Journeys in Sound & Music
The field recordings at the heart of Music For Listening by Canadian sound artist, multi-instrumentalist Michael Scott Dawson were originally collected with something different in mind, an album of prairie birdsong using fragments collected during walks through the pastures and farmland on the outskirts of his childhood hometown that never came to fruition. A phone…
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Michael Scott Dawson is a Canadian sound artist, multi-instrumentalist and community builder who explores ambient and electro-acoustic compositions through synthesis, field recordings, tape loops and manipulations. While much of his solo and collaborative work focuses on efforts to reconcile his relationship with music and technology, he is also a member of the free jazz collective…
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Continuing the first tentative steps into a new year of music, it seems fitting to focus next on the discovery of a brand new net label launched late last year by two brothers from Montreal who ambient music fans may know by their respective solo monikers of Lamasz and Grandbruit. Described as “an ambient label…
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Canadian composer & multi-instrumentalist Cédric Dind-Lavoie reaches back through time to find a very special group of collaborators for his first full-length release since the wonderful 88 (2018, Preserved Sound). Archives is a specially treated anthology of songs from the 40s and 50s that have been drawn from the collections of distinguished folklorists of the…
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The days are growing shorter and the last leaves of autumn are fading embers that will soon disappear. The transition of fall into winter seems especially dispiriting in a pandemic year, but there is still comfort and consolation in the anodyne effects of music. The six albums that comprise this journey come from artistic voices…
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However long it takes to put this seemingly interminable pandemic in the rear view mirror, one day down the road we will get the chance to look back fondly on the bright spots of kindness, creativity, and friendship that illuminated the darker times. But that does not mean we can’t savor them now where we…
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After a relatively sparse 2019, it is very nice to see a flurry of new activity over at hibernate recordings, the Yorkshire-based ambient label founded a little over a decade ago by Jonathan Lees. The catalyst has been something called the 2.6 challenge, a charitable initiative intended to fill the void left by the cancellation…
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Since its inception, Harry Towell’s Whitelabrecs label has been nothing less than prolific with release after release that seems to bring out the best in any artist that appears on the roster. In fact, Whitelabrecs made more appearances in my 2019 retrospectives than any other label. Given the creative impetus that represents, perhaps it is…
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When I first began to really diving into ambient music I was surprised just how much of what I liked what what was classified as ‘drone’. The name just seemed off-putting. For the uninitiated it appears to promise something monotonous, something to zone out to rather than tune into. As I quickly learned, however, in…
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Stationary Travels 