Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: Affin Records label head and long-time techno maker and sound designer Joachim Spieth is back with a new album project called Retrace. It is one that finds him blending dub with ambient electronics into seven "complex, aqueous soundscapes" packed with great textures and crystalised melodies. Opener 'Recall' sets a fine tone for the record then 'Shine' sinks into hazy and lo-fi static-laced tundras, 'Longing' is delicious dub techno from the bottom of the ocean and 'Drain' follows suit but with a little more propulsion. Many more such tracks follow on what is an intriguing album full of evocative narratives and heady pads.

Review: A cross-hemispheric exchange gave rise to Nocturna, the first collaboration between New Zealand composer Andrew Thomas and German sound artist Joachim Spieth - the former's first for Affin after long-held stints Kompakt. Beginning with Thomas's piano sketches, composed during a Southern Hemisphere summer, the material was passed to Spieth just as light returned to the North. A subtle transformation ensued; Spieth preserved the piano's fragile warmth as its edges came sculpted across ambient textures and restrained sound design. A peek-a-boo of presence and absence is scripted, where each decision to withhold a note feels as resonant as those included. Clipped reverb gargantuans contrast to crystal clear piano scales on our favourites, 'Lumina' and 'Amethyst'.

Review: Long-time European techno innovator Joachim Spieth has hooked up with Agustin Mena aka Warmth for a debut collaborative album that blends their shared love for expansive soundscapes and atmospheric compositions. Warmth is the Spanish ambient producer who is also behind the SVLBRD alias so these two know a thing or two about how to get the most out of their machines and so they prove here across an album of seven immersive tracks. They are rife with organic textures and evoke a sense of space and timeless longing, all with a gently persuasive sense of movement.

Review: Stiroll's Sofia marks the Ukrainian artist's return to Greyscale Records with his first full-length album, painting a sonic portrait of a day in the life of a suburban area. The album invites listeners to experience the subtle intricacies and layered sounds of a community awakening, bustling, and finally resting as night falls. The journey begins with 'Intro - Dusk,' a brisk and atmospheric opener that evokes the early morning stillness before a city stirs to life. The full chord remnants and distant echoes set the stage for the day ahead, capturing the anticipation of the morning. 'Standbye' follows, offering a more airy and purposeful vibe, moving away from minimalism to suggest the first signs of activity, as if the world is slowly beginning to wake. 'Foundamental' continues this progression, riding along with gentle sounds punctuated by flares of static, hinting at the humidity and energy building in the air. The track flows effortlessly, mirroring the natural rhythm of a day gaining momentum. As the day matures, 'Sequence To None' introduces more serious, conflicting chords, perhaps reflecting the push and pull of daily routines and interactions. The crisp production and deep bassline ground the track, offering a sense of structure and direction. Midday arrives with 'Vidlunnia,' a sparse, downtempo piece that feels like basking in the warmth of the sun. The chords wash over the listener like rays, creating a relaxing, chill-out atmosphere with a broken rhythm that invites reflection. The pace slows with 'Interlude - Fall Moon,' where a churning, almost mechanical heartbeat drives the track forward, building tension as the day begins to wane. The ominous mood that emerges in the second half hints at the challenges that often accompany the close of a day. 'Nulle Part' shifts the mood with a more pronounced beat, offering a straightforward yet catchy rhythm that feels both harmonious and conflicted. The hypnotic quality draws you in as it moves toward a positive, yet complex resolution. 'Fall Control' then soothes with heavily processed sounds, offering a brief moment of respite before the album's closing tracks. 'Hope' stands out as the most original dub track on the album, blending strings with a lofty melody that soars before plunging into deeper, more uncertain territory. The track feels otherworldly, capturing the complexities and contradictions of hope itselfia fitting theme as the day begins to wind down. Finally, 'Outro - Dawn' signals the end of the day and the album, with ambient washes that gently alert like a clock, leaving the listener with a sense that it is time to close. Sofia is a meticulously crafted album that encapsulates the ebb and flow of daily life in a suburb, bringing together the sounds of different people and languages into a unified, sonic narrative.

Review: Way back in 1995, Sun Electric (AKA Berlin-based twosome Tom Thiel and Max Loderbauer) released one of the greatest live ambient albums of all time, the stunning 30.7.94 Live, on R&S offshoot Apollo. Live at Votivkirche Wien is a follow-up of sorts - a previously unreleased recording from 1996 of the pair's show at Vienna's neo-gothic Votivkirche Wien concert hall, at which the duo made great use of the venue's natural reverb. Mixing their usual unfurling melodies and deep space chords with a mixture of gentle beats, sumptuous sound design and dubby basslines, the set ebbs and flows attractively before concluding with an inspired, stretched-out ambient techno re-interpretation of 1994 single 'Aaah!' In a word: brilliant!

Review: Astonishingly, a decade has now passed since Todd Gauthreaux first donned the Tapes & Topographies guise. Since then, he has released countless inspired and immersive albums, offering up an attractive ambient sound rich in drifting chords, densely layered sound design and contemplative musical motifs. Plumage, his first full-length excursion of 2024, sees him pop up on ROHS! for the first time. He's typically delivered the goods, matching ocean-deep ambient soundscapes with slow burning, melancholic melodies, evocative flashes of field recordings, hazy aural textures and twinkling, occasionally sorrowful, piano solos. It's arguably one of his most accessible and aurally striking sets to date - not bad for someone whose output has been consistently excellent for some time.

Review: Marseille's IOT Records is the home for Azu Tiwaline's latest dubbed out and dreamy pads and manipulated field recordings. It's her second album and is another one that stands up to her reputation for being a true innovator. Following on from Draw Me a silence in 2020, Teh Fifth Dream is an hour long session that veers from reverberating and bass heavy steppers to next level synth-scapes. Field recordings made in the desert of her native El Djerid, in South Tunisia, feature heavily as do tombak drums and modular synths from Franco-Persian spar Cinna Peyghamy.

Review: London-based Australian vocalist, producer and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappe has always made immersive, enveloping and deeply atmospheric that sidesteps convention. It was that uniquely haunting and emotive approach to ambient and electronica that earned her deals with Optimo Music and Houndstooth, amongst others. Now signed to One Little Independent, Trappes has pushed the boat out further on Requiem, a mournful and bittersweet musical meditation in which her distinctively sweet-but-drowsy vocals rise above manipulated cello textures, hushed field recordings, ambient textures and intriguing electronic sounds aplenty. It's bold, beautiful and at times breathtakingly brilliant, once again marking Trappes out as an artist with a genuinely unique musical vision.

Review: By Scott Hansen's previously prolific standards, we've had to wait a fair old while for a new album. Infinite Health, the third Tycho album for Ninja Tune after years signed to Ghostly International, is by design something of a reset: a self-proclaimed meditation on "hope for the future" mixed with a "requiem for the past". Stylistically, that also means a return to his electronic roots, with colourful, melody-rich and sun-splashed synth sounds combined with unfussy beats and breaks, toasty basslines and glistening, AM radio-friendly guitar licks. It is then, regardless of the inspirations behind it, a classic-sounding Tycho album - as highlights 'Phantom', the instrumental deep synth-pop dreaminess of 'Devices' and the lo-fi, trip-hop influenced shuffle of 'Green' emphatically prove.

Review: User.Exp's first release on Greyscale Recordings provides a thoughtful sonic exploration, made up of field recordings, contact and hydrophone mic sessions and shortwave transmissions (either generated from scratch or really recorded). Artist and label are met with serendipity and ease here; though many releases have hit the Greyscale stocks - all working well within their trademark sonic and visual monochrome - User.Exp's latest is an especially congruent record, bringing crackly burrs and earthen movements to an album that feels large in scope and difficult to pigeonhole, yet intuitively felt. As if to describe a set of 12 different microbiomes - all besieged by a black-and-white, ecosystemic blight - the likes of 'Pollution', 'Erosion' and 'Wind' provide indications enough as to the set of ideas going in here. A deeply calming release, full of textural intricacies and yet not without a creeping sense of unbalance too.

Review: Klamm is the new label dedicated to the artistic output of Saele Valese. After "Ivic", a collection of old and new materials published on Alva Noto's label (NOTON) at the beginning of the year, Saele Valese releases now his first real album "A White, White Day". Written and recorded between 2018 and 2021 the material of this work was sliced, glued and recreated several times, just like a filmmaker in the editing process, before finding its final form. Inspired indeed by the most poetic cinema, 'A White, White Day' represents, in the form of a non-linear and enigmatic narrative, a personal and psychological reflection on time, memory and dreams. Mastered by Rashad Becker.

Review: Fresh from joining forces with fellow Danes Lust For Youth on a decidedly experimental seven-inch single ('Jean Jenet'), Christian Stadsgaard brings his Vanity Productions project to Northern Electronics for the first time. In keeping with his career to date, The Night Has Passed Already fuses Stadsgaard's love of extreme, layered, distorted drone sounds and radical sound design with grandiose ambient chords, distant heavy metal guitar solos (drenched in oodles of reverb and white noise), icy electronic melodies (see the Biosphere-esque 'Way Around The Canvas') and buzzing, mind-altering fragments of effects-laden electronics. It somehow manages to sound intimate, contemplative and utterly colossal all at the same time.