Juno Recommends Ambient / Drone: March 2022

Review: Polish composer Olga Wojciechowska and veteran electronic producer Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, combine on A Strangely Isolated Place to revisit a beloved Strie album - Olga's more electronic and experimental alias. With previous releases on Serein and Time Released Sound as Strie, Olga Wojciechowska's 'Struktura' was released in 2015 to a limited audience due to its physical-only format. As Olga's work becomes increasingly more coveted, through her more recent releases on A Strangely Isolated Place (Unseen Traces & Infinite Distances), and with Struktura praised as one of her finest albums to date, the discussion to breathe new life into the album resulted in a unique pairing with Scanner, an electronic music producer and multimedia artist responsible for some of the most defining works of the genre since the early 1990s.

Blurring the line between harmony and dissonance, Struktura's original recordings paint an eerie, haunting and beautiful picture, conceptualized around abstract art, with intricacies and mystery abound. Here, Strie's original recordings remain untouched, albeit lovingly remastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, and it is left to Scanner to provide further interpretations of Olga's original recordings. Scanner productions can typically traverse a myriad of styles, but here, Robin took a primarily live-hardware approach to the remixes, allowing the rawness of his recordings to add story and depth. Recorded in one take, with no overdubs, the reinterpretations strip the melodies and textures to their original essence, bringing an entirely analog element to Olga's intrinsically detailed originals. Featuring artwork by Rep Ringel and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, Struktura Revisited will be available on Gatefold 2LP in a black/grey half-and-half vinyl, with 6x6" soft-touch heavy art card.

Review: Does what it says on the tin, this one - collects together some of Adam Shaikh's early recordings from the nineties. The Vancouver artist was a real don in the ambient and dub scene back then, his keyboard sills and knack for comics atmosphere always making him a firm favourite with the heads. He released on a range of top labels including his own Modulation Elektronik and some of the most choice pieces are included here. The opener is an archetypal deep space scene-setter then the likes of 'Vapor' cast free from rhythm and suspend you amongst the stars while 'Oberon' is a seductive fusion of dub depth and cinematic ambient design.

Review: Ambient music is a broad church these days, with the term covering everything from overly academic drone experiments, and fractured soundscapes, to Jon Hassell-esque 'fourth world' material and Eno style layered instrumentals. Space & Awareness, Simon Huxtable's latest full-length voyage as Inhmost, is ambient in the 1990s sense of the term: electronic, intergalactic, gently psychedelic, immersive, melodious and subtly influenced by IDM, experimental dub and the sample-heavy material of the Orb. It's a classic sound no doubt, but one that Huxtable absolutely nails. Meditative but interesting, deep but never dull, it's a Pete Namlook-esque trip that may well count as Huxtable's greatest album yet - and that's saying something!

Review: 12k is very happy to welcome Uwe Zahn, aka Arovane, to the roster. Arovane, a well-respected artist in the field, hailing from within the German countryside, has been active since the early 2000s beginning with releases on City Centre Offices and DIN in the heyday of the IDM and microsound years. He has since gone on to release work with n5MD, Pure Magnetik, and Strangely Isolated Place, among others. With Reihen he takes his characteristic pointillist synthetic structures and impeccable sound design and lays them in a web of fagility, decay and etherealism that feels like new a new direction for Zahn.

Review: Tape Hymns is a mesmerizing amalgam of sounds carefully crafted by frequent collaborators zake and City of Dawn. The warm hiss of analog tape as the foundational structure of these arrangements brings forth pastoral mediations with becalmed, atmospheric intent. Tape Hymns mix echoing sonic tones, slow-drifting sounds with immersive low-end frequencies.

Review: Brock van Wey's BVDub project has long been a source of inspired, sonic detailed and aurally grandiose ambient, where experimental sound design techniques and the overdriven noise of dub techno add untold layers of complexity. Violet Opposition, his latest full-length excursion under the alias, continues in this vein, with waves of fuzzy, hard-to-pigeonhole noise, effects-laden chords, mutilated instrumentation and cascading, ear-pleasing melodies combining to create a quartet of epic, opaque ambient soundscapes. It's an approach that pays dividends though, with the immense beauty of van Wey's arrangements and instrumental choices consistently breaking through a wall of echoing, intoxicating aural fuzz.

Review: Snowmelt is a new record by Australian artists Seaworthy (aka Cameron Webb) and Matt Rosner, the long awaited follow up from their 2010 collaboration Two Lakes. Matt Rosner continues to explore the natural world to inspire his work based out of remote Western Australia. His most recent release being No Lasting Form (Room40). Webb's output as Seaworthy has been sparse in recent years as he continues to pursue a career in environmental research, focusing on urban wetlands and their ecosystems. This marks the first substantial release since Wood, Winter, Hollow, a collaboration with Taylor Deupree in 2013.

Review: Rosales follow-up their debut for the Archives label 'Still, Tomorrow' with 'Woven Songs'. Written between 2019 and 2020 (prior to their debut album) this collaboration between Ian Hawgood and Brad Deschamps is a joint release on Home Normal and Polar Seas Recordings, featuring stunning artwork by Laura Kay Keeling. This new long-form work was sourced from guitar and synth loops and processed by Space Echo, cassette and reel-to-reel for decayed textures. The result is music that develops carefully, only to slowly fragment in the whir of the analog machines, all culminating in the dynamic penultimate piece 'matter'. 'Woven Songs' is available on limited LP and digital.