First single from Josh Varnedore's upcoming album "the thunder might save us" on Hammock Music label (August 23, 2024).

Delving into cavernous darkness and emerging with glimmering light, Josh Varnedore’s ambient soundscapes reverberate with an ancient, earthen warmth. Reverent and immersed in the natural world, the Ohio-based multimedia artist finds inspiration and more in the hills of Ohio and Arkansas, where he prospects for crystals and natural objects of wood, and bone to incorporate into his music and art. As he works with these elemental and organic materials–Varnedore bows his guitar using a rosined stone core sample from the Union Carbide mine in Arkansas that he estimates to be over one hundred million years old–Varnedore extracts the sounds of rock, soil and once-living matter, giving voice to the story of our slow burning journey with the earth. 

Central to Varnedore’s art is the relationship between enduring objects and ephemeral life, a subject he explores through improvised works of fingerpicked and bowed guitar, field recordings, and a diverse array of sounds created with a vintage sampler. In a collaborative creation with nature, Arkansan quartz will serve as a guitar slide, and a deer jaw found in the woods near his home is another earthen bow that he uses to produce the music he molds like clay. A palpable sense of place imbues Varnedore’s music, which he records in an old schoolhouse, as his songs are touched by the history of rural Ohio and the lives of those who have passed through the 19th century schoolhouse’s doors.   

As he traverses varied sonic terrain, Varnedore taps into voids to establish an immense gravity while threading delicate, weightless patterns from the natural world into shifting webs of harmonized melodies. The resulting songs are both glacial and luminous, golden-hued hums of an unspoken language that pulse and echo and decay and renew. His forthcoming debut project for the renowned Nashville-based ambient record label Hammock Music will be released August 2024.

the thunder might save us

Josh Varnedore - spill through the clouds like a river of light

Love in the Void

Hammock - Love In The Void

First single from Josh Varnedore's upcoming album "the thunder might save us" on Hammock Music label (August 23, 2024).

Delving into cavernous darkness and emerging with glimmering light, Josh Varnedore’s ambient soundscapes reverberate with an ancient, earthen warmth. Reverent and immersed in the natural world, the Ohio-based multimedia artist finds inspiration and more in the hills of Ohio and Arkansas, where he prospects for crystals and natural objects of wood, and bone to incorporate into his music and art. As he works with these elemental and organic materials–Varnedore bows his guitar using a rosined stone core sample from the Union Carbide mine in Arkansas that he estimates to be over one hundred million years old–Varnedore extracts the sounds of rock, soil and once-living matter, giving voice to the story of our slow burning journey with the earth.

Central to Varnedore’s art is the relationship between enduring objects and ephemeral life, a subject he explores through improvised works of fingerpicked and bowed guitar, field recordings, and a diverse array of sounds created with a vintage sampler. In a collaborative creation with nature, Arkansan quartz will serve as a guitar slide, and a deer jaw found in the woods near his home is another earthen bow that he uses to produce the music he molds like clay. A palpable sense of place imbues Varnedore’s music, which he records in an old schoolhouse, as his songs are touched by the history of rural Ohio and the lives of those who have passed through the 19th century schoolhouse’s doors.

As he traverses varied sonic terrain, Varnedore taps into voids to establish an immense gravity while threading delicate, weightless patterns from the natural world into shifting webs of harmonized melodies. The resulting songs are both glacial and luminous, golden-hued hums of an unspoken language that pulse and echo and decay and renew. His forthcoming debut project for the renowned Nashville-based ambient record label Hammock Music will be released August 2024.

wood metal feathers

Josh Varnedore - Wood Metal Feathers

Silencia is the latest collection of evocative and lustrous compositions by the Nashville duo Hammock. The band’s 10th LP, Silencia closes a trilogy that began with 2017’s Mysterium. It is a balm, gesturing at the healing that can ascend in silence. Slow-churning and contemplative, Silencia most prominently features strings orchestrated by Viktor Orri Árnason (Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds), mists of guitar by Hammock’s Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, the hushed drone of horns, and 20 elegiac voices from the Budapest Art Choir. The record was mixed and mastered by Francesco Donadello (Winged Victory for the Sullen, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ben Frost) in Berlin. Founded in 2003, Hammock’s music has appeared widely in film and television, and it has been praised by The Wire, NPR, Pitchfork, The Atlantic, and other major culture media. -Ryan Burleson

Silencia

Circular As Our Way

Preorder

Circular As Our Way (Silencia)

New album Silencia out now: ffm.to/silencia

Full Album

Afraid To Forget (Silencia)

Stream / Vinyl

In The Shattering Of Things (Silencia)

21 years since their formation in Nashville, Hammock has emerged as a leading light in instrumental music, with a unique sound that melds elements of ambient, electronic, orchestral, and shoegaze.

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