I bought two wonderful records this week: How to Disappear Completely – Seraphim, and Abul Mogard – Circular Forms.

Seraphim is a great work of ambient. Big monolithic textures that come in slow waves. It’s a dark record, and doesn’t really fluctuate too much in intensity, but I think it is a good example of contemporary ambient done well: it’s not the corporate form of ambient that are so pervasive on DSPs these days — the ones that Spotify recommends in the afternoons to “wind down” or something. The harmony is often elusive, but still there: It cycles, often with hints of melody in its deep texture, but it’s extremely washy and cloudy.

Circular Forms is one I stumbled on a couple of months ago and have kept returning to. I finally bought it, as I found myself habitually starting the record when opening up Spotify — that’s usually a good sign that I should buy it. This record is less droney that Seraphim, with clearer elements, though often extremely driven and washed out. My favourite track on it is Bound Universe, which features an incredible melody: an arpeggiated, speedy set of notes on a synth or sampler that sounds vocal-ish in some way. I feel like I can hear formants in there, especially on some of the lower notes with longer decays. But all tracks on this record just have this emotional quality that I love — at times its like looking over a wasteland, and other times its hopeful. It feels like that the final scene from the Dark Knight with the monologue just before the credits. It’s like a beautiful tragedy.

With both of these records, they don’t feature any percussion — only (non drum-)synths. Due to this, there’s a massive emphasis on harmony, melody, timbre & space, and dynamics. I think that’s something I am finding myself more and more drawn towards: carefully composed ‘ambient’¹ with a heavy emphasis on the more ‘epic’ or ‘cinematic’ approaches to harmony. Abul Mogard, Tim Hecker, and Loscil do this superbly.

1. I feel like this is where someone would step in and slap a ‘post-ambient’ label ↩︎