Now that we’re around the halfway mark, it’s fair to say that 2023 has been an incredible year for ambient music so far. Each month, I expect the unignorable releases to slow down, and instead end up finding even more records I’m itching to write about. This month’s column is no exception, packed with releases from some of the best artists in the game, from Anthony Naples to M. Sage. I structured the order to guide the reader on a journey from the after-hours chillout room to the creek, so press play and get ready for a blissful ride.
Artists mu tate and Nick Malkin keep relatively low profiles, but have both independently located ways to put out inignorable cerebral electronic music. London-based mu tate has spent the past few years slowly rolling out airy downtempo releases on labels like Motion Ward and Utter. Meanwhile, Malkin—working out of Los Angeles—came up with the project Afterhours, hosts the excellent NTS show Post-Geography, and currently serves up a wobbly strain of ambient noise under his own name. Now, the duo have teamed up under the moniker nimu for the album Picture In Picture, which lands on the Zenker Brothers’s Ilian Tape label—a fitting home for such an offbeat record. Over seven tracks, deep bass-y wubs support distant organic flourishes and unearthly sound effects. The whole thing feels like it’s being beamed into one’s headphones through countless layers of warm smog, glued together by an essence of dark, smokey beauty.
Colorado-based guitarist Matthew Sage is at the forefront of a verdant, organic side of the ambient scene—think the sphere of artists at the intersection of Chuck Johnson and Imaginary Softwoods. On collaborations with groups like Fubuutsushi and The Spinnaker Ensemble, Sage has used his folk-y chops to explore naturalism and experimentation. His new album, Paradise Crick, finds him further refining this penchant for carefree bliss. The album centers on hypnagogic tones generated on everything from autoharp to harmonica to human voice, which merge to cultivate a sense of shimmering psychedelic warmth. The record lives up to its enchanting title, and finds him flirting with positivity without straying from the creaky allure that makes his work so interesting.
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