Category Archives: ambient

Calypso

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Gigi Masin is an Italian ambient composer from Venice. Until the 21st century no one knew much about him, until cratediggers uncovered his 1985 album ‘Wind.’ This became known as an ambient masterpiece and in 2014 a compilation of his work ‘Talk to the Sea’ was released further raising his reputation. This year just in …

Nils Frahm

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Seeing Nils Frahm at the Knockdown Center in Queens this week reminded me how everything old is new again. In the seventies, people would pay to see artists like Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis perform surrounded by banks of keyboards and technology today Nils Frahm occupies a similar space. Obviously, between now and then, house, techno, and …

Going Solo

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Nils Frahm is a modern classical composer who seems to be everywhere I look. At least two complications I have brought recently have featured this piano player’s delicate and haunting compositions, as well as a soundtrack to the film ‘Victoria’ and an album released early this year as a free download called ‘Solo’. ‘Solo’ is …

Max Richter

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The reinvention of classic music has often been an embarrassing cultural void. Whether it was Emerson Lake and Palmer reimagining Mussorgsky’s Pictures in an Exhibition or Sky repurposing Bach. So the thought of someone recreating Vivaldi’s Four Season’s didn’t exactly fill my heart with joy. Until I heard it. What we get it turns out …

Opening

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‘Opening’ is an album that would probably slip under the radar of most music lovers. Yet this dreamy piece of ambient music is right up there with Harold Budd and Brian Eno. Created by San Francisco based Christopher Willits it meshes both analogue and digital worlds into one by taking guitar lines and harmonies and …

River of Forgetfulness

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A celestial choir has descended on my Brooklyn apartment. I hear it echoing through the cracks in the ceiling and bouncing off the hardwood floor. On closer inspection, I find this heavenly sound turns out to be coming from my very own wireless speakers, courtesy of Julianna Barwick Her new album ‘Nepenthe’ is named after …