ambient

https://terrorcityproperty.bandcamp.com/album/writing-behind-the-plate

Remnant, Remains - Writing Behind The Plate

Following her debut album, 'I’ll Look for You in Others' (Past Inside the Present), earlier this year, @patriciawolf_music joins Balmat label with 'See-Through', her second album. 'See Through' finds the Portland, Oregon musician and field recordist continuing to develop her signature style of ambient, balancing radiant soundscaping with a carefully expressive sensibility. But the new album is also marked by an important difference. Where 'I’ll Look for You in Others' was largely written in response to the death of a loved one, 'See-Through' represents a kind of rebirth. 

“After a long period of grief, I had been hoping to find my way to a place of lightness, peace, playfulness, curiosity, and sensuality again,” Wolf says. “What I was surprised and pleased to find is that for the most part, I had.”

She wrote and recorded many of the album’s songs quickly, in preparation for an August 2021 broadcast on the online radio platform 9128 Live. Excited for the opportunity to play live after more than a year of the pandemic, Wolf decided to write all new material for the event, working with a lean setup of Octatrack, Roland Synth Plus 10, Make Noise 0-Coast, and Novation Summit. (In fact, Wolf was the first sound designer invited to create patches for the Summit.) She also picked up an acoustic guitar that her brother had loaned her. “I decided to take the surrealist approach of ‘pure psychic automatism’ to see what poured out of me,” she recalls. “Woodland Encounter,” “Under a Glass Bell,” “The Grotto,” “The Mechanical Age,” “The Flaneur,” and “Psychic Sweeping” are all products of those sessions; the through line holding them together is their exploratory spirit and clarity of vision. 

Other songs, like “A Conversation With My Innocence”, “Recalibration” and “Psychic Sweeping”, wrestle with the traumas of the preceding year. Though they may linger on the heaviness of loss, Wolf says, “What I discovered is that a stronger archetype had grown inside me to steer my emotions and thoughts to a better place. “Likewise“, “Wistfulness” and “Upward Swimming Fish”—her first experiments with VST synthesizers—balance the bittersweet embrace of melancholy with the freedom to choose happiness.

“Pacific Coast Highway”, the album’s lone song with drums, might at first seem like an outlier. But it also signals Wolf’s interest in finding a fusion between the introspection of ambient and the togetherness of beat-oriented music. “Experiencing loss and isolation is what drove me into gentler territories of sound,” she says, “but I want to start making more beat-oriented music. After an extended period of loss and isolation, I’m ready to experience more joyous and social things.”

Listeners with keen ears might recognize the album’s closing song, “Springtime in Croatia”: A different mix of the song originally appeared on the 2021 digital compilation 'secondnature & friends Vol. II', from the Seattle label secondnature. This marks its first appearance on vinyl, however, and its spiritual home is undoubtedly here, at the close of 'See-Through'. As the bookending answer to the opening “Woodland Encounter”—another song in which field recordings play a crucial role—it closes the circle of an album that is itself keyed to the steadily turning cycles of life.

See​-​Through

Patricia Wolf - See​-​Through [BALMAT03]

Each Hour w Natalia (mix3 version)

London’s abundant waterways and parks provide an oneiric muse for Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s resounding debut full-length collaboration, an engrossing suite of weightless sax, synth and disklavier-bedded, noirish nocturnes that land somewhere between Grouper and Terry Riley. 

Centred around Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera’s muzzy vocal loops and the faintest melodic motifs, London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Vince accompanies on saxophone, synth and piano, shrouding Rossi's vocals in swirls of dimly lit psychedelic smoke. As a newcomer to London, Rossi was "caught up in a sort of wondrous overwhelm” - a feeling that seeps through every movement of the almost hour long album. Working mostly at the Roundhouse, the pair find a musical confluence between Rossi's words - "fluid, dreamy, hazy ideations" - and Vince's shadowy renditions.

Vince's plasmic echoes and Rossi's aerial delivery form a poetic union, twisting and painting each sound in pearlescent shades. Rossi's folk roots shine through like cracks of dawn sunlight on 'Sumu Puistossa' ("fog in the park"), reverberating over organ and dream-zone sax; her words tip into muted surrealism thanks to the controlled chaos of Vince's bleak treatments. His grasp of jazz is transfixing: bending sax motifs like ghostly memories of music from another timeline, smudging them into the soundfield. It’s most effective on 'Siellä Näen Kaiken' ("there I see everything"), where sickly, dissonant notes flicker like an almost-extinguished candle alongside motorised furniture music courtesy of a Disklavier.

Born out of wonder, daydreaming innocence and creative discovery, 'There I See Everything ‘ is the sound of two exploratory collaborators swimming into each other's ideas. From the Terry Riley-esque transcendence of '∞' to the sacred incantation of long-form closer 'Pikku Muurahaiskeko' ("little anthill"), the pair expose a new layer of creativity with each turn, gradually zooming out from discreet, vulnerable beauty to encompass a gently orchestrated chaos of sustained, sublime tension.

Cucina Povera & Ben Vince - Sumu Puistossa

Zaumne feat. YL Hooi - Sorcières (Parfum, SFERIC13)

Digital Download and Limited Edition Cassette available here: http://bit.ly/2kczZMG

JUNGLE GYM RECORDS presents "01112012," official debut of French solo artist Richard Francés. Having amassed a formidable body of work as Acid Fountain and in experimental groups JUJU and Pointe Du Lac, the Hylé Tapes head works under his given name for the 11th installment of our UNDERGROWTH series. A conceptual masterpiece in two parts, UDG 0.11 recalls the early synth environments of pioneers like Tangerine Dream and Terry Riley, with modern interpretations of sci-fi, deep thought meditation and extraterrestrial exploration. If inner and outer consciousness are in fact dependent on one another, "01112012" is a pathway to both, exclusively from JUNGLE GYM. 

"281316" VIDEO: bit.ly/2kEmJnx

SIDE A:  i. 2013  ii. 342023  iii. 191714818  iv. 1620019174  //  Richard Francés

Digital Download and Limited Edition Cassette available here: http://bit.ly/2keCQUU

JUNGLE GYM RECORDS presents "Prehistoria," a split cassette by Dravier & V. Kristoff. Following the collaborative "Shelter From Environment," the pair return to reflect on the most primitive memories of mankind. Kristoff takes SIDE 1, inspired by the physical artifacts that would eventually draw separation between humanity and all other animals. SIDE 2 from Dravier, then, expands on the concept with "Visions," a long-form piece exploring ancient psychological and spiritual devices of the Neanderthals, struggling to find their place in the universe as we still do today. Kristoff and Dravier develop these ideas and more with appropriately prehistoric recording techniques, utilizing a single mono synth with arpeggiator through guitar pedals, straight to tape... simple tools with far-reaching results, exclusively from JUNGLE GYM.

@draviersc @v-kristoff

SIDE 2. Visions // Dravier

Download

L.I.E.S. Takeover - Terekke - Saturday 24th February 2018

Success Stories #02 on LYL.Radio • @d-k-music

broadcasted on lyl.live on 20-04-18

LYL Radio - Success Stories (20.04.18) w/ D.K.

Broadcasted September 2018, a wild and exotic ride of the ages

ambient

CLEMENT MOGENSEN