Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone May 2021

Review: Shanghai-based label have been slipping out delicate, melodic electronics for a few years now, spreading their assembled roster's sound across tapes, 7"s and digital releases. This 12" from Knopha came out in 2018 and was gone shortly after, so it's high time a repress of this sumptuous new age synth dream got sorted. The vibe is distinctly 90s across Nothing Nil, revelling in FM synthesis and laid back atmospheres. Plush chords abound, and the beats fall in soft and sensual formations, even when a cheeky breakbeat slips into the slow-mo pulse of 'San'. A truly captivating 12" with the potential to create some real 'moments' at the right hour of the party.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The re-discovery and re-appraisal of Beverly Glenn-Copeland's work is one of the more surprising outcomes of the pandemic's great pause, which for some people at least meant having more time to dive into the archives of cultural history, from music to literature to movies. Not that the spotlight isn't wholly deserving. As this 1986 album shows, the artist was well ahead of their time, with this strange, heady brew of electronic exoticism, experimental ambient and percussive poetry easy to mistake for a contemporary record.

Glenn-Copeland's own story is also a pretty interesting one. Now 76 years old, the maestro spent years identifying as a lesbian woman, before investigations in gender discourse led to the revelation that a transgender man was a more comfortable identity for the music maker, who also lays claim to a catalogue of kids' TV scores, including Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station.

Review: This is what happens when acclaimed Los Angeline harpist Mary Lattimore enlists Slowdive's Neil Halstead fo production duties. A lush, and liquid listening experience that is as graceful as it is confident, blurring the lines between classical and ambient in a way that seems to echo centuries of traditional, almost Medieval tones and contemporary electronic adventures alike.

Lattimore's work has previously been described in terms of 'dreamscapes', and few have been painted more vividly than Silver Ladders. These are deep dive arrangements that expand and contract like breathing, allowing the artist's signature instrument to shine while submerging it in swells of refrain. Movement is constant, and yet the record feels mill pond still. Hardly par for the course, even in the fertile sonic ground she works in. Step inside and prepare to be captivated.

Review: A reissue of the third LP from Brian Leeds, an American DJ and producer based on Brooklyn, originally from Kansas City, if this is your first time coming across his work then prepare for a pretty deep dive into lush, dreamy soundscapes, otherworldly drone, and adventurous aural effects, all of which are realised with a musicality that goes well beyond many digital composers.


First unveiled to critical acclaim back in 2016, proof of concept is in the pudding here - one earful and you realise just how much here stands up to new productions today, explaining a little about why people were painting Huerco S as something of a visionary when the debut long form, Colonial Patterns, first arrived. Building on the blueprint laid out then, For Those Of You... is a rich and captivating ambient listening experience that's more than worthy of the spotlight second time round.

Review: 'Quiet Sines, Meditative Drones, and Eternal Resonance' is a collection of selected, short excerpts of arrangements that originally appeared on zake's subscription series. [2020-2021]

Review: Set against the backdrop of an escape to hidden corners of the rural Southeast, prolific healing sound propagandist zake presents 'Carolina & Coppice Movements'. Suffused with manipulated field recordings, each of these pieces reenact a moment in its composer's journey. These tracks represent a solemn yet joyful paean to seclusion, and the awe beyond our doors.

Review:  Pace Yourself has already won plenty of plaudits for a great debut EP from YS and equally superb ambient full length from Dream_E. Now it scores again with Horizons Sauvages, which was originally written for the exhibition of the same name by painter Marie-Laurence de Chauvingy de Blot. Both artists have a shared love of nature and the sound pallet here is just that. Organic, layered, endless, beautiful. Both pieces are meditative ones where new age music is reinvented with a less sentimental and cliched edge, and a more immersive and real world feel.

Review: Recently Will Long has been offering up freshly remastered reissues of some of his earliest work as Celer, including numerous self-released sets he made with his original studio partner, Danielle Baquet-Long. The latest to get this treatment is Cantus Libres, a double-disc suite of lengthy tracks that has long been one of the most hard-to-find sets in Celer's discography. Sitting somewhere between ambient and drone, much of the material is built around rising and falling, swelling and gently pulsing musical movements. While almost entirely electronic and crafted from densely layered, effects-laden synthesizer chords and textures, it's almost neo-classical in its use of cinematic sweeps and emotive, slow-release melodies. Thanks to a superb remastering job, it also now sounds more attractive than ever before.

Review: Talk about multi-faceted. Emanuel Prins Sundin doesn't just go by different names, for example Prins Emanuel, he also shifts musical a guises and jobs, previously having put out work that's best described as leftfield disco and jazz-inflected folk, and works part time as a fruit picker in his hometown, Malmoe. With that in mind you would expect variety abound on his first full length excursion since becoming a father.

Whether that's really the case depends entirely on how you see genres and stylistic lines. Everything here is pretty deep, from ambient techno to haunting IDM, but the it does all belong in the art-electronica end of the poorly-labelled release schedule. That's certainly no bad thing, mind, given the tones are all crafted with an attention to detail that elevates the producer far beyond so many peers.
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Review: Ross Gentry makes an impressive debut on the Polar Seas label with an album of ambient inspired by " inspired by two monumental works of modern fiction, Tom Perrotta's 'The Leftovers' and Don Dellilo's 'White Noise'." As such, the music explores human tensions and existential dread, with ominous dories layered over creeping found sounds. Shards of synth light break through the cloud atmospheres to bring light relief on 'Nobody Wants to be Here' while the edgy string sounds (performed by Emmalee Hunnicutt), lo-fi crackle and sustained pads of 'Midway' keep you in a state of unease throughout. This is a beautiful troubled album for similarly troubling times.

Review: With the re-emergence of trance as a cool and contemporary dancefloor sound it should be no surprise that it has been finding a way back into the ambient and downtempo worlds, too, and as a cornerstone of many tracks no less. Greek academic and producer Tzoukmanis, who holds a PhD in Mathematics(specialising in Functional Analysis and Calculus of Variations), certainly seems to understand the power of those arpeggiated melodies.

Having made music since 1995, you can also bet your bottom, top or any other dollar that his aural work is thoroughly accomplished, as this 2013 collection of tracks goes to show - here presented on vinyl for the first time. From subtly soaring harmonies and broken beats of 'Green Belt' to the plink-plonk, acid house infused beatless wonder, 'Free Hugs', everything resonates as much as it impresses.