Hidden Shoal Recordings has announced the digital pre-release of the eagerly awaited fourth album by US ambient artist Slow Dancing Society.
Following on from the ebullient warmth of the critically acclaimed Priest Lake Circa ’88, Under The Sodium Lights is Drew Sullivan’s latest ambient epic. The album feels like a distillation of the three stunning releases that preceded it – and as such is Sullivan’s finest work to date. The delicate interplay between focused melodic details and blurred washes of sound draws the listener into a hypnotic state, where the waking world and the world of sleep cascade in and out of balance.
Under The Sodium Lights resonates with a rich emotional core – and the choking realisation of our own transience. The album rewards immersive listening from start to finish, to really soak in its beauty.
“a complexity of sound that allows it to stand out from traditionally ambient music… It is easy to get dissolved in this album, to let yourself fall into meditation as the music plays… Textures and timbre are executed with great precision… Even the simplest of songs allow complimentary textures to be layered upon each other to create a robust yet spacious sound… an aural delight for the listener.” – The Silent Ballet on Priest Lake Circa ’88.
An emerging talent on the Japanese independent music scene, haruka nakamura’s second solo outing refines the lyrical, pastoral imagery that inspired his first album “grace”. Recorded in a studio overlooking the ocean as a tribute to the sight of the expiring sun falling slowly over the horizon at dusk, “twilight” is a sustained reverie that mirrors the dwindling rays of light at day’s end with its subtle variations in timbre and texture.
The brassy shimmer of ARAKI Shin’s sax opens the first track “Yuube no Inori” (Evening Prayer, M1), swelling languidly as the orchestra slowly unfurls around it like a resplendent sunset. Throughout the album, haruka nakamura coaxes a startling range of tonal color out of piano phrases that twinkle, patter and shuffle through a variety of compositions and tempos – the gentle march of “harmonie du soir”(M2); the somnolent haze of “On the Verandah” (M6) punctuated by drowsy stutters and cicadas muttering all around you; the reverberations of your languishing pulse as night starts to fall in “faraway”(M7). isao saito’s sensitive percussion offers subdued but confident support throughout – dwindling to a hush as the fading rays of the sun dissipate in the crisp night air.
The middle of the album – “Koukei” (Sight, M8) and “dialogo”(M9), in particular – wanders off on a short jaunt into looser, ethereal territory. The furtive meandering of the soprano saxophone by akira uchida, roving itinerant chords, airy percussion and carefully-spaced
sustain and release of the pedal are reminiscent of acoustic ambient jazz of ECM. Closing the album, however, are two melody-driven vocal tracks: “twilight”, a gentle flicker of a ballad that rises and ebbs with April Lee’s (aspidistrafly) fluttering, half-whispered vocals, and Janis crunch’s acoustic arpeggio-driven elegy in tribute to the dwindling of “The Light”.
"seeping through the veil of unconscious" came to us out of nowhere as a demo and i think i can say with some certainty that it's the best demo we've ever received. motion sickness of time travel is the solo moniker of lagrange, gerogia's rachel evans. she also plays in the duo, quiet evenings, with her husband and runs the hooker vision label with him as well. and while she's done some really great stuff, this album takes all of it, everything, to incredible new heights. evans concocts six whirlwind romances all in the space of an hour. beauty, magic and bleeding effervescence come together in perfect harmony. vague electro meanderings hide hints of early grouper as evans' compositions sing with the spheres. while the songs are built around vaguely catchy repetitive synth backbones, she laces an incredible array of instrumental layers between those bones creating music that is as dense and complex as it is continous. yet, the real star here is her voice. sometimes its at the fore, other times its buried underneath the plodding keys but it never gets lost and always shines. stunning music in every way. debut LP coming on digitalis next year. she's that fucking good. edition of 80, pro-dubbed. "
Following on from the ebullient warmth of the critically acclaimed Priest Lake Circa ’88, ‘…and to the dust we shall return’ is the perfect introduction to Drew Sullivan’s latest ambient epic, Under The Sodium Lights. Accompanied by a stunning video by Latvian filmmaker Ieva Balode, this glorious seven-minute song sees the gradual accretion of reverberant guitar tones, emerging from the silence as sparse reflections across the stereo field. Slow searching melodies overlap and accumulate before a descending bass figure carries the song home to its elegiac conclusion. The song, like all Slow Dancing Society releases, resonates with a rich emotional core – and the choking realisation of our own transience.
The video (included with this download) for ‘…and to the dust we shall return’ was created by Latvian filmmaker and artist Ieva Balode. Currently studying at the Latvian Academy of Art, Balode has taken part in many exhibitions in Latvia, and has also presented her own solo exhibition in the capital, Riga, where she currently lives and works.
The first single to be lifted from his selection of Jesu remixes (Jesu: Pale Sketches DeMixed), 'Can I Go Now (Gone Remix)' finds Justin K. Broadrick exploring a more luscious, emphatically electronic strand of his material than ever before. In addition to the epic, Autotuned pop of the original lead track, remixes are supplied by Donnaccha Costello and Syntaks: the former extends the original into a dramatic, slow-building opus that denies you drums for almost four minutes, but comes good in the end with a light but stealthily euphoric finale. Syntaks meanwhile detunes some synths and amps up the beats for a touch of woozy, Manual-like electronic shoegazing.
