Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: Yu Su's eclectic, organic sound is one that has been perfected over every consecutive release, and reaches its yetmost peak with 'I Want An Earth'. As if to make a defiant cry for a habitable planet, this one contains four tracks inspired by the artist's time spent in the deserts of Ojai, California, and the coastal areas of British Columbia, presenting a deeply pad-driven, warm and modular sound to match. A dazzling work of odd-timed cosmickery and varied sonics.

Review: Yagya (Adalsteinn Gudmundsson) is one of the foremost names on the intersection of ambient house, dub techno, and dream pop, having achieved international renown for their many icy, mournful and gaseous long-players and EPs for many imprints over the years. 'Faded Photographs' is Yagya's latest, and his ninth album to date, bringing together an interesting dozen of tracks overlaid with vocals from fellow artists Benoit Pioulard and Bandreas, and saxophonist oskar Gudjonsson. While stooped in pop songwriting, every track here locks in a triplet groove on top of 4x4 beat structures, producing a skippy, carefree and lackadaisical effect.

Review: 'Faded Photographs' is the latest album project by Icelandic producer Yagya. Featuring his usual blend of ambient and dub techno, this one is also among his first to incorporate elements of deep house, pop and classical music, with friends Oskar Guojonsson, Benoit Pioulard and Bandreas cropping up on vocal and saxophone features. Despite the fact that there are over eleven tracks on this opus, every track on the album makes use of 3/4, rather than the bog-standard quantised 4/4, time. The overall effect is a skippier, dreamier, more laid-back queering of techno, contrasting to the straight and unswung vibe of its square forebear.

Review: RECOMMENDED
This is the first album Ai Yamamoto has released for US imprint Past Inside The Present, and it almost feels like an artist finally coming home - albeit a home they never lived in before. A perfect meeting of minds a long time in the making, fittingly the work included here has also taken a while to materialise, with the arrangements presented written and recorded over a two year period, between 2018 and 2020.

Japan-born, Melbourne, Australia-bred, Yamamoto's extensive experience working with pianos, strings, wind instruments and keen attention to detail in terms of textures and timbre is clear to hear within moments of hitting play. Having been making music for the best part of two decades, she's long-since honed her craft and fine-tuned those skills, ensuring Love Me Tender is a hushed ambient beauty you won't easily forget.

Review: Up until his death in 2003, Hiroshi Yoshimura spent decades offering up immaculate albums that blurred the boundaries between ambient, new age and minimalism. For those not versed in the Japanese ambient pioneer's vast catalogue, 1986's "Green" - which is here reissued by Light In The Attic - remains one of his most impressive works. Created using a minimal number of instruments (mostly synthesizers and electric pianos), the set is as quietly jazzy as it is relaxing. Highlights include the meditative, Terry Riley influenced bliss of "Feel", the pulsing organ stabs and blissful electronics of "Sheep", the garden-ready musical hug that is "Green" and the swelling opener "Creek".

Review: Up until his death in 2003, Hiroshi Yoshimura spent decades offering up immaculate albums that blurred the boundaries between ambient, new age and minimalism. For those not versed in the Japanese ambient pioneer's vast catalogue, 1986's "Green" - which is here reissued by Light In The Attic - remains one of his most impressive works. Created using a minimal number of instruments (mostly synthesizers and electric pianos), the set is as quietly jazzy as it is relaxing. Highlights include the meditative, Terry Riley influenced bliss of "Feel", the pulsing organ stabs and blissful electronics of "Sheep", the garden-ready musical hug that is "Green" and the swelling opener "Creek".

Review: In the widespread revival of Japanese ambient music, Hiroshi Yoshimura's music has been cast as some of the most cherished and reissued. Albums such as Music For Nine Post Cards and Green have enjoyed high-end editions in recent times, and now comes the turn of 1986 masterpiece Surround. It's been fervently pined for by the new wave of Far East ambient aficionados, and for good reason. This is Yoshimura at his best, delicately placing elegant musical figures atop oceanic pools of synth and leaving ample room for the mind to cast adrift. That might sound like a very generic way of describing an ambient release, but Surround's qualities transcend the formulaic trappings of the genre to become something truly magical.

Review: Amongst the many Hiroshi Yoshimura albums to enjoy a reissue in recent years, it's astonishing it's taken until now for someone to do right by Surround. Yoshimura's legacy (and second hand value) has shot up since the resurgent appreciation of ambient music from Japan and some his most treasured albums have ridden waves of online algorithms to become wildly popular and highly sought after. The prices on original copies of this 1986 album tell you all you need to know, but thankfully Temporal Drift are here to present a high-end reissue of this masterful piece of ambient escapism, crafted by a true master of the genre. This is the blue vinyl pressing, all the better to dive into head first.

Review: Fluxus drone pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela present the latest reissue of 31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM/23 VIII 64 2:50:45-3:11 AM The Volga Delta, a historic and mesmerizing soundworld which captures the '60s pioneers' twin paths through the worlds of performance art, sculpture-based acousmatic music, and an overall real alternative beatnik lifestyle . Made between 1964 and 1969, the album has gone down in history as a captivating fusion of dreamy electronic sounds and Eastern-influenced vocalization, with techniques such as microtonal tuning and extended repetition laying its experimental groundwork.

Review: Club culture can be curiously misled at times. While the focus is so often on breakdowns, in reality it's the hypnosis of looped drums and hi hats that often captures our imagination. And while belters frequently steal the limelight, in doing so we're at risk of forgetting the unifying, open-armed foundations that are found in everything from techno to hardcore to jungle and beyond. Brutal Flowers certainly makes a strong case for rethinking priorities. "A no-airs and graces piece of cool future-proof ambience" the label puts it. We'd agree. YS's stunning record seems to speak to our inner dreams of what rave has been and could still be, it hits nail-on-head in turning the emotions of surreal walks home post-club with friends into beautiful, understated yet grand synth overtures. It never forgets that heads down and ethereality are not opposites, but instead two halves of the same passion, and thoughtfulness is really the only secret ingredient in the dance music spectrum.