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In order to review this properly, I need to first mention that there is a ton of free ambient music on the internet.  You can’t surf for very long without coming upon a netlabel with ambient downloads.

Back when I was doing my radio show on Stillstream, I was dedicated to finding as much new music as I could, so I would find and listen to a lot of music.  Some was good, some was fair, some was awful.  But then there were some albums that I would keep coming back to.  Even as new music appeared for me to play, I would be drawn to certain releases that just rose above the rest.

To me, Strange Skies is one of those.

Released on defunct netlabel (those words seem to show up as a phrase too often these days…) Lunar Flower, Strange Skies is the work of Swedish artist/synthesist Mats Persson.  Over the course of these 7 tracks, Persson builds a lush sonic world in which to dream, wonder or just be.

The tracks each have their own voice, but more important to the effect of this album is the feel of continuous flowing waves of sound.  While there is silence between individual tracks, it feels a natural continuation of the soft droning pads that permeate the tracks.

There are times when listening to certain albums or pieces that I have a feeling that this sound has created a world that I can inhabit.  It is something that I feel and intuit more than something logically constructed.  I can’t really explain it very well, but the best I can come up with is that I have the sensation of floating weightless in a warm, dark space.  I don’t really think—the brain slows down and the monkey mind is silenced.  I can just be.  This is one of those albums that carves out a space like this for me.  I can drift, semi-conscious, on clouds of simple flowing sound.

Sorry if that isn’t sufficiently descriptive of the music itself (more on that in a later post…), but the best I can do is describe my reaction the music and how it makes me feel.

I jokingly poked Mats a few days ago, urging him to make more music.  He good-naturedly replied that he knew it was something he should do.  Well, I don’t know what he ‘should’ do.  I don’t think music like this can come when there is pressure to produce.  It comes out of moments that arise that require their expression in sound.  It does take time and effort to put this together, but I think it will happen when the urge to create is too strong.  Then it won’t feel like an effort—it will just feel right.

I can’t wait for that moment to strike Mats again.  In the meantime, I will just listen to Strange Skies over and over and drift through that heavenly space.

DOWNLOAD Strange Skies at The Internet Archive.

For a blog that is focused on ambient music, I thought it might be time for me to lay out my personal definition of “ambient” for my readers.

When I’m searching for new ambient music, I start combing the web.  Sometimes I check out the big guns (Amazon, LaLa, AmieStreet, Emusic, etc.  (I don’t use iTunes.  Can’t stand it.)), but I’ll also search Jamendo, netlabels and other places.

I am often surprised by the music that comes up under the label "ambient".  I sometimes think it has become a label that is almost devoid of all meaning (what a semiotician would call an "empty signifier").  If the range of music to which it applies is so broad and so inclusive, then it does nothing to differentiate itself from music that is NOT ambient.

Now it would be almost impossible to have this discussion without mentioning Brian Eno and his seminal Ambient 1: Music For Airports. In the liner notes for that album he wrote: “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting”. And as the term implies, it is music that creates an atmosphere that surrounds the listener rather than being a point of focus or direct attention.

My idea of ambient is informed, like anybody else, through my own experiences with the music and what I am drawn towards.  And for me, I tend to be drawn toward mellow, slowly evolving electronic meditations.  While there may be some sort of rhythmic element, to me any kind of drums or percussion will take it out of the realm of ambient.  I like much of that music, but I don’t quite classify it as ambient. Archetypal for me is definitely Steve Roach’s masterpiece, Structures From Silence.

So what lies at the fringes?  I guess there’s New Age (though that is also really another empty signifier, no?), which in my mind tends to follow more traditional song structures (and lengths) and often includes acoustic instruments.  There is also what I label as Chillout (or downtempo), which I see as the more rhythmic, loop-based music that many people classify as ambient.  This fits more under the umbrella of "electronica" which I don’t generally apply to ambient.  It comes out of club/rave culture and is often more rhythmic and repetitive, though also with a dreamy, abstract quality to it.

One of the sub-genres that bugs me personally is "dark ambient".  While I see it as fitting in the ambient genre, I just don’t tend to like it.  I tend to go to ambient for a sense of peace and wholeness and so I’m not a big fan of ominous and threatening music, especially when it uses lots of noise and dissonance.  Now, I have to say that I see the attraction.  There are those who want to explore the darker depths of their conscious (and unconscious) mind, and this music provides an apt soundtrack to that.  But for the most part it just turns me off.  While I don’t prefer this music, I don’t tend to question much of it as "ambient".

However, there are times when I’m browsing that I come upon an artist that seems to have been having a bipolar episode while filling out the "genre" field for their music.  I mean, I don’t get how music can be ambient/jazz/death metal.  Now I can see some potential overlap for ambient and jazz, but death metal?  These two are really at opposite ends of the genre spectrum.  We have quite/meditative against loud/aggressive.  I don’t think it’s really possible to merge the two.  They are, to my mind, mutually exclusive.

Now, I have to interject here that I am not in search of some sort of genre purity or a campaign for truth in genre labeling.  I’m all for genre benders.  I’m really just laying out my own sense of what I mean when I look at ambient music.  It might help readers of this little blog to know where I’m coming from and why I choose the music I do.

I know there are many people who would listen to the music I share here and say that it all sounds the same.  But that’s usually the case for somebody who enters a field that is unfamiliar to them.  I could say that of country music, but somebody steeped in the history and with a deeper experience of the music could find important distinctions that a neophyte would certainly miss.  It takes repeated listening to tease out the nuances of each performer and composition.

While the music that I love and share here may seem to present a narrow view, to me it is a broad vista that is deep with subtly shifting atmospheres in which I love to get lost and just…drift.

So tell me, what’s your definition…?  Please comment.

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This album from the (formerly disappeared but recently reintroduced) Serein netlabel was released in September of 2001.

The Inventors of Aircraft is the pseudonym of South London musician Phil Tomsett.  Unknown Language appears to be his first collection of music and it contains some masterful ambient soundwork.

While I’m generally more of a fan of long-form pieces, this collection of 9 songs has an overall tone and focus that gives it the same feel as a single longer piece.

It starts with the slow, minimal pulsating of  all, nothing which works off of a subtle shift between chords that gradually drift away from each other (and the listener) across the length of the track.  This track itself is worth experiencing even if you listen to nothing else here.

The second track, signs, contains some glitchy noises that in most contexts I find distracting.  But in the overall flow of this album they work well.

As the album moves further along there are some mildly percussive elements that work their way through some of the tracks.  Yet the effect is generally subtle and well executed, again keeping with the overall sound that the album creates.

I come back to this album quite often and highly recommend it.  I also look forward to the possibility of more music from The Inventors of Aircraft.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Silvercord – Symphony of Sighs (2010)

The last time Geoff Nostrant of Silvercord released an album on Earth Mantra, his majestic Bioluminescence, it was a rerelease of a classic ambient album that he had self-released in the past from his own web site. Today, we have the pleasure of rereleasing yet another classic album by this supremely talented artist, this time a stunning and passionate collection of light ambient epics called Symphony of Sighs.

via Earth Mantra Netlabel.

I’m glad to see my friends at EarthMantra are giving wider release to the excellent music of Silvercord.  This one from 2005 is seeing a welcome rerelease.

Now there aren’t many commercial ambient artists who release much free music.  I don’t mean that as a criticism in any way.  There are many ways to work as a musician in the current social/economic/technological climate and I respect working musicians who make music as a career.  Especially in a niche genre like ambient music where there aren’t many people getting rich.

So it is refreshing to see when a commercial artist releases music for free.

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Australian artist Andrew Lahiff has released a number of ambient albums (on CD and MP3) through various online sources (CDBaby, AudioLife, SoundClick, etc.). I consider several of his albums to be truly wonderful collections of warm, drifting ambience (Following Circular Pathways comes to mind).

However, he has also released quite a large number of free tracks via his personal website and LastFM. The latter is where you can find the long form release Tracing Memories of the Silent Earth, released in December 2009.

What makes this release especially interesting is that Lahiff has chosen to release his first album-length (61:16) piece for free.

I am a big fan of long form pieces because I often find that abstract drifting ambient music works best when the material has time to grow and stretch out organically. While not all soundscapes lend themselves to such treatment, the long, slow and deliberate tones of this piece take excellent advantage of the space that Lahiff gives them to breathe. He strikes the right balance between constant, glacial tones and smatterings of sonic frosting that show up occasionally to provide some contrast and foreground focus to the track. While I would definitely hesitate to categorize this as “dark ambient”, I would have to say that there are aspects of the sound that can be, at times, ominous.

The piece has renewed my interest in Mr. Lahiff’s work and made me go back and put some of his earlier pieces into my current listening rotation (and he has provided a cornucopia of free music from which to choose…).

I highly recommend downloading Tracing Memories of the Silent Earth to experience this music for yourself.

And you should check out his commercial work as well and buy some music to support the artist.

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My love of Phillip’s work is well known.  As practitioners of what is sometimes called “light ambient” go, he is one of a handful of artists who create consistently well-crafted atmospheres.

daybook is no exception.

These four tracks present some wonderfully rich shimmering atmospheres of soft phase-shifted pads.  The movement is subtle and minimal, the chords consonant and fluid.  Everything fits perfectly.

Now I mentioned on Phillip’s blog that the one shortcoming that I could find with this release was that I found it too short.  The four tracks unfold over a relatively minimal 20 minutes or so.  I typically prefer long-form pieces like this.  However, upon repeated listenings I have changed my mind.  In fact at this point I tend to see the four tracks really as one entire work and when played on repeat (as it has been around my house quite a bit since its release) the entire sequence creates a wonderful sonic backdrop.

Thanks, Phillip, for another materpiece.

I don’t believe I spent any time thinking what album should be my first download after my hard drive crash.  There are quite a few albums that I play in near constant rotation, but Herd Forming is one that I constantly turn to when I’m looking for some warm, peaceful shimmering ambient music.

On the first track, The’ve Killed Our Cubs (which I’ve always found an odd title…), Mooma manages to distill the essence of Steve Roach’s entire Structures From Silence album into a mere 12 minutes.  And then he invites us to travel through an additional 7 tracks spanning a little over an hour total.

This album is, to me, the epitome of ambient music.  The sounds are long, slowly shifting tones, full of deep reverb that create a sense of deeply echoing infinite space.  Percussive elements are almost completely absent.  And the sounds continually create lush and light harmonic structures that invite calm and relaxation.

This album was released in 2006 and since then Mooma has only released a handful of tracks on some Ambient Collective compilations.  I was quite afraid that he had stopped making music (his website has not been updated in a long time–the guestbook now consisting primarily of spam) until I saw a track on the 2009 Serene Files collection.

So there is hope for some new music from Mooma.  But in the meantime we can dwell in this magnificent space that Mooma has crafted for us.

The other night while I was down in the basement watching a movie, I heard this strange repetitious noise. I initially thought it might have been the heat or the refrigerator compressor working hard. After a while I got curious and went to explore the source of the sound. As I neared my computer I began to get worried as the sound was clearly coming from that area….

Getting closer, the source was one of my Iogear Ion external 320Gb hard drives.  It was making a sound like a mouse having a difficult workout on the treadmill–obviously not a sound one wants from a hard drive.  I decided to turn it off and let it sit overnight.

Yesterday morning I turned it on and the little mouse continued his labors.  But the good news was that the computer could see the drive and I could even drill down some levels in the directory.  So the next step would be to copy as much data as possible to one of the other drives, which would have to wait until after work.

I fretted a bit during the day about my data.  The good news was that the data on their was either recently backed up or easily replaceable.  That leads me to how this is relevant to this blog.

One of the directories on the drive was my “Free Floating” directory in which I store all of my free ambient music downloads.  I kept it separate from all of my other music in order to make sure that the music I played on my Stillstream show conformed to station guidelines (as well as my own genre preference for the show).  While there was a lot of music on there, the good news is that since it all came from free internet downloads it is relatively easy to get it all back.  It’s just a matter of hitting EarthMantra, Archive.org, liminal recs, Endless Ascent, Altus, LastFM, etc. and redownloading them.

Now, the temptation is to just go on a gigantic downloading spree to refill the music directory.  But as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I had an opportunity here.  Rather than just refilling my library with all the music that is lost, I can download the releases one at a time and listen to each one fully before downloading another one.  I can focus on each release and listen closely, as if it were new to me.

So that’s the plan, to take my time and download one album at a time.  I hope to blog here on each one, perhaps a full review or maybe just some reactions.

So what will my first album be?  Stay tuned.

I hadn’t heard anything from Seconds Before Awakening since the first one, Zero.  Apparently I’ve missed quite a bit.  The most recent release is Four.

Thanks to Stillstream for playing it and turning me on to it.

Earth Mantra has found another gem in this live performance by Shane Morris.

These two long-form pieces (Solar Winds clocking in at 41:22 and The Internal Field at 18:48) are excellent examples of minimal floating drone.

Solar Winds contains moments reminiscent of parts of the classic Structures From Silence as well as some slightly more ominous drones amid subtle processed noises and watery effects.  This is music that changes slowly and subtly over the course of the tracks, moving from lush to quiet tension and then resolving in gently sweeping tones.

The Internal Field travels a somewhat darker route, among high pitched tones and evening crickets.  There is a greater sense of drama in this track than in Solar Winds, but the same focus on subtle shifts permeates throughout.

This is some wonderful ambient music that I highly recommend.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE