The theme of today’s post is legato keyboards. There wasn’t any forethought in that direction; I just happened to come across two pieces recently that both use this seemingly simple element to great effect.
Abstract Aprils, Hold
There’s a fine line between ambient bliss and new age schmaltz — and it’s admittedly a subjective one. But Abstract Aprils seems to me to be a good place to draw the line, offering just enough soothing ambience to calm the nerves and focus the mind but not so much that it loses a core sense of artistry and composition. (I’m not saying that new age artists aren’t composers; I am saying that their artistic choices tend to smooth out the rough edges to a degree beyond where my own preferences lie.)
On one level, Abstract Aprils’ “Hold” is a simple composition built from layered synth pads played at a slow pace and in a manner not dissimilar from any number of Eno-inspired artists of the past few decades. But if you’ve ever tried writing music like this, you know that the sum is more than its parts. You can put together all the right elements, but it’s still missing something. In its ambition, “Hold” is reaching for something in the realm of Eno’s 1983 “An Ending (Ascent).” While it doesn’t reach that height — what does, really? — “Hold” creates an enchanting world of sound over its four-minute run time, and rather than wear out its welcome it invites repeated listens if only to stay in that world a little longer.
Daigo Hanada, “And It Goes On” (Moderna)
Music can do many things — so many, that some composers are tempted to show their audience just how many elements they can cram into a single piece. But the ‘shock and awe’ school of composition has never held much interest for me: Just because you can throw in any amount of complexity into a piece doesn’t mean you should. The important thing is to use the right elements at the right time to create the desired effect.
Daigo Hanada clearly understands this. Hanada’s three-and-a-half minute “And It Goes On” evokes spiritual asceticism with a reverb-covered, 4/4, legato motif built from layered organ notes. The organ forms a warm, enveloping foundation over which upper-register, faster-paced piano notes dance and sparkle. Both organ and piano increase in intensity — the organ swelling in volume as the piano intensifies in its pace — but its conclusion in a quick fade leaves matters somewhat unsettled. The listener is left wondering whether the scene has completely played out, and if so, what exactly has transpired.
If the title is to be believed, “And It Goes On” is just part of an ongoing story — and one that Hanada will continue to tell in subsequent works.
“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.
Long ago in an entry-level college poetry class, I found myself dissatisfied with the ending of a poem. I don’t recall the poem, only that it raised a question that went unanswered. I pointed this out to my professor as a flaw.
The professor replied that there are two types of people: the kind who need an answer, and the kind who are comfortable with ambiguity. No doubt she was right. Apparently, at that time and in that context, I was the type who needed an answer. Later, I went on to a career in journalism, where it’s malpractice to leave unanswered questions in a story.
Thankfully for all of us, art and journalism are played with different rules. Ben McElroy’s Soon This May All Be Sea is built on ambiguity — and it’s beautiful. 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. Instead, he is fluent in ambient, drone and folk, and he combines them masterfully. He is comfortable in the language of fingerpicked guitar and bowed strings, but he can also create wobbly, pulsating drones to go with them.
The opening track, “Fading Rhymes and the Last Flight,” opens with a gentle ambient pulse and a simple three-note motif on acoustic guitar, then brings in a windswept wash of sound interspersed with melodic fragments floating in and out. Once you’ve settled into this musical universe, McElroy changes direction — bird calls enter midway through the six-minute track, followed by a fingerpicked guitar and what sounds like a harmonium, along with strings, snare drum and bells.
“Soon This Will All Be Sea” gives us eerie, layered drones, a bow skating across strings, a muted moan of feedback, a barking dog — and, then, a ramshackle piano building a simple edifice of chords around the continuing drone, feedback and strings.
“Outside the Bubble” is a blissful union of drone with Celtic folk music. McElroy captures the contemplative feeling and resonant sounds often present in Celtic music, making it his own not only by adding the element of drone, but also with the sparing use of his voice. (Used for atmosphere and melody rather than lyrics, vocals also show up on “This Pond is Life.”)
From track to track, McElroy dials up different combinations of his musical vocabulary: The 10-minute “All the Things That Once Were” is all drone and ambient, while the acoustic guitar part on “This Pond is Life” sounds like it could be a Nick Drake outtake.
McElroy’s short, (mostly) instrumental compositions are beautifully constructed works of mood and texture, evoking a full range of thoughts and feelings. But their beauty lies in the journey, not in the destination. The tracks on Soon This May All Be Sea don’t move you through a series of compelling harmonic progressions to a big, satisfying resolution. Instead, the album invites you into a rich, beautiful world of sound that is inviting and comforting — but also fleeting. No, we don’t get the certainty of the musical architecture of a pop song or a classical concerto. In its place, we get an intimate space to ruminate — and then, like so much else in life, it just dissipates.
Led by Brooklyn-based pianist David Moore, Bing & Ruth is an instrumental ensemble making mesmerizing music that combines elements of ambient and classical minimalism.
The group has been at it for years, releasing its first album (as far as I can tell), City Lake, in 2010. It’s only been a couple of months, however, since I’ve come across their music. I’m lucky I did.
There is a lot of instrumental music out there these days, and it can be difficult for artists, even very talented ones, to make a distinct impression in such an environment. But Bing & Ruth does just that — with the strength of its writing, the sophistication of its arrangments and recording, and the depth and beauty of its work overall.
“Dorsal,” the title track from this 2017 release, opens with ambient textures and delicate piano chords, setting the mood for what could be a wide-pan scene of an expanse of land at dusk. With a subtle balance of refined piano and eerie ambient sounds surrounding it, the music leaves you wondering how the scene might unfold. Is this the solitary, reflective aftermath of a breakup — or worse, maybe the moment after a murder, when the gravity of what’s taken place is just starting to hit?
With the name “Dorsal,” the piece at least implies an end of some kind — someone is walking away, or has turned their back; something is ending. At about the halfway point, the piano gets faster and more insistent, while the ambient sounds grow darker and more foreboding. Around the 4:37 mark, an exquisitely sculpted note of what sounds like guitar feedback cuts across the piece in a descending arc. Then the mood returns to the murky curiosity of the opening: an eerie beauty, fragile and uncertain.
“Torche (ii)” is the most classically oriented of the three tracks on Dorsal, with slow, low-register chords resonating through a progression that moves between consonance and dissonance. The feeling is impressionistic; chords float and expand through time. Rhythmically and structurally, “Torche (ii)” doesn’t sound complex — but neither does it sound simple. Instead, it carries just enough mystery to keep the ear engaged, waiting for the next chord, not quite sure what it will sound like or precisely when it will come.
“Weightout” opens with light, fluttering piano and moves through layers of floating tones that glide in and out, above and below the piano melody. There are sliding notes, hints of drone, subtle waves of feedback — but most of all, a balance between the clear instrumental presence of the piano and the murkier ambient sounds whose origins can’t always be discerned.
Bing & Ruth writes music that I like to call compositional ambient — where ambient sounds are put to use in service of a compositional vision that encompasses but also extends beyond pure ambient music. It’s a space where beautiful, moving sounds can happen — and, with Bing & Ruth, they do.
The Spot on the Hill blog is about discovery and exploration — discovering new music and exploring the origins and key elements of music I already love. In Now Listening, I explore music that has captured my imagination, both past and present.
16-minute soundscapes drawn from environmental field recordings are not my usual center of gravity musically, but Edu Comelles’ two-track release Línia / Pedra / Paisatge / Solc managed to grab my attention. “Línia / Pedra” means “line” and “stone” in Catalan, while “Paisatge / Solc” means “landscape” and “groove.” The pieces — each 16 minutes long — are inspired by the skyline looking out from the ruins of a castle in the village of Culla in northeastern Spain.
According to Comelles, aside from an overdubbed double bass, sound sources for the recording include only found sounds and voices — an impressive feat, given that much of the recording sounds like it’s been generated by keyboard. Of course, the found sounds have been processed electronically — but even so, the musicality of the sounds is remarkable given their non-instrumental origins.
“Línia / Pedra” is absolutely beautiful — a meditative, drone-like piece with an underlying pulse that’s punctuated by subtle crackles. For much of its 16 minutes, “Línia / Pedra” is propelled by variations on a single pitch, with drone-like, ghostly vocals providing an atmosphere of mystery, but — quite deliberately — not a melody. Beginning with vocals, the piece eventually adds haunting, fractured strings, as well found sounds, including what could be a rolling marble and tossed rocks.
“Paisatge / Solc” veers less toward drone and more toward ambient. There are a few clearly recognizable sounds — the buzz of an insect, the sound of wind, a processed voice — but for the most part, you’re left to just listen and take in the mystery.
What draws me into Comelles’ sound world is its richness, its movement and its indecipherable origins. The music flutters, drifts, crackles and floats. By the time the clear melody of a double bass enters at the 10:27 mark of “Paisatge / Solc,” Comelles has established such a full sound world — without instruments — that the entrance of a clear melodic line is almost superfluous. And sure enough, after the bass melody drifts along for a short while with the river of ambience that surrounds it, it recedes. “Paisatge / Solc” is amorphous in shape, and in no hurry to arrive at a destination, but it delivers a rich experience along the way.
The Spot on the Hill blog is about discovery and exploration — discovering new music and exploring the origins and key elements of music I already love. In Now Listening, I explore music that has captured my imagination, both past and present.
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.
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.
