ETC | Mid-Autumn 2024
20 (count'em!) beautiful albums for all your deep listening needs this season
As autumn's gloamy penumbra descends, a sonic revolution unfurls. The following, fastidiously curated, compendium of 20 amazing albums for Autumn 2024 provokes contemplation and redefines what is modern music, charting unexplored territories in experimental, ambient, contemporary classical, and electronica realms.
From gossamer-thin textures to densely layered soundscapes, these albums redefine the boundaries of aural perception, eschew facile categorization, and advance in uncharted spaces, inspiring listeners to reconsider the very nature of music itself. Herein lies a sonic cartography of terra incognita: mesmerizing compositions oscillating between the ethereal and the visceral, the analogue and the digital, the remembered and the imagined. These works don't merely reflect our zeitgeist; they actively shape it, offering glimpses into possible futures of musical expression.
1. “8 Tableaux” by Flore Laurentienne
In the purposeless yet consequential spaces between aural apprehension and emotional cognition, Canadian producer, composer and musician Mathieu David Gagnon's latest release under the Flore Laurentienne moniker, '8 Tableaux', emerges as a delicate meditation on the nature of suggestivity, memory, and artistic representation. This album, a sonic homage to the gestural expressiomism of painter Jean-Paul Riopelle, transcends merely illustrating its subject, as if a library record or a soundtrack, by becoming itself a complex semiotic system, interrogating the very fabric of our temporal and spatial understanding.
Gagnon's approach to this work is fundamentally archaeological, unearthing layers of meaning through a carefully stratified sonic excavation. The album's palindromic structure serves as both a formal constraint and a conceptual framework, creating a recursive loop that challenges linear notions of time. This circular formality echoes not only the compositional techniques of arpeggios and loops but also emboldens notions about the cyclical nature of cultural memory, where past and present continually inform and reshape one another in a perpetual dance of signification.
The opening track, "La Nuit Bleue," sets the tone for this suspended animation. Its stuttering strokes, rendered in what one might term 'sonic Morse code,' create a palimpsest of sound that simultaneously evokes and effaces the dense, lyrical visual language of Riopelle's brushwork.
Pentimento is a term for the process of changing an artwork during its execution, a form of stylized repentance that revisits and revises the intention and purpose of the work as originally conceived, perhaps even deliberately in a radical manner. In auditory terms, this process layers meaning upon meaning, each new iteration partially obscuring yet also enriching what came before.
As the album progresses, tracks like "Feuilles IV" and "Autriche III" further complicate this mnemonic reinterpretaion. The former's gradual build from cacophony to clarity and back again, never losing its strident sentimentality even as the formal outlines change drastically, mirrors the process of collective memory formation, where individual voices coalesce into a shared narrative that is both coherent and chaotic. The latter's use of strummed guitar strums that “bloom and fade into empty space" before reaching a shattering crescendo serves as a potent metaphor for the cyclical nature of memorial resurgence and decay.
Gagnon's use of repetition as a form of "sonic stasis" is particularly revealing. This technique creates a tension between inner, emotional movement and outward, physical stillness that mirrors the paradoxical nature of time itself—always in flux, yet somehow fixed in our perception. By avoiding traditional acoustic instrumentation in favour of expansive synthesizer compositions, Gagnon further destabilizes our expectations, creating a soundscape that is at once familiar and utterly alien.
"Bleu-vert (Vert de bleu)," exemplifies the palindromic structure by suggesting that meaning is not fixed but continually renegotiated through each new engagement with the work.
'8 Tableaux' is a complex semiotic system that challenges us to reconsider our relationship with time, memory, and artistic representation. By creating a sonic dialogue with Riopelle's visual art, Gagnon has produced a work that transcends specific definitions of music genre, offering a multidisciplinary exploration of how we construct and interpret meaning across the stairwell of reflections within time and space, within us.
Flore Laurentienne's '8 Tableaux' invites us to deccelerate and engulf ourselves in its layered intricacies, emerging with a deeper understanding of our place within the vast tapestry of cultural memory and artistic expression.
2. “Ephemeral Maps” by Julien Demoulin
Julien Demoulin's (AKA an Indianapolis-based artist who is part of the Healing Sound Propagandist and Past Inside the Present “quiet music” labels scene) latest release, "Ephemeral Maps," is presented as a soundtrack for rapidly evolving psychological and ecological landscapes.
This follow-up to "Dreams In Digital Dust" further advances a musical journey towards radically recontextualizing our understanding of sound as a medium ideal for exploring the mediation between human consciousness and environmental flux, the listener dialectically urged to adapt, moment-by-moment, to the volatile acoustic ontology of softly cascading drones and liturgically sustained intonations.
Demoulin's almost static yet shimmering soundscapes, conceptually inspired by J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned World" (1962), function as a series of overlapping cartographies, each layer of sheen and shade simultaneously obscuring and revealing new territories defined, and occluded, by sound. This approach mirrors Ballard's dismantling of anthropocentric narratives, creating a sonic space where human subjectivity is decentered vis-a-vis the monodic presence of the music, allowing for a more fluid, non-hierarchical engagement with the aural mise en scène.
The album's introspective drones and ethereal ambient textures serve are active agents in the deconstruction of traditional listening paradigms. Demoulin's careful modulation between "sleepy," "psychedelic," and "uneasy" sonic states creates a constantly shifting perceptual landscape. This instability echoes the psychological and evolutionary flux depicted in Ballard's novel, as the music navigates a soundscape as mutable and unpredictable as the submerged world it evokes.
In tracks that are "often slow, always dreamy," Demoulin crafts a temporal experience that resists the relentless forward march of conventional musical narratives. Instead, these compositions expand and contract, creating pockets of auditory time that allow for deep, meditative engagement with the work's thematic concerns, like a stone gracefully skipping on the surface of placid water, each successive repetitive point of momentary contact creating its own centre of concentric ripples, their peripheral waves distorting the reflected sky under whose mirrored image dark depths lie still.
The opulent layers and vibrant timbres that define “Ephemeral Maps” are not merely aesthetic choices but functional elements in Demoulin's exploration of "the deep implications of time, space, psychology, and evolutionary biology", aiming to reveal the complex interplay between human consciousness and our rapidly changing environment.
Demoulin's work resists easy categorization by blurring the boundaries of time and harmony, inviting listeners to experience a form of auditory speciation by following a voluntary process to become the kind of audience who has evolved new listening modes adapted to the demands of our changing world.
These sonic mappings, like the self-actualized landscapes of voluntary progress they demand of the evolving listener, are in a constant state of flux, revealing new territories of meaning and experience as a portal towards a fluid, ever-advancing present, its currents serving as both compass and sextant, as we navigate the uncertain waters of the Anthropocene, in search of new ways of being.
3. “Latency” by Pandorama
Pandorama's "Latency" is a complex auditory heterotopia, a busy space where disparate sonic elements coalesce to create a multi-layered exploration of time, memory, and affect. This collaborative effort by Julien Demoulin (see previous review #2) and Davy Van Den Bremt functions as a nuanced assemblage of hidden relationships between diverse genres like dreamy synth-pop, the softest strains of smoky, late-night hip-hop, the cool elegance of post-rock and even the seductive neon hum of airbrushed vaporwave pads gliding over metronomic techno lullabies, tinging the overall sound with nostalgia, an ever-more active agent of narrative drama in a permanently online world of increasingly blurred boundaries between past and present.
The album's title, "Latency," serves as both a descriptor and conceptual framework, inviting us to consider the delays and disjunctions inherent in our perception and processing of overlapping aesthetics. This unresolved state of becoming, full of optimistic potential, extends beyond the purely technical, encompassing the temporal lag between experience and memory, between the moment of listening and the assurance of recognizing. Thus, with time, a rave anthem might be reformulated as a wistful electronic vignette or a hip-hop beat might become the backbone of a video-game adjacent track.
In this space of delayed reconsideration, Pandorama crafts a sonic environment that is at once familiar and destabilizing, evoking a sense of what might be termed 'future nostalgia'- a reproductive longing for potential reinterpretations of the past.
Thus cultivating a field of musical potentialities, their sounds grow from the amorphous, metamorphosing, jagged interstices between styles and forms. These, unexpectedly present and surprisingly pretty, sonic apparitions, sprout forth like delicate sidewalk flowers whose whimsical beauty triumphs peeking through the cracked metropolitan concrete. Spring eternal lies beneath the pavement.
Ethereal atmospheres and mesmerising summer vibes permeate the album as aesthetic choices, constructing a complex auditory chronotope, a listening space of multiple timelines flirtingly glancing at each other’s suggestive silhouette. These sonic elements evoke a hyper-real hedonism, one that exists more vividly in memory and imagination than in lived experience. Downtempo beats and melodies fluttering skywards create a sense of suspended animation, a temporal limbo where past, present, and future coexist in a state of productive tension.
Pandorama's deft navigation of a variety of electronic styles under a cohesive sound speaks to a broader cultural moment, one characterized by the simultaneous accessibility to everyone of all past musical forms. A broad palette of emotions reflects the complexities of contemporary subjectivity, where affect is increasingly mediated through technology and nostalgia serves as both comfort and critique.
Seductive and considered, the pretty sonic gloss of the overall album fronts deeper implications. This dual functionality - as both audio decoration and an object of intense mnemonic scrutiny - mirrors our increasingly complex relationship with sound in an era of ubiquitous (and ubiquitously available) music history.
The album invites both passive consumption and active engagement, blurring the boundaries between foreground and background, signal and noise, while contesting traditional ideas of interpreting the past: after all, the concurrent disparity of multiple timelines happening at once has always existed, even in pre-online non-algorithmic configurations - just think of synth-pop and new wave, or rap and techno, which were born just a few record bins and scruffy venues away from one another.
A form of temporal disruption, these reconfigured memories, when translated into the cerebral language of elegant electronic textures and sensual synth decor, create a cognitive dissonance that forces us to confront how technology mediates our relationship with the past. Memories of anticipation and good vibes become tinged with a melancholic awareness of the impossibility of fully recapturing these moments. Artificial solace comes at the cost of organic loss.
"Latency" engages in a form of sonic time travel, collapsing distinctions between retro and futuristic. This temporal flattening serves as a potent metaphor for our current cultural moment, where the past is constantly recontextualized and reimagined through the lens of the all-seeing panopticon of our present recollection apparatus and its archival infinity.
Tapping into a collective unconscious of sound and memory by creating music that feels at once deeply personal and universally resonant, Pandorama has crafted an auditory experience that functions as a mirror to our desires, memories, and anxieties about living between nostalgia and oblivion, a space resonating with the latent possibilities of electronic music to reshape our understanding of (the many, public and personal) music histories and our (multiple, personal and public) places within them.
4. "Nothing To Do But Dream (Summer)" by Joey Pecoraro
Between wakefulness and slumber, Joey Pecoraro's "Nothing To Do But Dream (Summer)" is an EP that swings gently like a hammock whose ends are tied to particularly verdant trunks of contemporary classical and ambient electronica, inviting us to interrogate the nature of easy listening as a worthy contender for respectable cultural status in late-stage capitalism.
A beauty of record, its 5 tracks overflow with mesmeric new-age harmonies and the softest of drones, their placid expanses enveloped in warm chords and decorated with riffs
Pecoraro, a Detroit native, draws upon a rich and international musical legacy while simultaneously deconstructing it. His compositions operate as mosaics, layering fragments of new-age harmonies, healing frequencies, and synth touches to create a soundscape that is at once familiar and curiously foreign.
This tension between recognition and estrangement is evidenced by the elective affinities that interlock each delicate piece of an abstract yet harmonious sonic puzzle as if composing a photograph depicting the subtle adumbrations of a cloudless twilight sky - an example of such a vague yet correct sonic fit is the repetition of a delicate piano phrase becoming a common denominator that unifies fragments of Eric Satie riffs, their faint lilt overheard while crossing paths with the beatific tranquillity of a Gigi Masin sketch.
This juxtaposition of heterogenous yet related choices makes for a powerful metaphor of the non-linear, para-chronological, contextually diasporic experience of the postmodern condition, whose manifestation of cultural memory and aesthetic history remains a rogue narrative even when it comes to something as ubiquitous as easy-listening modalities, or what is now known as new-age ambient music, a subgenre of environmental music that proposes sonic aesthetics as much as it promotes new ways of listening, and has come a long way towards the mainstream since its niche 70s origins.
The existential authority of music like this, quiet, pensive, thoughtful music with a pronounced aim for the beatific and harmonic, was born somewhere between the spaced-out experimentalism of the ‘70s Berlin, Cologne and Düsseldorf electronic avant-garde and the ecstatic communal ashrams in new-age San Francisco almost half a century ago.
The temporal and spiritual nature of this meditative, euphoric music rests beyond the jurisdiction of realistic evaluation, situational precarity, invisible market forces, survivalist contingencies, orthodox edicts and other systemically inherent power structures.
Part of this inherently revolutionary music tradition, "Nothing To Do But Dream (Summer)" is a powerful meditation on the nature of memory, identity, and the fluid boundaries between reality and imagination. Adopting the technique of détournement, the repurposing of cultural relics to create new meanings, the polyglottal nature of this musical fusion disrupts traditional notions of authorship and originality but also serves as a reclamation of the commodification of nostalgia in contemporary music production.
It is exactly by including a multitude of aural contexts recognizable as pleasant - soothing lullabies of childlike innocence, massage-parlour-appropriate iridescent shimmers of pixelated chorals, an overwhelming feeling of welcoming serenity- all of them guilelessly serving an obvious and common aesthetic purpose of decisively pleasing, consciously wistful, by design relaxing music,
Against digital acceleration and cultural amnesia, Pecoraro's work serves as a necessary pause - a moment of reflection in which we can ambitiously reimagine grand thematic arcs, like our relationship to time, space, and the ever-shifting terrain of contemporary existence.
5. “Everything Squared” by Seefeel
Seefeel's "Everything Squared" is a spectral echo of its own legacy, simultaneously reifying and deconstructing the band's sonic vocabulary. This six-track mini-album, recently released on the legendary Warp Records, is both a continuation and a reimagining of the group's oeuvre, situating itself within a complex network of cultural, technological, and personal histories.
The band's core duo, Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock have layered new sonic explorations over the ghostly remnants of their past iterations: the project's genesis, rooted in the reissue of their mid-90s material, speaks to the cyclical nature of musical production and consumption.
Clifford's approach to composition, characterized by a process of accretion and erosion, mirrors the EP's thematic concerns. The tracks, described as "remnants of something that has been almost entirely erased," manifest a hauntological aesthetic that is facilitated by advancements in production technology, allowing for a more nuanced exploration of texture and space than was possible in the band's earlier work.
The inclusion of bassist Shigeru Ishihara (aka Berlin-based DJ Scotch Egg) on two tracks introduces an element of rhythmic tension, his syncopated basslines providing a counterpoint to the ethereal atmospherics that have long been Seefeel's hallmark. This juxtaposition of the corporeal and the ethereal serves as a microcosm of the album's broader conceptual framework, which grapples with the materiality of sound in an increasingly virtual sonic landscape.
Peacock's vocals function less as a traditional melodic element and more as an additional instrument in the mix, as her wordless utterances, manipulated and recontextualized by Clifford, blur the boundaries between the human and the artificial, recalling Renate Knaup’s psychedelic vocalizations for Amon Düül II.
The album's title, "Everything Squared," suggests a multiplication or intensification of the band's aesthetic principles. This mathematical allusion resonates with the project's methodical approach to augmented sonic theatrics, a process through which every element is carefully calculated and positioned within the acoustic field. The result is a work that is at once precisely engineered and deeply emotive.
Seefeel's position within the broader musical landscape remains as ambiguous as ever, since "Everything Squared" continues in the tradition of genre-agnosticism, drawing from ambient, dub, and experimental electronic music without fully aligning with any single formalism, remaining distinct and characterized by a focus on texture and atmosphere.
Ultimately, "Everything Squared" stands as a testament to Seefeel's enduring relevance in a radically different musical landscape, not only adding a compelling new chapter to Seefeel's discography but also contributing to ongoing discussions about the role of experimental electronic music in interrogating our relationship to time, technology, and sonic experience.
6. "Cloud Suites" by Nico Georis
In "Cloud Suites," California-based keyboard player, composer & songwriter Nico Georis plays a ludic sonic game whose lyrical charm transcends mere ambient experimentation, offering instead a fragile meditation on the aleatory interplay between natural phenomena and human perception.
Inspired by the changing cloud formations observed through his studio windows, this eleven-track opus, emerged as informal piano improvisations that gradually became a complex negotiation of space, time, and memory, filtered through the prism of Georis's unique musical sensibility.
Georis's approach to composition, rooted in the tension between his classical training and personal DIY ethos, manifests here as a form of sonic alchemy. The artist transmutes ephemeral cloud formations into fleeting auditory experiences, each tracking a meticulously rendered soundscape that mimics and reimagines its celestial counterpart, a sonic pareidolia. This translation process—from visual to aural, from fleeting to fixed—interrogates notions of representation and reality on a synesthetic continuum that threatens to blur their differential outlines irrevocably.
The album's conceptual framework, ostensibly simple in its cloud-gazing premise, belies a deeper engagement with issues of temporality and embodiment. Georis's real-time improvisations, performed in his aptly named Sky Shed studio, represent attempts to capture what cannot be grasped, to render permanent that which is inherently transient, like a sonic snapshot that not only freezes time but also transforms it in audible vibrations.
This paradoxical endeavour echoes throughout the work, manifesting in tracks like "Cumuloids" and "Sundog," where atmospheric textures blur the line between natural and synthetic sound production.
Georis's methodology, blending live performance with tape collage techniques, situates "Cloud Suites" within a lineage of experimental electronic music that includes pioneers of musique concrète and early ambient innovators. Yet, the work resists easy categorization, seamlessly morphing across tracks creating a fluid listening experience that defies traditional notions of song structure and album sequencing.
The whispered softness of "Cloud Suites" makes for an effervescently light atmosphere, caressing the ears with deliquescent flutes, barely-strummed keys, and breathy, harmonica-like tones.
An elaborate sonic procession of gentle poise that is at times reminiscent of the kaleidoscopic tranquillity felt while listening to a Dorothy Ashby suite, this album is an elevating experience, both aesthetically pleasing and intellectually enlightening, entering emotional spaces that are simultaneously bracing and achingly wistful, suggestive of childhood experiments and lifelong musical passions, all sensitivities that mirror the album's thematic concerns with transience and permanence.
Ultimately, "Cloud Suites" is a nuanced negotiation of an arbitrary game played with natural phenomena via technological mediation, offering a compelling argument in favour of building a creative relationship with our environment while we attempt to capture and preserve the ephemeral dimension where the boundaries between earth and sky, past and present, self and other dissolve into a shimmering haze of sonic possibility.
7. "Golden Pear" by Omni Gardens
In "Golden Pear," Steve Rosborough's latest incarnation as Omni Gardens (he’s also, amongst other roles, label owner of Moon Glyph Cassettes & Records), we encounter a sonic topography that navigates the liminal spaces between nostalgia and futurism, analog warmth and digital precision. This album, released in October 2023, represents a significant evolution in Rosborough's oeuvre, expanding upon the moog-centric soundscapes of "Moss King" to craft a more nuanced and multifaceted auditory experience.
Rosborough's compositional approach in "Golden Pear" can be understood as a form of sonic archaeology in search of meditational timbres, unearthing and recontextualizing aural artefacts, mannerisms and styles from various traditions, phases epochs of quiet electronic and acoustic music, including ambient, new-age and other permutations.
The incorporation of mellotron flutes, vibraphones, and marimbas alongside the familiar Moog textures perfumes the atmosphere with an exotic note, lavishly decorating the aural refuge with light-hearted yet heartfelt notions of an optimistic past, a radiant present, and most importantly, imagined futures.
The album's use of self-captured field recordings further complicates this temporal narrative, injecting elements of the quotidian into the otherwise ethereal soundscapes. An audio bridge uniting the rainbow visions of West Coast utopianism with the sonic jetsam of everyday life, this juxtaposition of the mundane and the transcendent serves as a critique of the artificial boundaries often imposed between "functional/relevant/realistic" and "escapist" sounds in electronic music discourse.
The tranquil, pop atmosphere that permeates the album belies a more complex engagement with notions of accessibility and experimentalism, by couching avant-garde sonic explorations, such as the obvious influence of forgotten electronic music gurus like Mort Garson, within friendly melodic structures and pleasing harmonies, thus challenges listeners to reconsider their relationship to both popular and experimental musical forms and ultimately rehabilitating new-age music with snobs who persist to dismiss the genre as mere aural wallpaper for beauty spas and suburban meditation classes.
The album's fluctuation between "bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons" can be read as a commentary on the accelerated temporalities of late capitalism. In its unhurried pace and dreamy atmospherics, "Golden Pear" offers a form of temporal resistance, carving out spaces for contemplation and repose within the frenetic rhythms of contemporary life.
Rosborough's framing of the album as created for "relaxed home listening" is not merely a descriptive statement but a prescriptive one, suggesting a specific mode of engagement with the work. This directive challenges traditional notions of active versus passive listening, inviting audiences to consider the political implications of relaxation and domesticity in an era of constant productivity and public performance.
As the head of Moon Glyph Records, Rosborough's work as Omni Gardens cannot be separated from his role as a curator and facilitator of experimental electronic music. "Golden Pear" thus functions not only as a standalone artistic statement but as a node within a broader network of contemporary electronic music production and dissemination.
"Golden Pear" is a multivalent work engaged in a nuanced mediation of emotional tranquillity, tailor-made for domestic listening purposes, inviting exploration and contemplation, and encouraging listeners to immerse themselves into their own private, inner, rich soundworld.
8. “The Secret Lives of Birds” by Patricia Wolf
“The Secret Lives of Birds”, Portland, Oregon-based Patricia Wolf's latest sonic exploration, resists conventional musical taxonomies, instead forging a trans-species dialogue that interrogates the anthropocentric biases inherent in our auditory perceptions. Wolf's compositions resist facile categorization, operating in liminal spaces between field recording, ambient experimentation, and avian-inspired soundscapes.
This work begins as an ornithological fascination whose observations and field-recorded samples are used as compositional templates, instigating a critique of human exceptionalism and elucidating the critical examination of the natural/cultured binary. Wolf's meticulous sonic curation reveals the artificiality of boundaries between the world as-it-is and human-constructed domains, exposing the permeability of these ostensibly discrete realms.
The album's 12 tracks function as spaces of otherness that simultaneously represent, contest, and invert our normative sonic expectations. Wolf's compositions destabilize anthropocentric notions of musicality, rhythm, and harmony, inviting us to recalibrate their listening frameworks and engage with non-human modes of expression.
Wolf constructs a post-human sonic ecology that challenges listeners to recognize the agency and subjectivity of avian beings through her deft manipulation of field recordings that capture the sound of birds, sources which she proceeds to imitate, surround or respond to with electronic textures. This process is not merely about illustrating the sound and habitat of birds; it is a collaborative endeavour that acknowledges the co-creation of soundscapes by human and non-human actors, particularly focusing on the aesthetics of disappearance as species threatened with extinction and displacement, both their voices and their worlds lost forever beyond the silence of time past and chances lost.
Wolf's artistic praxis, the recordings of actual birdsong and the capturing of calls and trills, thus extends beyond mere representation, embodying a form of sonic activism that demands a reconsideration of our relationship with the more-than-human world. By foregrounding avian vocalizations, environmental contexts and behaviours, she compels us to confront the Anthropocene's devastating impact on biodiversity and ecosystem integrity.
“The Secret Lives of Birds” conducts itself as an elaborate sonic thesis that records the entanglements of human and avian existence, serving as both a celebration of interspecies communication and a requiem for vanishing soundscapes, daring listeners to expand their conception of what constitutes music, nature, and ultimately, the murmurations of sentience itself.
9.“time is but the drawing of a sword” by Lyndsie Alguire
Canadian Lyndsie Alguire's “time is but the drawing of a sword” is her 14th solo release, coming after more than a decade of prolific presence in the Montral ambient scene, featuring other musical collaborations and other artistic practices, mainly in the field of photography.
In this album, recently released on the excellent, Seattle-based, Hush Hush label, she presents a whimsical examination of emotional linearity, formulating an ambivalent statetement of affective non-specificity, a vague declaration of equivocal moods against any prevailing notions of sentimental clarity and correlation, if not causation, between feeling and the sonic realm.
Introducing ambient motifs to the softest of dream-pop songwriting, the album operates as a gentle exploration of sound's capacity to disrupt, reframe, and reconstitute our experiential relationship with emotions and how sound dictates our own existential frequencies.
Alguire's compositional approach abandons traditional structuralist paradigms, instead embracing a rhizomatic framework that allows for multiple points of entry and departure within each track. The album's expansive sonic palette is characterized by isolated elements that resist facile cohesion even when they gently resonate within a narrow, almost monodic, harmonic range, their psychoacoustic indeterminacy serving as a sonic metaphor for the inchoate, even contradictory, essence of emotional fragmentation: bittersweet, sad-happy, pain-pleasure.
By foregrounding the in-between state separating emergence from dissolution, Alguire compels listeners to confront the inherent instability of emotional definition, deliberately juxtaposing comforting warmth and fragile uncertainty as the music interrogates the false dichotomy between a sentimental illustration of security and an apotropaic gesture against precarity.
Alguire's use of field recordings alongside synthesized elements blurs the boundaries between the 'natural' and the constructed, proposing a sonic hybridity which reflects the increasing emotional entanglement between organic and technological realms, questioning the validity of such distinctions in our current evolutionary stage.
'time is but the drawing of a sword’, beyond its seductive service at the altar of pleasure principles like sentimental escapism or aesthetic indulgence, works as a soundtrack to unresolved emotions that resist the tyranny of psycho-specificity, serving as both a sonic map of fractured present and a speculative exploration of potential futures, compelling listeners to reconsider their relationship with emotional nomenclature, and ultimately, their own subjectivity.
10. "Winter Sun / Fever Dream" by Gaussian Curve
Gaussian Curve's latest offering, "Winter Sun / Fever Dream," represents yet another departure from conventional notions of temporality in musical production, subverting linear narratives of artistic development and the fetishization of the 'finished' work. For this release, the super-trio of Gigi Masin, Jonny Nash and Marco Sterk excavate two unfinished tracks from their last album, archived in a liminal space between conception and completion, a return and reanimation that interrogates the arbitrary demarcations between process and product.
The duo of tracks were birthed from the same creative matrix as their 2016 opus "The Distance," yet consigned to a six-year gestation, are revisited in a sui generis manner equally composed of idyllic serenity and spiked with reticent tension.
Unfolding in a stately pace, radiating seductive atmospherics as they float away in a hazy, post-genre, daze, both compositions are an eclectic cocktail of influences that intoxicatingly tickles our senses just so, drifting away lazily at a familiarly aloof, soothing pace whose character incorporates all sorts of cool tempered musical idioms, welcoming the listener at an almost recognizable meeting point where post-rock, Balearic, ambient, alternative electronica and yacht rock coalesce into yet another iteration of the ineffably cool.
Layers of Rhodes, guitar, and minimal electronics interweave to create a textural density that, perhaps surprisingly for Gaussian Curve, incorporates Masin’s vocals as well as 303 bass and 808 rhythms, signalling, if not a stylistic shift, then a meta-commentary on the nature of artistic creation in the digital age, where works exist in a state of perpetual potential revision and recontextualization of what constitutes a 'finished' work.
11. "Migratory" by Masayoshi Fujita
Masayoshi Fujita's "Migratory" reconfigures categorizations of world music via the detached aesthetics of ambient experimentalism, operating as a sonic assemblage of transnational subjectivity, dissecting reductive notions of cultural authenticity, to embrace instead a polyphonic approach that interrogates the very nature of place and belonging in its globalized perception of origin.
A virtuoso of the (metallic, expansive) vibraphone, the (wooden, warm) marimba and other idiosyncratic instruments such as the (Japanese free reed pipes) shō, Fujita recently relocated after 13 years in Berlin back to rural Japan and is now based in his new home and studio in a rural Japanese mountain village atop the coastal hills of Kami-cho, Hyogoa. This biographical detail could be used as a metaphor for the album's exploration of deterritorialized sonic landscapes. The repurposing of a local kindergarten into his own Kebi Bird Studio emblematizes the album's reconfiguration of space and memory, revisiting and re-imagining past chronologies of personal memoranda and stages achieved on the path to artistic blossoming.
The incorporation of vocal interventions and spoken word passages by avant-garde artists like the American poet and musician Moor Mother and the Japanese vocalist Hatis Noit instigates complex reactions and sonic interrelations that mirror the entangled nature of their multicultural provenience. Their personal authorship functions as a disruptive element, destabilizing the non-committal airiness of the overall gentle sonic ambience with the intentional specificity of language.
Fujita continues to be fascinated with the transient yet recurrent paths of birds and how their far-flung travels echo the journeys inspired by wanderlust in humans. This preoccupation with departures, arrivals, goodbyes and returns is reflected both in the album's title and its conceptual framework. The imagined perspective of migratory beings offers a non-anthropocentric lens through which to consider the fluidity of cultural transmission, a phenomenon transcending, like avian flight, the artificial boundaries of nation-states and musical genres.
Fujita's collaboration with his saxophonist father adds a transgenerational dimension to the work, collapsing temporal and spatial distances into a single sonic plane. This intergenerational dialogue serves as a microcosm for the album's broader exploration of cultural memory and transmission.
"Migratory" is superficially, and attractively, an elegant fusion of ethnic influences and ambient exoticism, its soothing refinement disarmingly unfolding into a sophisticated inquiry that documents the aesthetic fragmentation and spatial dislocation characteristic of our post-internet disassociation. Fujita's work serves as both a sonic map of our interconnected present and a speculative exploration of post-national futures, compelling listeners to reconsider their relationship with place, identity, and ultimately, the very nature of belonging in the 21st century.
12. "Come partire in un giorno di primavera" by Far away Nebraska
"Come partire in un giorno di primavera" by Far Away Nebraska (AKA the Italian Alessio Bertuzzi) is an album that performs as a sonic re-inscription, layering existential inquiry over a deceptively simple musical framework. This work transcends facile categorization as ambient or introspective indie, instead functioning as a complex auditory puzzle that interrogates the nature of identity, memory, and temporal disjunction in late capitalism.
The album's Italian title, translated in English to "How to Leave on a Spring Day," serves as a poetic flourish and conceptual fulcrum, around which notions of departure, rebirth, and cyclical existence revolve.
Alessio Bertuzzi's accompanying text operates as a parallel narrative that both complements and complicates the foggy, distant soundscapes evoked by the hazy blend of smudged drones and reverberating timbres, aural fugue states which occasionally come into momentary focus, revealing themselves as elaborately treated guitars and etiolated synth pads.
Bertuzzi's rhetorical questions—"Would I follow the same path that led me here? Would I become the same person again?"—destabilise linear conceptions of personal development and identity formation.
These ambivalent existential inquiries echo throughout the album's placid interiority, their equivocal nature soundtracked by a dialectical tension between sonic stasis and almost imperceptible transformation, a delicate arrangement balanced between eventuality and stillness, a sonic set-up that resembles a mechanism engineered for transubstantiating sound to atmosphere, the audio equivalent of an incense burner.
The evocation of a hypothetical departure "like closing a door, turning the corner and taking a train" functions as a critique of escapist fantasy, questioning the promises of mobility and self-reinvention through an imagined exodus, while simultaneously highlighting the increasing difficulty of genuine transformation in a hyper-connected world of ubiquitous footprints.
The recurrent motif of springtime renewal - "The flowers will blossom once again" - operates as a complex metaphor for the cyclical nature of personal and societal upheaval, enacting a forensic anatomy of progress while questioning the possibility of true reinvention.
"Come partire in un giorno di primavera" questions the pacifying comfort of easy resolutions or pat philosophical platitudes. Rather, it presents a sonic landscape that mirrors the ambiguity and uncertainty of contemporary existence. Far Away Nebraska compels listeners to confront the paradoxical aspects of identity, memory, and desire in an age of perpetual connectivity and digital permanence.
A multifaceted exploration, bold of intention and aesthetically considered, the album challenges listeners to reconsider their relationship with time, place, and selfhood, offering not answers but a sonic space for contemplation and potential transformation.
13. "performs Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby" by Dylan Henner
Dylan Henner's "performs Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby" is a multi-purpose sonic artifact that excavates and reconstructs the legacy of electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, simultaneously placing the avant garde of the early ‘60s within the historical scope of electronica as we know it today.
The delicate, precious, jewel like result transcends facile categorization as mere homage or cover album, instead functioning as a nuanced examination of musical historiography, technological evolution, and the shifting semiotics of electronic sound in the 21st century.
The project's genesis in Scott's 1962 collaboration with the Gesell Institute of Child Development serves not as a mere historical footnote, but as a critical point of departure for examining the intersection of scientific rationalism and artistic experimentation in mid-20th century America.
Henner's lush, complex, decidedly adult-orientated harmonics and carefully considered arrangements succeed in proposing a winsome reinterpretation of this work for today, collapsing temporal boundaries, and creating a dialogue across six decades that challenges linear narratives of musical progress and technological determinism.
Scott's original "Soothing Sounds for Baby" series, which followed a tripartite structure mirroring infant developmental stages, exemplifies the modernist belief in the potential for electronic sounds to shape human cognition and behaviour. Henner's revisiting of this concept serves as both homage and critique, acknowledging Scott's visionary approach while questioning the underlying assumptions about infant development and the nature of "soothing".
The predictable commercial failure of Scott's original release, juxtaposed with its subsequent cult status and now Henner's reinterpretation, institutes a complex chronology of cultural reception, rejection, oblivion, rediscovery and reevaluation. This circuitous trajectory mirrors the broader reexamination of early electronic music, from niche curiosity to revered legacy, highlighting the mutability of artistic value and underlining the role of historical context in shaping musical appreciation.
Henner's methodological idiosyncrasy- deliberately limiting his engagement with the source material to create a work of "creative misremembering" - is an apt analogy for the nature of cultural transmission and imagined, as opposed to inherited, history in the digital age.
This elaborate process of selective recall and improvisational reinterpretation mirrors the fragmented, non-linear ways we now follow online when engaging with musical history as our browser history sails following the vectors of algorithms, their unfathomable trajectories taking off towards unknown horizons of cultural legacy, creative influence and artistic authenticity.
"performs Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby" is much more than a straightforward reimagining of a historical curiosity. Instead, connecting the dots between contemporary ambient / new-age aesthetics and the pioneering simplicity of mid-century experimental electronica, this album blooms as an exotic auditory hybrid, documenting the evolving affinity between technology, musicality, and human development over the past six decades. Henner compels listeners to reconsider not only Scott's original work but the very nature of musical legacy, technological mediation, and, informed by the far-from-negligible influence of the original intention, the role of electronic sound in shaping human consciousness from infancy onward.
Operating as a meta-commentary on the nature of creativity, influence, and cultural memory in the 21st century, this album challenges us to reconsider our relationship with musical history, technological progress, and the ever-shifting boundaries between past and present, original and interpretation, soothing and stimulating.
14. "Associated Sine Tone Services" by Associated Sine Tone Services
Associated Sine Tone Services is billed as a ‘conceptual collaboration between analogue oscillator wielders’ Jeremy Young, Nicolas Bernier (both from Montreal, Canada), and the hyper-prolific Dutchman Rutger Zuydervelt AKA Machinefabriek.
Their eponymous debut transcends facile categorization as mere experimental electronic music. As they state in the liner notes, “…this is music, over sound design, contrary to what listeners might expect from an album entirely built from sine waves and the analogue fidelity of vintage studio tools.”, embracing a polyphonic approach that is surprisingly accessible and emotive, even emotionally charged
The project's genesis in a literal dream adds anecdotal curiosity, framing its somnolent indeterminacy and hazy atmosphere as a sonic illustration of subconscious influence, an audible actualization implementing a nocturnal vision into a tangible sonic collaboration, a process that bridges the distance between imagination and reality.
The trio's deliberate embrace of a "pop-melodic approach", far from a grasp towards simple accessibility or an attempt for commercial concession, is a subversive critique of expectations surrounding experimental electronic music, challenging the artificial dichotomy between "pure" sound design and more structured musical forms. This methodological tension creates a dialectical space where the boundaries between abstraction and melody, noise and music, are constantly negotiated and redefined.
The exclusive use of sine wave oscillators and analogue processing techniques enacts the dual role of being both a technical constraint and a conceptual framework that interrogates notions of technological progress and sonic fidelity. By limiting themselves to these "vintage studio tools," ASTS create a nostalgic disjunction that posits a cyclical relationship between past and present sonic paradigms.
The album's sonic palette, described as “moody and cinematic" with "velvety textures and dense timbres," operates in an expansive space shared between ambient, experimental, and soundtrack music, reconsidering preconceptions about the emotional and narrative potential of sine wave-generated sound.
The project's visual meta-narrative both embraces and subverts the tropes of avant-garde culture as it references library music record sleeve aesthetics, an ironic gesture about the commodification of experimental sound and the performative aspects of electronic music production.
"Associated Sine Tone Services" transcends mere academic declaration, by leaning into narrative formalism, consciously evoking incidental music for science fiction movies, background sounds for science documentaries or effects created for radiophonic archives. As an example of the evolving semiotics of electronic sound in the 21st century, it challenges listeners to reconsider the nature of musical authorship, and ultimately, the very definition of what constitutes "modern music".
15. "my bright abyss” by Infinite Body
Los Angeles resident Kyle Parker's "my bright abyss," released under the moniker Infinite Body, defies easy categorization as another iteration of the ambient or modern classical genres, while its carefully constructed sense of timeless fragility questions the revisionist potential of piano manipulation in the post-internet era.
The gauzy textures and whispered playfulness of "my bright abyss" are simultaneously abstract and recognizable, sometimes beguilingly inconclusive like a late Morton Feldman piece, at other junctures charmingly whimsical like a Virginia Astley interlude, their sophisticated gentleness suggesting an intuitive relationship between catharsis and sentimentality, vulnerability and honesty.
Rolling piano notes, traditionally a symbol of classical refinement, become a meditational space of contemplation and reimagining, compelling listeners to reconsider the instrument's persistent expressive potential, even when employed in a manner not particularly different from the way a post-romantic Belle Époque composer would approach a simple piano sketch.
Parker's embrace of early 20th-century compositional styles offers a ready-made structural motif that guarantees formal refinement by adding a decorative framework that is nostalgically evocative of the period when serious music could afford to ignore melodic discipline and thematic decisiveness by remaining as effortlessly graceful as the grand gestures exhibited in a Chopin sonata, itself mimicking an agile improvisation.
The inherent theatricality of this historical regard is countered by the spare treatment of each one of the primary sonic sources, which include soft, almost incidental pads, a light layering of different takes echoing the same phrase within the same track or even the juxtaposition of intimately fragile piano riffs with vague snatches of everyday conversations and random birdsong.
This counterpoint of suggestive past and personal present becomes a subversive aesthetic choice, challenging notions of technological determinism and the fetishization of high-end equipment in contemporary music culture.
The album’s psychoacoustic profile, beyond the primary qualities of Parker’s virtuosic playing and his relatively austere studio techniques, retains an almost antique aural patina and period timbral quality. Associated with an elegantly measured compositional depth and tonal restraint, the delicate spirit of each meticulously considered piece allows "my bright abyss" to exist in a temporal disjunction that folds the past into the present.
"my bright abyss" is a lyrical collection about the evolving semiotic nature of the avant garde in the post-internet era, compelling listeners to reconsider their relationship with musical history, emotional catharsis, and what constitutes "experimental" in an age of constant sonic innovation and recycling.
16. “Music For Presence” by Mark Barrott
In avid anticipation of his new LP, out this November, I suggest we revisit a blissful EP of four summery delights, released back in 2017 by the always dependable Mark Barrott.
A legendary figure in the Balearic genre as a solo artist, DJ, remixer, producer and boss of the revered International Feel label, Barrot’s peripatetic artistic trajectory manages a complex negotiation between disparate sonic territories and geographical influences. The lush, organic sounds of his eponymous project are always exemplary fusions of rarefied, erudite influences, distilled and metabolized into their most elegant, soothing essence.
Barrott's final relocation to rural Ibiza, after years of being based in Berlin, then Uruguay where he founded his popular and well-respected indie label, functions not as simple biographical detail, but as a potent metaphor for the interplay between environment and artistic output.
These geographical shifts, and their parallel, existential narratives catalyze a sonic reimagining that challenges reductive notions of what Balearic music is, suggesting a more nuanced exploration of possible sounds that can be included under the wide umbrella of what can be summed up as eclectic, laid-back sounds appropriate for holiday islands, chill-out rooms, sunset bars and after-parties.
Barrot’s music performs as an autonomous zone of fluid sonic exploration, operating as a curatorial platform that interrogates the boundaries between exotica, free-form jazz, ambient, new age, electronica and any other conceivable genre, influence or style that encourages the languid sensuality that is the common denominator underlining the entire album,
Resisting interpretation as simple ambient escapism, the album documents the tension between its idyllic surroundings of conception and its indeterminate origins of inspiration, disqualifying aspirations of finality and demistyfying notions of perfection, compelling its audience to participate in a more nuanced understanding of how place, personal history, and sonic experimentation intersect, resulting in contemporary soundscapes appropriate for any nomadic inclination searching for a momentary glimpse of fleeting paradise, imaginary or tangible.
17. "Mirages" by Jonathan Fitoussi & JB Dunckel
Another gem from the vaults, "Mirages" by Jonathan Fitoussi and JB Dunckel, was released back in 2019. Its bright, sleek sound and soft, dreamy harmonies deserve re-appreciation for their persistently fresh allure, rooted in the warm, soothing tones of analogue synthesizers, prog rock flounces and an overall vibe of spacey Kosmische psychedelia.
Unburdened by complex compositional approaches, the tracks float by on a stream of modulated loops, carefully measured pads and woozy drones, with occasional twinkles sparkling in the otherwise quite linear soundscape. Surprise splashes of electric guitar, keyboard micro-riffs, angelic choirs or rudimentary percussion pre-sets, add to the early ‘70s faux-naive vibe reminiscent of Kraftwerk’s “pocket calculator pop” and other such pioneers of democratized electronics. More than a straightforward genre routine, the album stands on its own next to progenitors like Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream.
The project was initiated in Xavier Veilhan's purpose-built studio in the context of the Venice Biennale, a point of departure that speaks for the increasingly blurred boundaries between visual art, music, and architectural space.
Fitoussi and Dunckel's methodological approach in terms of arrangements - utilizing "synthesizers amassed through the years" is not an exercise gear fetishism, but a complex negotiation between personal history, technological evolution, and the search for instrumental "essence" and "soul." This focus on revealing the intrinsic qualities of electronic instruments challenges reductive notions of synthesizers as cold or impersonal, instead furthering their established capacity as conduits for deeply expressive and emotive sound creation.
The album's sonic spectrum, a melange of futuristic polish and contemplative restraint, described as ranging from very cinematographic to very direct, creates a dialectical tension between abstraction and immediacy, questioning the artificial dichotomy between the ambient avant garde and pop music, boldly proposing a continuum of welcoming accessibility coupled with forward-thinking experimentation that reflects the complex nature of what is electronic music today, a progressive outlook that incorporates its own pioneering yesterdays within the folds of its visionary ontology.
The droll characterization (by its creators) of "Mirages" as an "upgraded form of instrumental electronic music" is a drily humorous description of the music contained therein, as if one is reading the ingredients label listed on the back of an audible supermarket product, urging listeners to reconsider their expectations and preconceptions about what constitutes "advanced" or "progressive" electronic music.
The metaphorical invocation of "fruitful pictures arisen from a desert that forgot to be arid" is a poetic flourish, but also an elaborate commentary on the generative potential of seemingly barren creative landscapes. This surreal imagery of improbable fecundity challenges notions of artistic scarcity and limitation, delivering a nuanced acuity of how constraint and abundance interact in the creative strategy.
“Mirages”, sounding both familiar and startlingly new, embodies the fulfilled promise of early electronica pioneers: it’s contemporary music that is undeniably dependent on technological evolution and informed by a mechanistic strain of modernist aesthetics, yet, as if giving a voice to the ghost in the machine, it manages to capture successfully every slight permutation and nuanced synonym of intimate sensations, fragile sentiments, strong emotions and indefinable feelings.
18. "Moon Set, Moon Rise" by Salenta + Topu
"Moon Set, Moon Rise" by Salenta + Topu, was first released in 2021 and has since become a cult classic. An improvisational collaboration that immediately charms its listeners with the assured air of inspired serendipity, the dialogue between Salenta’s “alternatively-tuned” spinet piano and Topu’s cello remains organic, intuitive and thoughtfully choreographed throughout the 17 brief vignettes included in this release, only a small selection out of the many hours recorded.
The intimate outcome, emotionally generous even as it remains ultimately faithful to the distinguished aloofness of its jazzy sophistication, assembles an affectionate intricacy that flouts its origin as simple acoustic experimentation, celebrating the nature of artistic synchronicity and the evolving role of imperfection in musical creation.
Salenta + Topu's initial recording session, using an old recorder in a state-of-the-art studio creates a dialectical tension between modernity and antiquity, questioning notions of progress and fidelity in sound recording, raising inquiries that are not only expressed by the trembling timbre of the old piano but also its symbiotic relationship with the virtuosic cello swoops, cadences and textures.
Beyond nostalgic eccentricity, specifically adopting alternative modes of vibration and resonance, the album disrupts notions of musical correctness, asserting a more expansive understanding of what constitutes sonic propriety.
Topu's decision to tune his cello to match the piano's intonation creates a microtonal dialogue between instruments that transcends conventional harmonic relationships, in search of a more fluid and responsive methodology for inter-medium communication.
"Moon Set, Moon Rise" compels listeners to reconsider their relationship with musical serendipity, instrumental imperfection, and the very nature of what constitutes "tuning" and "composition" in the realm of acoustic experimentation. It challenges us to move beyond reductive categorizations of genre or technique, instead engaging with a finer insight into how chance encounters and deliberate adaptations can merge to create a sonic universe that is both recognizable and startlingly innovative.
19. "B-3 Vol. 2" by krajenski
In "B-3 Vol. 2," krajenski concoct an intoxicating musical elixir that simultaneously deconstructs and reifies the Hammond organ's position within the contemporary musical landscape, inscribing new sensual paths onto the well-worn grooves of funk, bossa nova, and Latin genres while excavating the spectral remnants of their historical contexts.
The album's genesis - a two-day studio recording of numerous improvisations led by German organ player, composer and band leader Lutz ‘Hammond’ Krajenski with fellow musicians and producers Dirk Berger and Samon Kawamura - suborns a deliberate destabilization of traditional production methodologies, prioritizing spontaneity and unplanned sonic encounters, resulting in indeterminate soundscapes that audaciously exist both within and outside established genre boundaries, decisive enough as examples of jazzy exotica but also expansive enough to transcend stereotypical mannerisms.
This non-committal approach yields an alluring ambivalence by reducing the extended improvisations down to their "essence", evoking a compression of time and coaxing a distillation of atmosphere.
These summarizing techniques, being sophisticated editing methodologies, manage to retain the original gestures towards an authenticity that is simultaneously constructed and genuine, managing to be at once disarmingly honest and stylishly affected, in other words, they are counter-intuitive music production disciplines that are flexible enough to deliver a convincing performance and proudly represent the stories told in a manner eloquent enough for suspension of disbelief.
In between the smoky instrumentals, there are momentary detours of a more soul-adjacent flavour, like Italian vocalist MOORE's rare groove vocal, which introduces a soulful element that humanizes the overall high-concept urbanity, while Nené Vàsquez's spoken word piece is an endearing homage to the Hammond organ but also a humorous, metadiscursive, commentary on the fetishization of analogue technologies in an increasingly digital world.
"B-3 Vol. 2" can be interpreted as a work of sonic fiction, one that interrogates the very notion of musical 'journeys' and their place within a fractured temporality where past, present, and potential futures collide in a kaleidoscopic array of timbres and rhythms.
krajenski not only pays homage to the Hammond organ's legacy but also charts new territories for its application in contemporary electronic music, aligning the nostalgic tones and antique textures of his chosen instrument with a modern sensibility that actively remaps the terrain of jazz-funk and the outer edges of lounge music.
By creating new nodes of connection between disparate sonic and cultural lineages, krajenski cultivates hybrid sounds in the fertile soil of an atemporal present, a field of references well sown, sprouting pleasantly recognizable vibrations of soothing harmonies and swinging winsomeness, florid memories of half-remembered favourites, whose welcome resemblance spontaneously reappears in our listening expeditions, like recurrent promises of spring eternal.
20. “Fragments” by Fallen
Last but most certainly not least in this impressive list of beautiful music, “Fragments” by Fallen, is the latest sonic offering of the super-prolific Italian maestro Lorenzo Bracaloni AKA The Child of a Creek, released as a 10” EP on the Icelandic Móatún 7 imprint.
Revitalising the concept of spiritual music, its esoteric austerity and lyrical beauty illustrate an elegant, nuanced, deeply felt exploration of the dialectics of existence, encapsulating the dualities of life's cruelty and wonder. Bracaloni, operating as "Fallen," (just one of his many aliases) manages to propose a sonic ritual that is both introspective and expansive, reflecting a perennial and universal quest for inner equilibrium.
The album's title, “Fragments”, is emblematic of its thematic core—life's ephemeral moments, each a fleeting yet vivid shard of experience, are the biographical source of inspiration for Bracaloni's meticulously constructed compositions, which remain intriguingly enigmatic in their reserved temperance yet also possess a spontaneous lightness, allowing for uplifting harmonies to evolve organically, often straying down unforeseen paths of spectacularly picturesque beauty.
This cinematic approach is evident in the album's structure, where each track glides with an unforced fluidity, occasionally adorned with gently rippling piano licks and echoing bells, a delightful procession of enchanting sonorities reflecting on serenely gleaming surfaces, floating away at the leisurely pace of a pastoral idyll slowly and irrevocably passing us by.
Musically, “Fragments” traverses a spectrum of ambient and experimental soundscapes, ignoring conventional formalities. The album opens with a series of serene, meditative pieces that encourage tranquillity and invite introspection with their harmonious frequencies of almost subliminally discrete hymnal choirs, their refined cascades of breezy wonder more enhanced than interrupted by the harp-like plucking of synthetic strings, softly strummed guitars, lilting vestiges of piano riffs, fragile percussion and multiple layers of time-delayed, lofty, expansive drones.
As the album progresses, Bracaloni delves into more experimental territory, incorporating elements of nature and abstract sonic textures, introducing the context of unpredictability, where moments of calm are often disrupted by unforeseen upheavals.
Bracaloni's use of melodic accords and harmonic arrangements is both innovative and expressive, even sometimes adhering to forgotten paradigms of sonic aesthetics inherited by his Italian heritage. Between the lines, one can hear echoes of baroque hedonism a la Vivaldi or even the plangent neo-romanticism of legendary ‘70s Italian soundtrack composers like the iconic Stelvio Cipriani or Pierro Piccioni, to name just two of a brilliant post-war generation that redefined the profile of instrumental music within the orchestral domain.
Bracaloni employs a range of acoustic and electronic instruments to create his rich, layered compositions and sonic environments that are at once immersive and deliberative. The painstaking attention to detailed technical excellence in the production process is evident, with each crystalline sound source perfectly placed in time and space to enhance the overall, unapologetically existential, ontology of the album.
The autobiographical nature of “Fragments” adds another layer of emotional depth to the album. Bracaloni's personal experiences and emotions are woven into the fabric of the music, creating a deeply intimate listening experience. The album's lyrical content, though sparse, is poignant and thought-provoking, offering insights into the artist’s imaginarium.
Recurring themes of acceptance and resilience are illustrated in sound by the perseverance of gestural movements and the tonal equanimity that informs the charged emotional context resonating throughout the album, providing a centred core of continuity and coherence.
“Fragments” is a masterful work and bold evidence of Lorenzo Bracaloni's artistic vision, conveying complex emotions through imaginative soundscapes, intricate compositions and an ethereal sonic palette whose nocturnal allure makes it not only a compelling addition to Bracaloni's discography but a most significant contribution to contemporary music.
Text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou, exclusively for the Psychonaut Elite, Berlin, October 2024