Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone February 2021

Review: In the decade since the release of his debut In 8 Movements in 2010 on Ethereal Symphony, the enigmatic New York-based producer Black Swan has built a reputation with his brand of tape-based symphonic drones. This year marks his 11th full length which comes courtesy of Indianapolis imprint Past Inside The Present. Repetition Hymns is quite a fitting soundtrack 'to the temporal distortion of quarantine, in which each day feels like an endless repeating loop.' This collection of foggy, ethereal soundscapes exist in a world of analogue saturation, capturing the medium's natural process of degradation, complete with imperfections which makes for an altogether sublime experience.

Review: Last year, the new beat-loving diggers behind the Musique Pour La Danse label stumbled on something rather bizarre in a second-hand shop: an erotic VHS video from 1989 whose soundtrack was a direct copy of legendary new beat LP King of The Beat, a fake 'compilation' where every sleazy, mid-tempo, mind-altering cut was in fact written and produced by the same trio of Belgian studio buffs. So, they've decided to reissue that LP as Erotiques New Beat, adding extensive liner notes from new beat scholar Geert Sermon, and pressing it to shocking neon pink vinyl. It's a fine set full of distinctively odd, druggy, acid-flecked and synth-heavy cuts, most barely known outside of new beat collector circles. It's well worth picking up.

Review: RECOMMENDED
Even the most determinedly understated chin-strokers will likely have emitted a squeal of delight when this one was announced. Everyone's favourite electronic producer-cum-contemporary composer (or vice versa?) releasing his latest works of art across two media - namely an album on cult hero label Erased Tapes, and a movie available on highbrow streaming service Mubi.

This is the audio, and while nobody who caught the video when it was available to view on-demand could argue this is just as powerful on its own, the solo sound is still an intoxicating and compelling ride. 'The Dane' is classy piano bliss, '#2' sits in the big room electronica end of things, 'Fundamental Values' is a scatty, broken ambient journey to the edges of drum 'n' bass, 'Enters' opens on long, ambient refrains.

Review: American ambient label and blog Past Inside The Present has a couple of very special albums out this month and hit sis one of them. The Free Dust record is actually built on a creative limitations: "Everything I make for this project is made by recording electric guitar through a few pedals to cassette 4-track" says the artist who records things to a tape machine then manipulates them and feeds them into a DAW which gives the music is gorgeously hazy, old, frayed, authentic textures. It's late night music for wandering minds and is utterly cathartic.

Review: Ambient music blog and label Past Inside The Present welcomes Tobias Karlehag for a lush new album that invites you to empty your mind and sink in deep, and, says the artist, "represents a transformative process for me both creatively and personally." He has spent 10 years studying across the world from Sweden to New Delhi and in that time he picks dup plenty of worldly musical traditions that gently inform this record. He is also deeply into modular synth sounds, which show in the unique textures and deft details that make this such a stirring collection of peaceful and soothing sounds.

Review: Multi-instrumentalist and composer Naliah Hunter's debut, 'Spells', is a much-needed slice of ambient fantasy. The project began as an "exercise in reclamation" over her own musical motivations, and resulted in a 6-track ritual in which each piece represents a different kind of magic spell.

Like protective water, air and fire charms, Hunter takes on many incantatory roles. She is a vocalist, harpist, and synth player. Her harp, in particular, takes centre stage; the calming wind spell 'Quiet Light', for example, is an embellishment of scale flourishes and dangling chimes.

Hunter likens her studio to an altar, taking ritualistic care to light candles and incense while creating. Like the track 'Talisman' - with sprinklings of midrange tones, relieved breaths and interpretive semi-lyrics - her music is intended for healing. A chunk of the album's proceeds are being given to the Loveland Foundation, which provides therapy for young black women.

Like beautiful but dissolving memories, every track fades out only after around two minutes, like the effusive wispiness of an apprentice wizard's practice. Speaking to KEXP, Hunter noted that her 'spells' had the express purpose of "creating locations away from here"; they are specifically "transportation spells". Fantasy has always been a genre of escape; like a timid fairy or Harry Potter snitch, the EP flits past in a wonderful plume of magic smoke.

Review: Debut albums don't often reach the heights of this one, which could well be a lost Boards of Canada album such is the richness of its stunning ambient electronic pallet. The mysterious Cult 48 behind the project got people despertae to find out more with this one right from the off: it's cosmically minded with its twinkling keys and lush chords, and rhythm comes from the gently tumbling drums that eventually transport you away from the here and now. Tight jazz drumming stands out on tracks like 'Slowly The Sky Turned Black' while 'On Diesel Verge' is a more textured piece that pairs light with dark.

Review: There are few things in design (both sound and art) that are more subjective-or more important-than the use of color. 'Color Language' takes the listener through various characteristics of four different colors. Cultural differences can have different reactions to color. A color that cultivates joy may be depressing or melancholic in another culture. The phonic output of Color Language may reveal similar characteristics that leave the listener to decide how the react to each arrangement.

Review: 21 years. Twenty. One. Years. Two decades. Who knows how many days (well, we could work it out, but...) Critique our laziness if you will, it doesn't change the fact that quietly, beneath the din of a world driven mad by pandemics and politics, this is a truly momentous occasion. One of many examples why Treviso is Italy's alternative electronic music capital, this is the first LP from the city's pioneering ambient duo Cabaret du Ciel since 2000's Blue Form, and it proves worth the wait.

Of course the pair have never been ones for rushing records. Since gliding onto the scene with 1988's debut full-lengther Solarisation they have only made four albums, including this. As warm and intoxicating as it is filled with suggestions of the unknown, owing as much to the chill out rooms of raves as crystalline minimalistic contemporary classical, we recommend diving right in because the water is perfect.

Review: With membership rights to a number of different bands and outfits, Jonna Karanka's reputation in the 21st Century Finnish underground is well established to say the least. Now this collaborative but solo-led project - which also features the likes of Jan Anderzen, Tsemba and Lau Nau - looks set to cement that status further with yet another evocative body of strange pop-psyche-ambient that seems to have landed from another planet.

At times it feels like you're knee deep in some alien jungle the arrangement is so textured, natural and organic ('Ihmispennnut', or 'Summer'). In other moments it seems to glint with the sheen of crisp modernity in moonlight ('All Nighter'), before darting off into more exotic aural adventures. A work of real imagination and vision, to say the least.

Review: The last time time Juno and Felix K met was on Die Verachtung, another Nullpunkt Germany EP that arrived in February 2020. On the face of it, that pared-back, bordering-on experimental drum 'n' bass shares little in common with this far more abstract collection of work. But dig a little deeper and it's not just the closing dub-tech-bass-ambient closer on last year's release that foretold of this latest effort.

Skulpturen #1-4 is nothing if not left of the standard electronic playing field. There are rhythms and movements happening here, but buried deep beneath strange waves, rushes and blurs of noise - take 'Skulptur #3''s apparent recording of conversations heard on another plane of existence. Drone at its deepest, most subtle and effective, be warned: everything here will be on the throne of your mind palace before you even start to feel it settling in.