Here in London it’s a bright warm start to the day. White fluffy clouds scud across the sky with local artist TDC Tunes as accompaniment.
TDC Tunes is Tim Corrigan from North London. He calls himself a Modular artist and is a member of @electronicmusicalliance. Today’s tune is impression which is part of the Escapism Mixtape Vol. 1 on OAKHI Records (available as digital or cassette here.
Impression is chilled electronica. It has a slight xylophone / wood block bobble to it with beats that come in a wash and then a bit of digital crunch. It’s all terribly positive. There are ascending keyboards that ripple and fragments of guitar type sounds. This is light and airy but never wispy. As breezy as the clouds slipping by.
Two tracks for Ambient Sunday. Both from the US and both take ambient into study beat territory with Bassic, and Jello Vibes.
Bassic is Josh from the USA but surname unknown. He says that “I use music to escape, I write and produce everything myself.” And he adds “When I last left rehab 3 years ago, I made it a goal to release my work. I had (and still have) a lot of pain from my past that I needed to get out but I didn’t necessarily know how to express with words. Music is the absolute escape for me.”
The track is Float to Infinity from his Trackless Seas EP. It’s ambient given a bit of a trip hop supercharge. It’s also a definite grower. There’s a subtlety to the ethereal vocals and gently chiming sounds alongside spectral beats. This is a numbed floating in space. Constantly revolving this is an eternity of sounds. Beautiful.
Trackless Sea EP
Moving to something more study beats with Jello Vibes. This is Angelo Outlaw Jr. who began playing mallet percussion at the age of 13. He was born and raised in Philadelphia.
The track is bandit from his The Outlaw Sessions Pt 1 release. It’s a delicious chilled old school affair marrying an almost Spanish guitar lick alongside xylophone chimes. It’s all very smooth and sophisticated. Proper lounging around in your best slacks in a hammock. The beats are rich and heavy adding urgency to the pressing need to lie down. Get the weight off your feet and on to your ears.
Music for Aperol time. Add extra ice. This is too cool even for your fancy beard-wearing craft beers.
I don’t know what time it is where you are. But here it’s humid warm days and the sun is starting to set behind a blanket of cloud. Must be time for a chilled cocktail and an even more chilled track from Ekki Hugsa.
Ekki Hugsa are brothers, Eric and Eckhart Hugsa. Originally from Iceland they’re now settled in London. They say they, “release music inspired by their journey of life and places of the World.” Stockholm is seemingly their debut track. And it’s a supremely confident and assured debut.
Stockholm is focused on really solid old school beats and the illusion of live instrumentation. This is the inheritance of K&D. They really are that good. They manage effortless strings and keyboards. It’s all so deliciously perfect. Not a hair out of place. A lead melody that tickles you enough for a frisson of pleasure but nowhere near enough to make you spill your drink. This is a track with shoes but no socks. Windswept hair that returns perfectly to place. Sand at your feet but not in your sandwiches.
Marshall Watson first appeared here in 2013 and has since appeared more than 40 times. He’s back after an absence of almost three years with his new chilled EP Sunsets on Larkin, Pt.1.
It’s a five track release on NuNorthern Soul Records, opening with Distant Horizon. This is very much in Marshall’s ambient vein. It’s a juddering keyboard against whooshing spacey sounds. All grand vistas and washed out views. Electric piano tinkle and you can see for miles across the beach.
Avenue of Mystery takes wood blocks and a spiralling guitar as its centre. There’s an almost echo of The Eagles’ Hotel California going on here. A soft rock Balearic revisit of the past. Dogwood heads back to a dreamy chilled existence. The piano tinkles on reverb with drone strings. It’s all ‘lost’ in other worlds.
Spirit Finger gives a throbbing beat a bobbling accompaniment alongside some spirit forest noises. It’s all a bit Amazonian psychedelia taken hand in hand to the beach party. The EP closes with A Door In The Sky. This is the best track here and unashamed Balearic ambient. A 90s revisited bit of sunshine and taken to the heights you want by a keyboard riff that tickles all your fancies.
A delicious US Balearic EP for summer days with A Door In The Sky its chilled and yet euphoric centrepiece. Welcome back Marshall Watson.
Ending the week with an IDM premiere from UK artist Naut.
Naut is also Darwen (aka producer/instrumentalist Jordan Riding). His work is often in the IDM space using recorded instruments, captured sounds & modular synthesizers mixed with programmed drums. And that’s apparent on aperture/bitter end, his first single since 2017. It’s taken from his new album a digital ocean of colour which is out later this year.
aperture is three and a half minutes of wheezy electronics alongside childlike melodies. This is very much in the 90s Warp Records style of IDM. But it has an unashamed air of cheeriness that allows it to gambol around happily and even to have a couple of false stops. The beats have a robust metallic clatter and the electronics hiss and fizz. It’s bounciness eventually ends slowly like the clockwork instrumentation ran out of spring and needs rewinding.
It’s pre-Friday so let’s have something a bit quirky to cheer the way to the weekend from Nik Morobi.
Nik Morobi is from Cologne, Germany and has been making music since the early 2000s. His new six track release Sorosoro contains the track Enrico. On the track’s title Nik explains that, “When I spent a short vacation at the beautiful Mecklenburg Lake District last year, one thing was immediately clear to me: Where there’s a lake, there’s got to be boating. I was particularly enchanted by the “Enrico Boat Hire”. After several beautiful days, however, the vacation was over without me having visited Enrico and his boats. So I at least dedicated this song to him.”
A lovely chilled house track. It opens with some glitched guitar and chopped inhalations. This gives it an almost IDM Country feel before the beats come in. There’s something quite uplifting and cheering about the way the piano rises and exudes positivity. There’s a lovely electronic soundscape going on here but handled so lightly and skilfully that it’s barely noticeable. Keeps the track incredibly light on its toes as it twinkles around you.
I defy for your day not to be better from listening to this track.
Still coming to terms with England beating Germany in a major tournament. Missed most of it because of work (partly on purpose I suspect). But the even bigger surpise was Switzerland beating France on penalties. To celebrate here’s Swiss artist Paege with some uplifting melodic techno on Harra.
Paege is Pascal Schwitter who has been around since the 90s. His artist pseudonym comes from a school nickname. Where Harra comes from I know not. It’s a village in Germany among other things. But be that as it may, this is perfectly realised melodic techno.
There’s the opening of a big phat kick drum for solidity and then some anticipatory strings. This coolly builds itself up to a gentle peak with a tiny touch of acid. The combination of beats and strings gives the track the techno kick it needs and a sense of epic scale, grace and adventure. Soaring as only the best melodic techno can this is freed from earthly chains.
Epically epic and sonically stirring. The best driving adventure you’ll never have.
Ah Ibiza. Never been to the club there mesself but some tracks just seem to capture its musical essence. LOVA delivers one of those on Echoes of Memories on NuNorthern Soul Records.
LOVA is Davide Lovato from Verona, Italy. The accompanying blurb describes his work as, “an emotive, groovy and melodic musical project for daydreamers, sofa-bound listeners and slow-motion dancers.” A bit florid in print but aurally spot on.
Echoes of Memories comes from LOVA’s Gypsophilia EP (and features on label sampler Summer Selection 2021). There’s a lush analogue feel to the electronics that gives the track both a hint of the late 80s but also a suffusing warmth. The beats have tom toms on top to give the track depth and solidity. That allows everything else to run riot in pastel colours. Synths bounce around and electric piano chords are always ascending. This is a beautiful lush daytime disco and as positive as they come.
Just 94 seconds of sound for you today. But what a way to use 94 seconds by study beats master BiiiG STRETCH.
Biiig Stretch (Johnnie Young) is from Moreno Valley, California His new track is Cabana. It’s a xylophone ridden sleaze lounge track. A taste of hip hop exotica. Xylophones give the whole thing a David Lynch style woozy sultry and dangerous air. Beats crunch around as wobbling guitar peeps furtively from behind the curtains. A tinkle of piano and then. Poof! It’s gone.
This offers chilled relief but leaves you just a bit dirty afterwards.
A triple bill Ambient Sunday, from Tewksbury, Of Those Who Know, and Chroma Sea. This includes at least one that focuses on drone, a genre I largely steer clear of.
Tewksbury to me is a small market town in Gloucestershire. Not today. It’s Douglas Tewksbury, a pianist and ambient electronic musician from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
We have Viscosity from his new album Paths (available on d/l. cassette and vinyl). He says “‘Viscosity is an eight-minute ambient work of cycling phrases for synthesizers (TTSH ARP 2600 clone, ASM Hydrasynth, Sequential Prophet Rev2) and processed guitar.” That all sounds a bit complicated to me. Instead enjoy the slowly swirling oily electronic sounds. There is a viscous liquid drone air to it all. Things start but don’t end. They shift shape and form. It’s meditative but also strangely unsettling and ever so slightly ominous. Life is suspended for the eight minutes this takes. As if locked in aspic.
Moving South to the USA we have Of Those Who Know. This is David Curtis, a solo project from Nashville TN. He says of his work, “Ultimately, I want to give my audience peace and comfort, as well as introduce them to a unique textural palette to be inspired by.” And that shines through on Slanting Rays.
Slanting Rays is full of warmth and comfort. He combines “the sound of classical marimba with common Ambient/Post-rock textures.” There’s a background sense of drone that ripples around as strings saw away. But the foreground offers sweet reassuring sounds from the marimba. It speaks to the heart and says everything is going to be all right. In the end. It manages to have a lightly ethereal quality as the sounds gradually ascend into the clouds. A track to give yourself to safe in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen.
Staying in the USA but moving westwards to the coast we have Chroma Sea. This is a San Francisco-based duo (Michael Valenzuela and Paul Ouellette) who “create introspective ambient & downtempo music that evokes the coastal atmosphere.” Â
They say they’re inspired by Adult Swim bumps. Meant nothing to me. But seems to be footage “shown before and after each commercial break, were originally shots of senior citizens swimming and doing random pool-related activities in public pools.” All sounds a bit odd.
Anyway, here’s Reflektor from the Daze / Reflektor single from last year. It’s a hazy IDM track. Has bits of Boards of Canada’s opaque pastoral about it whilst being fully electronic. Sounds clatter and wheeze away while underlying melodies keep things gentle. Lightly trippy it does have a chiming almost hypnotic quality of waves washing to and fro. Delicious IDM downtempo. If you go down to the beach today you’re in for a lovely musical surprise.
