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Top 10 of 2020

The music on this list is the music that moved me this year. With very limited exceptions, it is all instrumental, and it falls mostly under the minimalist and meditative parameters I have set for this blog.

The list is made up mostly of albums, but also includes some EPs and one single. This is a reflection of how music production is evolving, with musicians incentivized to release shorter recordings more frequently.

Like all Top 10 lists, mine is subjective, reflects my own feelings on what makes music compelling, and is subject to the limitations of what I actually heard this year. My intention is not to detract from anyone else’s conception of the year’s most compelling recordings. Instead, my hope is that some of the music that moved me might also move you.

Ben McElroy, Soon This May All Be Sea

Ben McElroy seems just as home with Nick Drake and Simon & Garfunkel as with Brian Eno — and that’s definitely a good thing. From bird calls and ambient drones to subtle feedback, understated piano chords, Celtic strings, and windswept coastal landscapes, Soon This May All Be is a beautiful statement of McElroy’s singular and organic mix of drone, folk and ambient. 

From my original review: “In genre and form alike, McElroy is ambiguous, operating at the margins of several genres and thereby creating a sound that’s truly his own. In a world with no shortage of ambient records, McElroy’s musical worldview encompasses ambient but isn’t constrained by it.” 

Jessica Moss, Opened Ending

I’m usually a traditionalist about Top 10 lists: I am listening for my 10 favorite albums, not opening up the field to EPs and singles. But at a certain point, you just have to recognize that full-length albums don’t hold the sway that they once did. So, while my preference to highlight full-length releases remains, I’m not going to be an ideologue about it.

Enter Montreal violinist Jessica Moss.

“Opened Ending” is just one track consisting of layered violins, electronics and feedback. An homage to Jewish music, it is an 8-minute meditation on loss. That loss includes the ultimate loss — death — but Moss also notes that she is also concerned with the loss of the things that make us feel alive, like live musical performances.

What starts as a beautifully dark violin piece with multiple mournful legato lines morphs into a drone piece as deep, rumbling processed strings and electronic noises enter after the 3-minute mark. Perhaps not surprisingly for a musician who has played since the early 2000s with Thee Silver Mt Zion (among others), “Opened Ending” delivers an epic, elegantly paced and expertly developed build. Against a din of drone and sonic detritus, the melody re-emerges, unbowed by the chaos around it. A drone note becomes an oscillating rumble. Two drone notes diverge, then converge again, amplifying their power in the process.

“Opened Ending” is a fitting metaphor for 2020: It’s mournful but powerful — not overcome by loss, but powering through it.

Morimoto Naoki, Hibi (Seil Records)

This beautifully impressionistic record encompasses subtle electronics, found sounds, toy bells, plucked strings, and warmly humming static noise. In mood, it contrasts with many of the records on this list: Hibi is a fundamentally hopeful record, delicate in its approach and playful in its exploration of sound.

In its capacity for inducing a blissful trance, Hibi could be classified as meditation music — but it is too interesting to be just a meditation record. In its creation of an inward-looking sound world — it’s instrumental, sometimes has drone notes and drifts along in a hypnotic haze — it could be classified as an ambient record. And yet, it’s an outlier in that the works don’t rely heavily on synthesizers, and also in that most pieces are short, clocking in at between 2 and 4 minutes. 

“Kino” combines a distant upper-register drone, gently plucked strings alternating from speaker to speaker in the mix in a non-linear rhythm, and intermittent creaking and squeaking sounds. “Ink” brings piano and soft bells. “Fl” gives us rain, piano and soft electronic pulses. “Hz” adds a warm hum of radio static.

To the expected genre descriptions of “electronic” and “ambient,” Morimoto Naoki adds the word “toytronica.” The term makes sense as you hear a succession of toy-like bells throughout the album. No matter what you call it, Hibi is intimate, exquisite and inviting. 

S.hel, Disconnect (Whitelabrecs)

This debut recording made an impression on me upon its release, and that impression remains. Iceland’s Sævar Helgi Jóhannsson is a skilled composer and sound artist operating at the convergence of several related genres — compositional ambient, ambient electronica and so-called ‘modern classical’ — and melding them in a way that shows an ability to absorb the lessons from the icons of these genres without falling prey to imitation.

From my original review: “Human Geography,” the lead track on Disconnect, “gives us impressionistic piano that is minimal but not simplistic, with both melodies and harmonies that offer a sense of the unexpected. We also get synth pads, feedback, electronic pulses and shimmering metallic sounds, all progressing in a grand, cinematic build.”

S. hel is making inventive music that is also compelling.

Night Gestalt, Sudden Rituals Vol. 1 (Bigo & Twigetti)

This album gets into darker electronica territory than my taste usually takes me; it’s also a compilation album, which perhaps makes it an outlier for a year-end list. But it’s precisely the fact that Swedish composer and producer Night Gestalt (Olof Cornéer, of the DJ duo Dada Life) is working with so many artists that makes Sudden Rituals Vol. 1 such an interesting listen.

For all its creativity, the basic elements of ambient — keyboards, drones, found sounds, static, electronic pulses — can sometimes seem finite. “Night on Earth” — an entrancing mix of ambient with Arabic sounds made with Iranian composer and setar player Behdad Babaei — makes it feel fresh. Babaei’s setar (a member of the lute family with two and a half octave range) mixes with Cornéer’s low, thick synth chords that rumble along in the lower registers as Babaei dances above with mesmerizing setar lines.

Arpeggios are at the heart of many of these tracks. Cornéer’s fascination with them is clear: “The arpeggio is everything in one — melody, rhythm, harmony — ringing out like a bell in space forever,” he says. The philosophy is reflected in the opening track, “All Directions at Once,” a collaboration with Joseph Shabason in which electronically generated arpeggios bounce off in all directions and mix with various warped vocals and space-age sounds.

“Like a Particle of Dust,” with Klangriket, offers beautiful legato sax notes that evoke the ambient jazz of Trio Ramberget, which are then propelled along by an insistent beat. Eventually, all melts into ambient tones.

“After All Our Elements Are Gone,” with C. Diab, is a driving and insistent work of ambient drone. It begins with the sound of falling water, but soon introduces the pulsating, distorted low drones that define it. Just shy of the 4-minute mark, it veers into hazier, calmer realms and recedes.

“The Sunken Machine,” with Lisa Rydberg, blends ambient electronica with deep, emotive folk violin. It is the most organic, least electronic-sounding work on the album.

Like most compilation albums, Sudden Rituals Vol. 1 is both more varied and less coherent than an album by an individual artist. But its variations are what makes it special.

Clarice Jensen, The Experience of Repetition as Death

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: The phrase “holy minimalism” might not be a compliment in some circles, but it’s definitely said with reverence here. 

Brooklyn cellist Clarice Jensen demonstrates the powerful combination of musical simplicity and spiritual contemplation on the opening track “Daily” and throughout this 5-track EP. Layered cellos play long, beautiful notes, and as the notes and their overtones reverberate and decay, they create a headspace for reflection and contemplation. Is “Daily” a reference to a daily prayer? A daily meditation? A daily ritual? We don’t know, but we could all use more of this feeling in our daily lives.  

Jensen lets it be known soon, however, that The Experience of Repetition as Death will not be an entirely calm one. “Day Tonight” is a 12-minute dark ambient drone piece, with low-end, electronically processed scrapes of a bow across strings combined with sounds both pastoral and eerie in the upper registers. Later, we get an upper register hum juxtaposed against low-end pulses.

“Metastable” is an enchanting blend of low cello drone, higher-register cello work, electronic pulses and simple, legato cello notes, the relative mix of each shifting throughout as the drone takes center stage and then recedes again. 

“Holy Mother” opens with what sounds like repeated melodic fragments from a pipe organ, but the notes for this album assure us that every sound on the record comes from a cello (often assisted via pedals or other effects). The work is defined by this repetition, alternating between hypnotic spiritualism and foreboding tension as deep, ominous cellos interact with — and, at times, overtake — the repeated fragments.

“Final” again juxtaposes long, simple lines against drone notes, building in a steady progression that gradually envelops the listener in the warm embrace of low but pristine tones. As the work fades, the drone recedes and the organic warmth of non-processed cellos remains, carrying the listener to a peaceful end.

Juilliard-trained Jensen — who has worked with Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Björk, Arcade Fire, Nick Cave, Jónsi, Nico Muhly and Beirut, among others — is a powerful force for new music, taking her conservatory skills into the realm of drone, minimalism and compositional ambient for a sound that is of her own making, but also carries echoes of minimalist tradition throughout. On The Experience of Repetition as Death, Jensen sounds like a true student of minimalism, now giving a master class.

Rotor Plus, Fugue States

If you have somehow stumbled upon my blog and are not already familiar with the site a closer listen, I encourage you to check it out: It’s a comprehensive and well-written chronicler of all things intstrumental, and it’s where I found Rotor Plus.

New Zealand’s Rotor Plus writes postmodern chamber music, for lack of a better term. Using trumpet, piano, violin, modular synth, clarinet, viola, cello, oboe and English horn, the ensemble moves easily from moody woodwinds to static noise to languid postrock to indie film score territory. One minute it’s minimalist piano and violin; the next minute it’s electronic drone.

Fugue States consists of two pieces, each just under a half-hour: “Before – I awoke in a dark wood,” and “After: The beautiful background.” Each piece is subdivided into several named movements.

“Before” opens with the subtle rustling of leaves, which are joined by soft piano chords. For awhile, it sounds like we might hear a work of cool jazz, but that expectation is snuffed out by a low electronic tone and the hum of static — only to return later when woodwinds enter and a cello plucks a line that sounds more like an upright bass. All bets are off, though, when a dense, dark synth sound enters just before the 13-minute mark.

“After” opens with silence. Single, long lines come in eventually, still sounding distant. Just past the three-minute mark, a far-off tone sounds in one ear as a slightly higher, oscillating tone sounds in the other. Instead of building to a climax, both tones recede into nothingness, to be replaced by low static and new sustained tones.

A new section brings simple woodwinds and pizzicato cello, subtle piano chords and, in a deep corner of the mix, a drum set. For a moment, we’re in Talk Talk land, until it’s all overtaken by harsh, building static. In the aftermath, there are soft pizzicato cello, woodwinds and a subtle hum of noise, followed by warm strings, insects at night, indecipherable rustling sounds, and the return of soft piano chords. At the 15-minute mark, it takes an unexpected (and temporary) turn into ambient space music. And then at the 20-minute mark, silence — though the piece continues for seven more minutes. Occasionally the silence is broken by a far-off birdcall, a subtly pulsating drone, and later guitar and soft droplets of piano. 

In mood as well as in genre, the strength of Fugue States lies in its exploration. It is both foreboding and beautiful, and it is captivating as it moves between the two. This is composition without boundaries, touching on contemporary classical, ambient jazz, ambient electronica, drone, postrock and more.

Do these works hold together as coherent compositions? After repeated listens, I still don’t know. But that’s beside the point here: Fugue States offers fascinating and enriching musical adventures, and the journey is a strong statement all on its own.

Library Tapes, The Quiet City

Even within the relatively narrow universe of contemporary minimalist piano music, different artists create widely varying music. Some artists get muddled on the minimalist part of the equation, delivering instead an incongruently ornate second incarnation of new age. Others keep it simple, but underdeliver on inspiration. 

On The Quiet City, composer and pianist David Wenngren — along with guests such as cellist Julia Kent and pianist Olivia Belli — delivers 10 short, intimate works for piano, strings and ambient sounds that speak softly and with appropriate reverence for what this minimalist genre of contemporary, piano-based works can be. 

Like most “neoclassical” music, the melodies and harmonies here are warm and comforting, not experimental or even mildly dissonant. But there is true emotion at the core, not the artifice of emotion that I sometimes feel from some “modern classical” compositions. This is slow, thoughtful music — with pristine piano chords, subtle synth pads and legato strings — that would pair well with an indie film. 

Many songs are under 2 minutes, and only one is over 3; the entire recording clocks in at just 22 minutes. These are more than fragments or sketches, but they seem intentionally skeletal in their development and variation. It’s the concept of minimalism applied not only to the contents of composition, but also to its form. On The Quiet City, Wenngren gives you just enough to draw you in, mesmerize you and leave you wondering what might have been. And maybe that’s exactly where he wants you.

Alessandro Cortini, Memorie I

Much like Night Gestalt, Alessandro Cortini’s Memorie I takes me into musical territory that is both darker and more electronic than what I typically listen to.

Like C. Diab, Cortini — once a touring keyboardist for Nine Inch Nails — specializes in long, slow builds, adding and subtly manipulating sonic elements to create a sense of propulsion and rising tension. Made on a vintage analog EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer, this is dark ambient music that drones, rumbles and crackles, as Cortini tweaks sounds throughout to produce wobbles, distortions and clashing sound waves.

In my favorite track on this release, “Paragioa,” a drone bed of low synths sets the foundation, with a simple melody pressing forward amid low-end oscillations and subtle shifts in pitch and speed. Slowly, the melody is joined and overshadowed — but not entirely drowned out — by static noise, and a massive river of sound flows forward inexorably.

Memorie I is both unsettling and darkly resplendent. With its dark, electronic drones, it’s a world away sound-wise from the simple piano chords of, say, Library Tapes or Goldmund. And yet, like the work of those artists, Memorie I also exemplifies the idea that simple elements can go a long way.

Shida Shahabi, Lake on Fire (Fat Cat)

I try not to overuse adjectives like “timeless,” but it’s one that comes immediately to mind when listening to Shida Shahabi’s 14-minute EP Lake on Fire.

Composed as a soundtrack to a short film of the same name by Jennifer Rainsford, Lake on Fire consists of three short, organ-based tracks and one solo piano piece. In the spellbinding opening piece, “Prolog,” long organ notes are interwoven with analog synth textures and given plenty space in which the notes hang and dissipate. The piece feels like the act of breathing, with subtle waves rising and falling, gradually pushing the music forward. The mood — though not the sound, exactly —  is reminiscent of the hazy ambient jazz of Trio Ramberget, but on downers and with spiritual overtones. Textures vary, but all are of a dark, warm hue.

“Interlude + Main Theme” is arresting from the start, with legato organ chords set against a single, upward-sliding note that rises both in pitch and intensity, causing a sense of tension and impending climax. Rather than a bombastic climax, however, the background pitch recedes and a church-like organ part enters.

It’s Shahabi’s organ work that gives “Interlude + Main Theme” — and the whole EP — its timeless feel. Though not dissimilar in general outlook to the work of Sarah Davachi, Shahabi generally takes a less experimental approach. The result is that while Shahabi’s work sounds like it could be contemporary, not all of it sounds like it has to be. Some sections of her music sound like they could have been written anytime in the past 350 years, others are clearly of a more recent vintage.

“Epilog” brings together a classic pipe organ sound with echo, delay and dissonant hums, laying claim to a more contemporary sound. Then the short EP comes to a close with a beautiful, close-miked, felt-dampened piano piece, “Main Theme – Piano Version,” with an early classical elegance.

Shahabi is gifted both as a pianist and as a composer. She masterfully pulls a lot of meaning out of deliberately minimal source material, playing with space, texture, pacing and harmonic progression to create a sound world that is adjacent to that of her contemporaries in the genres of compositional ambient and ‘neoclassical,’ but stands alone. Lake on Fire is brief, but — like last year’s piano-based EP Shifts — it makes a strong statement for Shahabi’s vision.

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We’re all “minimalists” now

The term is amorphous, but still useful

With minimalism so widely accepted and practiced today, it’s easy to forget that the name began as a pejorative and that this umbrella of musical styles had to fight for the cultural space it now occupies.

The history is worth a brief recap — both as a reminder that every artist working in this space is standing on the shoulders of giants, and as a framework for seeing the common underlying tenets of music that might on the surface seem quite different. 

What is minimalism? It’s exactly what the name implies: a stripping down of art to its essence; a spare, judicious use of the basic building blocks of creation. 

In visual art, minimalism came into focus in the late 1950s and early ‘60s in Frank Stella’s black paintings. In music, it came out of 1960s New York City and composers such as LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. Their music incorporated elements such as drone, repeated patterns (often arpeggios) and consonant rather than dissonant harmonies. 

No doubt there were numerous sources of inspiration for these composers: the philosophies and music of John Cage and Morton Feldman; Indian raga; African drumming; John Coltrane; and Miles Davis, whose explorations of mood, tone and space offer inspiration for both compositional ambient and minimalism more generally. 

The shadows of those early pioneers have since been cast in literally hundreds of directions: Brian Eno, Max Richter, Talk Talk, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Low, Stars of the Lid, Nils Frahm and many, many more. 

What was the knock against minimalism? Essentially that it is quite literally not enough — that its elements are too simple to engage a serious ear. In a classical context — Western art music, if you want to call it that — this criticism comes from the fact that minimalism represented a repudiation of what came before it, which was fiendishly complex modernism. 

Clearly I’m on the side of the minimalists or I wouldn’t be writing this blog. But there was a kernel of truth to the criticism: When taken too far, minimalism can become too predictable — too harmonically or melodically static. Of course, where that line falls is subjective: No doubt the music I make is too slow and devoid of surprise for some, while others might take comfort in its repeated patterns, layers of instrumentation and subtle variations.

At a certain point, it’s fair to ask whether “minimalist” still has any meaning. After all, the movement’s influence has spread so far and wide — among classical, film and ambient composers, and all along the spectrum from “art” to “pop” music — that it’s no doubt become an amorphous term. Not to mention that plenty of musicians and composers who have been tagged with the label reject it — and some of them have produced large, complex works that don’t fit easily under a minimalist banner. Also, terminology evolves. In the visual arts, the term “post-minimalism” has been used since the early 1970s, while in music it’s been around since about 1980.

So, is there any point to continuing to use the word “minimalism”? Again, it’s a fair question.

My answer is simple: Musicologists might split hairs over this, but I’m not going to. When I use the term “minimalist,” I’m referring to a framework of ideas — not strictly to the 1960s movement where those ideas originated. While there are certainly many subgenres that have spun out of the decades-old minimalist movement — and I’ll use those identifiers as needed — there’s still a common element that unites them all: the idea that less is more. 

That’s not to say that minimalist music is always simple — in fact, lots of it has plenty of musical sophistication and subtlety — only that it starts from a philosophy that a single note, or even silence itself, can speak volumes. And that’s enough commonality for me to continue to use the term to denote a big-tent philosophy that continues to yield beautiful and meaningful creative works, both throughout the decades and across a range of related genres.

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Now listening: S.hel, “Disconnect”

S.hel, Disconnect (Whitelabrecs, 2020)

“S.hel” is the musical name of Iceland-based composer Sævar Helgi Jóhannsson, who released the album Disconnect earlier this year on the U.K. label Whitelabrecs. The album places Jóhannsson at the convergence of several related genres: compositional ambient, ambient electronica and minimalistic piano (often called “modern classical,” but not by me). Nils Frahm is an obvious reference point, but Jóhannsson is carving out his own space.

If the genre names above sound too esoteric to bother deconstructing, here’s another way to look at it: From the outset, it’s clear that Jóhannsson is both a composer and a sound artist. The terms are related but not identical: The distinction in my mind is that a composer excels at working with notes, while a sound artist excels at working with sounds. No doubt there is a lot of overlap, but anyone who has both skills is working with a broad music-making palette.

Jóhannsson is certainly working with a wide palette. White Label released Disconnect on Piano Day (March 28), and while piano is featured prominently, it is presented within a context of strings, electronica and found sounds, and the piano is more of a unifying element than a strictly defining one.

“Human Geography” gives us impressionistic piano that is minimal but not simplistic, with both melodies and harmonies that offer a sense of the unexpected. We also get synth pads, feedback, electronic pulses and shimmering metallic sounds, all progressing in a grand, cinematic build.

The delicate, hypnotic “Delay Common Sense” is on the minimalist piano end of the spectrum, sounding like it could easily have been written by Frahm. Driven by walk-down arpeggios in the left hand and a graceful melody in the right, the three-minute piece also features the trademark piano creaks one hears in Frahm’s music. The piece is short, but nonetheless offers ample evidence of Jóhannsson’s gift for melody and phrasing.

“Irritant Bodies” lies at the sound artist end of the spectrum, composed of percussive electronic and found sounds interspersed with piano. Here, Jóhannsson is building a collage more than crafting melodies and harmonies.

“Law and Market” offers the fragmentary and formless feeling of ambient at times, but it also gives us notes and patterns, not just sounds and textures. It builds slowly with gentle (and, again, creaking) piano chords. Most of the piece moves along with a 3/4 (or 6/8) pulse, but starting between the three- and four-minute marks, Jóhannsson begins to play with our temporal center of gravity: The pulse shifts, the piano loses its clear pulse and the strings seem to inhabit a separate rhythmic reality; meanwhile, electronic sounds intermingle with organic ones.

On “Eia Popea,” Jóhannsson almost veers into the territory of what is often called modern classical — minimalist and piano-based music that, when executed poorly, bears a little too much resemblance to the stylistic excesses of new age. What keeps “Eia Popea” from crossing over the fine line between beauty and schmaltz are its unexpected subtleties: atmospheric and electronic effects in the background, piano lines disintegrating into creaks.

Whether he’s working with piano melodies or electronic pulses, Jóhannsson is a sensitive and highly skilled artist capable of working on multiple levels at once to create a compelling whole. 

His seven-minute closing track, “Permission society,” is a case in point. One on level, we get an abstract melody on what sounds like some type of bells; on another, legato strings rise and fall in an atmospheric drone that augments but does not strictly align with the sound of the bells. The effect is lovely and contemplative: a bifurcated sound, with bells operating on one end and strings on another, creating an ambigious space that draws you in and carries you along. About two-thirds of the way into a seven-minute build, Jóhannsson brings in a drone, a counter melody and indecipherable electronic pulses. It’s the sound of a skilled composer and sound artist bringing everything together — beauty, mystery, tension — and creating something both inviting and moving.

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What was your (instrumental music) gateway drug?

Last year, Arvo Pärt was the second-most-performed living composer in the world. For years before that, he was the most-performed composer.

That was not the case, however, when I first heard Pärt’s Fratres in 1989. He was not a household name at the time — not among classical listeners and certainly not among the wider music-buying public. I was working at Peaches Records & Tapes in Columbia, South Carolina, and I was in charge of classical buying for the store. (My knowledge of classical music was and is limited; nonetheless, I had some background and was the only one interested in filling the role.) As the classical buyer, I would check out album reviews, new release lists from labels and distributors, chart lists from Billboard, and promo copies of records and CDs to keep up with what the store should carry.

One day I came across an ECM New Series CD sampler. I don’t remember what all was on it; I only remember violinist Gideon Kremer and pianist Keith Jarrett’s recording of Fratres.

I had never heard anything remotely like it. Its dark, spacious presence; its unexpected rhythms and chords — no amount of mostly Baroque, Classical and Romantic-era pieces I had heard or played in my life had prepared me for how beautiful and moving this music was. From its opening notes — Kremer’s rapid string crossings emanating as if out of the ether, rising in intensity and punctuated at the 1:04 minute mark by the entry of a deep, resonant and authoritative chord from Jarrett —  Fratres felt both otherworldly and like it was anchored in my own soul. No piece of music had ever touched me as deeply.

In general, I don’t have a particularly good memory. But Fratres — including when I first heard it — I can never forget.

There are plenty of other artists and recordings — both in the distant past and more recently — that have helped set me on a path of introspective instrumental music. Some are instrumental; others just have a meditative, minimalist and/or drone-like aesthetic. I’m thinking of artists like Brian Eno, Philip Glass, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Talk Talk, Djivan Gasparyan, Johann Johannsson, Hammock, Low, Stars of the Lid, Stereolab, Last Days, Greg Haines, Eluvium, Labradford, Sigur Ros, Goldmund, The Album Leaf and many more.

If I were to try to draw a direct line between a musical influence and what I listen to now, it would probably point back to Sigur Ros more than to Arvo Pärt. But Pärt was my gateway drug — the music that showed me that there was a completely different way to make, and to think about, music.

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So much music, so many ways to find it

We are blessed as listeners to have a seemingly endless supply of new music, coming to us as a result of both production and distribution costs having declined drastically from where they were 30 years ago.

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, bands fretted about things like how to save up enough money for studio time and how to distribute their record once they’d made it. Now, lots of musicians are able to record at home, and distribution (at least the digital variety) has become simple through such avenues as Bandcamp (launched in 2007) and DistroKid (2013). The result: More music is being released than ever before. As an artist, that can make it difficult to get noticed — but as a listener, it’s an embarrassment of riches.

Luckily, when it comes to contemporary instrumental music, we have a lot of resources to help us sift through what’s out there. For the purposes of this post, I’m leaving out sites like Consequence of Sound, Aquarium Drunkard and Pitchfork — all of which cover instrumental music, but none of which specialize in it. Here are a few sites that cover instrumental music; if you have others to recommend, please do.

A Closer Listen – This is the most comprehensive and in-depth site covering instrumental music that I’ve come across. Founded in 2012, the site has a talented stable of writers and focuses on album reviews, covering ambient, drone, modern composition, field recordings and more.

Stationary Travels – Like A Closer Listen, Stationary Travels is ambitious in scope, covering modern composition, ambient and drone, as well as electroacoustic and experimental folk. (I’m adopting the site’s own genre names here; surely genre names will be a subject of a future post.) Among the artists I’ve recently discovered via Stationary Travels: inventive Canadian violinist Christopher Whitley, who creates all sorts of sounds one wouldn’t generally associate with the violin, and ambient artist The Humble Bee & Benoit Pioulard, who somehow retains a sense of blissed-out ambient while simultaneously bringing more energy to the endeavor than you often find in ambient music.

Contemplative Classical – From hushed minimalist piano to New Age-like instrumentals, ragged-around-the-edges ambient and challenging contemporary composition, there’s a lot to like — and a lot to sift through — on Contemplative Classical’s playlists. On the whole, though, Contemporary Classical’s center of gravity resides more with contemporary minimalist piano than, say, full-on ambient or challenging modern composition. The site also posts mixes by guest artists and a podcast by Matt Emery on Soundcloud.

Mes Enceintes Font Défaut (My Speakers Are Missing) – Based in Montreal, this site covers ambient, electronic and experimental music. This month’s featured album is a dark but beautiful work of ambient drone: Matt Jencik’s Dream Character.

Ambiance Glitters – The focus here is ambient music, but it’s not all textural soundscapes; you’ll also find delicate piano and cinematic music. Includes reviews, interviews and mixes.

Spellbinding Music – Most of what you’ll see covered on A Spot on the Hill falls under the general heading of minimalist and meditative, which I use not so much as genre categories (especially in the case of “meditative”), but more in the sense of general approach and emotional quality. That leads me to certain genre areas: contemporary composition, minimalist piano-based works, ambient (focused more on texture), compositional ambient (focused more on form), postrock, etc. Spellbinding Music casts its net wider, writing about contemporary composition but also getting into jazz, folk and roots music more generally. While there’s limited overlap with what I’m looking for specifically, it’s worth checking on this site now and then for an unexpected discovery (such as French poet and sound artist Félicia Atkinson).

Drifting, Almost Falling – Like most music blogs, this one is a passion project — and the passion shines through. A couple of things I particularly like: (1) The name “Drifting, Almost Falling,” tells you what you’re in for. The site’s focus is relatively narrow — defined as “minimal ambient, drone and modern classical sounds” — allowing a reader/listener to have a sense of the kind of artists they might discover here. (2) Write-ups usually start with a quote from the artist’s own bio/promotional materials, which — even if sometimes exaggerated, as promotional write-ups are — offer insights into where the artist is coming from and what they are trying to achieve.

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Top 10 of 2019

I told myself (and my wife) that if I started a music blog, I wasn’t going to let it become an enormous drain on my time. “I’ll post my Top 10 list with just a few words about each entry — two or three sentences at most,” I said. Then I promptly sat down and spent several hours writing — and editing, and writing again — about Hammock’s Silencia.

Realizing that if I spent several hours on each of my Top 10 entries, I’d be well into 2020 before I finished it, I decided to revert to the original plan: minimal words. I did a bit better the second time around — but not by much. Such is the challenge of serving as your own editor.

This list is a good snapshot of where I’m coming from musically. If you’re coming from a similar place, perhaps you’ll find something worthwhile here or in future Spot on the Hill posts.

Here’s my Top 10 list, in no particular order.

Trio Ramberget, Musik att somna till – My tastes generally run toward piano, strings, guitars and ambient textures, so I was as surprised as anyone to find that one of my favorite albums of the year combines bass clarinet and trombone, along with double bass. This Swedish group bills itself as an “ambient/free improvisation trio,” and that’s true as far as it goes. But to hear their soul-enriching, stunningly poignant music — conjured out of a gracefully resonant blend of breathy, ethereal and sometimes achingly sustained tones — you’d do them a tremendous disservice to think of their improvisation as anything less than exquisite composition-in-the-moment.

Hammock, Silencia – This duo from Nashville returns with another album of mesmerizing beauty. Silencia features a 20-piece choir and was mixed by Francesco Donadello, who has also worked with A Winged Victory for the Sullen and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Listening to Hammock, it’s ironic that I haven’t taken more direct inspiration from them. Their musical values — melody, pacing, arrangement, introspection, texture — mirror my own. 

The truth is, however, that I’m a latecomer to their spacious, compelling music. Still, from the moment I first heard “I Can Almost See You” (many years after its 2006 release), the Nashville-based two-piece has been on my radar. The track’s subtly propulsive build — achieved through ethereal keyboard swells, postrock guitar echoes, angelic but fleeting vocals, and the careful building and removing of textures — makes a compelling case both musically and emotionally. It doesn’t hurt that the track also carries clear hints of postrock pioneers Sigur Ros and Labradford.

Thirteen years after “I Can Almost See You” (from the album Raising Your Voice … Trying to Stop an Echo), Silencia finds Hammock demonstrating both how far the band has come and how true it has remained to its vision. 

At its foundation, the album shows Hammock developing the same mesmerizing dynamic builds it was using more than a decade ago — but the beauty and elegance of the whole endeavor is now on an entirely different level. Layers upon layers of keyboards, strings and vocals rise and fall, over and over, as Hammock’s musical architecture slowly unfolds. Cellos enter and recede. Notes float, seemingly suspended in midair. A low, gentle pulse gives a heartbeat that keeps the music pushing forward in a measured, stately procession. The pace is glacial (sorry, I couldn’t resist a reference to the band Seam), but never stagnant. Silencia speaks loud and clear.

Astrïd, A Porthole (1) (Gizeh Records) – The violin on the opening track, “Nemalion,” lays out a beautiful melody that is almost painfully exposed, liked you’ve walked in on a rehearsal you shouldn’t be in. Textural, echoey guitars, the drone of a harmonium and subtle percussion follow. Throughout, the French quartet — sometimes veering into Talk Talk territory — explores the edges of postrock where it meets contemporary composition. This album delivers on its name, offering a porthole into an enchanting musical world.

Anne Müller, Heliopause (Erased Tapes) – Fans of contemporary approaches to the cello — think Maya Beiser or Julia Kent — should love this beguiling debut, which Müller wrote, recorded and produced on her own. “Solo? Repeat” combines long melodic lines, rapid string crossings and layered cellos — and resonates like an ECM Records release.

Nils Frahm, All Encores – If you search for this album on Apple Music, you’ll find its genre listed as “ambient.” Look for the same album on Google Play, and you’ll see it categorized as “dance/electronic.” Before I had the chance to see Nils Frahm live last year, I would’ve thought “ambient” was a bit of a misnomer (due to Frahm’s hushed, but structured, piano works), while “dance/electronic” was simply a miscategorization. But there’s a reason that Frahm is one of the most well-known artists making instrumental music, and part of it is his multifaceted appeal and engaging versatility, moving easily from close-miked, felt-dampened piano to the sublime drone of a harmonium to the insistent electronic rhythm of a track like “Spells.”

Deaf Center, Low Distance – I don’t know how widely used or accepted the term “compositional ambient” is, but I find that it’s a useful genre marker to delineate the space between pure ambient music and what might be called modern or contemporary composition. Deaf Center, the duo of Erik K. Skodvin and Otto A. Totland, resides squarely in this space. From indecipherable atmospheric sounds and drone notes to strings, static hums and slow arpeggios from a felt-dampened piano, Low Distance shows Deaf Center to be absolutely masterful at making dark, riveting instrumental music, no matter what you call it.

Sarah Davachi, Pale Bloom – Davachi, from Canada, holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in electronic music and recording media. Her bio states what her work is about far better than I could, so I’ll let it speak for itself: Davachi’s work “is primarily concerned with disclosing the delicate psychoacoustics of intimate aural spaces, utilizing extended durations and simple harmonic structures that emphasize subtle variations in overtone complexity, temperament and intonation, and natural resonances.”

Davachi’s music is both heady and astounding; her 2018 release Gave in Rest is a magnificent display of her compositional power, full of multilayered elegiac meditations. Pale Bloom, meanwhile, opens with the focus squarely on her first instrument, the piano. The somber but elegant “Perfumes I” evolves out of a foundation of Bach and introduces electronics only in a subordinate role. “Perfumes II” sticks with the piano while also introducing vocals, while”Perfumes III” offers sustained drones overlaid by piano chords.

The last track on this four-track album, “If it Pleased Me to Appear to You Wrapped in this Drapery,” opens in a manner similar to Astrïd’s “Nemalion”: with beautiful yet painfully exposed violin, conveying a sense of musical and emotional vulnerability. Augmenting the violin are sustained tones and overtones whose origins I can’t identify. While the first three tracks take Davachi back to her pre-electronic roots as a pianist, the 22-minute closing piece finds her working with strings, organ and electronics, exploring subtle harmonic overtones in the tradition of avant-garde composer La Monte Young. Twenty-two minutes of minimalist drone isn’t for everyone —  at least not every day — but wherever Davachi goes, it’s at least worth a visit.

Sjors Mans, Noord (Piano and Coffee) – If you had told me a year-and-a-half ago that ambient music made by brass instruments would become a theme among my Top 10 list, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But then I heard Trio Ramberget and Sjors Mans. Noord gives us six tracks of blissful swells, atmospheric textures, delicately delivered trumpet and patient dynamic builds, along with some intimately creaking piano and occasionally frenetic synth work. All of it is thoughtfully constructed and mixed, delivering a result that’s profound and deeply satisfying.

Cenes, Carried – Comprised of cello, violin and piano, Carried is a meditative exploration of sound, with long drone notes and warm, sustained harmonies. Borne of an effort by composer/pianist Jim Perkins to step away from the grind of academic composition by taking a more instinctual, organic approach, the result is a wistful collection of brief and simple-yet-effective pieces.

r beny, Echo’s Verse – Two prominent features of ambient music are its dual focus on creating aural textures and on creating a feeling of drifting. San Francisco’s Austin Cairns excels at both, weaving complex, multilayered works from modular synths, tape loops and samplers. What separates r beny from, say, Hammock or Deaf Center, is where his music falls on the spectrum of ambient to compositional. Yes, of course it’s composed in the sense that Cairns is creating and organizing every sound — but the emphasis here is more on texture than on form, and the textures he creates are striking. On the title track, Cairns offers an ambient gem: an intermittent, wobbling hum carried along by a languidly paced melodic motif and punctuated by a static-y, higher-end tone cutting in and out and bouncing back and forth between left and right channels. Echo’s Verse is ambient enough to serve as background music, but you’re better off actually listening.

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Welcome to A Spot on the Hill

A Spot on the Hill is the name I use for my instrumental music project. As of this week, however, it’s also a place where I share my thoughts about music.

What’s behind the name? Several things, actually — but mostly, I think of a spot on the hill as a place of contemplation. And that’s what I hope to do on this platform: contemplate and explore the music I love, and hopefully share it with others.

First, some boundary-setting: This is not a review site. As a musician who wants reviews myself, I understand that when a musician finds a site that writes about the type of music they make, they really want it to be a review site. But while I do enjoy discovering new music, my deeper goal is to better understand and connect with the musical genre(s) in which I create music. I see promotion of new music on this site as an occasional byproduct, not as a goal. 

So, if not a review site, then what? As I said, it’s a place where I hope to explore the music I love and share it with others. Sometimes that might mean exploring where it came from; sometimes it could be exploring the terms and genre names that describe it; sometimes it could be sharing tracks or albums I love, recent or otherwise.

I’ve found inspiration from numerous artists, labels and websites operating in the realm of instrumental (and often ambient) music, and I’ll be mentioning and linking to them regularly. There are many excellent resources for learning about this music; my hope is that A Spot on the Hill can join the conversation.