Smoke Tests And Distant Planes

Leicester dark ambient duo Smoke Test have been clearing their musical shelves and emptying the cupboards, releasing an album, their third, titled Volume III. The musicians, Harvey and Ben, blend synths, guitars, found sounds and field recordings, creating drones and ambience that veers from interstellar to calming, from spaced out to uneasy. Ambient music often straddles the line between disturbing paranoia and reflective beauty. Smoke Test have a foot on either side of that divide. 

Highlights include the opening track Weird Flex- an Eno- esque descent from the outer limits into the atmosphere. Eris is judders and twinkles before distorting. Wasted Time seems to emerge from underwater, echoes and sonar bubbling up from the deep. 31 Atlas is radio static from a dying star. There's lots more on Volume III, out now. Find it at Bandcamp.

Also in the ambient/ drone zone is a new EP on Mighty Force from Alfie Kaye, four tracks under the title Distant Planes. Drone 2 comes first, rising and falling noise which grows and fades like stars flickering in the night sky. It is followed by Drone 3, a calmer and gentler piece, the endless circular ringing sound of a finger on a bowl or glass with a melody on top and time moves slowly indeed. Time Granular follows, radio waves or radar bleeps picking up messages from far off skies. Last is Vocoder, melodic drones and a wonderful sense of drift. Distant Planes is out at Mighty Force's Bandcamp today. Buy it here. 

Craven Faults, Smoke Test

A double post of ambient weirdness from post- industrial lockdown England. Craven Faults are a Yorkshire based outfit who make industrial ambient pitching up somewhere between 1970s West Germany and 2020s West Yorkshire. Walks across the countryside to see decaying mills and workshops turned into music using an array of modular synths, keyboards, organs, pianos and drum machines. A three track EP called Enclosures is out in physical formats now, available at Bandcamp and led by the ten minute trip of Doubler Stones.

Further south to the East Midlands and a city which was under lockdown and tiered restrictions longer than anywhere else in the UK. Leicester duo Smoke Test send out dark, ambient transmissions built using a similar sonic arsenal- synths, found sounds, noises. This isn't ambient as a calming, music for healing experience but uneasy ambient, a wordless shout into the void. They've just released their second album, cunningly titled Volume II. Opener Tender bubbles around for four and a half minutes, loops building and folding in on themselves with a touch of acid in there. The Owl Sanctuary is a disquieting walk at dusk, birds chirruping. Wasted Time, echoes bouncing around the inside of a container, is anything but. Buy it here. 

A Lockdown Mix

An hour and four minutes of music for lockdown. This lockdown hasn't been any fun at all. The novelty of the first lockdown has been absent and in the two darkest months of the year, it's been difficult. There are at least some glimmers of light now, the vaccines, the numbers starting to come down but I don't have much confidence Johnson will make the right call on Monday and fear that he is in thrall to the voices on the right wing who want to unlock everything as soon as possible. No one wants to stay in lockdown any longer than necessary but I think many of us would rather soldier on for another month or two with a very gradual loosening than open up quickly, chuck away all the gains and end up with another surge in cases and lockdown four in April. 

It's easy to be overwhelmed when faced with all this, all these problems and issues that are beyond our control. As Richard Norris said recently, 'music is the answer'. This is a mix I put together recently, starting out with some street sounds from the BBC's extensive online archive and a bit of Blade Runner, some drones and spoken word, something from Luke Schneider's astonishing steel pedal ambient album, more ambient music with guitars and pianos and synths and then a second half that opens up and lets the light in, a bit of optimism before the strings and drama of Two Lone Swordsmen remixed by In The Nursery. It's at Mixcloud. 

• Romanian street sounds (morning in Bucharest)/ Leon’s Voight Kampf Test
• Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: Estuary Embers
• Luke Schneider: Anteludium
• Mark Peters: Ashurst’s Beacon (ambient version)
• Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers Rework)
• Smoke Test: Regress
• Ganser: Bags For Life (GLOK Remix)
• The Primitive Painter: Invisible Landscapes
• Underground System: Bella Ciao (Laguna Mix by Gigi Masin)
• Seahawks: Sky Is You (Pye Corner Audio Head Tek Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: In The Nursery Visit Glenn Street

A New World

Today I offer you some music from the outskirts, from the fringes of the internet, musicians toiling away in bedrooms, backrooms and home studios. First up from Leicester- a city that hasn't been allowed out of lockdown yet- come The Smoke Test. Ambient, retro- futuristic, instrumentals music. Colours comes over like a 1970s Open University theme tune, starting at midnight on BBC 2 and running into the small hours....



The New World opens with long chords and sci- fi ambience but is soon joined by an electric guitar.



Clouds3 is a journey into inner space.



In Devon, land of coastal cliffs, overcrowded beaches and the English Riviera, Ray Parkes is creating guitar led instrumentals, in a similar field to Mark Peters and his 2017 Innerland album or some of Vini Reilly's guitar playing. Medina is melodic and inventive, growly in places, some tension underneath the surface.

Ray Parkes · Medina

Saints plays a pair of guitars off against each other, some Spanish sounding finger picking and washes of chords from a keyboard.

Ray Parkes · Saints ..