Lo Recordings have been going for over twenty years now. An often overlooked but important arbiter of modern electronic based music, they have chosen this moment to release a compilation of material that they see as exploring the connections, overlaps and roots of that oft over-used term ambient.
In association with Strange Attractor Press, they have invited a wide variety of artists to offer a contribution to fulfil whatever they view the term Spaciousness to mean. “Spaciousness” can signify many things, but on the whole, in the context of this album, it is about music that allows you as a listener to cast themselves adrift, allowing the imagination to work in tandem with the songs to generate the whole picture.
They have approached some renowned names here as well as artists with whom I am unfamiliar, but the overall sense of the album is verging on the blissful. The likes of Laraaji who in tandem with Seahawkes produces the breathy ambience of “Space Bubbles” rubs shoulders with Ulrich Schnauss who, working with Jon Tye, offers the Eastern-influenced “Orange Cascade”, a slow-motion flight above minarets in the company of dulcimer and clarinet over a warming drone. The kind of rootless drift that we understand as ambient introduces the album, Abul Mogard‘s “Flecks Of Endless Spaces” describing itself perfectly like a slow revolution through space, its sense of vacuum gradually changing as the drone’s appearance becomes more insistent.
There are rhythms scattered here and there through the album, with Blackwater‘s “Woodstock” evoking the sound of a tumble drier, its heavy, grating rhythm dense and textural; and things even take a turn for the Balearic with the hollow beats and laid-back early morning club sound of Private Agenda‘s “Ultramarine”. The soft, insistent resonance of Téléplasmiste‘s “Song For Ingo Swann” really brings to mind the travels of that advocate of remote viewing. We feel as though the we are sweeping the night sky, the modular sounds like stars heaving into view with the drama increasing as the sun-reflected drone slides over us. It isn’t all about gentle washes of sound, as a nod in the direction of classical minimalism shows that there is more to this idea than we might think. Andras‘s “If You Can’t Understand This Plaque, How Could An Alien?” melds free-form banjo and sitar with sweeping strings to create an odd juxtaposition. There is more exotic fare in Cathy Lucas‘s “Chatterscope”, featuring tabla, flute and Theremin in wonderful communion evoking some long lost Clangers episode.There is a lovely nod to some older artists, with the heavenly space lullaby of MJ Lallo‘s ‘Birth Of A Star Child” that dates back to the ’80s, and the track that sees the album out, Iasos and Carlos Nino‘s “Going Home”, is almost literally the sound of sunshine synthesised into electronic music. There is even a lovely DK remix of Susumu Yokota‘s “Wave Drops” that strips the original back to its essence, horse breathing lending an extraordinarily physical sensation.
There genuinely is something for everybody here, with special mention going to Indoa Jordan‘s “Rest”, with its utterly charming rhythmic xylophone interspersed with other sounds that evokes Christmas, and Yamaneko‘s “Lost Winter Hiding” that is the loneliest-sounding track here conjuring the isolation of an ice cabin, map pages fluttering in a breeze and the creak of frosted wooden floorboards. It is like Twin Peaks in the Arctic, but it is just a part of the overall appeal of this compilation. The label must have worked really hard to piece this together in the right way, and I really think it has been well worth it.-Mr Olivetti-
