Distant piano, vintage synths and faded orchestral arrangements resounding in spacious natural reverb. Nick Schofield’s Ambient Ensemble sees the Canadian composer and synth maven expanding his solo practice with an ensemble, adding his signature ambient essence to contemporary-classical and electronic music.
Where his previous two albums (Water Sine, Glass Gallery) were entirely solo endeavours and synth-focused, Ambient Ensemble invites gregarious group play. The compositions feature a chamber ensemble of grounding double bass and sliding fretless flourishes, warm violin and soothing vocals, with convivial accents of clarinet. Compelled by natural elements and intuitive composition, Ambient Ensemble is a refreshing assembly of acoustic works by Nick Schofield.
In January 2020, the album began with patient piano improvisations recorded in a church during deep Canadian winter nights. The sparse piano sketches were then slowed to half-speed and layered with classic Moog and Juno-6 synthesizers. After the project received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2023, the ensemble was formed with luminaries of the Gatineau/Ottawa music scene, featuring Yolande Laroche (voice, clarinet), Mika Posen (violin) and Philippe Charbonneau (fretless electric bass, double bass).
Citing the blissful spaciousness of pioneering new age flutist Joanna Brouk as a central inspiration, Ambient Ensemble lands delicately within the contemporary cannon alongside artists like M. Sage, Blue Lake, Ana Roxanne, and Joseph Shabason.
Regarding his newest single, “Picture Perfect,” Schofield says: “Picture Perfect is my most upbeat ambient song. It features pulsing piano, sparkling synths and swelling string arrangements – all recorded in a church with naturally resounding reverb.
The song is about envisioning perfection, while also recognizing the perfection of the present moment.
This piece shows the trajectory of my music, from working solo with synthesizers to incorporating acoustic instruments with an ensemble.
I wanted to work with acoustic instruments and an ensemble of musicians after hosting a concert series at Resonance Cafe in Montreal (which is sadly now closed) from 2018-2020 called Ambient Ensemble where I invited small ensembles of local musicians to improvise over my ambient music. It was beautiful and playful, full of serene surprises. The series featured so many amazing musicians – I was joined by label-mates Pietro Amato, Michael Feuerstack and Sarah Pagé, as well as Thanya Iyer, Austin Tufts, Eve Parker Finley, Sean Michaels, Alexei Perry Cox, Desert Bloom, Adam Kinner, Sarah Feldman, Justin Wright and many more. This new album is my way to produce the ‘Ambient Ensemble’ concert series on record. I am in love with how the album turned out because it is equally playful, serene and full of surprises that I would have never come up with on my own – just like the concert series.“
Keep your mind open.
[It would be perfect if you subscribed.]
[Thanks to Gabriel at Clandestine Label Services.]
I’m not sure if calling Melody Fields‘ 1991 album a “companion piece” to their 1901 album is correct. It feels more link a continuation of 1901, or perhaps a better world is a transformation of it, not unlike the flower on 1991‘s cover opening to reveal things previously hidden.
1991 also has plenty of guest collaborators, whereas 1901 was all Melody Fields all of the time. The opening track, “Hallelujah,” (a remix / re-edit / re-imagining of “Jesus” from 1901) is a spaced out team-up with Snake Bunker. “Blasphemy” is a wall of My Bloody Valentine-inspired sound – beautiful, loud, and somewhat intimidating. Psych-DJ Al Lover teams up with Melody Fields on “Jesus Lover,” bringing up the drum beats and bass to turn “Jesus” into a dance track.
“Dandelion” rolls along like a cool van painted with some kind of wild ancient warrior artwork on the side. You can envision warm wind whipping through your hair, perhaps with a dandelion tucked behind one ear, as you drive out to a coastal music festival. Human Language joins Melody Fields, appropriately on “Talking with Jesus.” They slow down “Jesus” almost to a crawl, turning it into a dark wave track that beckons you from behind a curtain at the back of a weird store is some forgotten rust belt town.
The bold guitars on “Diary of a Young Man” bring images of dusty ghost towns to mind…and then it suddenly hits you with vocals that could be from an actual ghost for all I know. Get your incense ready for “Bhagavana Najika Cha,” because it might lift you off the ground, and the closer, “Son of Man” (guest-starring fellow Swedish psych-giants GOAT), keeps you afloat until after the album is done.
It’s a neat record that shows off Melody Fields’ different music influences, loves, and talents. Where else are you going to hear a record that blends psychedelia, dark wave, and dance grooves?
Today, Amiture, the New York City-based project of Jack Whitescarver and Coco Goupil, unveiled their latest single “Dirty” from the upcoming album Mother Engine, set for release on February 9th through Dots Per Inch Music. The dark and serrated new single arrives alongside a self-directed music video, premiered earlier via FLOOD, who commended the duo for their “creative take on experimental electronic music forged and honed within NYC basements.”
Remarking on the track’s unique construction, Amiture issued the following statement: “In a way, this song is our most indebted to early hip-hop production on the album because of its melodic relationships. Each melody, guitar, bass, vocal, etc… is in a different key. This way we were able to find a darker environment that reflects the textures and soundscapes that older sampling technology had. Different samples in Dirty fit together regardless of their tuning, creating a cacophony of anxious gestures that somehow become a glittery dance track. We recorded each part live in our studio and not on a sampler, you can feel that kind of live, almost like theater, expressionist bravado. The lyrics tell you all you need to know about the ideal way to listen to Dirty.”
Expanding on the concept behind the music video, Whitescarver added: “Cameras are always recording you. Your laptop records you. Your phone records you. It’s not clear what distinguishes an intimate moment from a public one. Most major cities like New York are massively surveilled. I thought it was interesting to think about how you would behave if privacy was no longer a clear-cut idea. The video intercuts surveillance-type video of New York City streets and people with more intimate interior scenes and even scenes of people making out. Dirty is about remembering a time when sex and love were valuable. If you know someone is watching you, maybe that estranges you further from that, maybe it makes it more so.”
Whitescarver and Goupil were involved in music their whole lives and briefly performed in a band together in college before taking separate paths as visual artists. It wasn’t until 2021, when the two came back together to flesh out live arrangements for Whitescarver’s solo endeavor The Beach, that their collaboration really began. Following this reunion, Amiture was reinvented. While the two were performing songs Whitescarver had written alone, Goupil arranged their own parts, displaying a sculptural sensibility in their contributions. The synthesis of Goupil’s unorthodox guitar stylings with Whitescarver’s heartfelt songwriting proved to be a rich union.
Mother Engine began to take form in a dilapidated garage between a sanitation center and a set of train tracks. This would be their laboratory, workshop, and recording studio where they developed a process of working that included a newfound love for sample manipulation. They collaborated with other musicians including Matt Norman and Henry Birdsey to bring their production out of the digital landscape of Ableton. Between the tape machine, the amp, the turntable, and the computer, Amiture found magic. Each song is a part of a complex sonic matrix that reflected a vision and a sound neither one could have procured alone, always centered around Whitescarver’s classically trained voice and Goupil’s gritty, tripped-out-guitar sound, merged and then steeped in the traditions of American guitar music, industrial music, and folk melody.
Following the release of Mother Engine, Amiture will perform at SXSW Music Festival in March. Stay tuned for additional tour dates including details for a special hometown record release show in February.
Putting a contemporary spin on baroque composition, Astrid Sonne’s music feels at once alien and traditional. The Danish, London-based composer’s output is aloof, yet ornate—a formula that yields itself well to upcoming UK tour dates with beloved dream-pop artist and scene-mate, ML Buch.
Where Sonne’s prior work landed in the experimental, even ambient camp, the new material sees her stepping into both contemporary songwriting and beat driven productions. Her new single “Boost”, premiering on Gorilla vs. Bear today,is a perfect example of the latter, pushing into more eclectic, driving terrain. It opens with woozy synth chords, which give way to pounding drums that filter in and out of murky effects. In the final minute, the track disintegrates into a misty, freeform outro.
“Boost” concludes a run of candidly released material (“Staying here,”“Overture,”“Do you wanna”) from the recently announced album Great Doubt, which notably features the composer’s own voice in a unique blend of quintessential Astrid Sonne productions and a personal take on the art of writing a song. Great Doubt will be released January 26 via Copenhagen’s Escho.
On the single, Astrid Sonne shares: “I made Boost lying in my bed, it’s a quite energetic track coming from a not very energetic place. There’s a sense of release to Boost and a feeling of not caring too much, which can be good sometimes when you need to seek out new settings.”
Astrid Sonne is a Danish, London-based composer and viola player. Throughout her acclaimed discography, Astrid Sonne has been carefully crafting different moods through electronic and acoustic instrumental endeavours. On her forthcoming album Great Doubt, to be released January 26, 2024 via Copenhagen’s Escho, this skill is refined, now with the distinct addition of the composer’s own vocal in front. The tone of each track is unmistakably Sonne’s, structured around contrasts through an impeccable sense of timing. Lyrics on the album are sparse, merely highlighting different scenes or emotional states of being, leaving the music to fill in the blanks. Yet they also form a pattern of ambiguity, consolidated through the album title, searching for answers through looking at how and what you are asking, questions for the world, questions of love. The viola, a trusted companion since Astrid Sonne’s youth, appears effortlessly throughout the album, fully integrated into the sonic universe; through a pizzicato driven arrangement in the poignant track “Almost” or along with booms and claps in mutated cinematic stabs during “Give my all”, paraphrasing Mariah Carey’s 1997 ballad. Yet the string section also gives way to explorations of woodwinds, counterbalancing the bowed movements with digital brass and airy flutes. Finally, beats and detuned piano are fresh additions to the soundscape, cementing how Sonne’s practice is always evolving into new territories.
Live Dates 2/3 – Oslo, NOR @ Trekanten 2/6 – Copenhagen, DK @ ALICE 2/8 – Aarhus, DK @ PART 2/14 – Barcelona, ESP @ Casa Montjuic 2/15 – Lisbon, PT @ ZDB 2/27 – London, UK @ ICA *2/28 – London, UK @ ICA *2/29 – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew *3/01 – Manchester, UK @ White Hotel *3/02 – Glasgow, UK @ The Flying Duck * * = w/ ML Buch
Fixing us into the much-needed posture of passive resistance for this (r)evolutionary new (s)election year, “Panser L’inacceptable” is Laetitia Sadier‘s second single (and video!) from the forthcoming Rooting For Love. Flowing toward the album’s February 23rd release via Drag City, it follows the previously released single and video “Une Autre Attente.”
On “Panser L’inacceptable,” Laetitia’s wheel-like rhythm guitar paddles the waters atop a raft of Gamelan patterns, synthesized strings trailing in her wake. The video, created by Laetitia and filmmaker Christopher Thomas Allen, flashes through images of the natural world: water, stone formations, long rays of sunlight and stalks of wheat provide an idyllic mise-en-scene eventually wandered through by Laetitia herself. As she passes barefoot through a wood and bundled up through a cemetery, the images of nature’s riches take on a Tarkovskian resonance: an idyll from which we humans find ourselves at an unnatural remove. The chorus swells greater with each pass, and as Laetitia slowly sinks into the sea and through the woods, we consider the title: “Panser L’inacceptable” (“panser” meaning to bandage, or otherwise treat damage) — a headfirst dive into handling and healing past wounds. This theme hangs omnipresent in the endless skies stretching over the ten tracks that make up Rooting For Love.
With Rooting For Love, Laetitia continues her journey of the self through time, space and collective consciousness, with an album set alight by the heat of a turbulent world, collapsing institutions and Laetitia’s fully-engaged process of expression, not to mention orchestration. Scored with organs, guitars, bass, synths, trombones, vibraphones, live and programmed drums, Rooting for Love is guided by Laetitia’s empathic presence, leading an ensemble that includes bassist Xavi Muñoz, Hannes Plattmeier and Emma Mario programming drums and synths (as well as mixing tracks), and a vocal assembly of men and women billed as “The Choir,” alongside a talented cast of players and singers from Laetitia’s Source Ensemble and beyond.
After an extended tour with the mighty Stereolab in 2022, Laetitia’s first U.S. tour in seven years commences this spring with a performance at The Chapel in San Francisco on Saturday, March 2. Tickets are now on sale.
Laetitia Sadier 2024 Tour Dates: Sat. March 2 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel Mon. March 4 – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall * Tue. March 5 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza * Wed. March 6 – Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret * Fri. March 8 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court * Sat. March 9 – Denver, CO @ Lost Lake * Mon. March 11 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club * Tue. March 12 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle # Wed. March 13 – Detroit, MI @ Third Man Fri. March 15 – Toronto, ON @ Garrison Sat. March 16 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz Wed. March 20 – Brooklyn, NY @ National Sawdust ^ Thu. March 21 – Boston, MA @ Arts at the Armory ^ Fri. March 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ^ Sat. March 23 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd ^ Mon. March 25 – Atlanta, GA @ The EARL Tue. March 26 – Nashville, TN @ Blue Room Thu. March 28 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Upstairs % Fri. March 29 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada % Sat. March 30 – Austin, TX @ Parish % Tue. April 2 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge % Wed. April 3 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet’s % Thu. April 4 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon % Fri. April 5 – Big Sur, CA @ Fernwood Tavern % Mon. April 8 – San Juan, PR @ Club 77
* w/ Susan James # w/ Radio Outernational ^ w/ Storefront Church % w/ Sofia Bolt
Light in the Attic Records (LITA), in cooperation with Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive, proudly announces a definitive reissue of Reed’s Hudson River Wind Meditations, out January 12, 2024. Originally released in 2007, the deeply personal project provides the best example of Lou Reed’s decades-long exploration into drone and ambient music, as well as the pioneering artist’s final solo album.
For more than five decades, Reed (1942-2013) never stopped exploring new creative avenues. From his broadly influential albums with The Velvet Underground to his groundbreaking solo works, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer remained stylistically fluid as a singer, songwriter, musician, and poet. Reed experimented with minimalist drone feedback music in the early 60s while in the Velvet Underground, and released the highly provocative double-album Metal Machine Musicin 1975. From there he further developed his passion for drone music using both guitar and keyboards, including “Fire Music” on The Ravenin 2003. This experimental side of Lou’s musical life led to Hudson River Wind Meditations in 2007, and after that, live performances with the Metal Machine Trio and trios with Anderson and John Zorn. Reed was also a spiritual being, who devoted his later years to Tai Chi and routinely integrated yoga and meditation practices into his life. It was inevitable that his two passions would eventually mingle. Inspired to create a soundtrack for these quiet – yet powerful – exercises, Reed composed four compelling works, which comprise his 20th and final solo album, Hudson River Wind Meditations.
Released in 2007, the ambient compositions were initially created for Reed’s personal use, to accompany spoken-word meditations that his acupuncturist recorded for him. Over time, they transformed into music for Reed’s beloved Tai Chi and yoga practices. Eventually, the artist chose to share them with his fans, crafting them into an album with the late producer Hal Willner (Saturday Night Live).
Available for pre-order today on 2-LP, CD, and digital, Hudson River Wind Meditations has been produced for re-release by GRAMMY®-nominated producers Laurie Anderson, Don Fleming, Jason Stern, Matt Sullivan, and Hal Willner; restored by GRAMMY®-winning engineer Steve Rosenthal; remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin with vinyl pressed at Record Technology Inc. (RTI). The 2-LP and CD sets are presented in a gatefold jacket designed by GRAMMY®-winning artist Masaki Koike and features new liner notes by renowned Yoga instructor and author Eddie Stern, who guided Reed’s practice for years. Also included in the physical editions is a fascinating conversation conducted earlier this year between author/journalist Jonathan Cott (Rolling Stone, New York Times, The New Yorker) and Anderson, who discusses Hudson River Wind Meditations, as well as her husband’s devotion to Tai Chi — one of the album’s primary inspirations.
The 2-LP is available in three different vinyl variants, including Black Wax, Coke Bottle Wax and Glacial Blue Wax, while the Deluxe Edition includes the CD or 2-LP, a set of five 8×10 photos of the Hudson River photographed by Reed and printed on 10-pt High Gloss Kromekote C1S cover stock and housed in a glassine envelope, plus a 24”x36” fold-out poster designed by Yolanda Cuomo.
“Listening to Hudson River Wind Meditations as a whole piece is moving through several modes and states of a sixty-five-minute meditation,”explains Anderson. Echoing that sentiment is Stern, whose weekly sessions with the musician always included Meditations. “The sounds immediately drew you into an inner flow of awareness; something was happening with the music, but at the same time something was happening inside of you,” recalls Stern. “As Lou began to move with the yoga postures and began to deepen his breathing, the sounds of Hudson River Wind Meditations moved with him or, perhaps, just simply moved him.”
Meditations were also composed with the musician’s Tai Chi practice in mind. Anderson shares that Reed’s teacher, “[Master Ren GuangYi] was one of the main forces in Lou’s life, and Lou wanted to express that, to honor him.”She adds that when Reed initially shared the music with Master Ren, many of his pupils were hesitant about the modern compositions. “The music wasn’t well-received at first,” she reveals. “But Master Ren… kept playing it, and then, eventually, people were agreeing. ‘This is the best thing we’ve ever heard for Tai Chi.’”
Hudson River Wind Meditations is comprised of four parts: “Move Your Heart” and “Find Your Note” (both of which clock in at around 30 minutes each), plus two shorter selections: “Hudson River Wind (Blend the Ambience)”and “Wind Coda.”
The original release of Hudson River Wind Meditations included a brief introduction by Reed, in which he wrote,“I first composed this music… to play in the background of life – to replace the everyday cacophony with new and ordered sounds of an unpredictable nature.”
Anderson muses,“I guess by ‘life,’ he meant something like what Brian Eno might mean – ambient music that colors the air in very interesting ways. For me, it resets my brainwaves.” She continues, “In Tibetan Buddhism teachings, heart and mind are the same word – citta – close to the chi of Tai Chi, which is pure energy. This music is pure energy; it breathes in and out. It’s not like here’s the beginning: dum da da! And now it develops, and now it ends! Rather, it’s one long loop that keeps changing in subtle ways.”
Similarly, Stern writes, “We exist in a continuous flow of creation…But underneath all of that is the steady, ever-present current of life that is what makes us alive and pulses in us like a gentle drone, the drone that Lou has so aptly captured through [Hudson River Wind Meditations].It’s the harmony that you keep with you once you leave the Tai Chi practice room, the harmony that whispers its music after you finish your yoga practice. It’s a song, and you only hear that song when you listen.” He adds, “On more than one occasion – and I don’t know if it was true or not – Lou said, ‘I don’t even know how I made this, and I couldn’t repeat it if I tried.’ How marvelous that is, to make a piece of music so profound that it can’t be repeated yet has been captured for future generations to enjoy.”
This is a cool synthwave album of cinematic sounds that often catches you off-guard. It’s the soundtrack to a movie you’ve never seen, but want to find just from hearing it. It might exist in another dimension, or on a dark web torrent stream. Either way, it’s one of the neatest records I heard all last year.
Speaking of cool synthwave, Mandy, Indiana‘s debut album was a stunner on multiple fronts, as it covers not only synthwave, but also cold wave, dance punk, goth, and general chaos. They’re quickly becoming one of those “bands everyone’s talking about,” so don’t miss this record.
Only King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard could get away with naming an album something like that. It was their return to thrash metal, this time built around one of their favorite subjects – protecting our fragile planet. It was one of the best metal records of the year.
This album held my top spot for a long while, as it’s a powerful stoner / psych / cosmic rock record that hits hard with shredding guitar, pleading vocals, and roaring drums. It’s all about dreams, death, and what-the-hell-are-you-doing-with-this-life-you-have-that’s-gone-like-a-flash-of-lightning-you-git introspections.
Simply put, this is the most beautiful record I heard all year, and it’s a prime example of why you should always read old e-mails. This sat in my e-mail box for about four months before I finally got to it. I’m glad I didn’t delete that e-mail in a big purge, because Halsall’s album of ambient jazz, field sounds, and slight trip-hop touches is one of those albums that changes the attitude of the room wherever it’s played.
Thanks for reading and for sticking with me another year. Onto 2024!
This one came to me fairly early in the year and was an immediate favorite. It’s full of jagged guitar lines, weird drum fills, and plenty of power equal to the cosmic cover imagery.
Speaking of heavy cosmic riffs, this album from Auralayer is full of them and plenty of Buddhist philosophy to boot. This trio about floored me when I first heard this album and were one of my favorite discoveries of the year.
Would it be a “best of” list without a King Gizz album? I mean, they release at least two albums a year, and this year they released an electro / krautrock album full of synths and drum pads that turned out to be a fun time. You can tell they enjoyed stretching muscles they don’t often use, and they filled it with references to Egyptian mythology, which just made it weirder and cooler.
Yes, that’s the same cover image, and it’s almost the same album, but KGATLW decided to release two versions of the same record, with the extended version having long mixes with additional lyrics for each song – the short of which is just under eleven minutes long. It’s even better than the regular edition of the album and lets them do lengthy synth-jams that often move into rave territory.
Speaking of long synth-jams, Ki Oni‘s tribute to his deceased grandmother and his meditation on peace and death has tracks with minimum lengths of seventeen minutes, and all of them are beautiful. This is the kind of record that takes you away from anything you’re doing and drops you into a warm pool of peace and presence.
Who’s in the top ten? Come back soon and find out!
This is a techno EP based on the mythological tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece. I don’t know what else to write to make you keen on hearing it than that.
This unearthed, previously unreleased live recording of Motörhead destroying a jazz festival is nothing short of outstanding. They were firing on all cylinders during this tour. Count yourself lucky if you saw them in 2007. If, like me, you never got to see them live, this gets you close.
Rich Aucoin has a cool gig. He gets to collect and play with vintage synthesizers, arpeggiators, sequencers, and organs and make albums with them. This second volume of such music sounds like it was recorded yesterday with new gear. It’s full of dance tracks, ambient cuts, trance beats, disco riffs, and more.
Now that 2023 has passed us, it’s time for my annual countdown of some of my favorite stuff of the previous year. Who made the top 25? Read on and discover!
#25: Cavaran – Nights at Josan
Named after a bar near their recording studio they’d frequent after recording sessions, Belgium’s Cavaran returned with a solid record of desert / stoner rock that was a badly need dose of rocket fuel into our collective veins.
#24: Gimenö – Movement Remixes
Just like 2022, there was a lot of good EDM released last year, and this album of remixes by pals of DJ / producer Gimenö was among it. There isn’t a bad track on here. It’s all floor-fillers.
#23: Big Miz – Where I Belong
Another excellent EDM EP, this one from Big Miz on the Homage label. Miz combined house with trance and does it with subtle, slick skill.
#22: Bodywash– I Held the Shape While I Could
Shoegaze made a fine return this year, and that makes me happy – as did this cool record by Bodywash that bathes you in guitars, reverb, and clove cigarette smoke vocals.
#21: Eaves Wilder – Hookey
Another fun EP, this one about break-ups, screw-ups (in the world of mental health care), and drink-ups. Eaves Wilder might be “the next big thing.” Get in on her stuff now and become one of the cool kids.
Who makes the top 20? Come back tomorrow to find out!
