In this month’s roundup we run the full gamut of ambient. There’s guitar-led proto folk, overwhelmingly beautiful drone, euphoric trance nostalgia and even a soundtrack piece from the lead singer of one of the world’s most famous bands. Exciting right! Well, calm down – this is ambient after all, you’re here to relax (kind of). So sit back and enjoy the 15 best ambient tracks of the month.
Dawn Chorus and The Infallible Sea – Reveries
There is a particular, melancholy vibration that resonates through any given album closer, whether it’s in the arrangement and atmosphere, or in the basic understanding that an experience is coming to its end. With Reveries, Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea (the trio of Zach Frizzell, Marc Ertel and Damien Duque) offer a sustained embrace of this enigmatic mood across six patiently-evolving pieces, each of which manifests an aching, funereal fullness.
Arushi Jain – Still Dreaming
Delight, Arushi Jain’s follow-up to 2021’s seminal Under the Lilac Sky, out March 29 2024 on Leaving, carries, at its core, the simple proposition that delight is accessible and that the practice of cultivating it is a necessary endeavour. The result is at times achingly beautiful, at others almost unbearably paranoid – but always utterly engaging.
Not Waving, Romance – Infinite Light
Not Waving, once again joins forces with Romance, to unveil their transcendent new album, ‘Infinite Light’ which follows on from the ethereal majesty of their sublime previous LPs ‘Eyes Of Fate’ and ‘Restoration Of Bliss’. Drawing inspiration from Botticelli’s iconic painting ‘The Birth of Venus’, ‘Infinite Light’ embarks on a celestial quest through mythical vistas becalmed in quiet introspection.
Lapsed Pacifist – Open Heart
The title of Lapsed Pacifist’s debut album, ‘Hypatia’ is a reference to one of the many fantastical descriptions of imaginary places by Marco Polo in the book, Invisible Cities. The resulting droney ambient pieces are almost overwhelmingly epic and cinematic.
Pinkcourtesyphone – when static alludes to apprehension
I don’t think any other genre come up with better (albeit arguably self-indulgent) track titles than those found in ambient music. when static alludes to apprehension is preposterous, but also completely apt. If you’re in the mood for deep, gloomy introspection then look no further.
Mary Lattimore, Walt McClements – The Top Of Thomas Street
Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements are two of contemporary music’s most renowned innovators. Each has managed to expand the perception of their instrument’s capabilities, and their new collaborative album Rain on the Road is one of the year’s finest.
Relaxer – A Tickle In My Throat
Relaxer follows up the eerie, floating vistas of 2022’s “Force Field: A Guide for the Perplexed” with the mercurial, poetic descent of “In Softening Air.” Combining spoken word with spacious, enveloping sound design, this album explores the moist, mossy, fleshy crevices of the psyche; a place where we cannot help but to meet ourselves in dreams.
Gallery Six – Hirusagari
‘Unchallenging’ definitely doesn’t always mean that music is boring, or uninteresting. Sometimes all your want is to bathe in soft melodic movements and hushed tones. Japanese artist Gallery Six’s album won’t provoke or prod, but it will make you feel exceptionally chill.
Ana Roxanne – Nocturne
Southeast Asian, Los Angeles-based ambient singer and composer who creates devotional, hymn-like soundscapes. Nocturne finds her is exceptional vocal form, as her ethereal voice leads you through a sparse, haunting landscape.
Madeleine Cocolas – Drift
Madeline Cocolas’s new LP Bodies explores similarities between bodies of water and human bodies and seeks to blur the boundaries between them. These works incorporate sounds of water she recorded on trips to the Australian coastline as well as creeks and waterfalls in Far North Queensland, after which she heavily processed them together with synths and electronics so that the boundaries between field recordings, vocals and electronics are blurred.
Cash, anemOs, JHL – passthrough
If you’ve ever thought that How To Dress Well could do with a bit less structure to his songs, you’re really going to enjoy this one.
Thom Yorke – Letting Down Gently
This is taken from the Thom Yorke-composed original score for Daniele Luchetti’s film Confidenza, an adaptation of the Italian drama based on Domenico Starnone’s novel of the same name. The soundtrack LP sees Yorke working again with Sam Petts-Davies as well as the London Contemporary Orchestra alongside a jazz ensemble which included Robert Stillman and fellow The Smile bandmate Tom Skinner.
Bianca Scout – Anon’s Song
Blurring the boundaries between chamber music, contemporary dance, dark pop and ethereal ambience, Klein, Mica Levi and Space Afrika collaborator Bianca Scout distills a decade of multidisciplinary work at the service of her most enchanted album to date, moving between diaristic ephemera, demure post-punk and chamber ambient, and cracking open bewildering crypto-romantique wormholes in the process.
36 – Destroy Silence
36 is pretty much making album specifically for me at this point. Case in point; his latest ‘Trance Anthems for a Sunken Generation’ which ticks off the boxes of trance, nostalgia and nihilism in one fell sweep, with stand-out track Destroy Silence nothing less than absolutely astonishing.
Isabel Pine – Cresent
Isabel Pine is a classically trained violist, composer/producer, and artist originally from Chicago, IL. Her creative practice has its deepest roots in nature, where imperfection is beauty and emotion is raw. Through string textures, electronics, and field recordings, come the vivid colors, subtle melodies, and soundscapes of her world.
The post The 15 Best Ambient Tracks of May 2024 appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.