2024. So how’s the new year been treating you? Already one month down, just eleven more to go and we’ll be looking at 2025. But hey, let’s not rush it. It’s going to go by fast enough as it is. Let’s talk about some soothing, heady sounds that might help you through it all, shall we?
Today I’m going to hip you all to some pretty amazing ambient/drone records that are out now and ready to soothe your psyche, because God know most of psyches could use some soothing. Let’s get 2024 started on the right foot.
Labels Past Inside The Present, Felte, and Quiet Details are offering up some sonic goodness to help you cope with the weight and volume of the world we’re all currently living in. Ambient music as a whole has been in my periphery for years, but it wasn’t until 2020 that it became more than just background noise. It became an escape from the chaos that reigned supreme that year. I found a sonic pocket of peace to unplug within with artists like Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea, Jonas Munk, Omni Gardens, Billow Observatory, and zakè (a.k.a. Zach Frizzell) and City of Dawn (a.k.a. Damien Duque).
Discovering these artists and labels like PITP, Azure Vista, Felte, and Quiet Details offered an alternative to the insanity, and I’m all the better for them. So check out these four new releases and find your own peace within the madness.
Slow Dancing Society : Do We Become Sky?(Past Inside The Present)
There’s nothing I like more than an intimate, personal sound journey that’s more than just cool soundscapes and “getting lost” vibes(I like those, too.) But when an artist lays their personal experiences and emotional heft out for all of us to hear and feel, well there’s something very special about that. Drew Sullivan, aka Slow Dancing Society, has done just that with his excellent new double LP Do We Become Sky?. Over the course of 4 vinyl sides Sullivan builds swirling, thoughtful, and engaging sound worlds that bring up road trips as a child, love, loss, tragedy, and the swirling beauty that comes with a life well lived. Or just lived. Listen to the evocative “The Past Is Always Following Close Behind”, the cosmic buoyancy of “Retrograde”, or the beautiful lilt of “Time Won’t Forget What You Meant To Me” for this album’s emotional heft. Then take the 86-minute journey straight through.
Billow Observatory : Soliton EP(Felte)
It’s always a pleasure to fall into the world of Billow Observatory, the collaborative project of Jonas Munk(Manual/Causa Sui) and Jason Kolb(Auburn Lull). The transatlantic project began in 2006 with the two musicians sharing music files and building long form soundscapes from there. They debuted in 2012 with their self-titled LP on Felte Records and have since released four full-length albums and a handful of EPs. The latest EP is the mysterious Soliton EP.
Building heady swaths of sound that range from buoyant ambient to melancholy cosmic tomes to effervescent drones, Soliton builds on what Billow Observatory has done in the past, while adding new layers and sonic footprints that include Japanese ambient to Pharaoh Sanders and ghostly dub. Munk and Kolb have been doing this long enough to be considered bringers of the new age of Ambient, and on Soliton they earn that title.
Soliton is available now on vinyl, combined with last year’s Calque EP.
zakè : Lapis(Quiet Details)
On the latest release from one of the preeminent voices in ambient/new age/drone music, zakè gives us a masterpiece to the power of quietude. Taking inspiration from a Ram Dass quote, “The quieter you become, the more you will hear”, zakè builds epic overtures to sparse and subtle composition. Five long form works that pulsate like a cosmic heartbeat from the center of the universe, these songs build to peaceful resolutions while giving us a meditative journey on the way to those resolutions.
The loop-based pieces waver in the air; slow motion emotions and calming sonic bliss emanate with each track. From the glorious album opener “vow” to the hushed static of “origin” to the expressive resolution of album closer “home”, zakè engages us with his hypnotic production and heady sounds.
Chihei Hatakeyama, Hakobune, From Overseas, zake : Live Improvisations(Zake Drone Recordings)
Zake Drone Recordings wasted no time in the New Year to deliver the ambient goods. On January 1st the label released Live Improvisations, an intercontinental collaboration between Japanese ambient legends Chihei Hatakeyama and Hakobune (aka Takahiro Yorifuji) and PITP stalwarts zakè and From Overseas. Side one sees Chihei Hatakeyama and Hakobune laying out the gorgeous and slow-moving “Live Improvisation I”, while side two gives us the zakè and From Overseas counterpoint “Live Improvisation II”. Both are ethereal and transcendent conversations, spoken in electronic tones and soundscapes built on the heaviness we encounter in life. At just over 21 minutes each, these long form meditations on our existence in this world and what it means to live in the now emanate peace and light. Even when both can sadly be short in stock.
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