Jazz Articles

James Johnson: Entering Twilight

by John W. Patterson
April 12, 2002

I recently saw this release listed in a newsgroup as ambient music to fall asleep to — I agree. This release of Johnson’s evokes that moment when you are coming down from awe or an intense epiphany. I mean it conveys that sense of relaxed but fading wonder, the in-between places of undirected contemplation.The is a continuous play, one song, one composition, one mood piece. It has somewhat of a fade in, then weaves endlessly to nowhere and ...

Vidna Obmana: Soundtrack for the Aquarium

by AAJ Staff
November 1, 2001

“Vidna Obmana" (whose real name is Dirk Serries) evokes the sunless wet gloom of his native Belgium in this two-CD set which, as its name says, is music composed by Obmana as background sound for an aquarium installation. The first disc has seven sections of his atmospheric (or rather, aquatic) ambience, dating from '92 and '93. The second disc is also a recording from 1993, using some of the same material – performed in Germany, according to the notes, at ...

Stefano Musso: Sola Translatio

by AAJ Staff
November 1, 2001

This esoteric recording by two Italians who go under many pseudonyms is definitely along the lines of the mystical American ambientmaster Robert Rich. This is not a surprise, as “Alio Die" (Stefano Musso; the pseudonym means “On another Day" in Latin) collaborated with Rich on the equally arcane 1997 album Fissures. Like Rich, the Italian duo concentrate on sustained and cool-textured synthesizer and sampled-instrument drones. They use the same digital looping techniques as Rich, to create rhythm and pattern. And ...

Paul Vnuk, Jr.: Silence Speaks in Shadow

by AAJ Staff
November 1, 2001

Paul Vnuk has done some fine ambient work in collaboration with “Vir Unis" and Steve Roach in the last decade. Here he is on his own in an extended ambient atmosphere, a “sound-picture" or as he calls it, “psycho-environmental music." The album notes speak truth: “The open windows and industrial sounds of a rain-drenched city can have a strange calming effect on the soul." What you get for your 74 minutes of silence and shadow is the sound of rain ...

Markus Reuter: Digitalis

by AAJ Staff
July 1, 2001

Hypnos Recordings always brings us fascinating music. Digitalis comes from Markus Reuter in Germany. Like Hypnos' Jeff Pearce, Reuter uses only electronically modified and custom-built guitars to make his sounds, and as in much of Pearce's work, Reuter records “real-time." Again like Pearce, you'd never know that Reuter was playing a guitar or any other stringed instrument - it sounds just like a synthesizer.

Despite the commonalities, Reuter and Pearce are very different. Reuter, in Digitalis , uses the overwrought ...

Robert Rich: Sunyata

by AAJ Staff
February 1, 2001

In the field of ambient music there’s no one quite like Robert Rich. For 20 years now, he’s been bringing his nocturnal, eerie vision to the world through electronic music designed to alter consciousness, even when the listeners are asleep. Sunyata is a re-mastering of recordings made by Rich in 1981, when he was first experimenting with his “sleep concerts” at Stanford University, where he was then a student. Recently, Rich has been re-releasing his live concert performances from the ...

Vidna Obmana: Landscape in Obscurity

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 2000

Listening to this long ambient album by Obmana is like gazing into a shimmering pool of water in a secluded shadowy garden. It is restful and quiet and it makes no demands on your tired mind. Usually I associate the Belgian Vidna Obmana with dreary hours of melancholy electronic droning but this piece by him has a much lighter, sweeter sound to it. Some of this is due to his use of flute and saxophone riffs, most of them electronically ...

Jeff Pearce: To the Shores of Heaven

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 2000

There are quite a few artists in the ambient field who use electric guitar as part or all of their musical instrumentation, but none does it so well as Jeff Pearce. In this solemn but beautiful album there are timbres and sound-effects, and even percussion sounds, which you would think were done on a synthesizer - but all of it is done with electric guitar. That does not mean that there is no actual guitar-playing on the album; it does ...

Jeff Greinke: Lost Terrain

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 2000

Seattle-based ambient composer Jeff Greinke has a varied output, which ranges from rock to jazz to experimental noise, but he is perhaps best known for his ambient work. This 1992 album, Lost Terrain , is some of his finest ambient work, characterized by a slow-paced, chill melancholy. Not for Greinke are the pseudo-"tribal" drumbeats of other ambient artists, nor the ecstatic swell of overrich synthesizer chords. This is an austere music of grey skies and long, dim winter afternoons (Seattle ...

Robert Rich: Inner Landscapes

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 2000

Inner Landscapes is a compilation of the “best moments" from one of Robert Rich's live music concerts in 1985. At that time Rich was producing all-night musical events at which people were invited to come and sleep as well as listen. The idea was to re-create, in a modern way, the ancient practice of “dream incubation" in which a seeker would lie down to sleep in a temple, hoping to receive enlightening dreams from the deity. So this is by ...