New releases this week: Ambient/Drone

Review: Gothenburg trio Amateur Hour is Hugo Randulv, Julia Bjernelind and Dan Johansson, and Gar I Kras is their fourth album. It builds on the expansive Krokta Tankar Och Branda Vanor from back in 2022, and though still experimental and out there, it might also be their most accessible and polished work yet. Dreamy lo-fi pop meets gritty electronics and sound collage throughout as damaged linger above humming basslines and grimy guitars underpin detached vocals. It's a haunting but beautiful soundtrack for outsiders who like music from the fringe but that retains a sense of human warmth and soul.

Review: Hailing from Atlanta, Andre 3000 continues to redefine the contours of musical experimentation with his latest sonic offerings. On 'Moving Day', a piece first showcased in last year's short film documenting his recent work, the OutKast veteran trades in his usual genre-defying flow for the smooth, ambient tones of a cosmic flute. The track unfolds like a slow-motion dream, where the melodies drift in and out of focus, capturing the disorienting yet soothing experience of moving through transitions. Then comes the reversed version, 'Day Moving', which inverts the gentle flow of the original, adding an unsettling, almost ghostly quality as the music warps and loops. The third track, 'Tunnels of Egypt', brings in an unexpectedly grounded yet still vast atmosphere, with its deep, resonant percussion and sparse instrumentation evoking a journey through both time and space. Andre's recent forays into the abstract have seen him abandon his commercial past in favour of an introspective exploration that challenges both him and his audience. Across these three tracks, he once again demonstrates his ability to balance complexity with restraint, creating something both otherworldly and deeply personal.

Review: Eli Keszler hears the New York percussionist and composer of the same name lord his soundworld over as yet unhaunted terrains. Rooted in dust residues of American abstraction, jazz noir, ancient melodic memory and crumbling industrial forms, the record unfolds as a footworking meditation on beauty and erosion, gawping at the anguishes and awes of the present moment. Keszler's metamorphic practice spans releases on PAN, Empty Editions, and ESP Disk, as well as collaborations with Oneohtrix Point Never, Rashad Becker and Laurel Halo. Icons emerges as a natural continuation of his previous, equally as unsettling LP Stadium from 2018, and this one emerges as its natural progression. The release coincides with a conversation between Keszler and filmmaker Adam Curtis, framing the album within a wider dialogue on sound, history and collapse.

Review: Originally conceived as a suite for electronics and ensemble but then abandoned, the latest from Vancouver-based ambient producer Scott Morgan aka Loscil sees him restructure, remix and transform the ashes of it into something newian album that feels like a smouldering landscape, its textures layered with both loss and rebirth. Loscil's Lake Fire is an album born from destruction and reinvention. Thematically, Lake Fire draws inspiration from a road trip into the mountains Morgan took to mark his personal half-century milestone. eventually surrounded by wildfires and thick smoke, and that experience seeps into the album's DNA, shaping its dense, hazy atmospheres. The title itself reflects a haunting ironyiforest fires often take their names from nearby lakes, a stark juxtaposition of destruction and serenity. The album unfolds like a shifting mist. 'Spark' is dynamic and drenched in deep chords that ripple through a cloudy haze. 'Arrhythmia' carries a heavy build, swelling with intensity before receding into silence. These pieces, along with the rest of the album, feel like echoes from another worldidistant yet deeply resonant. Released on Kranky, which has long been a home and supporter of his music, Lake Fire is another great example at Morgan's ability to craft ambient soundscapes that are both vast and intimate. It's a hypnotic listen and an exploration of impermanence and transformation wrapped in a thick sonic fog.

Review: Calling the curtain on Field Records' Waterworks trilogy, Yui Onodera turns his ear to confluences of hydrology and history, dedicating his latest record to Japan's Kiso Three Rivers and their transformation by 19th-century Dutch engineering. The Kiso, Nagara and Ibi rivers, once prone to catastrophic flooding, were reshaped under the guidance of Johannes de Rijke, whose work helped protect Nagoya from seasonal deluge by 1912. Onodera, known for his nuanced sound architecture, approaches this subject with a finely honed ear for subtlety, layering quiet field recordings with fuller instrumentation, evoking the widening of a river from brook to strait. The A-side's bell tones provide a sensory-meridian intimacy, processed alongside guitar, and ethereal pads; while the B-side's contradictorily colossal quietude makes itself across two long-form studies, which drift through sampled water and restrained electronics.

Review: Florian TM Zeisig's latest project has been created with perfumer Angel Paradise so blends scent and sound into a multi-sensory experience rooted in the Bavarian Alps. While living in the rural village of Hinang, Paradise studied alpine plants to craft natural perfumes while Zeisig composed Spool, a reflective suite inspired by nostalgia, landscape and the duo's impending departure. Combining field recordings, ambient loops and blurred instrumental vignettes, the music has a wonderfully dreamlike, pastoral atmosphere that has your head lost somewhere beautiful. Paired with the fragrance that comes with it and captures the oily, floral essence of their environment, this is a poignant meditation on memory, nature and the fleeting beauty of physical presence that is unlike anything else you will experience this year.

Review: North London musician Sam Beste is the creative force behind Vernon Spring, a long, carefully fangled project intersecting jazz, soul, ambient and experimental music. Pulling on a string of recording artistic greatness, part-inherited from his dad's record collection which packed Thelonious Monk and D'Angelo, Beste soon found himself in the world of the studio, working with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Kano, Gabriels and Joy Crookes. The Vernon Spring is his own claim to individuation, and the new LP follows twelve elegant songs, considering values of family loyalty and global responsibility in uncertain times, as they clash and harmonise in unpredictable step. Piano, electro-acoustics, spoken word and tactile ambient careens underlie the record, and features from Max Porter, Aden and Iko Niche help curate an equipoised, grounded mental mood.