Rapid Fire Reviews: Ambient, Mostly

This week on the show where I try and often fail to limit myself to shorter reviews so I can cover more records in a year we are covering some ambient or ambient parallel projects. This genre certainly isn't for everyone so if you're reading this, you wonderful soul, lets go on this journey together. Enjoy <3

Daughter - Raum

Raum is a collaborative project between Liz Harris AKA Grouper and experimental musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Raum actually released an album prior to this back in 2013 thought I had never even heard of it until I listened to it a few times to make this review. On Daughter the duo are blending a very conventional style of ambient music with two other distinct elements, field recordings and the droning abstraction that dominated Grouper's very good album from last year. That creates some really beautiful and even striking moments like on the opening song Walk Together where the thick ambient haze is suddenly completely interrupted by a random vocal recording before being re-introduced again shortly after. I've read some of the backstory about this record though I'll be the first to admit I'm not a total expert on either of these artists or the late filmmaker who this record is dedicated to. It is impossible not to notice how important of a theme walking is to this record from the song titles to the multiple times it deploys field recordings of what sounds like footsteps on gravel roads. Some of my favorite moments on the record are when it is comfortable just towering up an overwhelming amount of sound as the layers of ambient drone start to build up into this impenetrable wall and out of nowhere a distorted or shrill field recording just erupts into the mix, it's overwhelming. I can't say I'm quite as enamored with the quieter more serene and naturalistic points on the record, while they are certainly easy to listen to I don't find them as easy to get lost in. But even on tracks like these the pair find ways to elicit compelling emotional responses. The rising piano keys on title-track Daughter are the best example of this as the song doesn't really grab me with it's bird sounds and gentle sway in the first half but once those keys start to get louder, more prominent and all consuming I just can't look away. The closing track to the album is a mammoth 20 minute song called Passage which at first is by far the most stark presentation on the record. While the piano keys are prominent when they appear they echo off into a very deep and very empty mix that is uncharacteristic for a record that typically has numerous layers of drone working at all times. It's a strange way to end the album off that almost feels like it was meant for something else entirely, but I find it to be a sonically compelling moment nonetheless. While this isn't rewriting the book on ambient music it clearly deploys effective tactics coveted by talented and experienced musicians that make for a rewarding listen. 7/10

Plonk - Huerco S.

Huerco S. is one of the numerous aliases of American electronic musician Brian Leeds whose music I haven't engaged with in quite a while. I seem to remember hearing the previous Huerco S. album back in 2016 but my review of it has been lost to time since then. Regardless I know it was curious if not slightly hesitant. It was enough to make me excited about hearing new music from him which in this case is finally emerging as Plonk. The very formless and abstract compositions on this record remind me of a number of different experimental electronic music projects but the chimes have a silky beauty to them that makes some points on here feel much more alive than your average electronic album. Some of these tracks shoot for a purely serene sensation while others aim for something more dramatic but when all is said and done I think the record occasionally undercuts itself from pulling these moves off. I do think that the length of this record is a bit of an issue, not because it doesn't have enough ideas or the songs don't differentiate themselves enough though. The issue I have is with the ideas that are here being stretched out well beyond their welcome. These tracks don't have progressions that develop in steady ways any compositional changes are pretty rapid and without pieces that necessarily build on top of themselves and develop, particular passages can feel like they run on for way too long. The one song that really divided me is Plonk IX which features a pretty interesting combination of extremely loose rapped vocals over an instrumental that doesn't really have any elements of a conventional hip hop beat. While I admire the idea and it has some strong moments, it goes on for a brain numbing 7 minutes, by the end of which I have no good will left to give. That is kind of the theme of this whole thing the music is indulgent but I'm more than willing to meet it halfway. The length on the other hand, starts to wear me down. 6/10

Raum - Tangerine Dream

Tangerin Dream really need no introduction but just in case you're unfamiliar they are a legendary German electronica act who have released a hundred million billion albums since the 1960's. While they aren't necessarily an ambient project they do deploy ambient stylings on many of their releases including this one so it felt right to cover it here. By comparison that means that this record is much brighter, more formulative and directly electronica inspired than the other two I've covered, though that does not make it any more interesting. Raum is 7 tracks but they add up to 68 minutes of material and it starts to feel like absolutely every minute of that as song stretch on to 8, 15 and even 19 minutes. Less of my issue with the record is about the songs developing, which they do actually do and occasionally in some interesting ways. I just don't think the bassline they start from is all that strong. The record is full of farty synths that sound very dated and drum patters that feel spacey just for the sake of creating space. I guess when you're on your 488th album it's hard to come up with something strikingly new but there is almost nothing across the runtime of this project that really even strikes me as all that unique. Once you get through a few of these tracks you start to get a really clear idea of the sound they are all aiming for generally and it makes it all the less compelling to seek out any intimate details of the songs. It certainly has pieces of interesting soundplay and I've actually grown to like the song What You Should Know About Endings quite a bit, but I can't classify this album as any kind of must listen. 5.5/10