My initial impression of William Gregg’s Into the Vortex is that the artist has decided to try to blend baroque music with electronics, a sort of Well Tempered Clavier on the synth or a new-ish take on Switched On Bach. There are jaunty-yet-regimented pieces that feel like they’d sound right at home on a harpsichord—and perhaps slightly less so in my ears. It can be charming, and my reaction to it may tend to be more dependent on my mood than I’d like to admit. The opening track may be to blame for my initial reaction; it starts quietly and with a genteel feel, but about a minute and half in, Gregg loads it with high, sharp tones that start poking me in my mind’s eye. The idea works better on “Elevation in G Major.” On this track the obvious baroque influence gets matched with keyboard runs lifted straight off a 70s rock album. (I’m getting images of “Fooling Yourself” by Styx, but I’m just that old.) There’s another side to the equation on In the Vortex, one that works better for me. Soft-edged, thoughtful pieces such as “Opening Mind” and “Elements” offer a less frenetic and, in my opinion, better executed listen. These pieces sound less forced. Gregg is able to layer his textures in and take advantage of their differences. The disciplined structure of the keyboards works better slowed down and paired with the pads and washes, and this also helps to highlight the beauty of the melodies.

I do not particularly enjoy Into the Vortex as a straight-through listen. I can only take so much of the electro-baroque idea in a sitting. Its charm and energy is more welcome when it pops up in a mix; track after track, the welcome gets worn. The quieter pieces more readily stand on their own, and showcase Gregg’s range. Over the course of the three albums I’ve reviewed, he has shown that he is interested in pushing his boundaries and finding new expressions. Although this one does not work as well for me as previous outings, it’s still worth a listen.

Available from CD Baby.

Having established her name with albums of rich, orchestrated New Age music often loaded with an All-Star roster of guest musicians, Fiona Joy sends the band home on Signature – Solo and sits down at her 1885 Steinway for 40 minutes of introspective solo piano music. Landing neatly between neoclassical and straight-up contemporary instrumental music, Signature – Solo has “end of day with a glass of wine” written all over it. “Ceremony” appropriately opens the proceedings, alternating exuberant passages with catch-a-breath moments fringed with melancholy. The lower chords explode, the highest notes sparkle. “Fair Not” spins its ballad with a touch of gypsy flair. Joy serves up two versions of “Once Upon Impossible”–a solo and one accented with wordless vocals. I like them both, the song is beautiful, but I do have to admit that on the vocal one, something in the voice actually made me wonder if she was covering the Twin Peaks theme song. Both versions find extra beauty in hesitant pauses between notes, the song’s tale spun out slowly and with just a touch of sadness. Joy revisits the song “Grace,” which appeared on the Grammy-winning album Samsara from Ricky Kej and Wouter Kellerman. (You can see the lovely video of it here.) This solo version lacks none of the depth and beauty of the her duet with Kellerman.  “From the Mist” begins like a delicate lullaby, and blossoms into a classically inspired piece, once again showing that practiced understanding of how to let emotion pour into the space within a pause. I will admit that I flinch a little at the overly showy down-the-keyboard slides in “Invisible Train,” but it’s one of the rare moments where Joy decides to go over the New Age top—and it really only sticks out because of how honest and heartfelt the music is when it’s not sent that way.

Certainly, there has never been any doubt of Fiona Joy’s deserved place in the roster of New Age pianists, and I find it surprising that this is the first time she has stepped into the solo spotlight. The fire and emotion that has always been present in her work gets amplified here, taking more potency from the acoustic vulnerability of the unadorned performance. Signature – Solo will quickly find a favored spot next to all your preferred contemporary instrumental pianists. So pour a glass of something nice, get comfy, and enjoy.

Available from Fiona Joy’s website.

Noise music is an acquired taste, but sometimes it’s surprising how much you can acquire in one sitting. Not that I’ve suddenly gone from my initial reaction of wondering what the hell is going on in Utu Lauttiru’s Nielu to singing its praises to all who’ll listen, but I have found myself going from wanting to to turn it off to thinking, well that was sort of interesting. What you have in Nielu is aggressive, unlikeable buckets of drone and industrial-ish noise that, all of a sudden, opens its hands to show you Finnish folk music set in a sort of deconstructionist framework. Or maybe it’s a somewhat graceless set of piano notes loosely working their way around a melody but finding that they need to kick through some junk someone’s left on the floor. And sometimes, as with “Wait and Witness” or “Skinned By Sea,” it rears up on its hind legs like some massive noisebeast monstrosity that roars into your face for several minutes at a time and isn’t interested in giving you a break.The acoustic elements that get thrown into the mix here seem like almost ironic efforts to humanize the music or at least give the timid listener some kind of anchor point. But they’re shaky and brief and we all know they don’t belong here. Please feel free to admit that the voices singing like some sort of twisted ghost chorus in “Mother Mountain Father Stream” gives you the creeps. You won’t be alone. But you have to admit, it’s a little fascinating—the same way a terrible accident is fascinating.

Nielu is challenging, by design. It requires patience and an open mind. Lautturi’s work has the ability to just about drive me away before making me need to hear a little more. It’s not something that I want to hear a lot of, and parts of it certainly stand out more, but it’s a hard listen that I’ve had to take in doses. Surprise elements help soften the blow, but it’s still a musical punch in the head. I would recommend Nielu to listeners with very experimental tastes, or for those who need something extremely visceral. You can look quite deeply into this work. Whether you like what you see is a matter of opinion.

Available from Pale Noir.

According to Chris Russell, he began working on the pieces on his release Still as a way to help him keep calm and deal with stress. Which means now we have something to help us keep calm and deal with stress. Russell moves through various stages and forms of quiet contemplation, even pushing the border between calm and less-than-calm in places. This is not your standard “meditation” music, pieced together in long, cloudy pads and the occasional angelic vocal sample. It’s more active, though quietly so. “Waveless” centers around a sound like windchimes in a high breeze, their ringing tone matched with a light, organic clattering—just a touch of natural chaos at the periphery of your zen moment. It’s on “Reverie” and “Nectar” that Russell eases into the occasional sharper tone, some reminiscent of Roach, but it’s less a harshness than an extreme rise in register, a brief swirl like reflected sunlight. These sounds stand out in comparison to the mistier work around, before and after them. Of course, Russell does bring us into purely floating ambient spaces as well. “Opacity” surrounds you like warm water in an immersion-tank-quality drift. It’s a pure ambient track with that deceptive simplicity, the one that nudges your mind into a subdued state. “Placid” and the title track, which close the release, ensure that the end of your voyage is as soft and bump-free as possible. Small sounds fleck the background of “Placid” as Russell lays out swelling chords in brightening tones. Again, it’s that gentle energy off-setting the pure ambience. “Still” is a breathing exercise, one that does embrace the long, cloudy pad trope, and does it well. It carries the brightness that “Placid” laid down, and smoothes out the surfaces as well.

Perfect for quiet play, but nicely detailed in an up-close listen, Still accomplishes what Russell set out to do: offer a calm, stressless space for you to settle into for an hour. Or more.

Available from EarthMantra.

Dark landscapes described in low-end-heavy pads and drones welcome listeners into Through the Gates to Nowhere, an album artist Jess Sola notes was two off-and-on years in the making. Sola says the music came as the result of revisiting the work in various states of mind, but from listening to it, I’d think those states were mostly quite pensive, perhaps gloomy, and mildly haunted. And for that, I thank him, because that’s exactly how I prefer my Numina. In waves of (mostly) beatless, impressionistic soundscapes, Numina surrounds the listener in atmosphere. The early tracks swirl like windblown fog, a grey and moving space filled with small, important sounds. There’s a spiritual weight to it, not oppressively so but definitely tactile. Perhaps it’s just pushing down to help you move inside yourself. And you will. By the time the windy and suitably cold “Arcfrost” fades way into “Furrowed Transitions,” I have no doubt you’ll have settled into a space of dark meditation. As if to help deepen that even further, Sola lays in tribal-style percussion, just a woody clattering in a constant rhythm. It’s comfortably familiar, and works its brain-massaging magic. “Reflexion Canyon” switches overt percussion for distant, echoing metallic clashes, perfectly partnered up with bright chime tones and deep vocal drones. There is a weightlessness to it, but the environment around you as you float through is somewhat less than comforting. It is a point of passage. The play between harsh industrial and glimmering ambient is smoothly balanced.  As we come to the final two tracks, the voyage arcs slightly upward in tone. “Amidst the Mist” is drawn in lines of light, slowly curving through the air. Classic ambient with just a hint of quiet spacemusic at the edges. The stretch that encompasses “Reflexion Canyon” and this is a pretty-much-perfect half hour of deep immersion. Much power comes from the contrast between them. “In Our Absence” continues the upward flow, its tones and repetition of phrase cleansing and bright.

It’s been a good year for Numina. (And, along with him, those of us who enjoy his work.) His collaboration with Zero Ohms, “Broken Stars Through Brilliant Clouds,” is an album I expect to crack many “Best Of” lists this year. This album, with its seamless shift from shadow to spirit and its totally immersive vistas, ups the ante and serves as a reminder why Numina has been an ambient name you must know consistently for the last 15 years. Get this now.

Available from Relaxed Machinery.

Personally, I haven’t the patience for the style of composer Damián Anache as it is presented on Capturas del Único Camino. Extremely sparse in its construction and perhaps a bit overly dedicated to the compositional importance of silence, the release presents four mid-length pieces arranged in part through an algorithm that pulls sound samples together. Slowly. And randomly. The sound-set is deep and varied, from running water to vocal samples to string instruments and glockenspiel, but it’s like they’ve been precariously balanced on a beam over our heads and we’re supposed to be interested in how and when they happen to fall. And the last track is 14 minutes of the sound of a stream, which is processed in spots and sometimes drops out entirely. Of the four tracks, the only one that hold my attention for any length of time is “Pasaje Propio,” which builds off of Anache’s voice and turns it into a chant-like ritual. Even at that, the voice bits enter, rise, fall and then do it again.

There may be something here for listeners into higher-math music. The generative properties of the music and the way the Ambisonics program constructs them, might lend it an intellectual appeal. It’s not for me.

Available from Inkilino.

I have listened closely to Trout Ribs, the debut ambient release from Carey Moore and, as the artist suggests, I have listened to it as background. I have to agree with Mr. Moore: Trout Ribs is probably best enjoyed quietly in the background. Under close scrutiny some of the tracks come away feeling a bit thin. At lower volume, that consideration fades and brings about a better appreciation of the meditative calm Moore infuses throughout the work. It is pleasantly unobtrusive yet manages to convey feeling in a very understated way. The flows are consistently soft, textured here and there with piano notes, chimes, and more. Those elements make for nice breaks in the flow. Electric piano chords pulse and reverb lightly against whispered drones on “Warm for October,” and Moore leaves ample space between each to let them work some sad minor-chord magic on you. “Leaning Into the Hollow” laces an interesting sound, like a processed voice, perhaps, over and through a set of more prominent drones to create a wavering, hypnotic haze. The bright chimes of “2 TwentyFive 15” are both charming and intriguingly over-amplified in spots, giving them a rough resonance. They blend well with the warbling chords behind them in this lullaby-quality piece. It’s comparatively active, and “active” is very much a relative term on this casually laconic release.

Trout Ribs is not an overly strong release, but there is enough going on here to suggest that Carey Moore has more up his musical sleeve. The emotional content is solid; it just sometimes lack complexity or depth. That being said, I do look forward to hearing what comes next. This low-volume introduction is definitely worth a listen.

Available at Carey Moore’s Bandcamp page.

Reese Williams creates “slowly evolving fields of sound,” like the one showcased in the 33 minute live laptop improv, Great Horizontal. I recommend patience when coming into this piece. Williams says that much of his work is intended as part of installation art, so the idea of the thing is meant, perhaps, to be taken in atmospherically, and adapting to certain atmospheres can take time. I find that Great Horizontal doesn’t truly pique my interest until a shift in tone about 10 minutes along. Prior to that, it’s easy to dismiss as an experimental work constructed in a scattered pattern of relatively random sounds. That aspect comes and goes; you may find yourself trying to suss out of what Williams’ noises are made. Voices? Field recordings? The grunt and chirp of wrangled electronics? As I listen, I keep getting the sense of disparate things wanting to become a solitary thing, but the composer keeps them just apart enough to deny real cohesion. There’s a tension, a potential that could be recognized at any moment. It’s interesting to think that even within an improv, a composer must have some form of direction in mind, even if it changes in the moment, so where is Williams heading? While I am not a big fan of this work musically, I find myself very much intrigued in the idea of the thing, the spark that keeps jumping to touch off new, somehow connected moments. The noises can be as grating as they are intriguing, yet they never nudge into prosaic noise. As drones form out of the melted squelch and gurgle, I keep finding that although, again, this is not quite my kind of listening, Williams has created in me the idea that I might need to know where it all goes. I may not understand it, ever, but it will not be for a lack of peering into the sound. Each shift is another why and as they pile one on the next, I find that maybe I don’t really need to know. I have things to think about, and that seems enough. Thought-provoking, if somewhat inaccessible work that will only truly appeal to those who enjoy both improv and broad experimentation.

Available from Reese Williams’ Bandcamp page.

Let me open with two connected thoughts. One, that if I put all the Erik Wøllo music I own into one playlist and shuffled it, I am not sure I could honestly say that I could tell you which song came from which album. Two, I wouldn’t care as long as I was listening to Erik Wøllo. There are certain artists whose signature sounds never get old for me. A good Steve Roach tribal riff. A Mike Oldfield guitar solo. Erik Wøllo’s processed guitars and e-bow work. Blue Radiance gives us a fresh batch of realms that mix long sighs from the e-bow with piano melodies spooled out a single note at a time, tasty sequencer riffs, and cloudy ambient pads, and it is yet again another album that I want to put on, turn up, and let play. Does it sound familiar? Yes, but Wøllo’s music has an exuberance, an energy, that shoots straight through me. It’s the way the e-bow pulls notes out of the guitar and off into the far horizon, rising the whole time. It’s the analog bliss of those sharp sequencer lines bouncing out a rhythm. It’s the points where things dial down to an edge-of-ambient quiet that’s still loaded with kinetic potential. I like the mechanical rhythm underscores “Osmosis,” and the way it plays off against the keys. I like the guitar in “Revealed in Time” when it rings out in short solos over a chugging bass line electronic accents that would do Tangerine Dream proud. I like the earthy acoustic guitar that opens “Sepia” and the way it falls into an easy duet with keys. I like the rich depth of pads on “Crystal Orbits,” their sound putting me in mind of a very light but quite sacred church organ. Have I heard it from Wøllo before? Sure, if my previous reviews can be trusted. And, honestly, I’m happy to hear it again.

This genre is often marked—some might say negatively—by large dollops of sameness. It’s no sin to say that Erik Wøllo sounds like Erik Wøllo; the quality of the music is there. It affects the listener, which is the goal. You will groove along to his beats and rhythms, you will fall into the quiet valleys, and perhaps like me, something in you will stir a bit when that e-bow makes another note stretch and reach. As a reviewer, maybe I need to note that Blue Radiance does not waver from the Wøllo equation. As someone who enjoys his music, this album continues a very pleasant ride. Your appreciation of it may depend somewhat on how you feel about an artist sticking closely to a signature. Regardless, let this one in for a while because the voyage is cool, smooth and pleasant.

Available from Projekt.

Al Gromer Khan explores hermetic trance music on his latest release, Lalita, and it’s a swirling, incense-clouded, sensual dive into Indian music. The music here is characteristically smooth and beautifully produced. There’s a practiced sparseness to it in places, with Khan letting minimal elements and the space between moments effectively create a nice emotional weight and a dreamy feel. After the short opening track “Tears at the Paisley” lays out a lounge-infused overtone for the album, the groove slides into “On Golden Boat.” This is where you get that first taste of dreaminess. Sitar opens the piece, followed by a light rhythm on tabla. It all moves slowly but gracefully. Hand claps add some texture, and it proceeds to simple glide by. “Ahira” reverberates gently in your ears, string notes hopping back and forth, which is fantastically brain-soothing. It sighs its way into “All of This and More,” a borderline ambient piece graced with a keyboard melody that also revels in pauses and held notes. These quieter moments—in what is, overall, a pretty quiet album—are my favorites. “Elvis Went to Durgapur” shifts from an ambient drift built on chiming tones to a prayer-like space with gorgeous chants and singing. “The Pilgrim and the Crow” opens as a whispered tableau, then takes on curling sitar lines, claps, and percussion, yet still feels airy and open and personal. The album closes with the appropriately titled, 10-minute “Wanting Nothing.” It’s got a waking-dream quality to it as you listen to elements that have become familiar over the past tracks slip past one last time. Piano underscores it all, again embracing that patiently lovely sparseness and the broad dimensional feel it creates. It’s very calm and cleansing and unhurried. Even single notes take on added importance in this misty place. A perfect close.

Lalita is one of those albums that just gets better with each listen. This culmination of Khan’s studies into Indian music to this point rings deeply with his personal connection to the music. It is spiritual, but that spirituality is administered softly and it insinuates itself into your consciousness rather than forcing its way in. This is a great piece for meditation, and if you start out just taking a close/headphone listen without intending to meditate, you’ll drop into that state before too long. Give in to it, and float your way through this wonderful album.

Available from CD Baby.