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Music

Peals Create Soundscapes Both Ambient and Edgy on 'Honey'

Peals' Honey, originally released in 2016, has found a new home on a different label, and an opportunity for reexamination.
Recent
Music

Laraaji Takes a "Quiet Journey" (premiere +interview)

Afro Transcendentalist Laraaji prepares his second album of 2020, the meditative Moon Piano, recorded inside a Brooklyn church. The record is an example of what the artist refers to as "pulling music from the sky".

Music

Ambient Producer Joshua van Tassel Believes We Need More Beautiful Things

Joshua van Tassel plays a modern version of one of the earliest electronic instruments: the Ondes Martenot. He discusses the calm, beautiful album he's written for it, Dance Music Volume II: More Songs for Slow Motion.

Music

Jon Hassell's Argument for a Fourth World Continues with 'Seeing Through Sound'

At 83, it's clear Jon Hassell's music is forever contemporary. All he's had to do is leave open space for the next exploration, as he does on Seeing Through Sound.

Music

Neu!'s Michael Rother Talks About Experimentation and Chance

Neu!'s Michael Rother reflects on the creative environment of lockdown, the struggles of playing experimental krautrock, and the collective beauty of live performance.

Music

Less Bells Offer Poignant Post-Classical Ruminations on 'Mourning Jewelry'

Less Bells' Mourning Jewelry is not light music in the sense of weight, but it might be light in the sense of brightness or contrast. It's an engaging little series of tropes about loss and processes of grieving.

Music

Laraaji Returns to His First Instrument for 'Sun Piano'

The ability to help the listener achieve a certain elevation is something Laraaji can do, at least to some degree, no matter the instrument.

Music

Max Richter's 'VOICES' Is an Awe-Inspiring and Heartfelt Soundscape

Choral singing, piano, synths, and an "upside-down" orchestra complement crowd-sourced voices from across the globe on Max Richter's VOICES. It rewards deep listening, and acts as a global rebuke against bigotry, extremism and authoritarianism.

Music

Unwed Sailor's Johnathon Ford Discusses Their New Album and 20 Years of Music

Johnathon Ford has overseen Unwed Sailor for more than 20 years. The veteran musician shows no sign of letting up with the latest opus, Look Alive.

Jedd Beaudoin
Music

Electropop's Baths Discusses His New Confessional Rarities Compilation

The ever-prolific Will Wiesenfeld of Baths and Geotic fame has built a career over his abstract electropop oddities, and he returns with another rarities comp that plays more like a confessional new full-length.

Music

GS Sultan's 'Music for a Living Water' Is a Meditative Love Letter to Liquid

Electronic composer GS Sultan's Music for a Living Water is experimental but also warm and highly accessible.

Music

Daniel Avery's Versatility Is Spread Rather Thin on 'Love + Light'

Because it occasionally breaks new ground, Daniel Avery's Love + Light avoids being an afterthought from start to finish. The best moments here are generally the hardest-hitting ones.

Music

Lee Jones' 'Down Into Light' Is a Minutiae-Scanning Beauty of Minimal Techno

Down Into Light feels like the album Lee Jones was always born to make. He's always had a lightness of touch, but here, his touch is more delicate than ever.

Music

Matmos' Drew Daniel Discusses Soft Pink Truth, Metal, and Trump

Drew Daniel: "Trump has weaponized a kind of insincere, smarmy trolling manner. I didn't want music that similarly relied upon that stance. I wanted something that was, in a way, the opposite. Something that felt affirmative and warm."

Music

The Soft Pink Truth's Entrancing New Album Is a Stellar Change of Pace

Matmos' Drew Daniels rebrands his solo work to meet the trying times, offering up an ambient techno classic for the ages under his Soft Pink Truth moniker.

Music

Photay's New Electronic LP 'Waking Hours' Is About Taking Time Out

Electronic music of the sort that Photay creates doesn't typically have much to say lyrically, but on Waking Hours, Photay has a message, and he gives the human voice much more space than ever before.

Music

TENGGER Unleash Blissed Out Electronic Soundscapes with the Gentle and Exotic 'Nomad'

Ambient electronic ensemble TENGGER take cues from nature and world travel to inform their latest album, Nomad.

Music

TALsounds Offers Controlled Bliss on ​'Acquiesce'

TALsounds' Acquiesce reminds us that it's important to notice how brief moments of confidence or peace can unfurl in real-time, forming solid ground for us to walk forward.

Music

Noveller's 'Arrow' Creates Mini-Symphonies for Guitar and Effects

Experimental guitarist, Noveller's Arrow suggests discoveries, open spaces, the sense of a calm certainty re-occurring over repeated listens.

Music

The Durutti Column's 'Vini Reilly' Is the Post-Punk's Band's Definitive Statement

Mancunian guitarist/texturalist Vini Reilly parlayed the momentum from his famous Morrissey collaboration into an essential, definitive statement for the Durutti Column.

Music

Inventions' 'Continuous Portrait' Blurs the Grandiose and the Intimate

Explosions in the Sky and Eluvium side project, Inventions are best when they are navigating the distinction between modes in real-time on Continuous Portrait.

Music

Apparat's 'Soundtrack: Capri-Revolution' Stands Alone As a Great Ambient Experience

Apparat's (aka Sascha Ring) re-imagined score from Mario Martone's 2018 Capri-Revolution works as a fine accompaniment to a meditational flight of fancy.

Music

David Grubbs and Taku Unami Collaborate on the Downright Riveting 'Comet Meta'

Comet Meta is a brilliant record full of compositions and moments worthy of their own accord, but what's really enticing is that it's not only by David Grubbs but of him. It's perhaps the most emotive, dream-like, and accomplished piece of Grubbsian experimental post-rock.

Music

Inventions Conjure Mystery and Hope with the Intensely Creative 'Continuous Portrait'

Instrumental duo Matthew Robert Cooper (Eluvium) and Mark T. Smith (Explosions in the Sky) release their first album in five years as Inventions. Continuous Portrait is both sonically thrilling and oddly soothing.

Music

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's New LP Is Lacking in Songcraft but Rich in Texture

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's The Mosaic of Transformation is a slightly uneven listen. It generally transcends the tropes of its genre, but occasionally substitutes substance for style.

Music

Fave Five: Rafael Anton Irisarri

As one of the most celebrated ambient composers working today, Rafael Anton Irisarri continues to evolve. We celebrate his metal-tinged new album Peripeteia with a look through the albums that made him.

Evan Sawdey
Music

Composer Kosta Jevtić Offers 'Reflections on a Journey' to the Mediterranean

Serbian composer Kosta Jevtić evokes the clement Mediterranean in solo piano form on the brilliant new album, Reflections on a Journey.

Music

Luke Schneider's 'Altar of Harmony' Hews Close to Ambient Tradition

Luke Schneider's Altar of Harmony often sounds eerily close to the Robert Fripp guitar of No Pussyfooting, only he trades in the old six-string for pedal steel.

Music

Markus Floats Creates a Warm Space That Never Dallies in One Place for Long

Third Album reflects experimental electronic artist Markus Floats' belief that music isn't just something one does. It's a life one leads, so each release is an excerpted component of an ongoing and all-encompassing journey.

Reviews

Sylvain Chauveau's 'Life Without Machines' Is an Indictment of How External Forces Falsely Shape Humanity

Whereas so many contemporary albums are created to harness flash and consumption, Life Without Machines allays bedazzlement. Sylvain Chauveau advocates for unplugging and disconnecting, and only then will we truly live.

Music

Nicolás Jaar's 'Cenizas' Is a Woozy, Ambient Masterwork

Cenizas is the sound of Nicolás Jaar skirting around the edges of his own sound—skeletal, stripped-back, examining the little things that made his music so great to begin with.

Music

DJ Python's 'Mas Amable' Is a Loopy, Continuous Dream

On DJ Python's Mas Amable, everything moves along in a liquid haze. Each song slowly mutates into the next, and each sound seems to become something unlike itself.

Music

Talking Book's New Ambient Score for an Imagined Film Is Engaging

The new LP from the Faith No More/Gigante Sound side project, Talking Book, is an interesting collection of ambient soundscapes, but could use more narrative heft.

Music

Matt Evans' Ambient Soundscapes Transcend the Genre on 'New Topographics'

New York-based percussionist/composer, Matt Evans brilliantly infuses his spacey sonic landscapes with the sounds of everyday life on New Topographics.

Music

Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams Create a Soothing 'Aporia'

Sufjan Stevens' and Lowell Brams' Aporia is ambient music meant to calm and provide a background to the quotidian aspects of one's day.

Music

Weeks Island's 'Droste' Is a New High Water Mark in Ambient Steel (EP stream) (premiere)

Lost Bayou Ramblers' Jonny Campos turns up as Weeks Island with Brian Eno/Cluster-inspired music straight from the bayou. Hear Droste in full ahead of its release on Friday.

Music

Nick Storring's 'My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell' Is Beautiful, Haunting, and Otherworldly

Canadian composer Nick Storring's latest album, My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell, is mysterious, multilayered, and unforgettable.


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