What we have in Herion’s Out and About is a work that is ambient chamber music in every sense of the term: spatial, intimate, classically based. Strip away the subtle wash of electronics that Emanuele Errante and Enrico Coniglio whisper beneath piano from Elisa Marzorati and viola by Piergabriela Mancuso, and what’s left is a rich bed of beautiful compositions for traditional acoustic instruments. (Besides their laptop work, Errante and Coniglio also add strings, guitars and more.) One of the best compliments I can pay Herion is to say that I’d listen just to those elements, sans electronics, and still firmly enjoy the disc. With the opening track, “Oxg,” Herion establish their acoustic-drone base, the metallic rasp of the strings adding not just a texture to the  sound, but an equal sense of emotional warmth and humanity. It’s part of the real beauty of Out and About–the way in which we’re intermittently reminded, as the disc goes along, that the sounds aren’t all circuit-born. It’s a good reminder, since it’s easy to lose sight of that as Herion quietly wrap you in smooth sound-ribbons. There’s a lot to like here, and much of begins with Marzaorati’s piano work. Her playing is sweet, graceful and impeccable, whether it’s thoughtfully wandering through Errante and Coniglio’s misty landscapes (“One Minute Before the Sunrise”), holding a polite dialogue with a sighing harmonica (“Cab”), dropping like forgotten tears (“Lindos”), or giving itself over to electronic treatment to capture a sound-image (“The Hanging Glacier”). The disc closes with her playing alone on the appropriately titled “Solo,” and it’s a standout moment on an excellent disc. And while her playing is central to Out and About, it’s the atmospheres that Errante and Coniglio craft around her and Mancuso that give the whole thing an amazing depth and a touch of the ethereal. The worlds are perfectly blended on the dramatic “Moske Orgulje,” with all elements adding their voices in balance. From start to finish, Out and About moves from moments of soulful serenity to breathtaking beauty. Its organic roots run deep to ground the listener in the moment and the experience. Out and About is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Available from Hypnos.

Auraltone Records is just getting its start as a label–I believe they’re all of five releases old at the time I’m writing this–but they’re quickly gaining note as purveyors of  interesting, diverse music. (In the past I’ve reviewed their releases “Gnosis” by Paragate and “Musical Sculptures” by Tim Risher and Claus Gahrn.) Into this growing catalog, add Tom DePlonty’s broad and engaging CD, Corridor. The disc’s strength come from the range of styles DePlonty covers without a hint of strain. He finesses the graceful lilt of a straightforward piano piece like “Halo” and tackles its more complex  cohort “Cold Spot”  with an equally  deft hand. Then he ably pilots sound explorations like the hushed-ambient floater “The Beguiling Charm of Pleasure” and the edgier, dense spacemusic-styled “Glare.” And when the blends them, as with the hesitant, echo-augmented narrative of “The Cup of Wands,” or upbeat pieces like “Zen Baby” or my favorite track here, the very catchy “Sleeping Monsters Lie” (both of which DePlonty calls “lullabies”) the results and the experience are heightened. DePlonty notes that his music is created by “building up, breaking down, transforming and juxtaposing patterns,” often taken from improvised snippets. There’s play at work on Corridor, and the pleasure of discovery comes through on every track. Corridor gets better with each subsequent listen–and there have been many for me–and leaves me wanting more from Tom DePlonty.

Available from Auraltone.

The phrase “Åpne Sinn,” I am told, is Norwegian for “open mind.” It’s an appropriate choice of moniker for musician Geoff Small, given the diversity of style on his excellent debut, Espiritista. As the disc flows along, Small shows something of a chameleonic adaptability, working cool ambient flows and uptempo constructs with equal ease.  He starts off by weaving a mesh of barbed sound in the title track, then reaches in to slowly extract long, breathy drifts that he balances against the noise. The feel is of starting from a point of chaos (the world, essentially), being brought to a place of meditative calm, and then coming back out.  And just when you think you’ve got a handle on Åpne Sinn’s approach, he drops in the beat and bass pulse of “Advaita,” which may be my favorite track here.  In this I hear a memory of Oldfield’s “Songs of Distant Earth” melded with an Enigma-esque groove. And it takes me over from the beginning. This track not only has funk, it’s got depth, something else Small is good at creating. All these pieces have a great sense of sonic dimension. Small’s beat-based offerings are just straight-up fun to get into. “Twinewheel” throbs its way along on energetic, rubbery chords;  “Slowdive” goes straight to my analog-lovin’ heart with mid-tempo Berlin-style sequencer lines and that wonderful, geometrically precise sense of meter. That being said, I have to admit that Small’s drifts may be my preferred side of Åpne Sinn. There’s no way to avoid losing six and a half minutes to “Freefall,” but you’ll give them up gladly to Small’s ethereal, perfectly layered sounds. The closer, “Arclight,” is 15 minutes of classic slow-chord, cloudflow ambient that carries echoes of “Early Man”-era Roach. There’s a subtle touch of rainstick throughout  (if I hear correctly) that beautifully grounds the piece for me. It’s a simple touch that Small manages to make important. A great track, and surely the right one on which to end!

Espiritista is another rock-solid release from Relaxed Machinery and I feel that Åpne Sinn will quickly evolve into an artist to keep an ear on. This is a superb first effort that simply gleams with potential.

Available from Relaxed Machinery.

Calmness comes in the wake of starting flutist Ann Licater’s “Doorway to A Dream.” It comes quickly, envelops you completely, and stays until well after the disc is done. Licater’s souful flute songs, the majority of which take their cue from Native American music, arc, soar and drift. A diversity of sound comes from her array of instruments; Licater breathes her dreams into life with Native American flutes, Anasazi flutes, Chinese xiao, silver alto and more. She also enlists the help of musicians who bring their own touches to many of the 14 pieces here. Troy Arnett’s piano, by turns delicate and strong, buffets Licater’s playing on “Earth and Sky” while Jose Neto’s electric sitar finds moments in which to brings a soul-stirring edge to the flow. Guitarist Shambhu softly augments Licater on the airy madrigal “Angel Bird.” Peter Phippen’s shakuhachi dances playfully with her on “Divine Love.” And because you can never have enough flugelhorn, Jeff Oster brings his in to add a second subtle breath to “Radiance.”

The draw here, obviously, is Licater’s flute work, which is flawless and shows an excellent range of style. The purest example is “Xiao Garden,” where the sound of Licater drawing breath between notes makes the piece stunningly intimate. There are only three things here: flute, breath, and the silent moments between. Or listen to “Into the Heart,” where David DiLullo’s African udu taps out a world-beat bed for Licater to float and spin across. Sensual and affecting. This is a superb CD and, being only her second, marks just the beginning for an impressive new artist. I’m looking forward to more from Ann Licater.

Available at Ann Licater’s web site.

Understatement is the hallmark of Pascal Savy’s ambient work. Filled with an underlying hush, there is never any hurry, no edges or harsh angles, and yet for all the quiet subtlety there is always quite a lot going on. His latest release, The Endless Seasons, lets you know from the first note of “Watching Dew” that this outing is going to be another soft drift that will take you briefly out of the timestream. Twinkling notes like the glimmer of sunlight on morning grass carry it along, never disturbing the peace of this imagined dawn. Savy moves us meditatively through his landscape, a place that is calm–but calm in the same way that if you take time to stand or sit quietly, you still hear life moving around you. Distant, small, sometimes indecipherable, but all part of the complete living  moment. Here in Savy’s work it comes as faint hisses, clanks and clicks–listen to the way it rises up like some steam-powered thing on “In Fading Light,” rubbing against foggy chords. Savy pays a lot of attention to the sense of distance in sound,which helps to create a sort of shadowbox feel to the work. But it’s a deep shadowbox, the diorama inside including little things we might not notice at first glance, but which are integral to the overall effect.

With this type of work, I typically say that it should be enjoyed both as a deep, focused listen and as a more truly ambient space-enhancer. But the detail work on The Endless Seasons is so tight, and so very intrinsic to the whole effect of the thing, that not going fully into it does both it and you a disservice. The downside to The Endless Seasons is that it’s a mere 36 minutes long. But every second has something to offer. This is a must-loop release that just gets better each time around.

Available from Field Noise Records.

One of the things that continues to strike me about the ambient and electronic genre is that for a sector of the musical world as fairly narrow in appeal as it is (excusing, for a moment, club/dance music) it’s quite deep. As I make my own way through it as a reviewer, I constantly come across musicians who, while new to me, have been toiling away at it for a while and in many cases have built a respectable following. Then, having found them for myself and if I like them, I set about scooping up the stuff I’ve missed, feeling somewhat silly that I missed them in the first place.

Such is the case with Dan Pound. Upon first listening to his 2010 release, Interlace, my initial reaction was, “Why haven’t I heard of this guy before?” Then I went to his web site and saw the list of about 35 releases and I felt even more like a dummy. With that first listen, however, Pound launched into my consciousness as an artist to whom I needed to pay attention.

Interlace starts out with a strong spacemusic feel–dribbling bits of electronics, solar wind effects, bass rumbles. It touches on darkness (the first track’s title, “Fade to Black,” might have been a clue) but possesses an interesting expectancy–a sense of impending light, if you will. There comes a moment in the third track, “Rare Refraction,” where the meaning of the CD title suddenly becomes clear–along with Pound’s intent. The track begins with piano over synth washes, curling down into a rhythmic electronic tangle balanced on a twanging beat. Out of this rises a flute, blowing a strong Native American-influenced song. Here is the interlace, the point where old meets new, ancient meets modern, organic meets technical to achieve a wholeness. The effect is enhanced by its coming after a solid half-hour of pure electronic worldcrafting. We have been brought deep inside ourselves to be reminded whence we came–and then we glide back out with “Point of the Laser,” where rich pads give way to a sequencer pulse and tidal-pull waveforms. From here Pound keeps things modern with the glitchy feel of “Shadow Screen” and the complex angles and whispers of “Inside the Crystal.” Through it all, though, the memory of that moment, that brief glimpse through the gap between worlds, remains. It’s quite a trip. Interlace is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Available from Dan Pound’s web site.

When you call yourself “The Mourning Dimension,” have a Reaper-like gent on the cover of your CD and you’re NOT a heavy metal band, I think I can safely go into the listening experience with a few expectations. Has Opened hits all the right dark ambient tropes: long, groaning minor chords, rushes of nightwind, and an overarching sense of ill-being. Thing is, Has Opened comes off as more accessible than a lot of dark ambient I’ve been listening to. While certainly dense and suitably depressing in spots, it never quite hits the sense of attempted alienation that defines much isolationist ambient music. For lack of a better term, call this “somber ambient.” The top piece here is “In The Dark Residence of Evil,” where hammer-drop chords slowly stalk the listener; between blows an insectile skitter of percussion tracks across your brain. Dark as dusk and packed with consider-your-own-mortality seriousness, Has Opened is a good listen for those who take their music grim.

Available from Barren Meadows Recordings.

Headphones on, please. With his new release, stones/still, Collin Thomas offers up a suite of five subtle works that pair field recordings with minimalist piano and droney washes. The field recordings, made in cemeteries, are for the most part static. They are what you’d hear if you stood in one spot for a while. But within the static are the quiet ripples of life–a plane whooshes overhead; birds sing; wind rustles. In the midst of it Thomas plays his piano a patient  note or two at a time, pulling time longer, making a moment wait to be done. Electronic warbles fill semi-empty spaces. Overall the sense is of being nowhere important, with nowhere important to be; you are here, and that’s enough. Stay while the moments form. Listen to what moves around you. stones/still is a superb ambient CD, embracing the compositional potential of silence and negative space in order to enhance the sounds that come to fill it.

Available at Collin Thomas’ web site.

 

By now you’ve no doubt seen this title turn up on a lot of “Best of 2010” lists around the New Age/ambient community. There’s a very good reason for this. It’s an amazing CD. Darshan Ambient (aka Michael Allison) has a true gift for creating works thick with emotion, built on diverse instrumentation, each piece vivid, image-filled and beautifully crafted. A Day Within Days presents Allison at the top of his game right from the start, setting the bar high for any future endeavors. “Talking Book” starts the disc off strong, building up from a simple piano melody, adding sounds bit by bit, growing to a guitar-fueled mid-point and then easing back down to complete the story. “A Deeper Blue” strikes me as something George Winston might have come up with if he had a little more groove in him. Hand percussion and subtle strings back the piano up nicely. Soaring vocals finish the piece on a high note. “The Lotus Eaters” comes off, whether intended or not, as a lovely Satie homage–it has that gentle angularity paired with simplicity and pure expressiveness. Every track here is full, rich and engaging; each has its own personality and story to tell. They are points in time, memories and moments captured note by note and retold in detail. Time must be set aside to give A Day Within Days the deep track-by-track listen it deserves, but I’ve also enjoyed it just playing to fill the space in a day. It’s quiet, pleasant and exudes a simple, calming joy that works it way into your soul. Allison deserves all the across-the-board kudos he’s been getting on A Day Within Days. It’s a magnificent CD and I have to add my voice to the chorus and call it a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Available at Spotted Peccary.

Andrew Mark Lawlor, recording as Wharmton Rise, continues to best himself with each new release. On his newest offering, Earthbound, Lawlor further perfects his style, a sort of cinematic spacerock that gives a distinct wink & nod to the progressive rock artists who have clearly influenced him. Although the disc starts out somewhat too stiff and formal with “Orbital Excursion,” Lawlor immediately kicks things up on the title track. It’s looser, hipper and fuller, bolstered on soaring, wordless vocal samples. (These are used so well throughout the disc, especially on the slow burn of “Long Lost,” that I had to write to ask Lawlor if they were live or sampled.) A synth flute adds an upbeat melody along the way. This is more along the lines of what Earthbound gives you for the rest of the disc. One of the things I quite enjoy about Wharmton Rise is how Lawlor creates convincing, flat-out-rocking guitar lines with his synths. He says it lets him unleash his “David Gilmour side,” and I defy anyone hearing his work for the first time to tell me they didn’t think it was actually him flailing away at his axe. It adds a gritty rawness to the sound, slashes of glorious prog-rock savagery. Have a listen to “Straight and Narrow” to get a taste of Lawlor’s blues-rock side, or the soulful 70’s arena wail in the early stages of “Cloudburst.” My favorite track here is “Downtown Desolation,” which busts the door open proudly wearing a Tangerine Dream t-shirt, sequencers set to stun. It’s an intense track that shifts gears a couple of times without losing sight of its narrative. My best suggestion for listening to Earthbound? Take it in the car with you, crank up the volume and go–just go wherever Wharmton Rise’s excellent CD takes you. It’s a helluva trip.

Available from LAD Records.