Record Review

Record Review: Innesti – Diaphanous

Innesti
Diaphanous 
I’ve been enjoying Innesti’s sound work for the last few years. I’m a well-established listener of Soma FM’s DroneZone and each time Innesti’s work comes on my ears prick up and I just pause and listen to the wonderful sounds and textures. This was my starting point when I received a release announcement from the excellent Past Inside the Present label and their release of Innesti’s most recent recording Diaphanous.

There’s a wonderfully poetic write-up in the release notes that unburden this writer of trying to add even greater poetics to the lush and centering sounds of Diaphanous, specifically:

“As with many tracks on the album, its background drones seem to appear from behind a mountain, conveying a humbling sense of scale as they sweep across the glacial valley in between sonic swells.”

“…crystalline flickers, approximating some psychic communication between nebulas, impossibly far away and millions of years in the past.” 

These beautiful passages only begin to frame the excellently organic sounds that Innesti has put together on Diaphanous. 

Diaphanous gives me a sense of looking through an old 18th century wavy glass window that’s aged to a point of abstraction; You can still make out shapes and colors, but it’s partly obscured and without sharp, well-defined edges, creating a rich and impressionistic soundscape that evokes a peaceful, floating gaze. This is something not lost on the author of the PR write-up, as they mention: “The very title, Diaphanous, suggests the scarcely seen, or the partially obscured…” I can’t say enough great things about the small sampling of the work that I’ve heard thus far and I look forward to listening to the recording in its entirety upon release. Well done!

Diaphanous comes out October 16, 2024 on Bandcamp in both digital and with a beautifully designed hard copy digipak option, limited to 200 – Get it here: https://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/diaphanous

-Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

Record Review: Deckard Croix – Weltschmerz

Deckard Croix
Weltschmerz 
Deckard Croix’s work Weltschmerz, a German word that combines ‘world’ and ‘pain’ to create a sort of poetic melancholy, as Carl Jung talked about it, when I first heard the term, may have the undertones of a poetic existential ennui, but there’s a hopefulness here; like a winter morning sunrise, when the sun is still low enough to cast beautiful hushed oranges in the moments before it reaches a low, gray cloud cover and disappears, absorbed into the gray-black nothing. Croix’s work is fleeting, beautiful and understated. Weltschmerz, to my mind, acts as a chapter in Croix’s far-reaching catalog, with each release, sound and story being a patch on a quilt that contributes to a warming whole – This is the best of what psychedelic music is. Get it on Bandcamp here.

Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

Record Review: Ed Herbers – Upper Atmosphere

Ed Herbers
Upper Atmosphere

Matt Borghi Music Review Ed Herbers Upper Atmosphere

Ed Herbers’ Upper Atmosphere is a deep space-bound voyage that is reminiscent of the best that Jonn Serrie and the late Constance Demby’s work had to offer in both sound and content. Upper Atmosphere is ‘space music’ in the purest sense of the term; a music that gives you a space for thinking and being, but also one where the spaciousness of the sound, timbre and textures allows a listener to get absorbed into the work and taken in. When I listen to Upper Atmosphere, I feel like I’m meeting up with an old friend and by that I mean it’s a warm summer night in the late 1990’s, I”m just getting settled into a new home about an hour outside of the Detroit suburbs, when I was randomly surfing the radio dial to see what new sounds my new location might reveal and I discovered Music from the Hearts of Space; Stephen Hill’s disembodied voice eerily booming through the sub-woofer on my 8-speaker AIWA stereo and I was hearing, fresh and anew the music of VidnaObmana, Kevin Keller, Jeff Pearce, Richard Bone and Steve Roach. That experience became my entry point into the music that would come to define the last 25+ years and most of my adult life – It was a wonderful time of sonic and musical awakening. Upper Atmosphere takes me back to that place, that space, that state of mind, covering, somehow the panoply of that artistic canon. I can’t guarantee that Upper Atmosphere will transport you like some kind of time-travel back to your simpler self, but I can’t guarantee that it won’t either. Do yourself and listen to Ed Herbers’ Upper Atmosphere, your peace of mind will be glad you did. Get it on Bandcamp here.

Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

Record Review – Thorny – Flood

Composed and performed on synthesizers and processed bass guitar, Thorny’s Flood is a tense wash of evocative soundscapes that pulses and writhes across the face of an unsuspecting landscape. Not surprising then that Flood is a sonic journey born from the depths of central Vermont’s devastating floods in July 2023.

JD Ryan says it best when he says that Flood reflects the duality of nature—its splendor and wrath—encapsulating the raw power, the ruin, the sorrow, and ultimately, the resilient spirit of hope. Flood manages to capture this sentiment perfectly without the use of a single sample of falling rain or rolling water, a literal aspect that takes away from the creativity too often, JD Ryan doesn’t indulge that tired ambient music trope. In fact, he took the hard road: Building that flow into the compositions from the ground up – You just listen and you can hear the unyielding fluidity, as sound is possibly the only thing that can move, with the flowing, forward-moving urgency of water.

Flood is a wholly original work and one where JD Ryan has created his own unique and moving sonic vocabulary. Never one to miss the opportunity for a pun, I dare say the floodgates are open on JD Ryan’s unique musical vocabulary. Fans of Steve Roach’s more earthy soundscapes and VidnaObmana’s early works will truly enjoy Flood. 

More info: 

https://witherwillow.bandcamp.com/album/flood-2
https://www.witherwillow.com/

Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Record Review – Jeff Greinke – Oceanic

High praise for Jeff Greinke’s newest recording,Oceanic, a stand out gem in a world of music streaming services and YouTube channels overflowing with so-called “ambient music” choices. Oceanic has moved me, musically and as an artist, in a way that I haven’t been moved in years. I admit, I’ve become jaded. I’ve heard a lot, listened to a lot and forgotten a lot of what I’ve heard. The prominence of ambient and drone music on streaming services with playlists featuring ambient music for sleep, yoga, meditation, relaxation, study, reading and just about any other inert activity you can think of and some others you haven’t thought of yet, hasn’t helped the situation. So much of what’s being released these days is uninspired at best and forgettable at worst. With Oceanic, I’m reminded of Jeff’s early recording Cities In Fog, a sonic and artistic touchstone for me, personally; a recording that moved me to become a recording artist myself. So, I guess, I’m biased, but I’ll gladly accept that label if it means that I get to listen to works of art like Oceanic over and over. If it were a tape, it would already be nearly worn out or at least the printed ink would be disappearing on the cassette and if it were a CD I would be on my way towards my second copy, having scratched it, taking it in and out of the CD player so many times already. I’ve been at this longer than most, but not longer than Jeff and not longer than Projekt Records; it warms my heart to know that quality is still a consideration and it’s finding its way into the universe. Do yourself a favor and give this a listen as soon as you can; repeated listens are only more rewarding.

More information here:

https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/oceanic
https://www.projekt.com/store/product/pro00417/

Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath