Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone Best of 2017

Review: Since slipping out in 1983, Midori Takada's debut album, Through The Looking Glass, has become something of a sought-after item amongst ambient enthusiasts (with hugely inflated online prices to match). Happily, Palto Flats has decided to reissue it, allowing those without overblown record buying budgets to wallow in its gentle, humid majesty. Remarkably, Takada not only composed and produced it, but also played every instrument, including marimbas, recorder, vibraphone, harmonium, and all manner of things you can hit and shake. The resulting tracks remain hugely beguiling, sitting somewhere between a dreamy take on traditional Japanese music, the classic ambient albums of Brian Eno, and the gentle, sweat-soaked explorations of The Chi Factory.

Review: Naturally, there's been plenty of hype surrounding this new Hyperdub 10", which features Burial indulging his often-discussed ambient influences. It's a typically creepy and ghostly affair, with the lack of beats - if not rhythmic elements - only serving to amplify the shadowy producer's impeccable sound design and brilliant use of manipulated field recordings. A-side "Subtemple" is particularly paranoid in tone, featuring as it does chilling melody loops, curious vocal samples, looped vinyl crackle and all manner of layered background noise. Flipside "Beachfires" is, if anything, even more dystopian, with Burial basing the action around the kind of pulsing chords that gust back and forth like an autumnal breeze.

Review: This album is compiled of material composed especially for St. Giga, Japan: a satellite broadcast radio station that transmits ambient music 24 hours a day and whose programming was based around current tidal movements. Composed and mixed by Kim Cascone and originally released on his seminal Silent imprint in 1995. Initially a visual artist, Cascone was said to be drawn to the aural collage of cinema soundtracks. He received formal instruction in structural arrangement and composition of electronic music at the Berklee School of Music until 1973, then went on to study with Dana McCurdy at the New School in Manhattan. After gaining experience as an audio technician, Cascone worked with David Lynch on both the syndicated television pilot 'Twin Peaks' and the movie 'Wild at Heart.' The gorgeous and mesmerising soundscapes on this release are just made for drifting and will certainly appeal to fans of Pete Namlook or Biosphere.

Review: Following an appearance on the Schleissen series, Tropical Hi-Fi makes a return to Emotional Response with some delightful exotica laced musings perfect for static real world situations, not to mention mind trips to distant shores. Just try listening to the steel guitar lilt and percussive tumble of "Tahiti Blue" and not having the image of a balmy, breezy island scene in your third eye. At times the record drifts off into experimental, field recording focused territory, and occasionally the machines take over for a more electronic experience, but throughout the playful inspiration of exotica binds this wonderfully realised record together.

Review: Every story has an end. But in life, every ending is just a new beginning.
Life goes on - not always as we envisioned it would be,
but always the ways it's supposed to be.

Remember, we usually can't choose the music life plays for us,
but we can choose how we dance to it. Make yours a beautiful memory.

Mystic & Quantum 2013-2016.

Review: On the back of Kompakt's expansive retrospective of his work under the Gas alias, the essential Box, Wolfgang Voigt has decided to deliver a new album - his first for 17 years. Predictably, Narkopop is as cinematic, widescreen and densely layered as anything the German ambient producer has done to date. Over 11 spellbinding tracks, Voigt blends field recordings and droning electronics with sweeping, almost orchestral movements, swirling melodic cycles, and occasional forays into rhythmic hypnotism. The result is a collection of "wall of sound" ambient compositions that does a terrific job tiptoeing the fine lines between both grandiosity and intimacy, and joy and pain. In a word: essential.

Review: Gigi Masin's second coming after the wondrous Music From Memory retrospective back in 2014 has been one of contemporary music's most heart-warming stories, with the ever-smiling Venetian embracing new musical endeavours and friends. Alongside the Gaussian Curve album recorded with 'Young' Marco Sterk and Jonny Nash, Masin brought a degree of considered pedigree to the Lifted project on PAN. Outside of all this however, Masin has cultivated a strong musical bond with compatriots and Hell Yeah founders Tempelhof, with this album Tsuki arriving two years on from the trio's first LP-length sojourn together. Some nine tracks long, Tsuki will entrance Masin fans as the three musicians lead you on a gentle, warm and enveloping saunter through kosmische, new age and sounds reminiscent of the Japanese minimalist electronics pioneers.

Review: Way back in 1996, Rod Modell (he of Deepchord and Echospace fame) joined forces with Chris Troy as Waveform Transmission. They released one, CD-only album, V1.0-1.9, before going their separate ways. 21 years on, they've reunited for this superb follow-up on Astral Industries. While there are naturally plenty of nods towards Modell's usual densely layered, ultra-textured sound - think manipulated field recordings and lashings of outboard analogue effects - for the most part the set is far dreamier and more melodically precise than his ambient works; a testament, perhaps, to Troy's influence. Either way, the resultant tracks are, for the most part, breathtakingly good, sitting somewhere between gently drifting aural meditations and Pete Namlook style deep space soundscapes.

Review: After 18 months of soft releases and sunset-optimised live shows across Europe, Danish dreamer Emil Breum comes correct with the aptly titled Moments. Each instant as cosy, poignant and emotionally rich as the last, Breum's ambience and cool sense of contemporary classical is showcased at its finest. The whole trip is a whirlwind of star-gazing soul but surefire standouts have to be the nylon string plucking Balearic bliss-out "Dive", the oceanic synth washes and delicate folds of "Bright Lights" and the striking keystroke confidence of "Blueberries". Delicious.

Review: Having introduced Spanish ambient pioneer Suso Saiz to a wider audience via last year's superb Odisea retrospective, Music From Memory has scored a new album from the long-serving musician and composer. Rainworks was recorded over a two-month period in early 2016, and sees Saiz evocatively joining the dots between Jonny Nash style guitar-led ambience, gently undulating, piano-driven mood pieces, evocative collages of found sounds and field recordings (see opener "From Memory & The Sky"), and ghostly, effects-laden ambient. He also finds time to pay tribute to Steve Reich style American minimalism on the cyclical brilliance of "They Don't Love Each Other".

Review: With this latest release on his fine Offen Music imprint, Vladimir Ivkovic has pulled off something of a coup. Ma is the first collaborative release from Ivan Smaghhe and Rupert Cross, a composer and sound designer who is best known for his work with fellow score maestro Patrick Doyle. It's an interesting and unusual set, with the duo utilizing a range of acoustic and electronic instruments to create tracks that variously touch on Don't DJ style polyrhythms, ambient mood pieces smothered in evocative field recordings, eccentric drone soundscapes, krautrock influenced compositions, shoegaze moods, and creepy, soundtrack style workouts. It's the kind of album that takes a few listens to really get under your skin, but it's more than worth the effort.

Review: A collaboration between Suzanne Kraft aka Los Angeleno Diego Herrera and the Antinote/LIES affiliated D.K. aka Dang Khoa Chau for Jonny Nash's Melody As Truth imprint. The label has thus far acted as an outlet mainly for Herrera and Nash's work, both individually and in collaboration: such as on the label's last release: the Passive Aggressive LP. Lush ambient journeys incorporating pristine digital textures and the metallic glimmer of classic FM synthesis are what is on offer here, for the most part: lo-fidelity dreams that flicker with neon-lit aesthetics all captured in VHS/Betamax resolution. Think of the perfect blend between Herrera's What You Get For Being Young LP in 2016 and the downbeat moments on Chau's Island Of Dreams LP for Antinote of the same year and you have a pretty good idea of how it sounds.

Review: Earlier in the year, WRWTFWW and Palto Flats both reissued Japanese percussionist Midori Takada's brilliant 1983 debut album, Through The Looking Glass. Now WRWTFWW has gone a step further, releasing another hard-to-find touchstone of Japanese ambient: Takada's 1990 collaboration with jazz pianist Masahiko Satoh, Lunar Cruise. It's another sublime set, all told, with Takada's impeccable percussion work - both jazz-style free drumming and more melodious instruments such as marimba, kalimba and xylophone - being complemented by Satah's slick and atmospheric synthesziers. It's perhaps a little more challenging in places than Through The Looking Glass - some tracks are dense and tribal in tone, or unashamedly experimental - but rarely less than wonderfully atmospheric.

Review: Roberto Aglieri is a noted Italian flutist and composer, and his 1987 album Ragapadani stands as one of his finest achievements. Archeo Recordings are ever hip to the finest treasures hidden away in the folds of esoteric music, Italian or otherwise, and have done a great service in reissuing the album so that it might reach a wider audience. Aglieri's flute sounds haunting and evocative over the range of delicate synth treatments, largely orbiting the minimal realm but with a naive charm that makes the music wholly accessible at the same time. Soothing, thoughtfully crafted music for tender times.

Review: Back in the mid 1980s, Jun Fukamachi decided to establish his own label, Nicole. It didn't last very long. In fact, the imprint only ever put out one record: a promo-only collection of untitled instrumentals called '86 Spring & Summer Collection: Instrumental Images. Here, that hard-to-find set gets the reissue treatment for the first time. Heavily influenced by mid-1980s film and TV soundtracks, contemporaneous new age ambient and expressive experimental jazz, the synthesizer and drum machine heavy collection sounds like it was designed to showcase Fukamachi's library music credentials. Crucially, though, it contains some superb, life-affirming compositions that should thrill those who have been enjoying the previous reissues of both WRWTFWW and Holland's Music From Memory.

Review: The latest release on Canada's Seance Centre label focuses on the work of long-serving Dutch experimentalist Michel Banabila, gathering together examples of his "excursions into otherworldly and imagined realms". The first record boasts tracks recorded between 1987 and 2017, shuffling between humid, percussion-led workouts, exotic ambience, dark and creepy soundscapes and sticky electronic/acoustic fusion. The second record (clips of which are not featured here) replicates the track list of the Rotterdam artist's 1983 album Marill, a sought-after, LSD-inspired trip into Brian Eno and David Byrne territory that remains one of the most thrillingly odd (but pleasingly beautiful) ambient albums of the period. In other words, it's an absolutely essential package.

Review: Italy's Antonio Marini last came through on Wicked Bass in 2016, and this new EP for his own On Board Music marks the artist's first release of 2017. We'd been waiting impatiently. Like he often does, Marini appears alongside and strange and wonderful blend of mystical sonics that seem to possess to tangible source and, by that, we mean that the sounds seem to have been made by Mother Earth herself. For example, the subtly acidic harmonies of "Abduction" breathe life into the rest of the sparse beat formula that surrounds them, with the following "Harmony Of The Spheres" similarly crafting a wonderful bed of organic melodies which come together into one glorious bundle of sound. On the B-side, "Alternative Currents" forms a majestic wave of improvised percussion knots and blurry cosmic rays, while "Persec City" jazzes up the mood with some very 'free' movements, and "Seven Transmutations" ties the EP to a close with a distant, opaque cocktail of classic Healing Force vibes. Wonderful stuff, as always.