Ἀρέθουσα
isolation, introspection, relaxation
ambient, folk, drone, acoustic, vocal, field recordings, early music, spiritual
I’m all about folk drones, and Alison Cotton delivers in spades on her latest album All Is Quiet At The Ancient Theatre. Strings, harmonium, vocals, all minimal, slowly moving. ‘The Bells of St. Agnes’ delves into some proper ceremonious balladry for a moment, but most of the album is calm meditation and gentle timbre shifts. (2018, LP/CD/MC/digi via The Left Outsides / Bloxham Tapes)
Sidhe Folk by Boggart’s Field is a series of enchantingly minimal synth compositions straight from the land of faerie. We would call it dungeon, but it’s not quite dungeon. This is music from forest and fen, grove and glade. (2018, Brave Mysteries)
Bright, so very bright! Curved Light’s new tape on Constellation Tatsu is a gloriously shimmering synth working. Flow and Return helps us connect with the universe’s flux and cadence. Join me!
Constellation Tatsu is a good home for modern New Age ambient tunes. In fact, it might be the best. Sacred World by Ecovillage is from the latest tape batch, and contains lush, expansive scapes for us to hide in.
Perfect, blissful calm is an art, and Eternell is a master. Still Light takes me where I need to go. Soft synths, soft rhodes, soft guitar, soft voices. A warm embrace. (2018, Sound in Silence)
Expanses (2014) is a classic, gorgeous The Green Kingdom album. And it now has an expanded reissue, with gorgeous remixes by Tobias Hellkvist, Halftribe, et al. The snow is there, but it is manageable. It’s cold, but you’ll survive. The sun is there, even though the days are shorter. This is essential ambient for the winter, when you’re trying to get it to be less bleak.
Out this week on CD/digi over at Dronarivm.
Gentle ambient on || nøthing ||‘s post-vapory artificial nature (2018). Soft organ(ic) pads stretch out, tickled by hazy string pluckings. We’re lying down, letting the plants embrace our willing bodies. #naturewave
MED GEN - Brittleroots (2018, ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ)
I retreat to my swamp, the place where few expect to find me. They think I’m too stuck up to get dirty. Here the sounds of the animals and the deep breaths of the earth are perfectly undisturbed. As am I.
I don’t always go for ‘dark’ ambient. But sometimes it’s the only place where you’ll be left truly alone, because few want to tread in these places. I can stay a long time silent, amongst the brittle roots.
The Rubies are putting out some rock-solid electro-acoustic ambient works, and I love it. Their latest is Sleeping World, a tape on Alien Garage (2018), just about half an hour of the gentlest waves, guitar pickings, and field recordings.
Sangam does some extended dreamy chillage on Soulless Other (2018, No Problema Tapes). It’s calming, but slightly unnerving, intrusive mindwaves from an ambiguous future of shifted spaces and identities.