Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone March 2021

Review: This intriguing and predictably atmospheric album is the first collaborative full-length from experienced modern ambient producer Dennis Huddleston AKA 36, and Los Angeles duo Awakened Souls, whose full-length hook-up with Pepo Galan, Palettes, received plenty of praise last year. Between them the trio have conjured up a hugely evocative and emotion-rich collection of cuts, where heart-aching, slow-motion guitar laments stretch out across swelling synthesizer chords, meditative pads, distant-sounding vocal snippets, enveloping aural textures and soft-focus piano refrains. It's a wonderfully meditative and picturesque set all told, and one that could well turn out to be one of the most essential ambient albums of 2021.

Review: MIF, or Manchester International Festival, has been considered a seal of quality since its inception back in 2007. A biennial dedicated to showcasing world premieres, it's the place Damon Albarn first unveiled his epic Monkey: Journey To The West before the acclaimed spectacular went global, where Bjork presented Biophilia and the fantastic instruments she created to realise that vision, and the location of Skepta's science fiction warehouse rave, Dystopia987, among other landmark shows.

2019's edition featured Invisible Cities, a sparkling new adaptation of Italo Calvino's 1972 novel of the same name. Stars of the Lid founder Adam Wiltzie and L.A. composer Dustin O'Halloran were commissioned to score the action on stage, and now two years later their soundtrack is ready to own. At times majestic and rousing, in other moments tense and poised, but all breathtakingly beautiful contemporary classical fare, we highly recommend.

Review: Five years ago, as part of his ongoing vinyl reissue series, Norwegian ambient maestro Biosphere offered up an expanded edition of his 2000 album Cirque. Due to popular demand, he's decided to serve up this edition again in early 2021. The album remains as fresh as it did when it first emerged 21 years ago, with the producer's usual icy ambient sound washes being replaced by warmer, hazier aural textures, gentle melodies, deep bass and a wide variety of distant-sounding rhythms that rarely dominate the sound space. The additional material, most of which is featured on record three, is equally as impressive, with the publicity-shy Norwegian expertly blurring the boundaries between dub techno and ambient techno.

Review: 'Being Below' is a mini-album of short songs created with digital and analogue instruments. Written with a structure that reflects shifting states, overlooking the past and future as a split pathway with the present endlessly fluctuating between. The pangs of rumination. An exercise in loop-less writing.

Review: While only comprising four tracks, Ruckverzauberung Exhibition is a monumental work and a significant moment in the career of Wolfgang Voigt. Marking the 10th anniversary of his Ruckverzauberung project, which was conceived to explore abstract ambient sounds, and our emotional responses to those noises, it's a serene counterweight to the producer's heavier and more foreboding GAS alias.

Despite the brevity of the track list, this double-vinyl release is deceptively sprawling, which each arrangement spanning roughly 15-minutes or thereabouts, and really showing off the artist's skill at creating tangible textures with sound. You can feel these pieces living and breathing with us, organically developing, building, ebbing and flowing in a way that marks Voigt out as a true vanguard of minimalistic composition, whose appeal extends well beyond the worlds of dance and electronica.

Review: Steve Moore is a modern day synth master. He has been honing his craft over the last 20 years and now, having joined forces with legendary label KPM, he explores a more quiet and introspective sound on his latest record, Analog Sensitivity. Layered up with meticulously crafted sounds, there are twinkling stars, thoughtful drones and airy open spaces all run through with an ever present sense of electronic futurism. It's mysterious and atmospheric as it unfolds on its mysterious journey. You don't know where it's going, but you're always glad to be along for the ride.

Review: RVNG INTL has scored something of a coup here by securing the rights to release Angel Tears in Sunglight, the first album in 30 years from the late, great new age composer and electronic experimentalist Pauline Anna Strom. Recorded towards the end of her life in the same San Francisco studio where she created her lauded 1980s work, the full-length is a beautiful, poignant and meditative as you'd expect, with Strom combining Reichian marimba melodies, sparkling synthesizer loops and luscious new age electronics with a variety of becalmed, creepy and glassy-eyed ambient textures. It's the aural equivalent of a deep bath in the company of an ambient master, which sounds like the kind of date night we'd really enjoy.

Review: These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound is Richard Skelton's first for Phantom Limb and the latest in a long line of standout releases from the cultured British star. It features plenty of the hallmarks of his signature sound - strings, pianos and acoustic instruments all mired in audio dust and dirt to make for tense pieces of electronic experimentation and ambient that can freak you out or calm you down depending on his mood. The artist again here uses signal-degradation "as a means of reflecting the processes of decay and transformation in the natural world" and the results are compelling.

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: Eternal ambient maestro and frequent collaborator Jonny Nash links up with renowned Tarawangsa player Teguh Permana for this new album which was recorded over the course of March 2020 in Bandung and Amsterdam. Tarawangsa is sacred music from Sunda, Indonesia and lends this album a truly lush meditative feel, with heart aching notes ringing out over Nash's plaintive piano chords. It's sparse but devastatingly absorbing as the five fantastic tracks all bring to mind thoughts of death, passage from one life to another, the changing seasons and eternal passage of time.

Review: ESP Institute look to Chee Shimizu for this one. He helmed an incredible Tokyo DJ collective called Discossession alongside Dr Nishimura back in the 2000s and the now dominant ambient talent Jonny Nash was also a part of the gang. They released two EPs which got cult status and for the music on this EP Chee linked with Tokyo guitarist miku-mari a.k.a. Takahiro Matsumura for some live shows at experimental audio/visual event Sacrifice. The multi-hour sessions were recorded and then edited down to the two pieces presented here which are filed with windchimes and Andean chajchas, synths, Tibetan bells and pyramid crystals and make for wondrous listening.

Review: Our first release of year 2021 sees the return of much beloved English musician Orla Wren. Recorded in, and inspired and infused by his home in the wilds of the Scottish countryside, his first album in 5 years is entitled "The Blind Deaf Stone" and is a paean to a certain pastoralism, and to the life of this somewhat secluded artist. The four long tracks are distinct excursions into a personal landscape of organic and broken melodic meanderings...the slapping spokes of a bicycle ridden through the tall grass, the swish of the walking stick, the buzz of the fly on the manure and the mysteriously subtle drone like chattering and burbling of the deepest countryside. Plaintive...melancholic...beatific...this is the loveliest of soundtracks to a simple life well lived away from the maddening crowd, and without regret. This is the very limited CD version in an edition of just 100 copies. In a lovely 4 panel digipak, featuring vintage photos of fellow animals long gone. This release was also available in a limited edition, double 10" lathe cut record edition.

Review: Philadelphia's cultural significance doesn't quite resonate in the same way on the European side of the Atlantic as it does back in the States. Of course we all know about Philly Cheese Steak, Hall & Oates, and The Roots, but the extent to which the biggest city in Pennsylvania acts as a melting pot for creativity, without really shouting about it, is really quite remarkable once you lift the lid. And we've not even mentioned It's Always Sunny... yet.

Cutting to the chase, far too late, Alex Burkat, is a case in point for the talent at work in said metropolis. A producer and DJ who has graced labels like Mister Saturday Night, Permanent Vacation, 100% Silk and Third Ear Recordings in the past, here he turns his well-tuned ear to ambient work, delivering three accomplished drone outings that do as they should - hypnotic, tunnelling, creeping but commanding.

Review: Semantica has long been leading the way when it comes to deep, experimental techno and associated sounds coming out of Spain. On Simone Giudice's Materia (his second album and only third release in two years) ambient, IDM, drone and experimental all feature across the 13 well realised tunes. After a gently atmospheric opener, 'Ghiaccio' grows more frosty and edgy, 'Ricordo' resets the mood with some heavenly bliss and 'Distanza' slows things down to a deep, predatory crawl. Italian crasftsman Neel guests on 'Inerzia', which is one of the many highlights here.

Review: The Cinder Grove is a follow up long player to Chuck Johnson's accomplished Balsams album. Once again the innovator dives deep into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. What he comes up with is a profound collection of music that layers strings, pianos and meditative moods into an affecting musical statement on the sombre nature of loss and irreplaceability. It is another fantastic entry into his shining discography and another truly affecting listen that makes an indelible mark across the five tracks.

Review: Daniel Avery is one of electronic music's most talented artist right now. Whatever he doe sis worth hearing, even if it is an unlikely partnership with Alessandro Cortini, the Nine Inch Nails synth artist. This is their debut work together and is a fascinating coming toter of their own respective worlds - the ethereal pads of Cortini and more rugged electronic drones and textures of Avery. It was all done remotely, with no real concept, over many years, and is a delicate yet hugely powerful album of absorbingly bleak ambient, occasionally frosty textures and moments of true synth beauty.

Review: Italian sound designer and producer Saele Valese has been operating around the fringes of minimalistic electronic music for some time, though this outing on Noton is still his debut full-length excursion. Named in honour of his alternative production alias, IVIC, the set does a great job in showcasing his now trademark sound: a hushed, atmospheric and enveloping blend of creeping drone tones, softly swelling ambient noise, occasional sub-bass tones and sparse, pared-back electronic rhythms. For the most part the tone is clandestine and mildly unsettling, with periods of decaying beauty interspersed with strangely hypnotic outings and genuinely chilling musical moments.

Review: Escape to a hidden place.