Two sets, exploring some of my favourite ambient releases for 2022. A lot missed out that are equally worthwhile sharing and commending to you.
No surprise founder of the now defunct Eilean label, Matthias van Eecloo's, subsequent label, LAAPS, is populated by some great new and established artists. Eilean was home to some of the finest ambient music from around the world. Opening the first set, Ecovillage (Emil Holmström and Peter Wikström) released The Road Not Taken on LAAPS in September, it features a bunch of guests - Fennesz, Aaron Martin, Ruven Nunez, Nailah Hunter and one of my fave vibraphone players, Masayoshi Fujita. It's the Fujita track I played tonight - Memories of Spring. Then another track from a LAAPS release, T'Gerius' Naissance from the April release, Bain D'Étoiles - I really like the sepia like tones of this track. Adam Casey follows with the third embodiment of the Liminal Music Societies collection of singles, Understand. Composer, songwriter, studio engineer (& owner of The True Vine Recording Studio), Adam is also an educator. I have followed Adam's musical career from an iteration of Trappist Afterland around 2009 (already having recorded as Seascapes of the Interior and The Boy Who Spoke Clouds). He consistently produces distinctive and engaging musical works. From Adam through Peter Knight and an extended track from his current ROOM40 release, Shadow Phase, The Softened Shore. Peter's album is on a number of best of lists for 2022, indeed a listener was familiar enough to text in and indicate his joy.
Opening the second set with a track from the brilliant third instalment in the For Ukraine series of benefit albums curated by the Headphone Commute team. Then, the album that has most likely taken my position as album of the year, Behrooz Moosavi's On Ontological Death, released through Shimmering Moods Records. The music on this album is (at times) quietly unsettling, and imbued with a melancholy that is profoundly beautiful. Mention by Behrooz of alienation, loss, tradition and dislocation are musically conveyed throughout this album. These responses are further contextualised through Martin Heidegger's considerations outlined in 'Being and Time'. The track played is the crunching cyclic drone of the title track, On Ontological Death, a beautifully layered sound world. I have not played this loud yet - I'm too scared. Behrooz states that the music on this album used source material from some of his mother and father's collection of cassettes of traditional Iranian music. Then seguing into Garden of Stars from Brian Eno's melancholic album, For Ever and Ever No More. Lots of lovely crunchy static drone that sometimes almost envelopes Eno and co's vocals, and sometimes pillows it. Then we segued into the ancient/modern music of traditional Korean instrumentation and electronics through the ever superbly realised duo of E'Joung-Ju and Mathias Delplanque, recording and performing as KEDA. The track Flow Part 4, is the final part of a distillation of music created for a dance performance by the Swiss dance collective, Compagnie Linga.
There you have it, I hope you enjoy(ed) it.
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