I last reviewed Christopher Alvarado in his Twilight Tranmissions guise. That disc was an aggressively dark affair, so when I received Translucence I prepped myself for more of the same. But Alvarado is one of those artists who can switch up identities and approaches and make them work. What you get in Translucence is music that retains a distinct edge of shadow throughout, but trends more toward ambient spaces lightened in spots by Alvarado’s rich, Spanish-flavored acoustic guitar. After two tracks of excellent grey-scale driftwork, including the mildly haunted flow of “Passage,” along comes “Fire Above the Desert Mesa” and the first major helping of that guitar. Coming out of “Passage,” the rich and solid tones of the strings are a startlingly pleasant surprise. The guitar sings over ghostly vocals and washes of sound. That Spanish flair brings layers of drama to the song. It’s my favorite track here. Alvarado smoothly throttles down into the comparative quiet of “Marbled Mask” before heading into the ominous tribal tones of “Ascension of Silence.” This is another great example of the near-dark tonal shadings that make Translucence so interesting. The sound is soft, perfect ambient pads, but the feel of the thing hovers at dusk, the drums working to ground it. It’s one of those tracks (and there are plenty here) where you just listen to the way the layers work; you take in how much is going on. The stretch that covers “Solace” and “Arcades of Light” showcase Alvarado’s slightly lighter side. “Solace” drifts along with title-relevant ease, synth pads appropriately breathy and broad; “Arcades…” pulls out all the New Age stops; Alvarado’s guitar is joined by softly whistling flute and lush piano in a work that’s calming and beautiful. Diversity is the hallmark of Translucence, and it’s diversity that moves along logically. Dark becomes light at the right time, smoothness picks up beats and textures right when it needs to. This is a must-listen disc from Christopher Alvarado.

Available from We Are All Ghosts.

Now and then when I’m writing a review, I’ll Google to see what other people have had to say about a disc. Not that I’m looking to plagiarize, of course, but just to see how others perceive the music. Looking at reviews of Tapage’s new release, Overgrown, I came across this line at Sputnik Music, and it fairly well sums up my own feelings: “You probably will not find anything truly unique in Tapage’s Overgrown. But, damn, what a great record this is.” I often feel this way about glitch in general. The base of the genre is achingly common; what makes a disc stand out is what’s there under the pops, snaps, and crackles and the pulse-racing microbeats. While I may not go so far as to call Overgrown “great,” I would say that Tijs Ham certainly understands what makes for very good glitch. I hear a track like “Crab,” and I know that Ham gets the power of juxtaposition. His adrenalin-laced beats power their way over lightweight, drifting melodies, not waiting for them to catch up but respectively co-existing. Its followup, “Ethyl,” maintains a fantastic balance–a downtempo backdrop that would be a very good listen on its own weaves nicely through a restrained field of snappy glitch. Wind chime tones make this one work very well. The short track “Mortuary Beef” (what a great title!) rises up from a slow drone to take on a beat. This is another spot where Ham works the balance. The beats come in at a low volume and stay there, just off in the distance with metallic clashes of sound. Ham can also amp up the beats, of course. “Loss” is textbook glitch, crunchy curls of sound and punched-up beats; “Mimic” is a rapid-fire array of standard glitch memes. But here’s the thing: go all the way through Overgrown and come around to listen again to the calm character of “Sine.”  This is when you get what makes this a very good glitch disc: sometimes it’s not all about the glitch. Tijs Ham understands that, and this is why you’ll listen to Overgrown more than once.

Available from Tympanik Audio.

Threnody for Collapsing Suns starts out in an arc of ominous, borderline-industrial drones, and if you weren’t familiar with Michael Page’s work as Sky Burial, you might figure that this dark ambient outing would, like its kin, continue on in this vein. But no. About 14 minutes into the opening track, “Return to the Peripheries,” a strident old-school analogue pulse shoulders its way into the dronework and now there’s a shot of rhythm arguing with the bold washes behind it. Toward the end of the disc, the bounce rises and lightens without giving up its intense geometry, fading back out toward the end of the track to make way for a fresh change of tone. This Tangerine Dream-like moment is brought to you courtesy of page’s always-evolving Sky Burial identity, and it deftly turns Threnody into not-just-another dark ambient disc. Don’t get me wrong–there’s plenty of dark here. “The Cadence of Collapse” opens with pounding drums that would inspire an Orcish legion to war, and “Refractions from the Rift” thrums and thuds with a marked industrial edge. But “Cadence” filters its way down into a perfect twiddle-and-wash spacemusic composition that rings with older-electronic echoes. The softness stands perfectly against the potency of the opening few minutes. Page sends the sounds orbiting around the listener’s head, creating an almost synaesthetic visual as your brain follows it around. “Refractions” ushers itself in with metallic, heavily echoed clattering and a galloping sequencer rhythm. The noise thickens, your pulse rising with the density, and then Page throttles back. There’s still an industrial timbre to the atmosphere, but now it’s like you’re looking at it from a distance rather than passing through its harsh, churning center. As the voyage continues away, the sound takes a more ambient tone, but shot through with infrequent metallic grinds and a high whine, like some lost radio signal. Within each of Threnody for Collapsing Sun‘s three long pieces (23, 16 and 13 minutes), Page creates distinct movements–changes of tone or intent that glide logically one to next. Each one is thus a nicely complete piece in itself while also a working part of the overall. Page runs the listener out to the edges of dark ambient and dangles them over the precipice without dropping them. You get a taste of darkness, but then given respite. The balance is perfectly modulated. One of my favorite releases so far from Sky Burial.

Aegri Somnia, which translates to “a sick man’s dreams,” offers up two drone-based pieces of 40 and 16 minutes respectively. Here, Page is joined by renowned Hawkwind saxophonist Nik Turner. The first track, “Movement I: The Synaethete’s Lament,” opens with a big 10-minute wash of building drone. Turner’s sax rolls in below and off a bit in the distance, wailing in a rock/free-jazz improv in harmony with the movement of Page’s dronework. The middle section winds down into a full-on hypnotic wash, a complete immersion in shadowy sound that invites your brain to just surrender. Turner returns later in the track, blowing through the murk like a waypoint for the mind-numbed traveler. “Movement II: Within and Without,” is similarly structured. For about half its length, it’s  a churning, aggressive and challenging track, sharply edged and not at all interested in your comfort. Then, in keeping with is comparative title, it changes over, becoming less cluttered in its sound, less claustrophobic. Page keeps some of the harsh elements prowling at the periphery, but brings Aegri Somnia to a reasonably soft conclusion.

Although of the two I prefer Threnody, both discs firmly cement Page’s reputation as a drone craftsman who knows that the form doesn’t live by drone alone. Both are also good discs for listeners who want to get the flavor of dark ambient without diving headfirst into grim, cluttered soundscapes.

Available from Collective XXIII.

Self-described “classical punk composers” A Journey Down the Well present a four-part suite that combines a chamber music sensibility, a touch of deconstructionist thought, and field recordings for How Little Can Be The Orchestra, a disc that wants me to like it more than I do. Taner Torun and cellist Ipek Zeynep Kadioglu lay down beautiful, classically inspired works that are quiet, thoughtful and intimate in their simplicity, then layer on the field recordings, and this is where they lose me. While the first track, “How,” remains true to the chamber-music idea, the next track, “Little,” opens with two minutes of nothing but field. Two minutes and then it simply cuts out entirely. It doesn’t augment the track, it doesn’t create a counterpoint, it just plays for two minutes and stops. Then the music begins, another quite nice bit of piano and cello, Kadioglu’s notes quivering off the strings. Conversely, in “Can Be,” the two sides of the equation blend. Rowdy sounds of a sporting victory–cheers, car horns, shouts–get a contrary accompaniment of slow, almost morose strings, and it works perfectly. What doesn’t work at all for me is the brain-assailing mewling of kittens in “The Orchestra.” After a minute-long setup of string and piano, in come the kittens. As Torun and Kadioglu meter out a hesitantly paced dirge, the kittens whine like nails on a chalkboard. From an idea standpoint, I get it. Contrast. From a listening standpoint, I stop listening. When A Journey Down the Well aren’t over-muddling the sound, How Little Can Be The Orchestra is a pleasing, if short, listen that nudges ambient and neo-classical together in a quite intriguing. I listen to more from them as long as their next recording is kitten-free.

Available from Fluttery Records.

Miles Tones, the first new release from General Fuzz since 2008, should come with a disclaimer that listening to it may cause euphoria and widespread outbreaks of generally feeling pretty good. Employing side musicians on guitar,  strings, trumpet and more, James Kirsch douses his listeners with a deep blend of New Age, electronic jazz and post-rock that hits and sticks, track after downright pleasant track. It’s got the laid-back ease of lounge, but shot through with a strong emotional honesty that’s a major part of its allure. “First Steps” makes for a fine introduction. Twinkling glockenspiel keys like a child’s music box start it off. Acoustic guitar and a sharp tattoo on snare ease in, setting the stage for soaring, wordless vocals from Audio Angel. (She reappears on “Return Value” like a funkier, grittier sister to Clare Torry from Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky.”) A piano bass line that to my ears comes away like a slight homage to Pachebel’s Canon rounds out the sound. From there it just gets tight, happy and cool. Latch onto those three words for the remainder of this disc because that’s what you’re getting. Hit “The Jam” and you’ll be courted by Ryan Avery’s lush violin work before Josh Clark of Tea Leaf Green steps in to light up the room with a hot guitar solo. JP Cutler and Emiel Stopler add more guitar into the mix. This may be my favorite track here. Kirsch lays down a snappy glitch-style beat for his musicians to work with, and they run with it. (One of his preferred working styles is to put forth a structure and let his guests riff over it as they will.) “The Gorge” heads for the jazz side of the street, electric piano playing off bubbly sequencer as Phoebe Jevotvic Alexander lays in vocals.  “Slow March” is an intensely emotional piece. It feels like the slow arrival of something positive in the wake of a hard decision. There are undertones of sadness, amplified by Avery’s strings and Jessie Ivry’s cello playing a gorgeous duet, but Peter Medland’s trumpet arrives in smiling counterpoint, singing a silky line and growing consistently jazzier as the track moves along. An amazing track.

Maybe it seems like a reviewer shortcut to say that Miles Tones is a pleasure to listen to, but two things: 1) It just is. The takeaway as the last track fades is that you’re finishing on a high note. You’re uplifted and  a little invigorated. This release is a mood enhancer, plain and simple. And 2), it’s clear that it was Kirsch’s pleasure to create this. It’s a very personal-feeling disc. If the twinkly tones in “First Steps” and “Arrival” aren’t there as a tip of the hat to Kirsch’s baby boy, I’ll eat my reviewer hat. The honesty I mentioned above virtually drips off the music; you’re being invited in and Kirsch hopes you’ll stay a while. The thing about Miles Tones is that it feels both quite personal and yet widely universal. James Kirsch has created this as a gift to himself, but he is sharing it with you.

Available as a free download at the General Fuzz web site.

For his latest release, Igneous Flame (aka Pete Kelly) opted to put aside the tools he’d gotten used to using to create his typically airy, richly layered ambient music and look for new ways to achieve his sound. Lyra started life as a guitar ambient disc in the style of David Sylvain but, as good Art often does, soon steered itself off in different and more individualized directions. The result was that Kelley split the work into two discs–one being synth-based and the other more rooted in guitar. The two share the warmth and depth typical of most Igneous Flame discs. Low drones form a base over which Kelly floats vaporous pads, long and prone to slow fades, sometimes giving themselves over to a big buildup that swells before evaporating. In among the drifts Kelly, as always, weaves emotional and narrative threads. Take a track like “Translucence,” which eases along, shifting tone before passing through a rushing wash of sound, a sort of sonic nexus, a portal that gives way to a new expression. There’s excellent motion at work here, and it packs its share of drama. “Brilliantine” shows off the same sort of shifts across its 10-minute span but keeps itself quiet through the changes. “Crystalline” adds some extra dimension with the solidity of quiet piano that appears in the last minute or so, rising like crystal in the midst of another gauzy flow. The only mis-step for me on disc 1 comes in the middle of “Auric,” where Kelly wallops a stretch of calm with a gong. A big gong. I’m just warning you in case you’ve got a heart condition. It must be said, though, that “Auric” does build to that moment, with almost orchestral swells pushing through in points, and Kelly moves from there to a spiraling whirl before easing back, so some leeway has to be given from a thematic perspective. But oh, that gong… It’s the only disruptive moment in an otherwise delightfully meditative flow.

By comparison, disc 2 comes away almost as if Kelly wanted to give us more of what worked in disc 1, but then ground the whole thing with the earthy waypoints provided by his laid-back guitar style. It’s an evolution of the first disc that shows how one more element can change ambient. I like that Kelly doesn’t make this just an ambient disc with guitar overlay, however. The guitar picks its spots and only comes in where it’s needed, where it neatly augments the moment. Its first real appearance happens more than halfway through the first track, a light and high bit of phrasing with a touch of a folksy twang that drops into Kelly’s signature flow. The title track features flickerings of acoustic guitar, butterfly storms of notes scattered across its face. It’s truly a blend of ethereal and corporeal, the dreamy and the distinct, and Kelly meshes the two sides of the equation perfectly, again and again. Listen to “Spark,” where at points Kelly pulls everything back to a point of near-silence, absolute wisps of sound from both sides–his lightest drones, the gentlest touch on the strings–and makes stunning use of the resultant negative space. You find yourself holding your breath and waiting for the next moment to be created.

Lyra is not an easy disc to write about; like many excellent works, a simple listen will do more for your understanding than anything I can try to say here. What needs to be said is that Igneous Flame is continuing to advance and improve, challenging himself with every new disc while managing to maintain a signature feel to his music.

Kudos also go to Kati Astraeir for yet another stunning cover.

If you’re interested in Kelly’s process and/or gear used in making Lyra, he jotted it all down in blog form for you.

Available from Lumina Sounds.