2012年度最佳氛围&缓拍专辑～ambientmusicguide

Year 2012: Ten Great Ambient & Downtempo Albums
December 17, 2012
In no particular order, here's ten new ambient and downtempo albums that pushed my buttons in 2012.
It's been a good year for independent music ingeneral. Many artists and labels online are now reaching fans with ease
thanks to sites like Bandcamp, Beatport and CD Baby. Most - though not
all - of my purchases this year have been digital downloads and I have
to say that my CD shelf hasn't expanded much at all in the past couple
of years. Meanwhile, my vinyl collection languishes in a wooden chest
thanks to the fact that my current house shakes from simple acts like
walking around, causing the the needle to constantly jump. Here's to my
next home - brick, single story and unshakable.
I hope you find something from this year's Top 10 that gently rocks your world. You can join the discussion at AMG's Facebook page.
Potlatch "Terra Firma" (Cosmicleaf Records)

It's trip hop, but not as we know it. Japanese band Potlatch may have
tickled your ears some years back with the stoned twilight beats of
"Asleep At The Swamp", a distinctive contribution to Waveform Records' Voodoo Roux Deux compilation. Not much has been heard from the band since then, which makes the release of Terra Firma very welcome indeed.
Potlatch has evolved a rather unique sound.
The slow, crisp clockwork breakbeats draw on trip hop to be sure, but
this music is quite unlike the classic stoner breaks of Nightmares On
Wax, Bonobo and others of that predominantly UK school. The sound is
somehow less cluttered, even minimal. There's always a ghostly synth
gliding in the background, against which the band casts gentle melodic
pulses and bleeps, subtly growling basslines, and the wispy vocals of
band member Anne Yang. Terra Ferma is simplicity in slow motion; sexy, playful and slightly trippy. Kudos to the Cosmicleaf label for picking up this beautiful release. Buy via the Cosmicleaf Records website.
Dead Can Dance "Anastasis" (Pias Recordings)

What do you do when a sound - your sound - that was unique 20 years ago has
since made its way into Hollywood movie soundtracks and the music of
hundreds of other downtempo and ambient acts? What can you do, except
keep on writing really great music? Anastasis is a case in point. This is Dead Can Dance's
first album of new material since 1996, an exotic fusion of sounds as
texturally seductive and harmonically rich as anything they've done.
The compositions are strong - exceptional in

places - and members Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry are both in fine
vocal form. Perry's song "Children Of The Sun" elevates its hippie
storytelling into an epic, spine-tingling realm with a magnificent
arrangement for horns and strings. Gerrard's incredible voice and
private language - a language she once said "grows by itself" - is
especially powerful on "Return Of The She-King", its vocal cadences
layered upon a haunting Celtic melody.
Dead Can Dance do the world
music-ambient-classical mashup thing with a depth that defies easy
description. Perhaps it's that they understand the universal humanity of
all these disparate musical elements better than most. Whatever their
secret, Anastasis is a most welcome return. Buy at the Dead Can Dance official site.
Marconi Union "Different Colours" (Just Music)

The UK music media is rather fond of calling Marconi Union a post-rock
band. Which you could translate as "any artist you think could play rock
but is more adventurous". Now I think that's pretty insulting to great
rock. Among sub-genres, post-rock strikes me as an especially useless
tag. But then again, if it's a doorway through which some people
discover this band's wonderful music then I won't complain too loudly.
Different Colours is Marconi Union's sixth full-length album and one on which they have expanded to a trio, with new member Duncan Meadows joining founders Richard Talbot and Jamie Crossley.
It's full of pastel chords and shimmering sounds, melodies that take
you places and sometimes go deeper. Electric guitar, electric piano,
organ and percussion are all clearly discernable in these instrumentals.
Yet the synthetic wrappings, (occasional) minimalistic repetition and
the overall slow-motion swell takes the music well beyond any rock
template. Intelligent, lush and moving - don't miss it. Buy at the Marconi Union official site.
Liquid Stranger "Cryogenic Encounters" (Interchill)

I dislike most digital glitch music. That's why I've never before warmed to Liquid Stranger's
big, crunchy brand of psychedelic breaks where a glitchy, harsh
aesthetic usually dominates. It's clearly intelligent music, but not to
my tastes.
His latest album on Interchill Records
is different, however. The glitch element is more restrained, the many
varied grooves are warmer, and the sound is an original mix of retro
IDM, early ambient techno bleep and melodic, psychedelic dub. I don't
know what Liquid Stranger fans make of it but I was quickly hooked.
It's positively panoramic at times, as highlighted on superb
tracks like "Cryo" and "Frostbite". The gorgeous, shimmering landscape
of "Ectoplasm" is almost beatless. Repeated listens to Cryogenic Encounters prove deeply rewarding, though I enjoy the album more when I roll the treble off a few notches. Glitch can hurt, kids. Buy at Interchill's Bandcamp page.

Hibernation "Second Nature" (Interchill)

UK artist Seb Taylor - composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist - has created one of his most ambitious works with Second Nature, the second album released under his Hibernation moniker.
This is a denser, busier, stranger brand of downtempo beats than the smooth surfaces of Taylor's better-known Kaya Project. It's also more electronic than Kaya's largely acoustic world-beat sound.
"Knowledge and Spirit", for example, mashes
up squalls, whoops and fluttering electronic textures with with jazzy
trumpet and lovely flute lines. Taylor packs a lot of detail into these
tracks; a dense, meaty groove like "The Fallen Sound" would end up
vague, tuneless or just plain unlistenable in lesser hands. They key is a
certain restraint: lots to look at, but all there for a reason. Listen
closely, listen often, and Second Nature will offer deep pleasures. Buy at Interchill's Bandcamp page.
Connect.Ohm "9980" (Ultimae Records)

I was rather disappointed with the Ultimae Records releases from both Cell (Alex Scheffer) and Hybrid Leisureland
(Hidetoshi Koizum) a few years ago. French artist Cell has been
responsible for some incredible one-off tracks over the years ("The
Gate", "Audio Deepest Night") on various-artist compilations, yet his
long-awaited Ultimate debut Hanging Masses (2010) crucially lacked a melodic core. Last year's Hybrid Leisureland album, meanwhile, I found too cold and fussy for my tastes.
Which makes 9980
a very pleasant surprise, being a collaboration between the two of
these artists under the moniker Connect.Ohm. It may not be a
groundbreaking release, but what it does it does very, very well. Much
of 9980 fits comfortably enough
within the slow, panoramic ambient trance sound that Ultimae has long
championed, although very much at the muted end of that spectrum. The
lush cosmic sound that Cell does so brilliantly is evident in the simple
bass chords of "Snow Park" which glides with all the mass of a deep
space cruiser, nudged gently along with gentle synth arpeggios and a
simple piano phase. To such timeless sounds Koizumi often adds an odd
but subtle textural variety on the album; not quite clicks and glitches
but...something. It's an intriguing and effective collaboration.
Without upsetting the album's flow, the last
few tracks seem to hark back to old-school sounds. The exceptionally
rich, cloud-like chords of "Gentle Perception" bear a passing
resemblance to Eno's spacemusic classic "Ascent", while "Time To Time By
Time" echoes 70's art rock ambient with its glistening drones and
sparse pinging notes. Buy at the Ultimae Records website.

Sounds From The Ground "Widerworld" (Waveform Records)

These guys are one of the originators of exotic ambient dub - a specialty of the wonderful Waveform Records
- and they have been at it now for nearly 20 years. While among the
gems there's been a few patchy albums along the way, this year's Widerworld captures
a talent undiminished. The album may not be as consistently easy on the
ears as their sound used to be, but this is inspired music from an act
still admirably treading its own path.
Sounds From The Ground - a duo of Elliot Morgan Jones and Nick Woolfson
- are masters at creating a big, cinematic sound with a modest number
of elements; there's enormous weight in some of those juicy basslines
and slow, lumbering dub beats. They're also partial to serving up
stunningly pretty harmonic progressions, a fine example being "Fields Of
Green & Yellow" which deftly meshes acoustic guitars with their
primarily electronic sound.
The dark side rears its head occasionally, the
best of these moments being the deliciously evil closing track
"Darswana". It starts out spiky, bleepy and abrasive and gets darker
from there. Bass-heavy, organ-like chords slowly rise in the mix like
some apocalyptic mecha crawling from the earth and threatening to
swallow the entire space, with extra doom courtesy of ghostly vocal
chants. A startling conclusion to one of 2012's finest. Buy at the Waveform Records website.
Bersarin Quartett "II" (Denovali Records)

I love Bersarin Quartett for the same reasons I love Max Richter's
albums. It's music for imaginary movies that's far better than most
soundtrack albums from actual films (Thomas Newman's best scores being
among the exceptions). Instead of snippets and cues and jarring stabs
that make little sense off screen, we hear fully realised works that -
to my ears - are perfect realisations of how a moody soundtrack album
should sound; wordless storytelling that exists in its own world and
works on its own terms.
This is German composer Thomas Bucker's
second album as Bersarin Quartett and it's magnificent. Bucker fashions
exquisite electro-acoustic blends where the boundaries between the two
are usually indistinct. He uses sound effects, loops, reverb and
whatever other techniques he needs - never to excess - to mould his
cinematic compositions into the desired shape. I'm especially impressed
with the creative way he discretely uses electronic glitch elements in
some of these tracks without making me wince in pain; a rare feat,
believe me.
There is no quartet as such - just several
supporting musicians - but Bucker's chosen moniker does reflect the

intimacy of chamber music if not its small-scale sound. String textures
from violins and cellos are prominent on the album and it's in the
string harmonies where much of the music's emotional power lies. The
sad, utterly ravishing "Im Lichte des Anderen" is a high point, and at
times the strings sound positively symphonic in depth such as as on
"Perlen, Honig oder Untergang". As a movie music for the mind, II gets five raving stars from me. Buy at the Denovali Records website.
Sync24 "Comfortable Void" (Ultimae Records)

There are two Ultimae Records
releases in this year's list and deservedly so. It's inspiring to see
this progressive ambient and dance label still producing the goods
after more than a decade of releases.
Sync 24 is the one-man project of Daniel Segerstad from Carbon Based Lifeforms, a Swedish band to whom Ultimae fans will need no introduction. His brilliant Comfortable Void has CBL's same sense of mystery but it's a little more personal, more idiosyncratic. It's also seriously addictive.
"Nanites" is a quite indefinable blend of slow
breaks, electric piano sounds and a looped choral sample; pretty yet
with a slightly sinister edge. "Sequor" spreads a slow, hypnotic
arpeggio from acoustic guitar over a droning bass progression and hints
of field recordings. "Something Something" and "Oomph" are probably the
most CBL-sounding tracks; layers of bubbling machine bleeps and 303 acid
lines beneath soaring, celestial melodies and powered by muscular
slowbeats. Comfortable Void is superb, up there with any of the albums Ultimae has released over its 12 year history. Buy at the Ultimae Records website.
Bruno Sanfilippo "Piano Textures III" (AD21 Music)

With his third collection of solo and almost-solo piano pieces, I can confidently declare that Bruno Sanfilippo now dwells in realms inhabited by such gifted artists as Harold Budd and Tim Story. Piano music with ambient qualities is hardly new - Eric Satie (1866-1925) was doing it well over a century ago - and yetPiano Textures III reminds
us what a potent vehicle the style remains for the gifted artist. It's
interesting that the versatile Sanfilippo is not even a piano
specialist; just look at his wide and often wonderful discography
including last year's Subliminal Pulse (2011).
Like its two predecessors, Piano Textures III
is essentially a solo piano album, with a smattering of environmental
samples, some subtle synthesiser effects and - on one track - some warm
and sympathetic cello. The music swims in a slightly reverberating space
but the sound isn't as blurry and washed-out as, say, some of Budd's
trippiest pieces.

Connect.Ohm "9980" (Ultimae Records)