You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a little foggy. I’ve just spent an hour floating around inside of Sam Rosenthal’s The Passage, and it can take a while to come back to reality. Stepping off from a 16-minute Black Tape For A Blue Girl song from 1999, The Passage sends the listener on two quiet journeys, one 45 minutes long, the other a 10-minute combination wake-up call and mental palate cleanser. Together they create a space cut off from time, minimalist drones coursing in warm, fluid waves that completely envelop the deep listener. I’m sure this disc sounds fine as a low-volume loop, but put in the headphones, keep it a little on the low side, and it becomes a long, calming, therapeutic brain massage. Rosenthal lets his waveforms roll forward, transformations in tone coming slowly–more like a subtle change in temperature than any sort of sonic shift. He seems content to set his layers in motion and let them decide where to go next. You will get lost in here, make no mistake. When the first 45 minutes have glacially eased their way past, you may only become aware that you’ve moved into the second track, “Rae,” when violinist Vicki Richards softly makes her entrance. “Rae” is lighter in overall tone than the title track, a lazy spiral of sound moving upward, bringing you back to an awareness of your breath, and fading quite perfectly into a well-deserved contemplative silence. The Passage is a perfectly constructed piece of drone ambient, a comforting swath of negative space to retreat into to just exist in the sound for a while. A superb offering from Sam Rosenthal.

Available from Projekt.

Talk about truth in advertising. Christopher Lapina skims through New Age, jazz in smooth and standard varieties, and solo piano as he and his friends make their way through this Eclectic Eve. It’s an ambitious undertaking and a lot for the listener to take in, but Lapina and crew manage to keep the ride smooth and enjoyable through all the shifts. The strongest tracks here are the ones that tip toward the jazzy side of things. “Lucy Turns Eclectic” feels like Vince Guaraldi hooking up with Manhattan Transfer. A cappella vocals open the track with a very Peanuts cartoon-worthy “doo doo doo” melody, like easygoing scat, over a brushed beat. The piano, played by John Fluck, kicks in and the whole thing just rises up in joy. They win points with me here because I’m a huge jazz trio fan–piano, drums and bass. “Rolling Blue” feels like a lost Steely Dan instrumental, with sax from Rob Holmes and guitar from Phil McCusker. They playfully trade lines, Holmes reaching down into the low registers to pull his notes up and let them fly. They square off again in “String Theory,” where Holmes’ sax absolutely seduces and smokes and McCusker comes out of a place of cool soul to lace his lines through the groove. The Eve switches up in feel when Lapina brings cellist Suzanne Orban into this mix. “This Time” and “Before You” feature her lush, romantic work dancing gracefully past Lapina’s melodies.  The smoothness of the cello is particularly effective when paired with Lapina’s prepared piano on “This Time.” The high, tinny sounds from the piano counterpoint the low-end tones on the strings and the long sighs Orban strokes out.

The tracks that put the piano in the forefront are beautiful showcase pieces. Lapina’s gorgeous composition “Moon and Spoon” is textbook New Age piano in its approach and effect, glistening with feeling. Here the piano, played by Roland Chiles, stands alone, except for subtle and perfectly placed moments where pad-like strings sing softly in the back. “She’s Often Here” skirts an edge of darkness with a quirky rhythm and a deep voice whispering a story beneath it. Even so, the playing is a pleasure to listen to and the way the piece comes together, taking up just two minutes, simply captivates.

With its diversity, this is the sort of disc that slips smoothly into a shuffle. It certainly stands on its own, however, the changes in tone and style making it like a radio station all its own–a station that only plays the good stuff. Well worth a listen.

Available from Christopher Lapina’s web site.

It’s possible that within the acoustic instrument kingdom, the cello is uniquely suited to ambient music. While it can be played with fiery fervor, its sad and throaty tone really comes alive when played with patience, long draws of the bow coaxing out beautifully mournful sighs that drill into a listener’s heart. These sighs translate perfectly to an ambient pad structure; layer them and add touches of electronic texture and you’ve got Astoria, the new release from The OO-Ray. Ted Laderas began the pieces here as improvisations on the cello, then went back and fleshed them out with looping, pitch-shifting and distortion. The pieces range from ambient drifts like the raspy “Autumn” and the softer-edged drones of  “Gwageus” to neo-classical infusions like “Palimpsest.” Throughout, the pieces are thoughtful and emotionally dense. The somber tones of “Andalusia” contrast with the somewhat familiar gypsy-dance melody that Laderas slowly metes out.”Waveguide” puts me in immediate mind of Gorecki with its heart-wrenching cello line and minimalist approach. Laderas accents this lazy drift with resonating, hard-struck chords. “Marzo” stands out for its comparatively upbeat tone, Laderas flicking his strings in a pizzicato percussion. A clockwork beat rounds out the sound. The draw here, as with most electro-acoustic ambient, is how well the too-human organics mesh with the electronics, the rough against the smooth. Laderas pulls it all off nicely, creating sound-sketches of feelings that we want to look deeply into, and which we understand at a gut level.

Available from Audiomoves.

Disturbed Earth (aka Dean Richards) and Steve Brand are perhaps two of the most visible entities in ambient music at the moment. Brand has been impressively prolific of late, between releases on the Relaxed Machinery label and reissues of his older work via his own Pioneer Light label, and Richards is in high demand for his masterful sound processing and manipulating skills, and also has about 29 releases of his own. Here they combine to craft an hour-long ambient drift that, while quiet for the most part, runs very deep. It’s a headphones-required/lights-out kind of disc packed with sonic imagery. The journey begins in shadow, with serpentine flutes reminiscent of Roach and Obmana’s InnerZone and Spirit Dome twisting off into the gloom. Throughout the disc the flute comes and goes; it may be a guidepost, a sort of sonic silver cord on the way down, or a reminder of the growing distance from the surface of conscious thought. Whichever way you look at it, it works. The duo make an interesting choice, at the end of the flute’s first appearance, to snap the sound off rather than fade it. It’s an abrupt way to mark a shift in tone, but it’s effective. You pay attention. There’s a distinct dynamic at work in this disc as it winds its way through the journey, and it’s often much more subtle than this first change-up. After some dramatic moments following the flute cut-off, What Is Memory? softens slightly while not lightening much in tone. Brand shoots bold pops of chord out of the wash and all the while the pair slowly guide it toward a gentler place–which they reach around the 20-minute mark. From here it’s a stretch of breath-slowing, mind-salving ambient anchored with a rich wash of sound. Wavering tones take over as the voyage continues. The sound grows denser, becoming almost chaotically thick around the 40–50-minute mark, then pares back again. Brand and Richards play with the intensity of the sound in the final 15 minutes or so, creating waveforms that swell, crest, break and reform. Quietly, this superb ambient disc eases itself to a close in a droning wash of sound that turns slightly upward in tone. After a deep breath, you should be ready to take this journey again.

I like that What Is Memory? never quites extracts itself fully from shadow. After all, the recesses of our mind aren’t exactly well-lit places, and to get to the good memories we often have to walk through some pretty murky patches. But the sense of going ever deeper without looking back and wondering if we’ve gone too far–that’s the strength here. The sound compels the journey forward into knowing.

Available from Relaxed Machinery.

My brain goes into a sort of sound-association, Name That Tune mode when I listen to Paul Ellis’ new release, From Out of the Vast Comes Nearness. Ellis manages to meld the familiar and the original in a very listenable mix that’s kept me engaged for multiple repeat listens, and not just for the way it puts me in very good mind of classic ambient and electronic tunes. While I may pick up traces of Tangerine Dream in twanging bass lines or a tang of Vangelis in Ellis’ bolder moments, there’s never any doubt that you’re listening to an individual talent. Ellis offers up five sizable tracks, the shortest clocking in just shy of 11 minutes, giving himself plenty of space to express and explore his own ideas while tipping the hat to his influences. “The Infinite Minute by Minute” opens the disc with spacey electronics; pauses give structure, creating fading moments from quick runs of notes and giving focus to the dwindling sounds in the spaces between. A nice science fiction soundtrack feel courses through it. The minimalist repetition of “The Click and Chime of Passing Time” drives forward with an infectious energy punctuated with easy tone shifts. This track does me the disservice of sounding like something I know but can’t place. I love it while I’m banging my head. It’s the first shift, around the 4:45 mark, is where I hear it. Up to there, I’m caught in the high-register bounce, taking flight with the feel of a classic early electronic piece. “Firefly Rising Outshined by the Moon” also plays with minimalism, the guitar line at its center confidently repeating its message against whispered electronics. It’s a nice touch when bass sounds enter to bolster the guitar and rich vibraphone-like tones.  The title track opens with a tactile darkness courtesy of a thick bass wave, then settles into a deep-space drift with a potential energy that just burns slowly. This track puts me in mind of the superb collaborations between Craig Padilla (with whom Ellis had worked) and Zero Ohms. I could loop this one all day. “Watch the Stars Come One by One” is a pure homage to TD, a dramatic bass riff anchoring appropriately twinkling high notes. The main sound just drips with the pure pleasure of 80s-style synth work. The longest track at 21 minutes, it’s equal parts guilty pleasure and synth-lover’s joyride. I particularly like the way Ellis stretches it out to sparseness in the closing moments.

From Out of the Vast Comes Nearness has the immediate effect of making me regret not having heard Paul Ellis’ work before. The disc clearly shows off its heritage without getting bogged in it. It’s familiar but not slavishly attached to its inspirational source material. As I said at the outset, I’ve had this loop literally for hours without it wearing out its welcome. It has energy, narrative, drama and fun tucked into it. A superb work and a must-hear from Paul Ellis.

Available from Spotted Peccary/Lotuspike.

Somewhere in the middle of finding my way through Talvihorros’ Descent Into Delta I became aware that while I could not say for sure whether experimental guitarist Ben Chatwick knew exactly where he was headed when he set out on this disc, it was clear that wherever he was going, I was following. Descent Into Delta began life as live guitar improvisations which were then revived and augmented in the studio. The fives pieces here manage to maintain that sense of in-the-moment rawness, of existing in a given form only at the whim of the composer, likely to bend into some new shape at the change of a chord. Thematically, Chatwick looks to move the listener from a musical approximation of an agitated or very active mental state–a Gamma state–into the dream-deep, near-flat-line calm and chasms of a Delta state. The journey moves quickly, given that the disc is only about 40 minutes long, but Chatwin’s thick and heavy drones grind time into an exaggerated length. The movement is logical. The static-blasted drone of “Gamma” buzzes its way through your head before segueing smoothly into “Beta,” perhaps my favorite track here. Chatwin works his way through a slow-motion post-rock melody, slowly dialing up the guitar’s distortion until it just takes over the sound. Still the song goes on, spiking levels and all, before Chatwin lets it scrape its way back down. “Alpha” turns the flow more abstract, crackling electronics sparking over grunts of low-end chord structures that sound like they’re striving to find form. Order asserts itself tenuously amid the chaos and the sound hesitantly quiets down. This deposits the listener in the “Theta” state, a dreamy meld of sounds and sensations–garage-rock windmill flails churn intermittently against long, shimmering drone-chords while a low hum massages your back-brain. Coherence begins to fade to hypnagogic meandering as the brain spins in fuzzy spirals downward into delta. The final track opens with a deep bass drone that wavers ever so slightly. The hush happens immediately. Sparse picked notes glimmer in the dark flow as it envelops your brain. Viola from Anais Lalange makes the perfect complement to Chatwin’s gentle structure. This is one of those give-yourself-over tracks that will take you fully out of your reality for a short time, and ends the voyage perfectly.

Strong guitar ambient from Chatwin, Descent Into Delta is most definitely worth a deep listen. It loops nicely and Chatwin’s technical mastery is evident in every note, buzz, grind and flow.

Available from the Talvihorros web site.

Inspired by “the beauty of circles,” Janne Hanhisuanto’s 10-part suite Circles in 3D is a cool, constantly shifting batch of ambient, electronica, prog and, at just the right time, a shot of reggae. Hanhisuanto hits every one of the styles spot-on; he’s never out of his comfort zone and so never takes the listener out of theirs. The disc opens with a smooth, classic quiet-music piece made of simple rise-and-fall pads, then turns the sound with watery tremolo and playful electronic accents and nature sounds. Part 3 is where Hanhisuanto throws his first entertaining curveball, splitting open a downtempo feel in chiming tones to unveil a reggae tempo and gorgeous string melody. Jennifer Zheng’s voice slides in to chant about “The right to feel…”–it’s a cool little trope that Hanhisuanto later revives to create a nicely anchored through-line for the suite. Part 5 is a wildly catchy piece that sounds like Jean-Michel Jarre got his hands on the Dr. Who theme. Jarre fans will catch very distinct echoes of Oxygene in the jaunty rhythms and the tone of the synths here. Toes will tap, bodies will rock. It’s inevitable. Carry that momentum into Part 6, a Euro-pop-flavored joyride that has Hanhisuanto eventually unslinging his guitar and briefly letting fly.The disc quiets and darkens then, through the shadow-drawn stretch of Part 7 and into the hushed kinetic potential of Track 8, where a bass pulse seems constantly ready to rise up. Hanhisuanto plays beautifully with a sense of expectation here, and hints of old Tangerine Dream nudge their way forward. Part 10 closes out the disc in a hush and brings the circle around to its beginning. Needless to say, this disc loops well.

Circles in 3D is an absolute pleasure to listen to. It showcases Janne Hanhisuanto as a diverse musician with a lot to say and the chops to say it very well.

Available from Auraltone.

Mingo’s music comes from a place where the world is shrouded in a state of constant half-light, never entirely out of shadow, filled with moments that swell with expectation then  pass with a sigh. A place where it’s enough to be present, watching sonic vistas rise from mist and crumble back without remorse. On his newest release, The Light That Bends, Mingo takes that feel and pairs it intermittently with beats that range from slow post-rock drums to ritualistic tribal clatter, never raising his music’s voice above a dusky whisper, because he doesn’t need to. Ambient constructs drift and shift, curving gently around the beats; the movement between the two is sublime. After the rising-dawn softness of “First Light,” Mingo places his first beat–that lazy post-rock count-off–in the title track, sliding it in place next to a charmingly clumsy one-note-at-a-time piano melody. In the background, hazy colors of sound wash through. Halfway through, the beats and melody clear out to make space for a thoughtful, twinkling drift. Mingo shifts to the tribal side with “Reflections of Apprehension,” the drums pulsing over another calmly moving driftbank. A very nice treat, especially if you’ve been with Mingo from the start, is when he reaches back to his first album to pull the essential tones from “Hollow Ascension” and reworks them into “Second Ascension.” Here again the centerpiece is a hesitant melody, accented with echo and played over arcing voice pads and a steady 3-count beat. “Translation of Lost Consciousness” begins the movement toward a more ambient sound, its swirling depth punctuated with the last of the beats (for a while)–a slowly fading blend of electronic claps and drums. Things turn toward darkness with “Erosion As the Day,” imparting a certain hold-your-breath suspense with long, rising pads that feel like they’re striving hard to find light. Church bells peal in counter to the rattle of collapsing metal. The final two tracks, “Resplendent Descent” and “Last Light,” land squarely in that half-lit realm. The first is filled with chirping birdsong, as if they’re trying to urge along  dawn that never quite arrives. Darker tones sit immovably at the lower end of the sound, vestiges of night that refuse to go until the final hopeful chord. The second is driven by a twanging sequencer line, underscored by a low hiss (also heard in “First Light”). The potential energy of the sequencer always feels ready to take off and yet–remains just potential. This is the last light and no one’s going anywhere. The shadows reform around us, and it’s time to begin again.

The Light That Bends is another superb release from Mingo that showcases the depth of his ambient ideas.

Available at the Mingosphere.

Obsil’s Vicino opens with a high, twinkling sound like a music box–a sound that becomes a motif throughout the disc but which, although initially charming, manages to wear out its thematic welcome before the disc’s over. Which, for me, more or less describes Vicino. Interesting at first, but rapidly wearing thin. Which is unfortunate because overall Obsil (aka Giulio Aldinucci) culls a mix of fairly interesting, if not always consistent, ideas out of field recordings and miniscule clips of sound. The disc is built on an aggregation of moments, quick glimpses of sonic somethings that flash past and leave their afterimage turning in your head. Sometimes those afterimages are worth thinking about; just as often, however, they can leave you scratching your head and wondering what you were supposed to get out of it. While I usually enjoy discs that take the listener through shifts of identity or concept, Vicino at times seems more aimless than changing. The randomness of the sounds and the way they’re pulled together can seem abrupt and slapdash in spots. It feels like the further into the disc you go, the less cohesive it becomes. Tracks devolve into experiments that don’t always work. Fans of abstract and experimental music might find more points to latch onto here. For me, Vicino just leaves me wondering what it is I’m not understanding.

Available from Guido Aldinucci’s web site.

Bob Holroyd’s new release, Afterglow, is quite simply the gentlest, most emotionally potent, enveloping piece of electro-acoustic ambient music I’ve heard in a very long time. From the first whispering cello notes in “Half Light,” the all-too-human element that fills this disc takes firm hold. It sets the tone for a suite of works whose strength comes in part from their open emotional vulnerability and their heat-pouring-forth lyricism. That mix, along with Holroyd’s graceful playing, particularly on piano and cello, hook the listener immediately. Afterglow has a story it needs tell, and it’s softly asking you to hear it out. And you will. “Ambient Like Snow”  has a metronomic rhythm picked out in simple piano notes played with syllabic intent. High notes drop in, their resonance turning to hushed, vibrating echoes. “Empty Vessel” begins with Holroyd’s guitar speaking in a slow, folk-tinged voice, then builds in layered statements as soft drones roll under the mix. Restrained outbursts of electronic burble speak up in spots to add texture. The guarded use of electronics is part of what makes Afterglow shine. Holroyd slides understated electronic washes, virtually unnoticed, in the background of most tracks, a layer of subtle tone that seems to give the organic instruments an even stronger presence. I really enjoy his treatment in “27 Words,” where a warble of sound plays against more of Holroyd’s simple-yet-solid piano. And in the one place where the electronics take more of a starring role, “In the Time We Have Left,” Holroyd shows that he can handle that, too. A loop of sequencer patiently walks its pattern as a piano melody takes its time getting ready and strings ease their way into the blend. Holroyd’s ability to hook immediately into your emotional response centers becomes quite apparent in the three shortest tracks on the disc, each just over two minutes. As noted earlier, “Half Light” wastes no time hitting you in the heart; “Fragments” finds the cello crying again, layered in a weeping choir of rich sound; and “Moment” offers a melancholic pairing of guitar over strings–the guitar line repeats in the background as the cellos morph and wail. Much of the draw of Afterglow, for me, is the way in which Holroyd takes apparently simple phrasings and lets them be just that. He recognizes that they have a certain strength of their own, that the spaces between notes are as vital as the notes themselves in creating a response, and he lets the mathematics of this simplicity find their way to very listenable, touching equations. It’s in our quieter moments that our truest feelings arise; Afterglow is filled, start to finish, with those moments. Afterglow is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Available from Bob Holroyd’s web site.