Ann Annie – Atmospheres Volume 2

Modularfield

After 2017’s Atmospheres Volume 1” on Modularfield, Denver-based Ann Annie has found an opportunity to follow it up with Volume 2, containing more pastel sketches and gauzey sunset glances, perfect for easing the mind and gently sinking into contemplation. Over the course of about half an hour and seven tracks, Ann takes us gently by the hand and leads us through long grass and around rippling pools, heading for the places that have been overlooked by people and to which it is possible to escape life’s frustrations.

It opens with the saunter through an early morning Japanese garden of “Drifting”, which sparkles and shines and feels like awakening into a new dawn. The sounds stretch and blink moving slowly, and I think cassette is the perfect format for this as the sounds seem to refract and pulse as the heads are turning. There is something insistent in the repetition, but with a faint sweetness of the drones swaying in the backdrop.

I have always wanted to do that thing where you lay on the grass near a runway as the planes come in to land, but to save me actually doing it, “Oceans Away” feels like the actual soundtrack to it, the rushes and roars travelling overhead as the incidental sounds move around, you seem to quiver in a heat haze produced by the engines and the glorious sunshine. It is transportative stuff which didn’t prepare me for the minute-long melancholy of “97 Dreamin”; the echoing lachrymose strings give a hint of Twin Peaks, but it is over far too soon.

“Upstream” opens side two and the sounds of a storm are interspersed with a myriad of jolly beeps and bloops that pour sunshine over the uneven landscape. It just feels as though Ann Annie is letting loose a random pattern of fantastic and colourful bubbles blowing and bursting across the gloomy terrain. The fact that there is a repetitive and hysterical mouse organ leaving its little trail through the patterns is only a bonus.

According to the biog, Ann is jazz trained, but apart from the soft jazz interlude of “Reflections” that brings to mind Train Above The City era Felt, you could be forgiven for not noticing that influence. Clearly jazz as a starting point has led Ann in the most diverse and thoughtful of directions, and the album culminates in the summer’s evening firework display of “Latitude” which feels just like that. It is as if Ann has lost all control of the sounds and they are shooting off at random, the listener just waiting to see where they might go and how far or how high. The sense of randomness allied to the very natural progression of sound encapsulates Ann Annie’s aesthetic and it is utterly charming. I am already looking forward to Volume 3.

-Mr Olivetti-