Ambient
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Perhaps it’s a bit early to be thinking in terms of best-of-the-year lists for 2018. Of course, great albums are just as likely to land in January or February as they are in any other month. But common sense dictates that we contain our enthusiasm until at least the spring. This new album from Kuala…
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By the end of the 1980s, the excitement surrounding early ambient music artists like Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Daniel Lanois had given way to the artistically suspect new age movement. Truthfully, the word movement gives that dark period too much credit. The only thing labels like Wyndham Hill managed to move was units. Lots…
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It’s been more than three years since we heard something new from Minneapolis’ Chris Bartels. Starting a family can do that to you. A new mouth to feed has a way of upsetting schedules and reordering priorities. This new work captures Bartels’ domesticity in more ways than one. “I embraced imperfections and made a point…
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There is a floorboard outside my daughter’s bedroom that creaks loudly when stepped on. We have woken her more than once, trying to navigate our way around that particular piece of hardwood. Such is life in a house built more than a hundred years ago. Carlo Giustini’s new album La stanza di fronte (The Other…
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There is a moment, at this time of year, when you know snow is approaching. The sky darkens, the air dampens, then one or two flakes circle slowly to the ground. This is what The White Summer sounds like. From Turin, Italy, Luca Bonandini’s The Illusion Of Science released its second album on Dec. 21,…
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In a world obsessed with speed, is there anything more powerful and liberating than to be purposefully slow? Is it the ultimate act of rebellion in an on-demand world? Jason Sweeney’s most recent Panoptique Electrical recording will have you thinking along similar lines. His minimalist, ambient/new classical album Quiet Ecology isn’t just slow. It’s radically…
The Moderns 