Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone June 2021

Review: One of three Seefeel re-releases arriving together - shining light on the band's mid-90s 'Warp years' - St/Fr/Sp is the only one of these that has really never existed in the past. Comprising two EPs, Starethrough and Fracture/Tied, the outing also brings in a very rare Autechre remix of 'Spangle', making for a package that's got collector's item written all over it.

Musically, this is around the moment when Seefeel began to fully embrace the abstract and electronic, having just signed to Warp, and while the shoegaze of their past remains audible there are so many influences here plucked from beyond that spectrum. Embracing ambient, drone, rave chill-out, dub, acid, and psychedelia, this edition reflects two ends of that world - the blissful and largely astral first EP, and beat-driven and highly rhythmic second.

Review: Seefeel's second studio album, their first for the feted Warp imprint, saw them expand on some of the ideas in their 1993 debut, continuing to embrace the lush soundscapes that typify shoegaze and rooting things in deep sub bass, while bringing fascinating new blueprints to the table.

Which isn't too surprising, given Succour landed in 1995, by which point the UK's rave scene had managed to find a way into almost every aspect of youth and pop culture. Far from a dance music album, nevertheless the record has clear acid house influences, from soaring vocal cries through to intoxicatingly loose types of syncopated rhythm crafted from heavily detailed percussive sections, with tracks like 'Vex' taking us all the way to IDM. Exquisite explorations so far ahead of their time they still sound new almost 30 years later.

Review: The re-appraisal of early Seefeel has been long overdue. We're not entirely sure why this hasn't happened before, but to put things into context this is the first time Ch-Vox has been available on vinyl since it debuted in 1996, sidling up alongside the band's other outings dating back to 1994, all of which came about through involvement with Sheffield and global electronic music institution, Warp Records.

Ch-Vox actually landed on Rephlex, the imprint founded by Warp regular Richard D James, AKA Aphex Twin, and Grant Wilson-Claridge. Taking us further into the chill-out rooms, Sunday morning comedowns and midweek meditative moods of UK rave, in many ways Ch-Vox is more complex in concept than its predecessor, Succour, helping establish an early framework for what we now know as drone.

Review: Considering she is known for a patient appreciation of space in sonic arrangements, Ana Roxanne works at a remarkable pace. Unveiling her debut album in 2019, last year she gave us the follow up, Because of a Flower, making for two great long forms in as many years. ~~~ preceded both as her first EP, arriving in 2015, but in many ways it remains the deepest dive into her world.

Focusing on rich ambient textures that seem to swirl around the ears before enveloping, or swallowing, the listener whole, ~~~ opens on the highly effective choral moods of 'Immortality', and then moves through a variety of emotive but calm moods, peaking with the track that first turned heads across the world, 'I'm Every Sparkly Woman', a rethink of the Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan anthem 'I'm Every Woman' that has since been Roxanne's ultimate stylistic calling card.

Review: Having spent much of her still developing career working alongside husband James Barnard in Los Angeles-based ambient act Awakened Souls, Cynthia Barnard bas begun to deliver occasional solo and collaborative releases as Marine Eyes. Idyll is her debut solo album under the alias, and tends towards the pastoral, meditative and immersive. Created as a way of exploring "the healing nature of sound", the album's weightless, enveloping soundscapes combine billowing new age synthesizer chords and lapping waves of electronic sound with effects-laden guitar textures, field recordings and layered vocalisations. The results are becalmed, beautiful and calming - perfect for those who need to de-stress or escape through music.

Review: Here is a wonderful collaboration between two longtime friends: Portland-based musician and visual artist Ilyas Ahmed makes a hazy yet intimate form of psychedelic folk music, utilising acoustic and electric guitars, while Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a multi-instrumentalist who is co-founder of the Root Strata record label based out of San Francisco. Combining Ahmed's expansive guitar/synth-work and Cantu-Ledesma's immaculate style of sound design, the collection of tracks "presents as a book of short stories or vignettes highlighting their individual strengths." This version of the release comes courtesy of Cantu-Ledesm's own Devotion imprint.

Review: The last time we encountered Ethereal Logic was on the 2017 record Extraordinary Trip. Now they are back with another that could well do better at living up to that name. Again S.Moreira and Indi Zone show themselves to be every bit the tour de force of abstract sounds, somehow managing to find rhythm, harmony, and structure in vast, open-ended sonic spaces.

'Euclidean Lullaby' is a case in point. Track two on the album, its combination of droplet percussion and waves of half-melody shouldn't be so effective at drawing us in and making us hang on every tap and echoed refrain. But it is, offering a case in point for why less can often be so much more. If this is ambient, it's proof the genre really does sit well with dancefloor focused tunes - you just need to understand how to use it.

Review: Their first album in 10 years, O Yuki Conjugate's Sleepwalker receives a welcome vinyl edition here courtesy of Alex Egan's Utter imprint. The album documents the British dark ambient project's live performances between 2017 - 2019 and is also the soundtrack to an accompanying film by band member Andrew Hulme. All in all there were 24 concerts that Roger Horberry and Hulme performed at, across nine countries. The music and images were conceived together and the resulting vinyl release comprises 10 tracks, plus additional live recordings such as the hypnotic sound tapestry of 'The Air Is Alive' and the haunted dub of 'The Madness Below' - both from their Flesh and Bones live session on NTS Radio in 2018.

Review: Way back in 2009, the then current line-up of Tangerine Dream recorded and released Chandra: The Phantom Ferry, a concept album inspired by a manuscript found in a former military camp in Greenland back in 1997. This belated sequel continues the story, offering a typically atmospheric, near symphonic journey through synthesizer soundscapes full of melodic movements, sparkling electronics, moody chords, sun-kissed sounds and impressively layered compositions. There are few genuine surprises, but the quality threshold remains impressively high throughout. Basically, if you love Tangerine Dream - or even synthesizer soundscapes full stop - you need it in your life.

Review: Scott Morgan's latest immersive ambient deep dive as Loscil has its origins in a three-minute composition performed by a 22-piece orchestra from Budapest. Morgan pressed this recording to vinyl, then scratched and sampled it within an inch of its life. Each of these samples was then used (and abused) in a variety of ways, before being shaped into a suite of brand-new tracks. The process certainly worked, because Clara is simply superb: a collection of alternately melancholic, gently uplifting and becalmed soundscapes whose simmering orchestral origins are only noticeable if you know the back story. It's a stunning set all told and a genuinely involving and immersive ambient excursion.

Review: We are excited to bring you this wonderful new album from mysterious Russian artist Non Dolet (it does not hurt), entitled V. This release comes in the form of an 8 track, 45rpm EP of electronically treated, Slavic folk tinged melancholy, and pseudo film soundtrack infused beauty of a most original sounding nature. Behind the twinkling and chiming echoes, the haunting dubby rhythms, and the nostalgic nursery rhymes of her native Russia shine through in the uplifting and haunting drama that unfolds across these beautiful tracks. This release comes in two vinyl versions, in a total of only 100 copies. This listing is for the standard version in an edition of only 50 copies, in heavyweight, recycled kraftboard jackets, with corner mounted, hand worked double sided archival print on the front. The artists name is mounted beneath the photo, and is in the form of a raised embossed b/w label made with a 1970's handheld Dymo-Mite Tapewriter.

Review: It's Masayoshi Fujita, but maybe not as you usually know him. Bird Ambience is, of course, a beautiful collection of neo-classical tones that reference traditional music from well beyond the North Atlantic sphere of influence. And the same can be said for everything he has made in the past. But here he brings in both the acoustic work of his solo material and more experimental, electronic-leaning stuff under the El Fog alias to write a new chapter in his own story.

The album is sublime, and Fujita's choice of instruments has much to answer for. Putting down the vibraphone in favour of a marimba, we still keep the wooden, earthiness of the notes but with the new kit these become more expansive and offers a wider range. It's a subtle difference but one that's more than noticeable once you realise the change, with the results utterly mesmerising.

Review: In recent years, Andrea Porcu has been responsible for some of the most immersive, slowly unfurling ambient music around - much of it inspired by a combination of much-needed musical escapism and a desire to create music that would aid self-meditation. New Values, his latest longform piece, arrives with little or no explanation, other than a simple sentence about "listening to the essence of fading light". Beginning with the dull tones of tape hiss and a distant electric piano, the 46-minute piece quietly builds in waves, introducing long, lingering chords and drifting electronic motifs to accompany Porcu's fluid, slow-motion keys. It feels like lazy, languid music for similarly stunning, drawn-out sunsets, with all the warmth and comfort of a soft-touch blanket. In a word: stunning.