Kranky US 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Jacob Long's third full length LP under Earthen Sea sees the New Yorker weave together a slew of downtempo tracks, pulling from dub-techno and chillhop sensibilities, in a tracklist that feels like you are in the center of a steel sphere, as tracks like the Lo-Fi 'Stolen Time' and 'Rough Air' reverberate around you. Ochre Sky is a real highlight off the records back half, the mellow timbre and interspersed organic percussion (including a sample of a sink splashing) evokes a slow paced walk through a luscious garden. The material quality of Ghost Poems is what makes it so special, with each of the 10 tracks constituting a different biome to an expansive diorama. From the warm sunbeams of 'Fossil Painting', to the underground lakes of 'Felt Absence' each track has something refreshing to offer.

Review: Liz Harris' image as a gothic, studio-dwelling, ambient mastermind is cemented by her 12th album, 'Shade'. Compiling a loose and formerly unrelated collection of songs made over the last 12 years - from the short, ruined polaroid-style opener 'Followed The Ocean', to the naked strum-singing of 'Unclean Mind' and the droning submergence of 'Basement Mix', this one is arguably one of her most lo-fi projects. It easily captures Grouper's emergence on the international folk-ambient scene through the analog fog of rare CD-Rs and handmade cassettes, making her career trajectory a ghost story if we've ever heard one. Gear up for a print edition, with original sky photographs by Harris' friend David Horvitz, as well as a signed archival letter-press print of Moon Study, her exclusive new book.

Review: Ruins is the 10th LP from Portland artist Grouper, an incredible set that's found it's home on the inimitable and always on- point Kranky label...and yes, it's another fine outing from the voco-noise head. Tracks like "Clearing", however, show another side to Grouper's usual rough edge. There's an element of smoothness to those sombre keys and far-out vocals. It's basically an ambient album with an extra layer of soul in its core - check "Made Of Air" for a seriously trippy set of soundscapes.

Review: Noted as a "beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue" (we're looking at you, Spotify) Tim Hecker's No Highs is a righteous paean for what ambient music should be. And that certainly isn't mindful background music for turning you, the listener, into the best and most productive capitalist you can possibly be. Instead, Hecker's latest invites considered and focused listening; an alternative to the mediated, telescreeny musical SSRIs that impose on us today. A world turned upside down, the album presents highlights such as 'Lotus Light', 'Pulse Depression' ad 'Winter Cop', which suggest anarchic themes, while also fastening a sense of jaggedness and tumult, in a style of music that is so incorrectly expected to be neither of those things.

Review: A fresh, atmospheric sound is proferred by South Carolina singer and producer Nancy Blues in the form of her latest vinyl LP Exit Simulation, in which she cuts through the intertwined hazes of childhood memory and personal psychogeography to produce a veritably ultra-ambient dust cloud of sound in 13 tracks. At its core, the album trickles faintly forth from the watershed that is neo-soul - multi-layering her voice; harmonizing; pitting honest, raw rimshots-n'-crackles against contemporary stylistic cornerstones like lo-fi and night-bussy ambient electronica - all to evoke, convincingly, the mood of stasis in which she finds current solace in her current home of Charleston. Evocative of having found a newfound time and place to reflect, Blues conjures up the weekends of her youth, spent mesmerized at the ambient music of the slow-paced devotionals performed by the local Oklahoman church band.

Review: Ana Roxanne is no stranger to gender discourse. 'I'm Every Sparkly Woman', which appeared on her 2015 debut EP, was a re-reading of the iconic Whitney Houston - Chaka Khan cover, and a celebration of modern femininity and empowerment which later became about loving yourself irrespective of gender as Roxane came out as intersex. Now ready with her second full-length album, identity is never far from the table.

Opening with a spectacular spoken word piece told through multi-tracked voices, we're given an introduction of layers, shades and connected musical phrases that's at once abstract but coherent - the complexity of life on record, perhaps? From there we explore everything from Gothic choral to ambient, New Age and dream pop. The result is highly affecting, sublime stuff you sink into slowly and never want to get back out of.

Review: Husband-and-wife team Carl Hultgren and Windy Weber have been successfully fusing elements of ambient, dream pop and shoe gaze since the early 1990s, keeping up a steady release schedule that has so far resulted in no less than 11 studio albums and a string of inspired collaborative sets. Their latest album, "Allegiance & Conviction", is their first for three years and sees them drowsily drift through a selection of opaque, otherworldly tunes rich in densely layered guitars, hazy aural textures, barely audible vocals and dreamy, delay-laden sounds. It's a hugely enticing set all told, with our favourites including the glistening head trip of "Moth To The Flame", the Labradford style post-rock drones of "Alone" and the slow-burn bliss of "Crossing Over".