Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone: June 2024

Review: Obliques unveils Poeme symphonique here on limited clear vinyl. Composer Jonathan Fitoussi reimagines Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 "Titan" in a groundbreaking creation commissioned by Radio France. Recorded live at La Maison de la Radio's grand auditorium on November 18, 2023, in Paris, this concert epitomizes a fusion of classical and electronic music. Fitoussi's interpretation breathes new life into Mahler's masterpiece, enriching it with contemporary sensibilities while preserving its timeless essence. With this release, Obliques invites listeners on a transcendent journey through sound, celebrating the convergence of past and present in the realm of symphonic expression.

Review: "2 Sim" is a phrase referring to mobile phones with two SIM cards, used to describe people of mixed heritage, dual nationality, or multiple residences. After being called a "2 Sim" by a stranger in Freetown - a moment recorded and featured on the album - Duval delved into the contemporary West-African 2 Sim experience. Originally released in 2018, this EP now gets a proper vinyl release. Created from two months of field recordings and interviews with family, friends, and peers in Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 Sim features site-specific recordings collaged with solo piano pieces and production work done in Sierra Leone and the UK. The EP is accompanied by a short film/music video of the same name, which Duval shot and directed while making the record. The EP blends the rawness of field recordings with the intimacy of solo piano, offering a deeply personal exploration of identity and belonging. This release is a compelling addition to Duval's growing body of work, reflecting on duality and cultural intersections.

Review: Ekin Fil's drone-pop consternations emerge through vaporous tones and forlorn, distant songs, as if plucked from a dream. These pieces exist on their own accord, moving with an internal logic of emotional heaviness that transcends mere shoegazing ambience. Her compositions evoke the fragmented etherealization of Elisabeth Fraser's voice from a forgotten David Lynch scene, acting as an ASMR trigger for Proustian recollection - profound, hidden, and desolately sad. The Helen Scarsdale Agency has had the pleasure of witnessing Ekin's continued growth as a composer, releasing seven of her magnificent, under-the-radar gems. Her slow-burning, dejected ballads draw from a deep well of sorrow, with varying frequencies and intensities of bitter light poking through - loves lost, a world broken. While not hopeless, her music acknowledges the considerable hardships we face. Sleepwalkers embraces familiar metaphors of narcolepsy and the unsettled state between sleep and wakefulness. Yet, it stretches into new territories with compositions paralleling Tim Hecker's gravitation soft-noise in 'Stone Cold' and slow-motion serialism in the ambient crawl of 'Gone Gone.' Recommended for fans of Grouper, Rafael Anton Irisarri, A.C. Marias, and Carla dal Forno.

Review: Michaelangelo Antonioni's name will always be synonymous with incredibly beautiful cinema, even if those movies can be challenging at times. Pablo's Eye takes some inspiration from the visceral aesthetic qualities that defined many of the great auteur's work, and then distills this into soundscapes that are uniquely spectacular, deceptively polished and yet effortless and raw. Whether you'd really call this ambient is a question for another time and another place - The List Was Sharp Our Eyes Were Open certainly creates ambience. We might be cast adrift on a small dingy, the peril of being stranded in the ocean subsiding into a strange sense of calm and quiet, motifs and tracks passing by like island in the endless blue. But when getting lost feels this good, who needs saving?

Review: London-based producer Box5ive is best known for bass-y reverberations, putting together potent UK-sounding club stuff for labels like Panel Audio and Well Street Records. A new direction found, co:clear now presents a stunning and beautiful collection of gentile ambient and drone material which is as transportive as it is trippy. A sunrise, a breathwork session, an odyssey through the mind's eye, a real work of art. At its most lush, Grey Space gives us the spatial twinkles of 'Sour Kiss', or the whispered exhales of 'Rough Sleeper', 'In Grey Space' and its sense of vast emptiness, and the crystalline harmonies on 'First Name'. At its loudest, we have the occasional beats and echoed notes of 'Omni74' and the blissful, d&b-chill of 'Blind' and 'Sell A Door'. The point being, this is never loud or overbearing, but always seductive and immersive.

Review: The hallowed grounds of Switzerland's Hallow Ground label are a fecund floor for cultivating the best ambient experimental music out there. Owing to their curatorial precision and charm, they welcome Japanese composer and sound artist Fujiiiiiiiiiiita (Yosuke Fujita) back to the fore for a sophomore album release. Having already released a slew of records whilst also touring the world, Fujita's latest album hears him in a rare space of quietude, documenting a recent studio rejig to incorporate several new additions, such as adding an electric air pump to his pipe organ and expanding on the use of his own voice. A challenging but ultimately rewarding work, with subtle vocal and textural experiments always peeking through the strata.

Review: It's studio album number four for Ancestral Voices, AKA Liam Blackburn. First we had the sonic diary of his time in South America, a life changing experience by all accounts of the LP 'Night of Visions'. Then we were given a dark exploration of oppressive frequencies on 'Divination', and finally meditative experiments with a custom tuning system for 'Navagraha'. For the fourth part of this high concept quartet, the artist turns his attention to metaphysics, ideas around the consciousness and our self-made realities. In terms of sound, it's utterly beautiful. From the warm building hums, percussive details and background waves of 'Inner Planes', to dense layers of refrain on the title track itself, there's no escaping its power.

Review: Ambient Etudes For Bass Guitar & Pedalboard is a new album from James Bernard that collates a number of his ambient sketches and improvisations that the artist has made in the last 12 months. The music was made in three different locations and with three different bass guitars, and each time in a live setting, in one take, all captured using the sound-on-sound looping method with a single instrument and a pedalboard. The whole thing is coated in lo-fi fuzz and real-world dust and has a circular nature that means you're always going somewhere but never find out where. It's a perfectly soothing tonic for calming busy minds.

Review: Selene by Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English is a beautiful exploration of atmosphere and gravity, seamlessly weaving together expansive soundscapes with a grounding sense of stability. At its core, Selene is a contemplative journey that delves into the human desire for transcendence and new perspectives. Through its meditative compositions, the record captures the essence of celestial zones and the boundless visions they evoke. Drawing inspiration from various sources, including radio telecopy, filmic dreams, and fictional renderings, the album transcends traditional boundaries to create a rich tapestry of sound and emotion. As a collaborative effort, Selene builds upon a lineage of musical exploration, bridging past and future with its innovative approach to composition and production. Through its ethereal melodies and evocative atmospheres, the album embraces the beauty of the unknown.

Review: Modern glassy ambient forefronters Motion Ward present their latest masterpiece from two standout centre-stagers on their roster, Ulla Strauss and Ultrafog. Having not collaborated on a full-length record before, the one is billed simply as 'two individuals from faraway (journeying) the world together'. "(They) were given many tiny gifts from the surroundings. Then the music came out as a matter of course, as if a thing was being put in its right place." Sonically, this translates to a pristine, sampledelic blissout, verging on the nascent road-trippy electronic-shoegaze motifs that Motion Ward have found themselves exploring as of late; and echoing the kind of alien ambient guitar-dubs that could recall Fennesz or Bibio, lest they weren't also mixed up with the kind of contemporary vocal chopups and glassy, aerated refractions that continue to carve out this extended crew's current noble standing. Our highlights; 'Lame Mart', 'Kind Zo'.

Review: Immersive but not ambient, the sleeve notes claim. It's not hard to see where the copywriter was coming from, either. SloMo A/V is testament to the months and years DJ and procure Chloe Thevenin has spent building soundscapes in her studio, honing the kind of skills necessary to create this level of lush and depth of, err, depth. Teaming up with Dune Lunel, a Paris-based art director who has been working within and around culture for two decades, and Adrien Godin, of ECV Digital, what's here is actually just one part of a greater whole. If you've been lucky enough to catch a SloMo A/V performance, you'll already know where this is going. Listening to the audio alone is captivating, sounds grow and develop from the faintest quiet to something that's, well, not loud, but certainly powerful and hypnotic enough to bore directly into the mind's eye. The experience forces you to slow down, reflect, consider, and ponder, sounds that inspire the imagination and speak to our third eye. Now, just imagine if this was accompanied by the visuals Chloe's project is based on when experienced live.