#ambient

#ambient

Black metal has been chummy with ambient music since birth, but Ulver's commitment to the genre is something else. Their debut album, (1995), released when singer Kristoffer Garm Rygg was 18, inspired a whole universe of nature-drunk folk metal; meanwhile, Nattens Madrigal (1997) is a prime example of the most scabrous and distortion-encrusted recesses of black metal. Between the two was the ambient Kveldssanger (1996), which proved they could work well at a lower altitude, but that still didn't prepare anyone for 2000's Perdition City:

The key is in isolating the listener: His music can sound apocalyptically desolate, or like being thrown into a whirlwinding cyclone, or like you're staring at an empty sky while taking a long drag of a cigarette. This album feels very different: It's inviting and personal. Especially stirring is "Number," where Haino patiently sings, stretching each phrase across an expanse of glossy, electronic sputters.

Vanities, the debut full-length by French producer Barbara Braccini, aka Malibu, is equal parts devotion and alienation. Her short, lush ambient compositions layer formless washes of synth with field recordings of city sounds; seamy and ominous, they evoke haunted industrial areas or images of abandoned business districts during Covid. At the same time, the songs on highlight Braccini's clarion, wordless vocals-hymnlike passages that attempt to thaw the production's frosty veneer.

The album unfolds with the patience of a long tracking shot, fostering the illusion of being swallowed up by darkness. Opener "Moon" begins with a rich, buzzing synthesizer drone and the huff of naked breath through a horn; as the chord expands, revealing new frequencies, Williams sketches the tentative outline of a minor-key melody before he's joined by the searching cries of his bandmates.

Something Stars of the Lid were already very good at in this nascent stage was making drones that had an uncanny animation, as if their tracks were creatures and you could sense the life moving through them. The opening "Before Top Dead Center" is a darkly brooding piece of gently throbbing guitar feedback, and the swaying modulations suggest respiration, as if we're watching the coiled potential of a giant reptile as it sleeps.

Murky drones swirl, winds howl, and a voice full of Biblical portent mutters, 'I saw something... flower, bloom from nothing.'

The collaboration between James Holden and Wacław Zimpel results in a playful exploration of musical boundaries, driven by mutual surprise and an innovative approach to composition.