRD, Lav, Slow Dancing Society, Coppice Halifax, Warmth, Deflektion, Innesti, & Svartholtet. There is lots to love, with the icy shimmers and late night chill of the opener to the more dark, dank and dubbed out version of 'Merope' by Lav. 'Celestial Entropy' gets two different but equally fascinating versions turned out to close this absorbing EP in style.

Review: Dial Recordings co-head Peter Kersten, aka Lawrence, is no stranger to Mule Musiq. Birds On The Playground is in fact his 14th release for the label. Kersten wrote nine arrangements specifically for Toshiya Kawasaki's recently unveiled Studio Mule, an audiophile listening bar in Shibuya, Tokyo where the Hamburg native is said to have been 'slightly drunk' while enjoying the music. He wanted to bring this feeling of being 'tipsy' across in the album itself, composed on both acoustic and electronic instruments with the addition of field recordings captured in Berlin's Tiergarten. The result is a collection of contemplative downbeat journeys incorporating jazz, cosmic, ambient and japanese folk influences to wonderful effect.

Review: To celebrate the album's 20th birthday, long-serving ambient producer Magnus Birgerson has decided to offer-up a remastered edition of his debut full-length as Solar Fields, Reflectve Frequencies. Amazingly, it's the first time that the album, a decidedly spacey classic that cannily combines elements of Biosphere-style icy ambient with acid-flecked IDM and turn-of-the-millennium downtempo grooves, has been available on vinyl. It's a hugely atmospheric, immersive and entertaining affair all told, with highlights including the TB-303-laden bubbliness of 'Floating Channels', the deep space positivity of 'Red Vortex', the slowly unfurling bliss of 'Overlapping Particles' and the skewed, vocoder-sporting space-pop of 'Symbolic', which reminded us a little of Metro Area collaborator Kelley Polar.

Review: The enigmatic Black Swan's Repetition Hymns is a gorgeous collection of 19 short pieces that all add up to a great sense of momentum. Well suited to the slow passing of time that we have all endured during lockdown, the ambient pieces range from frosty and angst ridden to more pure and heavenly. As each imperfect loop unfolds, it changes in infinitesimally minor ways that only reveal themselves if you really give yourself over and get deeply immersed for the duration. Ad you should, because it is a great and rewarding use of time.

Review: The enigmatic Black Swan's Repetition Hymns is a gorgeous collection of 19 short pieces that all add up to a great sense of momentum. Well suited to the slow passing of time that we have all endured during lockdown, the ambient pieces range from frosty and angst ridden to more pure and heavenly. As each imperfect loop unfolds, it changes in infinitesimally minor ways that only reveal themselves if you really give yourself over and get deeply immersed for the duration. Ad you should, because it is a great and rewarding use of time.