Reviews of what I’m loving right now in ambient, downtempo and genres we don’t even have names for yet. Albums by Steve Roach, Taylor Deupree, Dronarivm Records, 20 Hours After Dawn, Catpilot, Hypnodial and Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society. 20 HOURS AFTER DAWN Sun Will Crackle (I Low You Records) buy/listen More dreamlike, deliciously imperfect ambience […]
My Youtube channel has never been the main outlet for the mixes and radio I create via Ambient Music Guide. But I appreciate that my work does have some fans on Youtube, and recent developments involving wholesale video blocking have been frustrating. Over the last 12 months or so, I’ve noticed that certain independent labels, […]
*Sam from Projekt Records asked me to write this promotional piece on Steve Roach to mark the occasion of his Grammy Award nomination for Best New Age Album with Spiral Revelation (2017). Electronic and ambient pioneer Steve Roach started creating his music during the late ‘70s golden age of analog synthesizers, a time when the […]
*Originally published in an Oz version of Red Bull Music Academy’s street zine The Note to coincide with the Red Bull Weekender arts and music festival, Sydney 31 August-3 September 2017. While Oz ambient and downtempo lacks a unifying scene, gems abound. Mike G from Ambient Music Guide picks 10 albums from the past 30 years that […]
Baz Bardoe from Australian Musician Magazine approached me with a request for an interview about Ambient Music Guide. Not being a complete fool, I said yes. READ THE INTERVIEW Back to Blog home
I started playing around with samples from John Lunn’s Downton Abbey TV theme and this 7-minute piece is what came out. It was done with time-stretches, edits, loops, reverb and other manipulations. The original version is an incredibly lush and harmonically rich piece of music. I was always fascinated by its textural depth and sensed […]
Over my 30 or so years of playing and reviewing other people’s music, I’ve had a lot of approaches from artists and labels to promote their stuff. I could tell you some stories. Today I’ll stick to just one, plus offer a few tips to increase your chances of getting heard. First let me say that I encourage […]
Despite the rise of on-demand streaming services, the world of 24-hour net radio is still with us and the offerings for ambient and downtempo fans are awesome indeed. Here are five of the very best. Has the Spotify glow worn off? Are you sick of organising what to listen to next? And do most of those playlists […]
This week I got a surprise: Silent Records – the legendary 90’s ambient electronica label – is back. In fact it relaunched earlier this year and I had no idea until now. Label founder Kim Cascone (aka Heavenly Music Corporation) explained all in an interview with Stillstream.com: “I’d been a fan of the web radio […]
I had a curious experience after I started walking daily in the city with crowds of commuters while wearing isolating earphones. In short, the space that I normally give other people around me diminished – without me even realising it. It got me thinking about what an extraordinary human sense our hearing is, and how […]
I’m utterly engrossed by the new Marconi Union album Ghost Stations. The UK trio has been doing their melange of rock, ambient, jazz, classical minimalism and electronica for well over a decade now and they really took their time on this one: two years, in fact. Ghost Stations contains four long, episodic tracks. What blows […]
My New Ambient 2016 mix series kicks off with three very contrasting ambient and downtempo mixes. Volume 1: Infinite Meadow Pastoral ambience and hyperreal impressionism from recent releases by Inner Travels, Hybrid Palms, Robert Rich, Sinepearl, Jim Ottaway, Erik Wøllo, Byron Metcalf, Slow World, Miyake and Omni vu Deity (Ishq). Volume 2: Sunshine Grooves Downtempo […]
Short but sweet recent documentary about American new age music pioneer Iasos. From Jacob and Nick @ Far Off Sounds: Far Off Sounds, a webseries about obscure, unusual, and ecstatic musical experiences, presents Iasos, a mini-doc about one of the founding fathers of what is now called new age music. When Iasos performed for British […]
Hands up who doesn’t touch their CD collection much anymore? I see plenty of hands. Until a few weeks ago, mine included. I still own a truckload of vinyl and CD’s. But neither has been getting much love from me in the past five years or so. It hardly needs saying, but I’ll say it anyway: file downloads […]
Enjoy my new mix spotlighting the deep, seductive, personal sound of American synthesist-pianist-composer Tim Story – chamber music for the 21st century. With a rich catalogue reaching back to the early 1980’s, Tim Story remains a highly distinctive voice in American ambient. The 90 minute mix spans his first album (1981) to his most recent (2014) and touches […]
“Go as deep as you can go.” – Stephen Hill 40 years is a long time for any radio show. For a radio show that plays music not easily defined or understood by many, an unbroken 40 year run seems little short of miraculous. Yet Music From The Hearts of Space still stands, a testament […]
And so it came to pass, so many years after leaving our shores. Kicking off the second leg of their 2012-13 world tour, the recently reformed Dead Can Dance gave a focused, powerful performance at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday night to a rapt home crowd. Astonishingly it was the duo’s first Australian show […]
Last week (Sept 15) marked three years since the untimely passing of Pink Floyd co-founder and keyboard player Richard Wright. Never did a key member of such a major rock act have such a low public profile as did this quiet, unassuming man. He was nearly always in the background, by no means a media […]
