Nothing difficult today. Just relax into Ambient Sunday with Slowflight.
Slowflight is from Germany and comes with the mission statement “Dreamy, emotional lo-fi made from heart.”
This is their first appearance this year with the none-more-dreamy charms of Between Worlds.
Between Worlds is a mix of soft keyboards and barely there lofi beats. But what lifts this track use of a lazy compelling guitar line that holds the centre of the track as everything else drifts around it.
Slowflight says this track is about “being stuck at one place and longing for something greater!”
Between Worlds offers both a lovely relaxed chill as well as a slight yearning in the guitar line for something better. Beautifully delivered.
Retro-futurism in an IDM guise from Castell Embruixat.
Castell Embruixat is Guillermo Martorell from Barcelona, Spain. His work is experimental and strange. His blurb describes it as “a project that feels less like a band and more like a memory you can walk through. With a textured and immersive sound, the music leans into slow builds, phantasmagoric melodies, and tones that seem to come from somewhere just out of reach.”
Here’s The Magik Torch remixed by live collaborator Verde Lima. This is a woozy strange track that flaunts its analogue undercarriage.
The Magik Torch has a hazy IDM analogue edge to the sound and that slightly wowing sensation that comes from stretched cassette tapes. Things come in and out of focus.
There are strings and machine hisses to lay on top of the electronic haziness. This is experimental but done in an utterly accessible way.
I’m starting the week in a chilled mood with downtempo tracks from Buxus El BeatMaker, and Astral 22.
Buxus El BeatMaker is a purveyor of “Hip Hop Swing, Soul & P-Funk Textures” from Buenos Aires.
The featured track is the ultra chilled Focus Inner Trip. The beats are down at 79bpm so everything is consequently slowed. This is mellow with a capital M.
The beats have a light acoustic feel. But what drives this track in its sweet winsome way is a lovely reverbed Rhodes and that sense of warm analogue sounds.
Beautifully chilled boom bap. Everything drifts right into place.
Taking a more sophisticated lounge path to chill is Astral 22 (Armand Tulumello). Originally from New York City, he now residing in LA / Palm Springs.
His biog offers about his work that “I create from an inner ‘feel good’ place. The foundations of soul music complimented with electronic and ambient elements and my connection to the metaphysical, nonphysical realm is where the Astral22 production sound emanates.”
The featured track is Late Night In Paradise. This blends Ambient, Lounge and a kiss of Latin sounds.
There’s a real sense of Thievery Corporation at work here. The gentle wood blocks, the Latin hip shimmy and the laid back lounge feel.
This is beautifully constructed. Everything comes at you slow but with a clever knack of delivering little melodies that linger in the mind.
It’s cocktail hour music but done with such skill that it is capable of taking you away somewhere sultry and warm. Loosen your clothing and pour me a Cosmo.
Ambient Sunday is having a mellow moment with Mike Strong.
Mike Strong is from Germany. He describes his work as “A seasoned entertainer in the German Pop and Schlager scene, his heart has always beat for the quiet, soulful moments as much as for the big stage.” Hard to think of something as far away from ambient as the singalong good times of Schlager.
The featured track is Morning (lofi mix) from the album Quiet Hour V2. It’s a relaxed minimal track.
The track coalesces around the twin poles of a rippling piano motif and some laid back lofi beats. There’s a little surface noise to give it a bit of depth.
The whole aim of the track is for you to unwind. There’s nothing difficult here, nothing threatening and nothing hurried. It’s all lulling you into a dreamlike state.
If Eno equated his ambient to wallpaper music then this is its modern equivalent. And I mean that as a compliment.
I don’t often post cover versions. But this one from Web Web who take on Bloodflow by Grandbrothers deliver something that exceeds the original.
Web Web is a German four piece comprising Roberto Di Gioia – Fender Rhodes, Piano, Organ, Synthesizers, Percussion, Tony Lakatos – Flute, Altoflute, Tenorsaxofone, Christian von Kaphengst – Upright Bass, Fender Jazzbass, Peter Gall – Drums, Percussion.
They’ve been around for over 10 years. Originally into spiritual jazz they have strayed far from that in their new release album Kover Kover.
Kover Kover is, unsurprisingly, a set of cover versions. The artists covered are a diverse bunch. From Grace Jones to Kruder & Dorfmeister, from Joe Jackson to Nirvana. From Eurythmics to Talking Heads.
They’re all worth checking out but I’m focusing on Bloodflow by Grandbrothers since I didn’t know the original and this is Web Web at their most electronic and least jazz.
The original of Bloodflow is a piano driven downtempo piece featuring the Grandbrothers’ manipulation of the piano. Web Web take this as a jumping off point to push their cover into somewhere darker.
The piano is still there but is hazily operating within something that allows other instruments and electronics to vie for the centre ground.
There’s a wonderful use of tumbling beats to give the track a harder edge as synths saw away.
Eventually, the piano subsides completely with the electric piano and synths taking over the centre ground. It blossoms into something strange and strangely magical.
If you’re going to do a cover then taking it somewhere new is the way to go. Web Web deliver that in spades.
After local elections across most of the UK you might want a lift. Here’s Nightkites with the stirring melodic IDM techno of Destinations.
Nightkites is Murray Stockdale, a producer, writer and composer from Brighton, UK. He writes dark, atmospheric and uplifting ambient scores. He cites influences such as Burial, Four Tet, Moderat and Bonobo. But people like Max Cooper seem more appropriate here.
The featured track is the thrilling and uplifting Destinations, the opening track from the album Metropolis.
Destinations opens with a dark sparkle of warped vocal and an orchestral sweep of synths. This is IDM as overture.
Synthetic strings slither into view before juddering bass synths give the full orchestral power as the track reaches for a majestic crescendo.
This is like Max Cooper at the Royal Albert Hall. A sound that’s built to fully occupy the largest of spaces and send your sights up beyond the cavernous ceiling and into the sky and beyond.
Nothing too difficult today, simply cheery Electronica from Chekarino.
Chekarino is a multi-instrumentalist from Kyiv, Ukraine. The featured track is Drift. It was released nearly a year ago but there’s something wonderfully uplifting about it.
Drift opens with a bunch of bobbling synth lines before uptempo beats arrive to take it to a crescendo.
But what really delivers the heart of the track is the interplay between the pumping synth melody and the scuzz of the bass.
That bass gives the track a grounded sense that stops the track from becoming mindlessly cheerful.
Two tracks for Ambient Sunday from RAUSTE and Wetwire.
RAUST is a solo musician and producer based in Stockolm, Sweden. His work comes at things from a post rock as well as ambient perspective.
The featured track is the minimal beauty of Never Started Never Ended the title track of his album released towards the end of last year.
Never Started Never Ended is a six minute journey into the possibilities of space. The track is about the space left between notes.
Musically, this is not quite drone and not quite post rock. It’s a gentle warm bath of a soundscape.
There’s a slow wash of tones, almost drones and odd hisses and noises off. This isn’t quite aiming for meditative. It’s beyond that. It’s in the realm of perfect infinite calm.
And so to the anxiety managing Ambient of Wetwire. This is Ri Stewart and Renee Slade from Yachats, Oregon who record with BlueDot Productions. They’re back here after a nine year gap.
Wetwire come with a mission statement that says “The news cycle is relentless. The climate is changing. The polycrisis is no longer abstract, it’s Tuesday. Somewhere in that pressure and noise, people still need music that resets the nervous system without disappearing into the background.L
The featured track is Convergence, the closing track from their recently released album Neurobrine. They describe the track as “A pensive build where layers align and resolve, carried by an internal pulse rather than rhythm.”
Convergence offers a poignant take on the world today. Wetwire’s Ambient offers synth tones which ache with the weight of the hurt in the world.
This is a seven minute trip inside your inner turmoil. It doesn’t aim to heal but to make things a bit more manageable.
Bass synths offer a reassuring backdrop and presence. There’s the occasional swirl of the synths of a troubled mind. It’s a constantly shifting and dynamic.
There is a post rock skirl of phased guitars. Things ebb and flow. Like a mind that can’t quite settle. This takes a bit of concentration to get full value.
Ambient doesn’t have to be easy in a world that’s hard to navigate.
AcidTedblog favourite McDead is back again with something to give you a proper smack around the chops. A re-fried Big Beat assault for the 2020s.
McDead, if you need reminding, is London born archaeologist Kev Edinborough. Released a week ago the featured track is the thrilling assault and battery of Security Space.
The track wrong foots you from the get go. A sweet tone starts only to be overtaken in seconds by a dirty sleazy bass line.
This is one of those tracks that revels in the noise. It’s got everything and the kitchen sink thrown in here. It should be a mess. Instead, it’s thrillingly exciting.
There’s a galloping bass. There are analogue shoegaze guitars. There are bits of almost Aphex Twin type IDM angularity. But most of all. And this is really important. It’s an utter blast.
This is a dayglo paint spattered romp of a track. In a world of chaos we think we need something to make sense of it. Perhaps we’re wrong. Perhaps all we need is something to make the chaos sound like the most fun ever and dance ourselves to oblivion?
It’s Friday so let’s have a couple of box fresh releases from acidted favourite Kodomo and newcomer the Dj Kutone.
Kodomo is Chris Child whose work tends towards delicate IDM music. “Kodomo” (子供) is the Japanese word for “child” – both a reference to his surname and the fact that he grew up in Japan.
This time he’s back with a couple of remixes of tracks from his album Sisu (I reviewed the title track, which I loved here). The remixes are by Rafael Anton Irisarri and Lusine. I’m featuring the former.
Where the original of Constants & Changes was IDM at its warmest and almost choral, Rafael takes the opposite path.
The remix is a cold machine like take on the original’s humanity. It opens with sounds of cold dripping and foreboding gloom. A bit of drone takes its place but retains the cold dankness.
Everything does eventually go a bit hazy and warms up ever so slightly but there’s still an unsettling atmosphere about it all.
There’s almost a sense of listening to humanity’s demise. Sounds reverberate across the piece and swell to an almost crescendo. And then it all starts to fade. To infinite nothingness.
Next a debut on acidted from the Dj Kutone. He’s from San Francisco and has been around since the early 90s. His biog adds that “After spending most of his life mixing sound for other artists, the Dj Kutone is finally out from behind the mixing board and releasing his own music upon the world.”
He’s here with new single Over The Top from the forthcoming Look Out! project. I’m featuring the Tamed Mix. It might say tamed but don’t expect it to be shy and retiring. This is tamed in the sense of being run over repeatedly by a herd of wildebeest.
Over The Top is a track that revels in the possibilities of percussion. The beats offer you a fair smack round the chops and a firm order to get up on the dance floor.
There’s no real melody to speak of. There’s a little bit of almost rave like synth stabs in among the tumble of drums. This is a track that welcomes messy late night darkness.
It’s all rather thrilling and goes for full rave stabs in the centre of the track before winding itself up as it rushes Pell mell towards the ending. This is perhaps the love child of Altern-8 and The Chemical Brothers.
ACID TED