Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone June 2020

Review: The latest full-length excursion from the Zake Drone label brings together imprint chief Zake and Past Inside The Present collaborator Slow Dancing Society for a first collaborative outing. Comprising six slow-motion tracks that sit somewhere between drone, academic ambient, sound design, ambient techno and neo-classical, "Mirrored" is an undeniably meditative affair capable of soothing stressed minds and warming aching limbs. There are of course distinctive highlights - see the gently throbbing deep space chords and hypnotic deep techno beats of "Mirrored", the windswept-but-warm pulse of "Anamnesis" and the contemplative late night drift of "Nadir" - but the album's greatest strength is undoubtedly how it sits together as a coherent, mood-enhancing whole.

Review: Bochum Welt's 2019 album "Seafire" was arguably one of the strongest full-length sets that Central Processing Unit has released to date, which given the Sheffield-based label's track record is high praise indeed. This EP offers fresh interpretations of some of the album's many highlights. First up is a perfectly pitched radio edit of "More Light" a gorgeous slice of IDM bliss that recalls the halcyon days of Boards of Canada, which is later given a slightly chunkier - but no less beautiful - treatment by EOD and a bustling, club-ready electro re-fix, complete with Yorkshire bleeps, by veteran DJ/producer James Zabeila. Elsewhere, the ambient mix of "G1" is as luscious and blissful as you'd expect, while Teflon Tel Aviv's revision of "Color Me" is opaque, sun-kissed and more than a little spaced-out.

Review: Downtempo dream team Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft join forces once more for another excursion far out to sea. Their ambient soundscapes are as lush as they come and are the perfectly transportive sounds we need right now. From mellow and melancholic piano chords to meandering synth lines there is lots to get lost in here, always with a real sense of slowly unfolding narrative and deep sense of immersion. The tenderness of this duo seems to know no bounds as they continue to find truly moving beauty in the most minimal of compositions.

Review: Kompakt main man and ambient maestro Wolfgang Voigt served up some of his finest work yet on the Ruckverzauberung album a couple of years ago. Now Astral Industries treats us to a live recording of said album, taken from Voigt's performance at Hackney venue St Johns Church in March last year. The dark and brooding soundscapes of this modern classical exploration take on a new and dynamic dimension as his immersive compositions of haunting, densely layered strings and sinister swirling pads transport you to another world, behind the mirror. A fine release from Astral Industries.

Review: Sound scientist Brock Van Wey decided to mix things up during the making of his latest album, the decidedly bittersweet and weary "Ten Times The World Lied". To begin with, he decided to deliver an album without vocals - the first time he's ever done that - before opting to record a track a month, on the tenth day of each, for ten months. Furthermore, each densely layered track was recorded and mixed live. The results are impressive, with Van Wey offering mostly melancholic - but intensely beautiful - collages of layered ambient chords, effects-laden melodic movements and extreme aural textures that fill every invisible nook and cranny of the sound space.

Review: According to Rafael Anton Irisarri, his first album for Dais was inspired by a desire to "focus on the personal in order to tell a wider human story" - itself a reversal of his usual more impersonal approach to music-making. Musically the eight-track set also offers a slight stylistic shift, too, with Irisarri's usual ghostly ambient chords, grandiose sound design and heavily processed electronic textures being joined by fractured snippets of choral recordings, similarly fuzzy string songs, and the kind of densely layered and intense sounds that recall the dark weightiness of heavy metal. Throw in a bittersweet and melancholic tone, and you have one of Irisarri's most striking albums to date.

Review: Even by the standards of ambient artists, Celer AKA Will Long is insanely prolific. It's why he's already been the subject of one must-have box set (Smalltown Supersound's five-disc "Memory Repetitions"), and can easily make his new album, "Future Predictions", a sprawling, four-disc affair. As those familiar with his work will attest, few are capable of crafting works of such stunningly swelling beauty. All four extended pieces here - all of which were created by layering tapes loops of instruments to give the effect of a live ensemble, with added processed field recordings and sound effects - are breath-taking, delivering the kind of emotive, immersive ambience that provides a meditative distraction from the stresses of everyday life.

Review: Having previously self-released his music online, Adam London AKA Bedroom has finally found a home to showcase his particular brand of immersive, slow-burning ambient music - albeit via a release of which only 100 copies are available worldwide. While this means you'll have to be fast to secure a copy, we'd recommend making the investment. The Chicago-based producer's work is fluid, warm, dreamy and drifting, with his extensive use of glistening, reverb-laden electric guitar solos, opaque chords and other 'traditional' acoustic instruments - there's occasional and well-placed piano, cello, viola and violin - recalling the work of Jonny Nash and the superb Music From Memory label. While London's work has its own distinct flavour, it paddles in similarly sunset-ready waters - and is every bit as alluring.

Review: Three years on from their first inspired full-length collaboration, electro-acoustic experimentalists and composers Yair Elazar Glotman and Mats Erlandsson join forces once more. The result is a 50-minute suite of tracks that mixes swelling, surging orchestral movements with processed electronic sounds and a rich, bass-heavy approach to sound design. It's not quite ambient - it's too detailed, carefully crafted and intricate for that - but it isn't exactly neo-classical, either, instead existing in some kind of opaque netherworld between the two. Whatever you call it, "Emanate" is exceedingly immersive, rewarding those listeners who take time to take it all in using a great pair of headphones.

Review: According to the wordy press release that accompanies it, Affin owner Joachim Spieth's latest album - his third in total - was, "built by seemingly endless, sensitively interwoven surfaces," and, "creates curves of tension between immersive, melancholic and euphoric moments." The eight-track set is certainly atmospheric and alluring, with Spieth creating spine-tingling, mood-enhancing moments via waves of swelling ambient chords, opaque aural textures, ghostly voices and the kind of processed sounds more often found in drone releases. There are occasional rhythmical excursions - see the foreboding pulse and unearthly electronics of "Ultradian" - but for the most part "Tides" is the kind of enveloping, all-encompassing ambient excursion that's best appreciated while lying flat on your back with your eyes closed.

Review: Created as an addendum to the 'Carolina' album, 'Coppice Movements', and the five movements comprising the EP, isn't so much a case of exploring new territories as it is a convincing display of just how much can be done within a relatively strict conceptual framework. One of the joys of drone in forms tied to ambient electronica is the deceptive sense of depth - refrains often hang on a single central tone but float, glide and flow in a manner that creates textured soundscapes on such a huge scale images of mountain tops and big country wildernesses are rarely far from the mind's eye. Zake's latest is a case in point, offering plenty of calm but complex scores primed for the self-reflective moments in time we spend considering the beauty of our world.

Review: On her 2019 debut album "Vegetal Negatives", sound recordist, sound designer and experimental electronic composer Marja Ahti offered up a striking blend of processed field recordings, unearthly ambient tones and hissing tape loops. She continues on a similar theme on this equally impressive sequel, the centrepiece of which is a 20-minute long commissioned piece, "The Altitudes", in which creepy electronic tones, deathly bells and spooky ambient chords flit in and out of an atmospheric collage of crackling radio static, distant field recordings and otherworldly noises. The four shorter pieces on side two explore similar aural themes, with the ebb of flow of Ahti's minimalist musical missives slipping in and out of ghostly, music concrete style soundscapes.

Review: We were full of praise for Will Long AKA Celer's recent quadruple-album set, "Future Predictions". In our review we also pointed out that his back catalogue is worth investigating, though his prolific nature can make it hard to know where to start. Helpfully Two Acorns has come to the rescue by offering up this reissue of one of his earliest - and still most potent - sets. "Scols" was initially self-released in 2006 as part of a double CD-R set, and was made alongside his then partner, the sadly departed Danielle Baquet-Long. The album effectively drew up the blueprint for much of Long's later work, delivering immersive ambient soundscapes built around layers of tape loops that together sound like swelling orchestral movements.

Review: It's not hard to start picturing the kind of world Old Tower belongs to. Everything from the track titles to the sense of wonder and awe invoked through the use of choir voice lines forges a Middle Earth kind of vibe, making for a real adventure into vivid sonic territories that lie somewhere between ambient, drone and doom synth folk. It's not for the faint-hearted, basically. In many ways the sense of size is most pervading - tracks here sound as though they were recorded in a monastery, or ancient catacomb. 'Loremaster' arguably offering the strongest case in point, with its dramatic organs and pounding ritualistic drums. Matched with the spiritual grandeur of 'Shadow Over Thy Kingdom' and the sense of desolation and unease running through 'The Fallen One', it all makes for quite the trip.

Review: For his latest album as Atomine Elektrine - his first for esteemed Dutch imprint Winter Light - Peter Andersson has drawn inspiration from the Antikythera Mechanism, a real-life ancient Greek device that is widely thought to have been the world's first "analogical computer". The album's six tracks are as magical and mythical as the discovered device that inspired them, with Andersson cannily fusing layered field recordings and strange, spaced-out noises with swelling ambient chords, slowly unfurling melodies and spacey sampled noises to create audio collages that defy lazy categorization. It reminded us a little of some of the darker and weirder outings of the KLF during their brief ambient period (think the lesser known "Rites of Mu" and "Waiting" soundtracks), albeit with more intergalactic ethos.