Ambient – Page 2 – 7th Level Music

James Adrian Brown releases first single, “Generator,” from upcoming debut solo album.

Today James Adrian Brown, former Pulled Apart By Horses guitarist, announces his debut solo album ‘Forever Neon Lights‘ out Jan 30th via Castles In Space. After achieving chart success, touring the world, and releasing four critically acclaimed studio albums with PABH, Brown has begun paving a new path in instrumental electronic music and composition. New single “Generator” is online now and Brown will be touring the UK and Ireland throughout November.

Forever Neon Lights is inspired by Brown’s formative memories of visiting the Blackpool Illuminations as a child. Those bright lights by the sea became a personal symbol of hope, possibility, and escapism, shaping the creative vision Brown now brings to his solo work.On the new single, Brown says ” ‘Generator’ is about creating your own momentum and powering through life’s challenges. Just as the illuminations need a generator to shine, we all have to find and build our own energy source to keep moving forward. For me, it’s about resilience, staying true to your dreams, and making them real.”

“Generator” on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-S3w9ILL2I4
“Generator” on other streaming services:: https://ffm.to/generatorjab

Brown’s solo work is heavily electronica-based, utilising analogue synths alongside tape machines, piano, strings, and immersive ambient atmospherics. His focus lies in the analogue process of capturing and creating sound using physical hardware. Taking inspiration from artists such as Boards of Canada, Rival Consoles and Thom Yorke, Brown is exploring, evolving, and pushing his songwriting into bold new sonic territories.

Hot off the heels of producing Benefits’ critically acclaimed album Constant Noise earlier this year, and following a continual flow of live shows, singles, EPs, collaborations and remixes by the likes of Hayden Thorpe, Blood Red Shoes & Benefits.

A deeply personal yet outward-looking debut, Forever Neon Lights is a conceptual record that draws on memory, imagination, and transformation. Across its tracks, Brown reflects on childhood wonder, the excitement of possibility, and the struggles and triumphs of chasing a creative life. The Blackpool Illuminations serve as both literal and metaphorical inspiration: dazzling, unending, and powered by unseen energy.

Sonically, the album finds Brown pushing into new territory with long-time producer James Mottershead, weaving pulsing electronics, immersive textures, and evocative melodies into a dynamic, shifting instrumental landscape. It marks a bold evolution from his guitar-led past into a fully realised electronic vision.

Speaking about making the record, Brown says:

“This album is me laying everything out, the things I’ve carried since being a child, the hopes, dreams, and doubts I’ve felt as an adult, and the stubbornness to see things through. Writing and recording it felt like reconnecting with that wide-eyed version of myself who thought the lights back in Blackpool wrapped right around the entire country every Christmas and went on forever. It’s about taking that feeling and turning it into something lasting and real.”

Forever Neon Lights will be released January 30th, 2026, on one of Britain’s most essential electronic record labels, Castles In Space. The album will be available on limited 12” gatefold vinyl and across all streaming platforms.

See James Adrian Brown live:
20th Nov – Preston – Mad Ferret
21st Nov – Leeds – Headrow House
25th Nov – Manchester – 33 Oldham Street
27th Nov – Belfast – Black Box
28th Nov – Dublin – Crowbar Terrace

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Frankie at Stereo Sanctity.]

Review: John Also Bennett – Ston Elaióna

Take some flute, add synthesizers, mix them with early morning sun bouncing off the Partheon in Athens, Greece, and have it served up by a former noise rocker. What do you get? Ston Elaióna, a beautiful ambient album from John Also Bennett.

I’m not sure how to describe this album, or even if I should. It’s something best experienced. The opening title track is like falling into a dream. “Gecko Pads” is inspired by a lizard Bennett saw on the wall of his apartment studio. “Hailstorm” mixes soft synths and flute with the quiet ticks of the titular storm Bennett recorded in Athens.

“A Handful of Olives” almost ventures into drone music with its long synth notes, but Bennett’s flute turns the song into a lovely stroll through a grove. “Sacred House” refers to the home of the Oracle of Dodoni (as does the mist-like track “Oracle” later on the record) and sounds like a record played by a ghost. Heck, “Seikilos Epitaph” is a composition found carved on an ancient pillar (the oldest known complete musical composition to exist).

“First Lament” is a song Bennett has been performing for years in different forms. Here it’s like something you’d hear drifting over a mountain path as you approach a temple you’ve been climbing toward for days. “Easter Daydream” is, I think, the only song on the album with percussion…and that is a field recording of a church bell across the street from Bennett’s apartment during Holy Week. Finally, if you buy a physical copy of the record, you also get “Lonely Melody.” Remember that ghost playing a record earlier? Well, now he’s doing spectral tidying of the haunted house to keep his mind off the fact that no one comes around to listen to his spooky records.

Again, it’s better to experience all of this than to read about it. Grab a copy of it, sit with it, and let it drift around and through you.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Cody at Terrorbird Media.]

Shrunken Elvis presents new single – “An Odd Outlet.”

Shrunken Elvis is a Nashville-based trio born from long European drives, cold winter jam sessions, and a mutual love of genre-defying sound exploration. The group unites three seasoned musicians—Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson, and Rich Ruth—each bringing a distinct musical background to a shared creative space that prizes intuition over ambition.

Cullum, a pedal steel guitarist originally from East London, has recorded with artists like Angel Olsen, Lambchop, Miranda Lambert, and Billy Strings, while also releasing two solo LPs of folk-psych compositions on UK label Full Time Hobby. Thompson, a Nashville native, emerged from the city’s DIY scene playing in his first band Gnarwhal, and later helping to form other bands including Promised Land Sound. He’s toured and recorded with Margo Price, Skyway Man, Erin Rae, and others. Known for his immersive solo project Rich Ruth (Third Man Records), Michael Ruth blends spiritual jazz, ambient, and synth-infused post-rock into meditative and expansive compositions.

Now all based in Nashville, the trio thrives within the city’s supportive and exploratory music community. That environment has allowed them to forge a path that veers from Music City’s more traditional output, offering space to experiment and innovate freely. You can hear the fruits beared from this path on the upcoming self-titled album Shrunken Elvis, announced today for a September 5th release via Western Vinyl. Pre-order the albumhere.

The stunning first single “An Old Outlet”is a track that zeros in on the junction point between genres such as kosmische, jazz fusion, electronic, and ambient — collective loves of the three members. Check it out on YouTube.

Recording their debut album presented a unique challenge: to preserve the energy of their live three-piece dynamic without over-cluttering the arrangements. Their goal wasn’t to make an instrumental album that highlights individual prowess on pedal steel or guitar—but rather to construct a musical terrain where all elements coexist, each voice contributing to something entirely new. Embracing a philosophy of “no goals, just ideas,” the group let the music unfold naturally.

Mixed by Jake Davis (William Tyler) and featuring cover art by UK psych-folk artist Max Kinghorn-Mills (Hollow Hand), the debut Shrunken Elvis record is music made without expectation—but full of purpose. It’s the music they’ve always wanted to make: immersive, intuitive, and deeply alive.

Shrunken Elvis’s music exists in a naive, open-ended state—unconcerned with outcome but guided by deeply honed instincts. Having spent much of their careers as side musicians, this project represents a rare opportunity to create purely for the sake of collaboration and curiosity. Influences range from Alice Coltrane, Michael Rother, and Pat Metheny to KLF, Ashra, and Can—along with visual and cinematic touchstones like ECM album art, Kurosawa, and Bergman. Ideas often emerged in old English pubs on tour and were carried into the studio with quiet urgency.

The group’s origins trace back to a 2022 European tour behind Cullum’s solo record. Long drives crammed into a VW Passat—traversing Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the UK, and Ireland—fostered a kind of creative incubator. With no fixed plans or agenda, the trio began crafting compositions using their compact tour setup of two guitars, pedal steel, and synths.

Their shared listening experiences on those journeys helped shape a collective sonic language, one that transitioned seamlessly into winter recording sessions back in Nashville. Gathered around a small fire heater in a shed studio, they captured that same spirit of spontaneity and collaboration in sound.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]

Review: Rival Consoles – Landscape from Memory

Ryan Lee West, known to many as the man behind Rival Consoles, has put together his ninth album, Landscape from Memory, “from a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets” (according to a press release sent me) and synths and sounds made in hotel rooms and other spaces after taking a year off from music and, for a little while, losing his creative spark.

Thankfully, Rival Consoles found the energy and drive again and has released a fine record of ambient music, dance grooves, and atmospheric sonics. “In Reverse” starts the album with Radiohead-like synth bumps and bubbles and acoustic guitar that drifts in and out of those synths like happy birds coasting between trees. The beautiful “Catherine” is a song for West’s love, who helped him rediscover his love for composition and creating soundscapes.

“Drum Song” is well-named for its thumping, bumping beats. “Soft Gradient Beckons” is the sound of a happy, robotic bird waking up with the sun. It perfectly floats into “Gaivotas,” and that nicely drifts into the almost-industrial dance track “Coda.” “Known Shape” is an almost weightless dance track that feels like something you’d hear in a spaceport lounge. The fade out of “Nocturne” will make you feel like you’re calmly walking into or out of a fog.

“Jupiter” pulls you in like its namesake’s gravity and gets your toes tapping as you slide into orbit and feel your molecules vibrating. “In a Trance” (made in a New York hotel room) might put you there, and the ethereal “If Not Now” will help you stay in that meditative state for a while longer. The synths on “2 Forms” sound like they’re half-awake but still helping you dance at 3am.

“Tape Loop” has a twinge of suspense to it, and the title track closes the album with an uplifting energy – the kind that West found while making the track and the rest of the album while dealing with…well, everything everyone is dealing with right now.

Memory is often fuzzy, and creating or describing a landscape from it is often wrought with inaccuracies. This landscape created by Rival Consoles, however, feels lush and familiar…even in the darker parts. It feels like the right place at the right moment – which is right now.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]

Review: Lorenzo Dada & Leo Benassi – Island EP

Don’t let the cartoonish cover fool you, Lorenzo Dada and Leo Benassi‘s Island EP is a solid house record with plenty of bounce and bump in it.

The opening bass of “Midnight Piano” alone will make your head turn and your hips shake. The tapping beats of “Slow Ride” mix with subtle horns and softer bass for a smooth make-out groove.

Apparently, there are “No Flamingos in Salinas,” but there are plenty of smooth, lush beats and grooves on this track. It’s bright and bouncy and something you’ll probably slide into a dozen mixes this summer. The EP ends with the dreamy “Dream On,” bringing in bubbly beats and looping synths to create a groove that I’m sure a lot of hip hop DJs will slow down and sample.

I’m sure you’ll dig this and drop it into many sets of your own, too.

Keep your mind open.

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Sally Shapiro’s new single asks, “Did You Call Tonight?”

Today Swedish italo disco / synthpop duo Sally Shapiro share new single “Did You Call Tonight” from their upcoming album ‘Ready To Live A Lie’, which is due May 30th via Italians Do It Better.

On the track, the band said “Microcheating is the theme of this new single. Musically it’s inspired by 80s electro breakbeat, a bit slower and funkier than our usual style.”

“Did You Call Tonight” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vYtgddi4xps
“Did You Call Tonight” on other streaming services:https://idib.ffm.to/didyoucalltonight

Made up of producer Johan Agebjörn and an anonymous female vocalist who uses the pseudonym Sally Shapiro; the duo are known for their dreamy, melancholic sound and nostalgic homage to 1980s Italo disco and gained international recognition with their debut album Disco Romance (2007), which was then followed by My Guilty Pleasure (2009), Somewhere Else (2013) and their debut for Italians Do It Better Sad Cities (2022).

The name “Sally Shapiro” has always referred to both the duo, as well as the enigmatic anonymous singer whose real name is something else. But “Sally” is also a third entity: the fictional character singing about her love stories. It’s now been 18 years since Sally Shapiro’s debut album Disco Romance, that took influences from italo disco and indie pop with a naive and youthful flavor, as if everything “Sally” did was to “walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs”, as she once put it.

Ready To Live A Lie may, however, be the duo’s darkest album yet. The lyrics have shifted from the euphoria of first love to exploring “Sally’s” struggles in long-term relationships—love triangles, boredom, resentment, and the lingering sense of loneliness.

Ready To Live A Lie is out on Italians Do It Better on May 30th and includes the duo’s acclaimed Pet Shop Boys cover Rent.

Taking inspiration from synthwave, italo disco, nudisco, indie pop and bossanova, the album becomes their fifth studio album & their second for Italians Do It Better – again mixed together with label founder Johnny Jewel (Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire).

Sally Shapiro’s forthcoming album ‘Ready To Live A Lie’ is now available for preorder on vinyl 2LP (pink vinyl or transparent electric blue vinyl), CD and digital from their Bandcamp page.

Pre-order album: https://sallyshapiro.bandcamp.com/album/ready-to-live-a-lie
Pre-save album\: https://idib.ffm.to/readytolivealie

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Frankie at Stereo Sanctity.]

Review: j.o.y.s. – self-titled

Ramon Narvaez is also known as j.o.y.s., which stands for “Jump Out of Your Skin.” It’s an acronym for stepping out of your comfort zone and trying on something new. For Narvaez, that meant teaming up with has pedal steel-playing pal Justin Gaynor to finally put the musical improvisations they’d been creating into a self-titled album of intriguing ambience.

“dastardly” opens the album with simple synth chords and guitar drone notes that swirl like a vortex opening in space and time. The bending of time was a central theme while Narvaez and and Gaynor were creating the album, and they nailed the feel of it right away. “yucca valley” is perfect for desert meditations, as it seems to stretch beyond your senses and center you in stillness.

“river / road” curls along for over eight minutes, with Gaynor’s pedal steel helping your brain drift like a leaf on the water and your hand sway up and down outside the car window as you drive at a leisurely pace. Speaking of water, “blue water prison” is something you won’t mind being in, as it washes over you and then drains away tension.

The guitars on “lee & leo” are reminiscent of lonely border towns or nearly empty roadside diners on a side highway. “heights” almost fades out before sliding back in to bring you back to Earth. The long title track is a back-and-forth conversation between Narvaez and Gaynor’s guitars while quiet synths moderate them. By the time we get to “96 (jumping cholla),” we’re either falling into or awakening from a dream.

It’s a lovely record, and a nice meditative journey if you’re looking for one.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Ryan at Clandestine Label Services.]

Kara-Lis Coverdale announces first new music in eight years.

Kara-Lis Coverdale — “one of the most exciting composers in North America” (The Guardian) — announces her first new album in eight years, From Where You Came, out May 9th via Smalltown Supersound, and shares its lead single “Daze.”

A dynamic and sublime work steeped in emotion and sensitivity, From Where You Came unspools as a series of nocturnal transmissions, altered-state refinements, and vivid stories, rich in vibrant, illuminating qualities. Drawing together 19th century programmatic music, mid-’70s jazz, and her distinctively colorful and multi-dimensional approach to composition, she conducts emotional resonance like currents of charge, hard-wiring the purely felt into electronic signals.

Though written and recorded across several continents, including at the GRM Studio in Parisand the Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm, From Where You Came was completed in rural Ontario, Canada. Featuring contributions from multidisciplinary sound artist and cellist Anne Bourne and GRAMMY award winning trombone prodigy Kalia Vandever, the album’s eleven expansive yet condensed compositions incorporate strings, woodwind, brass, keys, software and modular synthesis, inscribing a musical language that resonates animations with unfiltered, striking clarity. “Anything can have a voice,” says Coverdale. “For me, voice is beyond human”.

Reckoning with the experience of grief, dislocation, and the pressure of total freedom and independence, Coverdale yields supernatural capacity to transfer tribulation into highly imaginative and inspiring fantasy epics of sound. Lead single “Daze” feels like the joy of flight — wind choruses dance and twirl in ornate cycles as dissonant portamentos ascend to soaring heights, gliding across turbulent gales to new pockets of harmonic plateaus.

Listen to “Daze”

Born in Burlington, Canada and of Estonian heritage, From Where You Came is Coverdale’s first major new work since Grafts (2017), Aftertouches (2015, Sacred Phrases), and A 480 (2014, Constellation Tatsu). Coverdale has performed concert halls, clubs, and festivals throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia headlining and touring with Big Thief, Caribou, Gagaku Ensemble and Floating Points (including as a part of his Promises ensemble at The Hollywood Bowl in LA). She has previously collaborated with with Actress, Yasuaki Shimizu, Caterina Barbieri and Lyra Pramuk and has created compositions for film, theatre, dance, symphonic instrumentation, and installation, including Cello Octet Amsterdam, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Vanemuine Theatre, NYC Contemporaneous Ensemble and Ludens Choir with pipe organ a connective tissue throughout much of her work.

Pre-order From Where You Came

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[Thanks to Ahmad at Pitch Perfect PR.]

j.o.y.s. releases “heights” from upcoming debut album.

“heights” is the second single from j.o.y.s.– the moniker of Ramon Narvaez’s ambient project. j.o.y.s. is an acronym for “jump out of your skin” – an apt expression for Narvaez’s project that views the album as a documentation and definable marker of a life always in flux.

From Ramon on “heights”:

“heights” is the second single from j.o.y.s. Broken into two parts, it follows myself and my collaborator Bestamo as we contemplate our residencies in the neighborhoods we existed during the making of this record; the neighborhoods of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. As with our previous single, we meditate on this instrumental music with a companion poem:

“well no shit, i’m like sisyphus,

because unlike many in this metropolis,

my parents are not funding this.

it’s all a near miss, to wait here wishless;

on a waitlist for a wish list,

just because i’m your one puerto rican friend,

doesn’t mean you’re not a little bit racist.

and just because i’m puerto rican,

doesn’t mean i’m not participating in the inevitable gentrifying of all of it.

awake from a sound sleep, there’s no forgiveness.

our disease is our disease.

on my knees, no company to keep.

you say it can’t always be a crisis,

when it is in fact, constantly a crisis.

gliding between life and death,

but i digress, i guess.

this one goes out to boyle heights, humboldt park, crown heights and all the rest.”

After years of trying to maintain some semblance of an art life while maintaining odd jobs, I began thinking of how truly difficult it can be to not have extra financial help while the cost of living rises seemingly indefinitely. This triggered the unfortunate realization that some of the people I chose to call friends were able to continue to live in these ever gentrifying neighborhoods due to some form of immense privilege. All the while playing a part in the suppressing of the innate culture within and living in a place with “affordable” rent myself only contributed to my ambivalence further.

It’s prompted me to look a bit more closely at what it means to be a somewhat assimilated Puerto Rican person having spent time growing up in central New Jersey and the Bronx, all the while the under the continued pressure conform to a society in a country that has bastardized the island where my true mixed ethnic roots originated.

How far have I distanced myself from the eleventh floor of a high rise on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx that my grandparents rented? The one that always smelled of Puerto Rican cooking and had doors that remained open to the little community within the building. How many of those communities are continuously being uprooted by a greedy developer so those aromas of home cooking are replaced with some hack instagram recipe cooked by a tech bro that pays $4000 a month to live out his dreams of big city adjacent livin’?

The cover art features a reenactment of orcas attacking a yacht which signifies to me a true act of mother nature hopefully get us all back on the right track. A track where “community” isn’t some sort of performative buzzword.

Love,

Ramon 2025

—

While ostensibly an ambient record, the musical touchstones of Ramon Narvaez and his collaborator Justin Gaynor span from 90’s alternative and the gnarliest of shoegazers to Daniel Lanois’ seminal Goodbye to Language. These expressions are presented unpretentiously on j.o.y.s. highlighting the serpentine path out of the New Jersey hardcore scene to Narvaez’s current home in Los Angeles. Both scenes live and converse on this record. Brutalist slabs of noise are stretched across the desert landscape and met by elegiac pedal steel.

The album is presented beautifully. A 14 page companion zine comes with a poem written by Narvaez for each composition. The result is a metacommentary and trenchant observation of being a D.I.Y. artist in the world of celebrity artists, trust fund modular synth bros and A.I. generated ambient music.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Ryan at Clandestine Label Services.]

Review: Lonnie Holley – Tonky

Lonnie Holley is singer, songwriter, artist, educator, and poet…and, surprisingly to me, a trip hop artist. I knew that his new album, Tonky (named after his nickname from growing up in and around honkytonks), would be full of gripping tales from his life and views on the current American landscape. I didn’t expect it to be layered with found sounds, electric beats, and trip hop touches.

The opening track, “Seeds,” is the longest at over nine minutes and has Holly telling about how fields he worked as a child until he was exhausted or often beaten so bad he couldn’t sleep. The string instruments strum out growing tension while simple synth chords are like the hums of spectres watching from the other side of the veil. “Life” is a short poem of hope with Holley encouraging us to use small actions to grow big change.

“Protest with Love” is the most punk rock song I’ve heard in a long while, and it’s wrapped in a lush trip hop track. “If you’re gonna protest, protest with love…Let love do its thing,” Holly advises. Loving thy neighbor, heck, just being nice, is one of the most rebellious acts you can do in 2025. In the jazz and post-funk (Is that a thing?)-inspired “The Burden,” Holley tells us all that it’s on us to remember those who came before and how we need to honor them (“The burden is like a spell that’s been cast upon you. Burdens of our ancestors to unravel and clarify in history.”).

“Let those who have ears, let them hear…We might not have it all together, but together we have it all,” Holley preaches in the beginning of “The Stars” — a powerful track about how people brought over on slave ships saw the same stars we now see, but how much have we progressed since then? The included rap by Open Mike Eagle is so slick it might drop you to the floor.

Holley makes sure you’re paying attention on the growling (and slightly funky) “We Were Kings in the Jungle, Slaves in the Field.” “Strength of a Song” has some of Holley’s strongest vocals on the record as he sings about finding hope and power in music. Near-industrial drums make “What’s Going On” sound like a roaring muscle car engine. “I Looked Over My Shoulder” is psychedelic jazz mixed with dark-wave synths.

“Wait a minute…” Holley says at the beginning of “Did I Do Enough?” Good heavens, haven’t we all thought that at some point — especially if you’ve been through a tragedy, or someone close to you has? The song is just Holley’s heartfelt vocals above ambient synths that build to gospel-like grandeur and it’s a stunner. “That’s Not Art, That’s Not Music” has Holley firing back the criticisms aimed at black music and culture upon their detractors.

The album ends with the hopeful “A Change Is Gonna Come,” but Holley asks, “Are we ready for something to happen?” One has to recognize the signs, when to stand up, and when to take flight. We have to be willing to accept change from divisiveness to inclusion. “How can I love God without loving you?” a woman asks not only herself, but also all of us. It’s the main message Holley wants to convey, and one we all must hear.

This is already one of the best albums of the year.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]