Daryl Groetsch Takes a Stunning Oceanic Voyage
Daryl Groetsch has given the ocean depths an eerie sense of calm and adventure, ranking among the finest ambient soundscapes in recent memory.
new age
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio Create “Great Black Music”
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio discuss their diverse musical backgrounds, spiritual practices, political preoccupations, and the research behind their music.
Alice Coltrane: Conjurer of the Majestic
Andy Beta’s Alice Coltrane biography, Cosmic Music, is an excellent work about this forward-thinking and often misunderstood musician.
Holden & Zimpel Explore the Emancipatory Power of Technology
Electronic music’s Holden & Zimpel give us hope that perhaps science and technology might just liberate us from some of life’s unnecessary struggles and strife, after all.
Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Lists/Music/Music Features/PopMatters Picks/The Best Music of 2024
The 15 Best Ambient Albums of 2024
André 3000’s surprise Album of the Year nod at the Grammys was only one of the many ambient/experimental highlights to happen in a wild year like 2024.
Kolumbo and the Quest to Tour Every Tiki Bar in America
As a kid in landlocked Texas, Frank LoCrastro has wanted to make Exotica music. With Kolumbo’s sophomore LP, his dream of touring tiki bars is within reach.
Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Lists/Music/Music Features/PopMatters Picks/The Best Music of 2023
The 10 Best Ambient Albums of 2023
In a digital landscape where consumption methods are constantly fracturing, leave it to the best ambient artists to excel and innovate despite impossible odds.
How Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks Became the New Age “White Witch”
The idea of Stevie Nicks as Fleetwood Mac’s “white witch” is particularly poignant as the second wave of feminism rolled into the ’70s.
Peter Manning Robinson Turns His Piano Into a Prism on ‘Celestial Candy’
Peter Manning Robinson’s Celestial Candy is an album unlike any other. It takes one of Western music’s oldest instruments and gives it an intensely new twist.
CFCF’s ‘memoryland’ Is the Love Letter to ’90s Techno We Didn’t Know We Needed
On memoryland, CFCF builds a time machine to take you back to the sounds of ’90s techno, house, and dance-pop.
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".
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.