For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001

FTAL 018 - May 2013

Hanetration - Nae Troth EP (Hanetration Bandcamp download)



Hanetration delivers a narcoleptic slab of promising, folly-discarding drone that trims overgrown rosebushes of emotive effigy and scatters the path with immobile branches. These branches represent thoughtfulness, generosity and the platonic agreements in between. It communicates to dynamic gesture, aggregation of good, and rejection of the tedious, or bad. The tedious in dynamic encounter terms is a marshmellow burnt at the stake of fire - taking all the sweetness out of the equation and instead leaving a charred cube of blackness. Dissonance has a similar effect if overdone, which is where Hanetration is an expert at atonal gradients that work the mind like a cog in a bigger mechanism. Promising stuff, and a nicely refreshing antidote to quasi-sugary-Ambient of the Chillwave.

http://hanetration.bandcamp.com/album/nae-troth-ep

Newa - Hedgehog (Sub.Spiele Bandcamp download)



Annastay calls Newa's music "really settling", such is the oceanic downtempo-ness of the ambiences, springing leaks up Deep House creek with thumping beats and a chorus of Detroit Techno melody. This is Ambient as it's very drifty, and the somatic nature of the sound construction guarantees chipping away at any nervousness towards brighter vistas. "Hedgehog" is a fitting resume: prickly on the surface, tender underneath, with extraction and constriction playing pinboard isometrics with the songwriting style. The bass thickness is really something to sway in awe to, crisp and refined with a textural nod to Parks and early Harmonia. Both in word meaning and artist meaning, too - harmonic current enacts strong fashioning with these woodblock rhythms until Frank Sebastian's sorbet-like beatless finale.

http://subspiele.bandcamp.com/album/hedgehog

Method One - Symbol #5 (Auxiliary Surus Store 12' / download)



The dynamic encounter for me with Method One came through my initial underwhelment of him seemingly just creating party tunes, or tunes of less substance. So "Symbol #5" shook my whole idea on its head and left me with a big smile. Because at another extent, it wormed its way into my consciousness like a torch light late at night, heavy on rays of high contrast. There are beats on this set of four tracks, but they're structured in such a manner as to eschew the normative conception of what drums and heavenly soundscapes should sound like. "#5.4" is the best I think - those soaring strings tug at the heartstrings and shed moss on Auxiliary as a euphoria proponent of the modern Bass Music scene, with muscle at 170BPM that reaches to Drum & Bass - experiments zines such as The Wire can latch onto.

http://www.surus.co.uk/auxiliary/symbol-...16362.aspx