Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone: February 2022

Review: After a run of reissues and a boundary-blurring fusion of classical music and electronica (January 2021's Angel's Flight), Norwegian ambient veteran Geir Jennsen AKA Biosphere has gone back to basics on Shortwave Memories. Ditching software and computers for analogue synths, drum machines and effects units, Jennsen has delivered album that he claims was inspired by the post-punk era electronics of Daniel Miller and Matin Hannett, but instead sounds like a new, less dancefloor-conscious take on the hybrid ambient/techno sound he was famous for in the early 1990s. The results are uniformly brilliant, making this one of the Norwegian trailblazer's most alluring and sonically comforting albums for decades.

Review: Polish composer Olga Wojciechowska and veteran electronic producer Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, combine on A Strangely Isolated Place to revisit a beloved Strie album - Olga's more electronic and experimental alias. With previous releases on Serein and Time Released Sound as Strie, Olga Wojciechowska's 'Struktura' was released in 2015 to a limited audience due to its physical-only format. As Olga's work becomes increasingly more coveted, through her more recent releases on A Strangely Isolated Place (Unseen Traces & Infinite Distances), and with Struktura praised as one of her finest albums to date, the discussion to breathe new life into the album resulted in a unique pairing with Scanner, an electronic music producer and multimedia artist responsible for some of the most defining works of the genre since the early 1990s.

Blurring the line between harmony and dissonance, Struktura's original recordings paint an eerie, haunting and beautiful picture, conceptualized around abstract art, with intricacies and mystery abound. Here, Strie's original recordings remain untouched, albeit lovingly remastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, and it is left to Scanner to provide further interpretations of Olga's original recordings. Scanner productions can typically traverse a myriad of styles, but here, Robin took a primarily live-hardware approach to the remixes, allowing the rawness of his recordings to add story and depth. Recorded in one take, with no overdubs, the reinterpretations strip the melodies and textures to their original essence, bringing an entirely analog element to Olga's intrinsically detailed originals. Featuring artwork by Rep Ringel and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, Struktura Revisited will be available on Gatefold 2LP in a black/grey half-and-half vinyl, with 6x6" soft-touch heavy art card.

Review: Zake and City of Dawn return to their longstanding collaboration for a new album, 'Agape', delivering a slow-droning album that bucks the trend of ambient's original purpose as background music. The Texas-Indiana duo steadily eases into great time-dilated deluges of sound, slowing everything down, yet not giving into pure depth, spanning both high and low frequencies. A natural theme is unearthed across the six pieces, producing a sublime soundscape reminiscent of Steve Roach, Bvdub or GAS meeting the thematic motifs of Shelley or Wordsworth.

Review: I'll Look for You in Others is the bittersweet fruit of a painful time in the Portland, Oregon, electronic musician's life. Patricia wrote and recorded the album in 2020, in the aftermath of losing her mother-in-law to cancer and then, months later, losing a close friend. Created using her habitual materials-synthesizer and voice-in unfamiliar ways, the album served as a means of processing her feelings of heartbreak. Feeling disconnected from everything around her, including her usual approach to music, Patricia found new inspiration in spectral processors-digital FFT algorithms that pull apart and reconfigure audio. As she reshaped her synthesizers and voice into stark, silvery new forms, she realized that the process functioned as a metaphor for grief itself: a representation of the transformation that happens when our loved ones are no longer with us as a physical presence, but are still alive within us in a beautiful new way. I'll Look for You in Others is not just a document of loss; it is a testament to the way the loss of loved ones changes our lives, and the way the presence of those we've lost changes shape after they are gone. I'll Look for You in Others marks Wolf's official debut album, following a long, extensive practice of live performance, sound-design projects, contributions to benefit compilations, and reworks of the music of her friends and peers.

Review: In remembrance of Pete Birch, AKA Woosh, AKA The Peaceful Ones and founder of Spirit Wrestlers. Four ambient pieces, three of which were released as part of Pete's 52 Card Trick series on the Spirit Wrestlers Bandcamp site, plus another piece which was a favourite of Pete's but was never finished in time.
Collected together on vinyl for the first time, all profits from the sale of this record will be donated to the Spirit Wrestlers Foundation. Set up after Pete's passing, the Foundation promotes the belief that ""Music is the Healing Force of the Universe"", that ""Love Is the Most Important Thing"" and helps causes that were close to his heart. Nx

Review: 'No Beauty In The World' is a reflection of how in a world so cruel we can find beauty, with its music bouncing between beautiful ambience and piano loops, modular synth melodies to darker textural and feedback driven drones. Unlike other wounds records where the fluidity of the entire album tells a story, 'No Beauty In The World' explore various sonic possibilities and territories. This is a culmination of over 2 years of writing and recording, constantly driven by the uncertainty and darkness in the world that we live in. Despite it all, the sonic arc of the album gives us something to hope for, maybe there is beauty in the end. The record was engineered and mixed by Diogo Strausz (Far Out Recordings) in France and mastered (digital and vinyl) by Lawrence English (Room40). The record features collaborations from guitarist Carlos Ferreira and drummer / synthesist Phillip Stosberg.

Review: Re-issue time for the fourth long playing effort from Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never project, this one initially dropping after a lengthy gap. His knack for texture and fuzzing soundscapes knows no bounds, but here they are offset with more open and empty pieces that reset the mood. There are moments of pure inward reflection, more outward gazing ambient tracks that imbue you with a sense of hope and plenty of hallucinatory melodies.

Review: Jaki Liebezeit, Clive Deamer and Tony Allen are all clear influences on Marconi Union's new album Signals. The Manchester musicians have already got a well formed discography (there have been a rather impressive 12 albums in the last 18 years) but this latest addition is another boon. It's a seamless mix of synthetic textures with organic sound, shimming drums with soaring riffs. The drumming is in fact central to this record - never overbearing but never insignificant, it provides the compelling rhythms while the mellifluous guitars add the emotion. A deeply involving listen for sure.

Review: Turkish artist Ekin Fil spent a year writing this one during the early and most anxious stages of the first lockdown in 2020. It is cast under a heavy shadow and cloudy skies of circling drones, drifting chords and spoken word laments. There are glimpses of hope and light in some of the more melodic pieces, where a little key shines through the dust. It is a record that fully captures a sense of isolation and limittless moments lost in time and deep in thought. Despite the seriousness of the music, it is often beautiful.

Review: Gerd Janson's Runing Back encourages us all to take a moment to relax, sink in deep and get lost in some reverential thoughts with this new album from Panoram. The artist's first album came on Edinburgh's Firecracker Recordings and this one is just as sublime. It is surreal ambient with vocal whispers, strings that signify new dawns and wide open blue skies that cast you adrift on the Med. The colours are muted hues of orange and yellow, the occasional rhythms are lo-fi and rickety, beautiful, slow-moving melodies washer you repeatedly and the whole thing has its own uniquely out of this world atmosphere.

Review: 'Anon 1' was originally released as a very limited Anonymous 12" on Past Inside the Present in 2020, featuring 36 and Isaac Helsen. The idea was to let people hear the music and judge it not on the names behind it, but purely on the quality of the music itself. When it sold out, the label revealed who wrote it. Obviously quite a few 36 & Isaac Helsen fans missed out, so Past Inside the Present repressed the record, but this time with the knowledge of who made the tunes now public.

Review: When it comes to crafting high-quality, hard-to-pigeonhole electronic music with an immersive ambient twist, there are few better than Manchester duo Space Afrika. Honest Labour, an album crafted during the various pandemic lockdowns of the last few years, remains rooted in their trademark sound - think opaque ambient electronics, blazed beats, crackling field recordings, snatches of spoken word and snippets of sampled vocals - while also subtly expanding their musical repertoire to include stoned lo-fi soul, Cocteau Twins style guitars, occasional guest raps, pitched-down neo-soul and cascading string arrangements. Taken as a whole, it's a magnificent and enveloping musical journey that could end up being one of the strongest albums of 2022.

Review: "Querencia: a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home." Garage Hermetique welcomes Jane Fitz on its sub label dedicated to non-dancefloor mixes on cassette.

Review: I'll Look for You in Others is the bittersweet fruit of a painful time in the Portland, Oregon, electronic musician's life. Patricia wrote and recorded the album in 2020, in the aftermath of losing her mother-in-law to cancer and then, months later, losing a close friend. Created using her habitual materials-synthesizer and voice-in unfamiliar ways, the album served as a means of processing her feelings of heartbreak. Feeling disconnected from everything around her, including her usual approach to music, Patricia found new inspiration in spectral processors-digital FFT algorithms that pull apart and reconfigure audio. As she reshaped her synthesizers and voice into stark, silvery new forms, she realized that the process functioned as a metaphor for grief itself: a representation of the transformation that happens when our loved ones are no longer with us as a physical presence, but are still alive within us in a beautiful new way. I'll Look for You in Others is not just a document of loss; it is a testament to the way the loss of loved ones changes our lives, and the way the presence of those we've lost changes shape after they are gone. I'll Look for You in Others marks Wolf's official debut album, following a long, extensive practice of live performance, sound-design projects, contributions to benefit compilations, and reworks of the music of her friends and peers.

Review: 'No Beauty In The World' is a reflection of how in a world so cruel we can find beauty, with its music bouncing between beautiful ambience and piano loops, modular synth melodies to darker textural and feedback driven drones. Unlike other wounds records where the fluidity of the entire album tells a story, 'No Beauty In The World' explore various sonic possibilities and territories. This is a culmination of over 2 years of writing and recording, constantly driven by the uncertainty and darkness in the world that we live in. Despite it all, the sonic arc of the album gives us something to hope for, maybe there is beauty in the end. The record was engineered and mixed by Diogo Strausz (Far Out Recordings) in France and mastered (digital and vinyl) by Lawrence English (Room40). The record features collaborations from guitarist Carlos Ferreira and drummer / synthesist Phillip Stosberg.

Review: Originally released back in 1986, Marine Flowers was first intended to be the soundtrack to a documentary about sea life in Palau, the western Pacific Ocean island nation. Used as part of a campaign to promote the ill-fated laserdisc, yet another format born too early and too late to succeed, one listen to the contents and you quickly realise this music was never going to stay put as a simple TV score or marketing tool.

Skip forward 35 years, and the album is about as sought after as they come - cult status long-since achieved. It's difficult trying to put a finger on exactly what it is, but let's just say this is evocative and deeply moving electronic music presented as a kind of soft rock pop opera. Once heard, never forgotten.
----

Review: It takes about a minute to fall head over heels for 'My Lights Kiss Your Thoughts Every Moment', the first track on Rushing, a collection of compelling and utterly spellbinding work by Bristol-based singer, sonic artist, and general visionary Lucy Gooch. A sublime concoction of ambient refrains, deep, moody, muffled keys, and perhaps the most spectacular voice we have heard this decade, creating something serene but powerfully emotive.

It sets a real precedent, but what follows proves every bit the match. The title track looks to focus more on production trickery, taking those sweet vocal tones and developing them into loops and layers while still ensuring the original words take centre stage, a backdrop of strings adding the sense of build and expectation. Throw in the almost church-like feeling of 'Sun', cosmic rays of melody that make up 'There Is A Space In Between' and we're sold. Well, we already were.

Review: Duane Pitre's Omniscient Voices is another excellent one from the acclaim pianist and composer. It is his first since the highs of 2015's 'Bayou Electric' and finds Pitre composing short piano motifs and feeding them into a generative computer program which then in real time convert them into microtonal electronic sounds. It results in an album of minimalism, with blurry chords and more detuned sounding notes that cut through the ambiance. Sounds decay and evolve, smudge and melt into one another as this warm and enveloping album unfolds with hints of sadness, loneliness and bitterness all found within.