The last time I posted to this site was October of last year — a full 10 months ago.
Everyone knows that to get an audience on a blog, you need to post consistently. Maybe not daily, maybe not even weekly — but you need to be engaged in the work of building your audience and delivering to them the type of content that’s going to interest them on some regular basis.
Not only have I not done that, but the last post I wrote, “Big Ears 2024, Part 1,” carried an implicit promise of a Part 2 — which, of course, never arrived. Not that the world was waiting for it. Like a lot of niche blogs, this one doesn’t have much of audience. Of course, it might stand a chance of getting one … if I actually posted more often.
As a professional communicator — I work in communications at the University of South Carolina — I should know this more than most people. And yet, the Spot on the Hill blog site has been woefully erratic and inconsistent since the day I launched it in January, 2020.
To be honest, I can’t promise that will change. When I can muster the energy to be upstairs in my music room at night, where my computer is, I generally prefer to be playing an instrument or working on something in Logic Pro than writing a blog post. Sometimes I jot down notes of recordings or topics I should post about, but I never quite get around to writing about them.
So, every year when I get a notification from my web-hosting company that I need to pay up for another year, I consider the calculus. On the one hand, I haven’t done much with this site. And on the other hand, I have done some things — and, theoretically, I could do more.
Maybe this is a classic example of the sunk-cost fallacy, in which people are reluctant to give something up when they’ve invested a lot of time, money or effort into it — even though it’s clear that giving it up would be more advantageous.
Or, alternatively, maybe I just haven’t invested enough.
I’ve been studying up for the Big Ears Festival, listening to a 96-hour playlist my friend Will has amassed in preparation for our March trip to Knoxville, Tennessee. And while I’ll never get through the full list, I can at least sample enough music to pick out a few highlights — which I’ve already been doing on this blog (here and here in posts highlighting Ichiko Aoba, Bing and Ruth, Caroline, Catherine Lamb, Kali Malone and Tarta Relena).
Two more artists I’m hoping to see: Lesley Flanigan and Xylouris White.
Lesley Flanigan – I can only assume that Flanigan, a New York-based experimental musician who makes her own instruments, is still making music, but the latest two releases on both her Bandcamp and Spotify pages are Hedera from 2016 and Glacier from 2014. The 20-minute “Hedera” juxtaposes a steady, driving percussive sound against layered, ethereal female vocals. “Can Barely Feel My Feet” builds on a foundation of vocals while also exploring drone, microtonality and shimmering electronics.
For more mainstream-oriented audiences, “Shattering” from the 2014 release Glacier will be a more accessible distillation of Flanigan’s ideas, also building up from layered vocals but offering the additional entry points of lyrics and a clear melody. What will she sound like in 2023? I have no idea, but I’ve heard enough from these two releases to know that I want to find out.
Xylouris White – Lesley Flanigan has fewer than 200 monthly listeners on Spotify; Xylouris White has just under 1,200. It’s a testament to the philosophy of Big Ears that the festival opens its doors to artists with such small followings alongside artists with hundreds of thousands or even millions of listeners. Lead with quality, and the listeners will show up.
Xylouris White is a duo consisting of George Xylouris, a Greek singer and laouto player (the laouto is a stringed instrument that is part of the lute family), and drummer Jim White of the Dirty Three. The music — which includes both original compositions and Cretan folk music — ranges from melancholic, traditional-sounding ballads to propulsive, rhythmically complex tunes that evoke experimental jazz. Xylouris is a powerful singer with wide emotional range, and his laouto playing similarly runs the gamut from gentle, refined plucking to manic strumming. White is a versatile and intuitive percussionist, matching Xylouris’ mood at every turn and adding not just rhythm to the equation, but also tonal color.
The beauty of this music is in how well Xylouris and White complement each other, how much emotion and energy they both bring to the music, and how it can sound both deeply traditional and fiercely fresh — sometimes alternating between the two, other times simultaneously.
The Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, is coming up next spring. I was a latecomer to the festival, attending for the first time in 2019. Having been once, though, I vowed to myself that I will try to attend every year.
This is the second in an occasional series of posts on artists I am looking forward to hearing.
Bing & Ruth – “Nearer” is one of two solo piano works from the 2022 release Species. It’s an intimate, four-minute work that speaks with a profundity that only solo piano can, with each chord making a statement, while its resonating aftermath offers a moment of contemplation about what that statement might mean.
Catherine Lamb – One of the thrills of new music is challenging yourself. Enter Catherine Lamb and her microtonal drone works. They’re the kind of pieces that could send an unsuspecting audience member to the exit, muttering that what they’re hearing isn’t “music” because it doesn’t have a clear beat or a discernible melody. They’re also the kind of pieces that reward an open mind and patient listening, as layers upon layers of elongated notes shift subtly in timbre and intonation as they move toward, away from and against each other, creating a complex web of harmony and dissonance.
This coming March will mark my third time at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you’ve been there yourself, then you know it’s a one-of-a-kind musical experience — an almost overwhelming lineup of world-class artists covering every genre from drone to indie rock to jazz to contemporary classical to Americana, along with plenty of styles that fall between the lines. Among the artists I saw this year were Low, Arooj Aftab, Caroline Shaw and So Percussion, 75 Dollar Bill, Sarah Davachi, Kronos Quartet, Efterklang, Leyla McCalla, and Myra Melford.
The 2023 lineup promises to be amazing, too. Here are just a few of the artists I’m looking forward to hearing.
Tarta Relena – I’m basically throwing out the “instrumental” playbook for this blog entry. Tarta Relena is a vocal duo from Barcelona that updates Catalonian folk melodies with gorgeous, mesmerizing arrangements.
Ichiko Aoba – Japanese singer-songwriter who plays guitar, piano, clarinet, accordion and flute.
Kali Malone – Minimalist compositions for pipe organ, choir, chamber ensembles, as well as electroacoustic formats.
Caroline – Fragile pieces that exist somewhere in the space between indie, Americana and postrock.
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.
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.
Emmanuel Witzthum, “Book of Fragments” Album: The Book of Dusts (Facture, 2019)
Like “minimalism” itself, the term “holy minimalism” is sometimes used as a pejorative — but you won’t find it used that way here. Composer/violist Emmanuel Witzthum’s Book of Dusts is inspired by “old notebooks, antiquarian editions, calligraphic writing, and piles of books dressed in spiderwebs of dust,” but it could just as easily have been inspired by gazing up at the arches of a cathedral or walking through a cemetery.
Clocking in at just 1:56, “Book of Fragments” is a meditation — perhaps on loss: the loss of time, of memory, of loved ones. Though the music emanates from a single viola, its melodic line feels more like a call and response between two instruments, as mournful, resonant legato notes ring out individually and occasionally meet each other in harmony.
Music like “Book of Fragments” is a gift of our postmodern era, in which all periods of music are freely available for composers to draw on. Witzthum is looking back hundreds of years, reaching for the spiritual resonance of plainchant in terms of acoustics, while drawing more on the Baroque era harmonically. And yet, “Book of Fragments” is fully of its time.
“Book of Fragments” — and the album from which it comes — is meditative, contemporary classical music that speaks deeply. The piece is brief — just a fragment of music, really — but like minimalism itself, it says a lot with few words.
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.
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.
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.
