Northern, Taylor Deupree

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Northern, Taylor Deupree Taylor Deupree runs 12k records, and he makes some rather nice ambient music himself. Northern is a record full of long drones and meandering, glitch-like sounding tracks. The songs have quite a bit of nuance and texture to them and grow into themselves over time. I'm finding the record works nicely played through as well as it does when you're pulling tracks out at random throughout the day. Highly recommended if you're into the more electronic end of the ambient music spectrum.

Related Taylor Deupree MySpace Profile Taylor Deupree Bio at 12k records

Somnia, Greg Davis

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Somnia, Greg Davis A really nice recent find is Somnia by Grey Davis. Six tracks of quiet atmospherics and synthy drones. The shortest track clocks in at 4:02, and track 4, Campestral (version 2) is over 22 minutes in length. The record is full of nice long tracks that are really quite good at fading into the background.

I picked up a few other records from Davis recently as well, and they're quite good. I'll likely have something to say about them around here shortly. In the meantime, have a listen to his work, it's really top-notch stuff.

Related Greg Davis Bio at Kranky Greg Davis MySpace Profile

Early Morning Migration, Ezekiel Honig & Morgan Packard

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Early Morning Migration, Ezekiel Honig & Morgan Packard Occasionally, in the back of my mind, I get the feeling that I'm screwed because it turns out I've already listened to all the good ambient music, and I've got nothing new to write about here. The feeling is a bit silly, obviously, as is embarrassingly made clear to me as I stumble upon a record or artist I've never heard of before and am promptly blown away.

This happened to me a few days ago when I discovered Early Morning Migration, by Ezekiel Honig & Morgan Packard. It's a collaboration, except they didn't create the tracks together. Six are by Honig, and 5 are by Packard. The result is a long, slow, beautifully sad record full of subtlety and texture. This is really nice stuff, and I've already tracked down other work from both of these artists, about which there will be more here in the near future.

Related Ezekiel Honig Wikipedia entry Ezekiel Honig MySpace profile

Ambient Music Links, July 26th

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  • GREG DAVIS Interview
    "We took the opportunity of the release of his superb collaboration with Paris-based Roux to catch up with Davis and talk about his already impressive body of work and his many approaches to music and sound."
  • 12k
    12k label blog.
  • Taylor Deupree Interview
    "Busily, happily and quite effectively carving out his own "microscopic" niche in the world of electronic/ambient sounds, Taylor Deupree is keeping busy with his 12k label..."

There's more where this came from at del.icio.us/ambientmusicblog.

Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd

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Before the Day Breaks After the Night Falls On the recommendation of a reader, I recently picked up two new records by Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd, Before The Day Breaks and After The Night Falls. I'm familiar with Budd's work, specifically his collaboration with Brian Eno on Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror. I've also got Budd's The White Arcades. I like both of those records, and had heard good things about Budd's collaboration with Guthrie in the past, so I figured these would be right up my alley.

These two records have a similarity about them. And by that, I mean they sound like Harold Budd. Big, roomy, reverby sounding keys and guitar, but all muted and flattened a bit to sound like you're listening to something just off in the distance. Or, maybe, what it would be like to listen to another record under water.

The two records are apparently meant each meant to be a counterpoint to the other, and you can see this in the titles of the tracks, i.e. track 1 on Before The Day Breaks is "How Close Your Soul" while track 1 on After The Night Falls is "How Distant Your Heart." I created a playlist that positions the corresponding tracks from the two records together and you can hear the kind of call and response going on.

These are two very nice records, and if you have any interest in Budd's work, or if you like his previous work, which many consider to be prototypically "ambient," then you'd be wise to have a listen to these records.

Marsen Jules

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Les Fleurs, Marsen Jules Marsen Jules is the alias of Martin Juhls, a German electronic musician. Back in January I downloaded Les Fleurs and found it fairly interesting. It mixes glitchy tech sounds and instrumentation with longer melodies and atmospheric sounds.

Golden, Marsen Jules

So when I came across a copy of the recently released follow up to Les Fleurs, Golden, I figured it would be worth a listen. Turns out I was right. It's more of the subtle glitchy sounds I liked in Les Fleurs, along with spare acoustic guitar melodies. And it's a bit more "electronic" sounding than some of the records I've been listening to lately, so it's a refreshing change of pace to all the piano and orchestration. You might call Golden minimal, but it certainly does not lack atmosphere or texture.

Juhls also produces and performs as krill.minima. Checkout the Marsen Jules site for more information and some free mp3 downloads.

Related Official Marsen Jules site Marsen Jules MySpace profile