AMONGST MYSELVES: Fragments (CD on Amongst Projects)
This release from 2010 offers 57 minutes of introspective ambient music.
Amongst Myselves is Steve Roberts.
Ethereal textures waft on temperate breezes, establishing an aerial foundation of delicate tonalities. Additional tones are filtered into the sparse mix, creating fragile structures of sound just shy of minimal silence. The sort of silence that has just enough substance to go unnoticed but the artful puissance to slide into the listener's subconscious and affect the cerebral workings. These effects are extremely subtle, acting below the subject's cognitive level, tweaking synaptic connections and inducing a soothing calm that spreads throughout the body.
The electronics are very tenuous, crafted to remain generally unintrusive except on a psychological level. These tonalities are soft and gentle, pursuing harmonic waves of peaceful determination. Atmospheric and congenial, these tones are elongated to generate a near-infinity presence. Their embodiment undergoes rarefied changes, flowing through variations at an extremely gradual pace.
While electronics are the main instrument utilized in crafting these auralscapes, the discerning listener will hear environmental sounds (birdcall, etc.) hidden in the mix, flavoring the flow with terrestrial elements, grounding the music to an earthly mien. Other instruments include guitar, light strumming which introduces a human quality to the ambience. And percussions are present too, but used very minimally and with their beats suppressed to the point of sounding as if they come from very far away.
For one track, the music elevates beyond minimal ambience and adopts a melodic presence with twinkling keyboards and hints of processed strings.
These compositions are intended to induce introspection, and their meager definition allows them to slither through the environment, unseen and barely heard, delving into the psyche with amiable skill.
MATHIAS GRASSOW & TOMAS WEISS: Farewell (CD on El Culto)
This release from 2010 offers 71 minutes of ethereal ambient music.
An assortment of ethereal textures is utilized to achieve a droning auralscape that is punctuated by pensive percussion. Additional electronic waves cascade across these tonalities, embellishing them with auxiliary resonance and creating a layered realm of tenuous substantiality. Harmonic pulsations are stretched to near infinity to generate expansive vistas of sound that display minimal variations in their fundamental state.
While changes in the temperate flow do occur, they transpire over such elongated passages as to defy easy discernment, evoking a subtle progression that moves without obvious movement. This deceptive diversity is mainly detected by the listener's subconscious vantage and accomplishes a soothing psychological effect deep with the cerebral process. Extraneous vaporous garnishes lend hints of depth and definition, establishing faint modifications among the atmospheric stability.
While extremely delicate in their presented form, many of the actual electronics possess a hidden grinding quality, an aspect that is only evident upon microscopic examination. This passive structure comprised of harsh source elements marks an inventive application of the composers' creative skill.
A few of the tracks' soundscapes are punctuated by pensive percussion, imbuing those pieces with a dirge-like disposition.
Further enhancing this music's endless mien, the various tracks are presented in a seamless flow, transforming everything into a never-ending flux of rarefied electronic textures.
HUMAN METRONOME: The Child Set Free (CD on Resonating Earth)
This release from 2010 offers 74 minutes of playful ambient music.
Human Metronome is Eelke van Hoof. Mastering was done by HM's frequent collaborator Wasili Papadopoulos (aka 33 Tetragammon).
Utilizing a soft synthesizers, percussion, bamboo flutes, guitars, and a variety of environmental sounds, HM strives to create an organic world for the audience, but the music concentrates on an introspective quality that divorces the listener from their surroundings, plunging them into a realm of the inner child and setting that spirit free.
Delicate electronic atmospherics establish a sparse auralscape that is then seasoned with a human presence through winsome flutes and languid beats.
The electronics are extremely vaporous, maintaining a tenuous definition with reality through expansive tonalities that achieve the illusion of distance. Periodically that remote vista is brought closer by increased density.
Plucked strings introduce a subtle tension to the sonic flow, then that stress is softened by bending the notes into fluid chords that remain elusive by immersion in the textural soundscape.
The flutes enhance the music's airy quality with their breathy expressions, evoking the presence of nature in a manner that surrounds without becoming intrusive, allowing the listener to focus on their own psyche.
While maintaining a distinct ambience, these compositions realize a child-like character through the playful application of the fragile elements, producing a lithesome structure that flexes not unlike a series of serene waves caressing a beach. The result promotes a state of comfortable introspection.
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