Third List: Ambient

09Feb08

I have decided to go with an ambient list this time around. Ambient is fairly new to me, having only found its merits through diligent listening and massive amounts of willpower. Seeing as how I don’t even have the patience to listen to most dance songs all the way through, I am very surprised with myself for actually being able to appreciate ambient. To be honest, I have forced myself to find the appeal of ambient music, so that I may build a defense against my amphetamine inspired personality. There is a certain calmness, composure and nuance that makes ambient music appealing, but certainly works against honing my inappropriate humour skills.

Ambient music is serious fucking business, and, unfortunately, this pretension can get in the way of musicality. For example, listening to Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek’s (Fennesz is another artist I fail to understand) “Chello Recycling/Chello Drowning” I can’t help but feel like I’ve been had. For a good three minutes of the arduously long Chello Drowning, there are some rain noises and an irritating metallic insect drone. How is this shit music? I can go outside and leave a tape recorder in a fucking swamp during a rainstorm to hear this; I want some sort of creativity and initiative. Ambient is music’s version of abstract art: sometimes you get a Jackson Pollock and sometimes you get a bunch of atrocious looking random colours flung on to the canvas from some no talent fucker’s ass.

Besides all that, there were a couple very good releases last year that I listen to rather frequently, although I am sure that my literacy in ambient is simply not good enough to know all the relevant artists, nor the best material. So, as an amateur, I hope the following list is satisfactory for you experts. Just so you all know, my exercising is still hurting my muscles, but it is also making my body feel and look fabulous. If you’d like to see what my painful routine has done for me, look here (I am so fucking strong).

September Collective “All The Birds Were Anarchists” (Melodic Ambient)
[Mosz; 2007]

Head over to their myspace to have a listen.

I put this on to review, having not listened to it in quite a while, and holy fuck is it good. I mean, this album is exactly what I want out of ambient: patience, but with an eye to melody. A perfect balance between traditional instruments and electronic sounds also make for an organic, but surreal sound. I listen to this album and seriously feel as if I am hanging out in an enchanted forest with elves. I do have a fascination with fantasy, and so the albums of this genre that I tend to enjoy most are ones that are ripe with escapism—preferably the kind of escapism that takes me as far away as possible. When I listen to ambient, I don’t want to still be in my bedroom with my headphones on, I want to be as gone as an autistic baby on acid. September Collective rarely fails to deliver, and even when they do, I am still in the enchanted forest; only I faintly start to feel my headphones and blurry images of my desk and bed creep back into my vision.

Eluvium “Copia” (Classical Ambient)
[Temporary Residence; 2007]

There are some free sounds here.

“Classical” ambient is simply supposed to refer to the fact that Eluvium’s album is comprised mostly of classical piano, strings and brass instruments. Obviously, this doesn’t mean we are dealing with fucking Bach or something, but it does put into perspective Eluvium’s predilection for ambient symphonies. I don’t know much about Eluvium except for the music, so I guess this is what I’ll talk about. First of all, I have to comment on how beautiful this album is. I am not predisposed to outbursts of emotion, except for maybe disgust, so it is a telling sign of the power of Eluvium’s music that I feel like I want to just float into the clouds and cry—World Vision has got fucking nothing on Eluvium. All the songs on this album are long, consisting of drawn out chord progressions that run the length of the track, while Eluvium builds atop them either strings or a piano melody, pushing the possibilities of the simple chord changes to their limits. “Prelude For Time Feelers” is one of Eluvium’s piano odysseys that I simply HAVE to mention. Beginning with a solo piano, the song slowly climaxes with the inclusion of droning strings, and a melodic change of pace that is enough to make even my cynical, atheist ass religious, if only for a moment.

Sylvain Chauveau “Nuage” (Classical Ambient)
[Type; 2007]

There are some tunes from Nuage here.

Chauveau’s Nuage goes a different direction than most ambient artists, dispatching with the protracted song structure that seems to define ambient, and instead opting for small outings into different themes, the longest song clocking in at 4:44. While artists like Eluvium draw as much blood from one chord progression as is humanly possible, Chauveau clearly has ADHD and seems to get tired of his songs rather quickly. Such a structure could kill many artists by putting strain on their archive of songs, sometimes forcing them to dip into the gutter just to fill an album. At times Chaveau does this, at least it seems like it to me, with songs like “Troubles”, aptly named for a song that sounds like it was written for an esoteric interpretive dance routine that probably includes obscure references to obscure artists that only the “enlightened” few can possibly “access”. That said, Chaveau almost always redeems himself; for every folly there is a gem to match.

Filed under: Ambient, Eluvium, Lists, Music, September Collective, Sylvain Chauveau   |  Leave a Comment