Ambient

From blue planet beauty to far-off galaxies, Lemongrass has been sowing his wide and abundant “Ambient Land” dreamscapes once again. A healing sedative, that slowly works its way through the bloodstream, flooding the brain with finest delta waves. With “Ambient Land 4″, Lemongrass masters the art of simplification, intuitively reducing the production to what is essentially important. Thus this EP goes beyond quietly epic reportage, leading to a state of inner peace and meditation…

Multi-instrumentalist David Arkenstone began his recording career back in 1987 with the impressive debut Valley In The Clouds followed up 3 years later with the notable Citizen Of Time. In 1994 Arkenstone released Another Star In The Sky and much like the two previously mention albums his compositions had some elements of the ambient genre. Such influences were less obvious in his subsequent recordings until 2007 when he released Myths and Legends which also had textures of the genre. But not until now has David truly set his mind to fully experimenting with the Ambient World courtesy of this double disc conception…

Following “La Contra Ola” (BJR015), Bongo Joe is pleased to present LA OLA INTERIOR, a compilation exploring the ambient side of the Spanish electronic music produced in the 80’s. It gathers musicians from various horizons and of many generations, who shared the desire to create an immersive soundscape and to combine electronic music with non-Western musical traditions. As a general rule, the Anglo-Saxon tropism did relate the spanish peninsula’s ambient music to the Balearic Sound, that is to say to the relaxing music played in Ibiza’s nightclubs. But this music takes place in the productive territory of experimental musics, and particularly in its two main breeding grounds: the tape recording underground and the independent musicians-producers scene.

To coincide with the electronica revolution of the late '90s, Bill Laswell remixed a number of Bob Marley records as ambient dub for the Dreams of Freedom: Ambient Translations of Bob Marley in Dub album. If these songs were remixed by any other producer, the results could have been disastrous, but Laswell is one of the masters of intellectual dub – he knows what to take out and what to add, creating a spacious, cavernous mix that is provocative without being extreme. Some longtime Marley fans will balk at the very idea of the album, but the results are undeniably impressive, even if it's a little too restrained and cerebral to qualify as first-rate ambient dub for clubs.

Ambient Hawai'i was formed by Makoto Kubota, Sandii and Yuki Yamauchi. The high quality sound woven by the three musicians is, including ambient, world music and ethno/tropical taste sound inspired by Hawaii.

Like so much of Moby's earliest work, this isn't so much an album as a compilation via his original label, Instinct. Ambient influences in techno were all the rage in 1993 in terms of press and coverage (though jungle would swiftly eclipse both it and the progressive house genre), so it's no surprise Instinct wanted some of that action, right down to the says-it-all title. Motivations aside, Ambient is an enjoyable collection of experiments; if Aphex Twin's monumental Selected Ambient Works releases eclipse it in terms of both quality and sheer inventiveness, Moby's own efforts in the field are often quite pleasing. Those familiar with such later efforts as "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" and "The Rain Falls and rhe Sky Shudders" can find their partial roots here, though the compositions are generally more formal and less-immediately noteworthy than what came next.