An Ambient Sunday double for you with Spacecraft and Sol Nomad.
Spacecraft is Mumbai-based producer Rishi Bhatia who’s been creating ambient/electronic music since 2019. He’s appeared here a few time with his beatless beautiful soundscapes. And here’s another.
The Memory of Heaven is a just released track from forthcoming The Sky Remembers EP, out on 20 February.
In line with the track title this is a celestial vista of uplifting high tones. It manages to avoid drone by having a gently rolling set of movements and moods.
Simply beautiful.
Sol Nomad is from Germany. But I know no more than that. So, on with the music.
Here’s Iagu from the album Journey Frequencies ~ Africa. Sol Nomad explains “”I lived next to a small village in Guinea Bissau. After we built a new water pump, I made this track responding to that time and action. Iagu means Water in Kriol from Guinea Bissau.”
The track is a burbling piece of electronica filled with found sound of what I assume is the village.
People chatter. Life carries on. Chimes echo and pulse against the backdrop of drone.
Water burbles away. There’s a sort of calming contentment at work. A soundscape making connections across the globe.
A welcome back to Kodomo who has today released new single Sisu. Expect elegant IDM.
Kodomo is electronic music producer and composer Chris Child. His work has roots in IDM, minimalism, techno, and various styles of ambient music. “Kodomo” (子供) is the Japanese word for “child” – both a reference to his surname and the fact that he grew up in Japan.
He’s been appearing here on and off for over 10 years but it’s been almost two since he appeared. New single Sisu, the title track of his forthcoming album, is a wonderful vehicle in which to return.
Kodomo explains that Sisu is drawn from the Finnish word that embodies determination, grit, and quiet strength in the face of adversity.
Sisu may mean grit but as a track I found it beautifully uplifting. There’s a bit of the garage beats of early Burial dubstep mixed with that organic keyboard feel of Boards of Canada.
The keyboards have an analogue sheen and a warmth that’s utterly beguiling. This is IDM at its most human. A wonderful return and an exciting peek into the album out next month.
Here’s the debut album from waafer. And it’s a concept one built around Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Expect dramatic hip hop and treachery.
Waafer is from the US. She first appeared here last summer with the impossible beautiful ambient of i was your star, you were my sun. Now she’s back with her debut album.
Macbeth is a concept album built around the dark treachery and brutality of the foreboding and bloody Shakespeare play. It’s a hip hop album but one that cuts viciously and deep.
Waafer says of the album’s origins that “When I first started making it, I wasn’t even really thinking about even making it an EP, much less an entire album. But I always wanted to make a concept album…”
And here we are. She says “The production in it was inspired by Madlib’s beat-making on Madvillainy, combined with hints of Thundercat’s funk work, additionally combined with the ideas of old jazz themes and John Williams.”
I must admit I was expecting something kinda ambient and chilled. Not this. Waafer says “I wanted to flex my ability to make things like this, and having a discography of stark tonal whiplash just seemed funny and interesting to me.”
The album opens with a bang on Headless. Big bass driven beats are slice through with sharp strings. It’s all very cinematic and evocative. Deceptive Prophets follows. It’s a darker treacly affair. The beats slow to an almost dubstep pace and disembodied voices moan offstage.
Daybroke offers flutes and disconnected beats with a heavy edge of distortion. There’s almost a Drill sense here. Oh, Treachery belies its title with some smooth jazz brass. It’s a welcome relief after the claustrophobic sense of the previous tracks.
Ghosts starts in a drifting ambient vein before broken beats arrive to upset the calm. Intermission returns to the sophisticated study beat sound of Oh, Treachery. But you can’t quite relaxed with the backwards sound offering just a touch of the unsettling.
Good Intentions delivers some awkward choral elements. It’s all a bit spooky and dark. Macbeth, Macbeth is a sweet piano led track, despite the title relating to the witches coven.
False Comforts offers some more heavy broken beats in an almost psychedelic setting. Guilty Comforts gets close to ambient with the strange classical piano. But beats come to remind us that a final reckoning is near.
The album ends with Born of a Woman. The title is the prophecy from the witches designed to give Macbeth a false sense of security. But Macbeth ignores that Macduff was born via Caesarean section.
The track has an echoed portentous feel to the hip hop mimicked in its stately pace. Strings offer an uncomfortable dynamic. This allows the album to end on a sombre note, accentuated by the fake end and fade.
An ambitious album filled with dramatic uses of hip hop. It’s occasionally a bit too theatrical but delivers on the premise of the play and offering something you won’t hear elsewhere. Hip hop that’s bloody and hits straight for the heart.
Here’s a sneak peek of Lullabies’ new album Distilled. It’s a laid back American road trip. Full of dusty tracks, lonesome guitar and boom bap beats.
Lullabies is the instrumental project of Phoenix-based guitarist and producer Richard Lam. He describes his work as “Blending ambient guitar work andsoulful textures his music draws inspiration from artists like DJ Shadow, Tommy Guerrero, and the golden era of hip-hop.” Meanwhile, I’m sticking to my description of spaghetti western boom bap.
New album Distilled isn’t out generally until March but it is available as a pre-release download on Bandcamp. You can listen to six of the ten tracks that make up the album. And all 10 for $5.
Distilled is very much a road trip. It starts with Left In The Dust which is an early album highlight.
Left In The Dust has that cinematic edge to the guitar and a sense of blinding sunlight against which you have to narrow your eyes. A little Mexican edge to the guitar gives it that desolate frontier town vibe.
Quarter Till is a gentler proposition. The guitar is more strummed and the beats less oppressive. It’s a moment of calm reflection on the road ahead.
Idea Weapon has a late night bar feel with spooky small hours beats and a closing time trumpet.
Next, the previously reviewed hereDuelo De Almas (tr. duel of the souls/spirits) of which I said “This a cracking mix of hefty beats with some lovely Mexican style guitar. Proper day of the dead material.”
The half way point is Dust and Blood, where the guitar takes a more classical turn. An elegant elegiac track.
Thread The Needle hits the road again with a weary melancholic air. The guitar moves into a more bluesy rock style with background trumpet. You Know It also goes for that bluesy styling.
Title track Distilled offers a previously unheard heaviness to the proceedings in the beat and reverbed guitar. There’s an air of suspense and anxiety. Bad things are ahead.
The album closes with Conduit and For What It’s Worth.
The former is like that moment before the final shootout in a Western. When characters face their final reckoning. The music is mournful and the echoed beats sound of a death foretold.
The latter is the calm after the storm. The guitar is acoustic and light even when it adds some electric blues. Beats have an optimistic feel. The journey is over. You’re coming home. The credits roll.
If you want something chilled with a bit of New Age / World music feel then this track from Imaginea is for you.
Imaginea is from France. His biog says “Sonic Journeys Between Serenity and Intensity! Merging earthly vibrations with celestial light.” Not sure about the celestial light but his work does come with good vibrations.
The featured track is Néon Totem Tribal Mix. There’s a lot of spirit of the forest about this.
There’s an almost flute sound to give that World Music vibe. It’s all late night and quite sultry. Perhaps a bit hot yoga. The bass line is rich and deep.
And yet there’s a wonderfully drifting energy at work here. All the sounds dovetail beautifully. It’s all terrifically textured and yet comes across as open and light.
Imagine yourself somewhere better with this track.
It may only be three weeks since Solomantra last appeared here but this new track, Voyager, is too good to pass up.
Solomantra doesn’t offer anything by way of background, other than he may be from Ukraine. Whatever, here’s Voyager with some classy melodic techno vibes.
Voyager flirts around the techno and house borders in its six minute pass by.
This is a track that wants to take you on a journey. There’s no wham bam thank you mam cheap peaks here.
The beats are ultimately joined by a dark bass line and some strings that saw away raising the temperature but slowly.
A little piano to tickle your fancy but a peak doesn’t really come until the half way mark. Even then it’s quite subtle as it breaks and allows the piano to come though a bit more to emphasise the melodic nature of the track.
Today’s offering from Dashamlav is one of those tracks that sits in the pre or post club space. It’s not quite upbeat enough for a club but nor is it quite chilled enough for a comedown.
Dashamlav seems to come from Ireland. His biog says “Dashamlav (दशमलव), meaning decimal, represents the space between absolutes, the in-between states where identity, sound, and emotion are constantly shifting. where nothing is fixed, and everything is becoming. Dashamlav lives between 0 and 1, between silence and sound or it could be just a dot.”
The featured track is Velha from his self-titled EP. This is a mix of gently chiming guitar sounds alongside some low key but funky beats.
There’s a cool bass that occupies the background and gives the track a bit of bottom end and depth.
The track offers enough beats to get you itching to get on the dance floor or to allow you to step off into something gentler.
That sense of coming down is accentuated by the mid track dial back. Beats disappear and a spangly keyboard offers a way through. Beats do return but perhaps the link to the dance floor is broken.
Ambient Sunday is going a bit New Age with Akira Film Script.
Akira Film Script is Ryan Watts based in San Francisco. His biog says he’s “focussing on experimental alternative sounds from noise to ambient.”
Here’s Halogen from the album Autumn’s Dawn. Ryan says that the album “is a deeply personal record to me – I built it from the ground up from personal meditations and memory reflections pre modern-internet… I crafted compositions that captured the feeling of the memories – ostensibly these are audio paintings of reflections from my childhood in the 80s and 90s.”
Halogen is six and a half minutes of beatless calm. Yes, it’s quite New Age referencing with lots of held tones and almost the sense of temple bells.
But it never quite goes full yoga. This is properly beautiful music. Everything has a liquid shimmer. It’s like watching clouds slowly change shape and drift by.
Nothing is hurried. The music takes the time it needs. In a world of shot protestors this is a little moment of lucid calm.
Can’t beat a bit of moquette for some lovely public transport fabric. But if you’re unlucky enough not to live in London, cop a load of some swirling strangeness from At The Psychedelic Circus.
Back here after a five year gap, At The Psychedelic Circus is from Utrecht in the Netherlands where they know all about psychedelic states. There’s no real info about the artist, simply that “We bring you atmospheric psychedelic electronica. A fusion of the wandering human mind and our electronic reality.” Expect nods to The Orb and David Lynch.
Here’s Patterns Formed from the just released Whispers of Yesterday EP.
Patterns Formed opens with some scientific talk about drug experiments and offers a glimpse into the artist and track name.
It then dissolves into a childlike chiming melody and background chittering. There’s an uneasiness about this with disembodied dubs appearing out of nowhere.
The track doesn’t have a structure as such. Sounds wander seemingly at will. A bit of keyboard dub here. Some ultra bass there. And all the while that chittering.
Music for a proper late night paranoid trip. It’s all rather wonderful.
Here comes the Empire. Time to resist. And an extra Ambient Sunday with Lingering Tones.
Lingering Tones is from Hawaii and by way of biog offers only “inspired by tea, incense, and impermanence.”
The featured track is Moss And Leaves from the album The First Collection.
Moss And Leaves is a fragrant blend. There are some quite solid beats for an ambient track. But they’re quite metronomic and the other sounds are spaced and spacious.
This is horizontal hip hop. And it’s quite experimental without being difficult.
There’s quite an almost Japanese feel to the gentle chimes that merges well with the echoed hip hop. Melodies are kept spartan but have a properly karmic feel to them.
This is a gateway to something more and very promising for a first collection.
ACID TED 
