ABUL MOGARD Vinyl & CDs

Review: On limited edition green vinyl comes the deluxe edition of Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest, two-suite full-length collaborative record, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close, released through Black Knoll Editions. This gut-wrencher of a record unfolded after a chance kinship following a show at which both ambient legends appeared. Despite this seemingly irreverent origin story, 'Piece Of Forever' and 'Waking Up Dizzy On A Bastion' are anything but throwaway, each entrancing the listener with up to 20 minutes per side of awestruck sonic bokeh and tidal dronework, producing an overall tactile and warm, fully audiophilic experience.

Review: On limited yellow vinyl comes the latest LP from the elusive ambient moniker known as Abul Mogard - impossibly distant, impossibly close - this time made in collaboration with equal and match, Rafael Anton Irisarri. Having made friends serendipitously at the sold-out opening of the SoundSet Series at Madrid's Condeduque cultural center in 2023, at which they performed together for the first time, the duo's encore that evening compelled them to get their heads down and commit to a collaborative studio session. What followed was an intense, modular-synthetic jam that, in its final studio-polished incarnation, unfurls and ripples like dark pond water. Both tracks, most notably 'Waking Up Dizzy on a Bastion', slow-burns into the heights of glory and tearful sentiment, as if capturing the feeling of time slowing down when confronted with death in the heat of fortressed battle.

Review: Ambient legends Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri team up for new album Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. Unfolding naturally after being booked to play at the same show in Madrid in 2023, the two ambient artists' dazzlingly warm, slow-progressing approaches to ambience fuse neatly together here. Just two long pieces, 'Piece Of Forever' and 'Waking Up Dizzy On A Bastion', titularly grasp at the theme of eternity, determinism, historical peaks and troughs: the supporting atmosphere is equally as impressively arresting, seeming to urge the listener to 'give over' and move with the flow of time, less than the flow of will. Such a paradigm shift can indeed serve to make distance and closeness seem irrelevant.