Life has felt very busy lately for me. In times like this I find it useful to have some appropriately relaxing music I can put on to distract myself from the day-to-day hustle and bustle. The mix I have for you here has been stress-tested (quite literally) and should provide you with some relief if that’s something you need. If you’re interested in finding out more about the releases included please follow the links and let the artists know you heard them here. Track listKapTep & Christian Alsemgeest, The Day the Internet Went Away Taken from: Exhale (Chitra Records) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. The Day the Internet Went Away. Inspired by a power outage. What did we used to do before the internet? VOLTIJ, The Violets Are Blue Taken from: The Violets Are Blue (Self released) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. VOLTIJ continues his exploration of the wonders of nature, but this time with an eye to the storm clouds on the horizon. A famous Robert Bateman painting shows a majestic tundra swan flying over a marsh with a barely visible airplane vapour trail at the edge of the frame. The sky doesn’t belong only to the birds anymore. In a similar way, the eight songs of The Violets Are Blue explore man’s relentless and often corrosive effect on the natural world on which we all depend. The ever present spectre of man’s destructive influence is sprinkled throughout the album, in every glitch and pop, every dissonant note, every distortion, and every feeling that maybe something isn’t quite right. Felicity Mangan, Cello Figures Taken from: String Figures (Elevator Bath) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. The six pieces on "String Figures" sample and combine the resonant timbres of strings and electromagnetic textural fields with field recordings from wetlands. These elements were shaped through digital processing into polyphonic, angular assemblages, ranging from austere minimalism to sumptuous drones and elegiac ambience. Alan Graves, Sauvie Haze Taken from: A Possible Wind (Bathysphere Records) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. Alan Graves (Los Angeles-based producer and audio engineer Justin Longerbeam) explores change in his latest album. A sonic odyssey of transformation, 'A Possible Wind' offers a rich auditory experience through a collection of field recordings of wind captured over a decade, spanning the rugged landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, the bamboo forests of Hawaii, the rolling hills of Northern California, and the sandy shores of SoCal. The album reimagines these natural spaces, filtered and processed through an otherworldly prism of hardware effects, charting a personal migration southward along the west coast of the United States. David Helpling & Eric "the" Taylor, Cavernous Heart Taken from: The Precious Dark (Spotted Peccary Music) Release of the week © All rights reserved. Used with permission. The Precious Dark is the newest collaboration by Ambient Electronic artists David Helpling and Eric “the” Taylor. These seven pieces revel in the exploration of the unknown, and launch both artists into uncharted creative territory. Taylor’s fervent analog synthesizers, Helpling’s ethereal guitar and cinematic vistas are here, but The Precious Dark is more wistful and moody than their previous efforts. Sparse expanses stretch, making emotive climaxes all the more sweeping E J R M & Unusual Cosmic Process, Incandescence Taken from: Incandescence (Ambient Cat) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. Delicate piano melodies and deep enveloping pads weave together to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Perfect for introspection, relaxation, or drifting into a tranquil state of mind. Richard J. Birkin, Hiddenness Taken from: Hiddenness (The Atomanaut's Almanac) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. With a title taken from a passage in Jon Fosse's Septology, Hiddenness has more romance to it than Birkin is typically known for. The left hand stays constant, while the right hand dances towards and away from their meeting point on the keys. "My partner picked up on the piece when I was playing it, saying that it conjured images of stolen glances in a hallway, forbidden love and a missed connection. In fact, every friend I shared it with had a different visual come to mind." Birkin spent hours and hours trawling The Internet Archive to find some old footage to provide the visual, before stumbling on a silent black and white home movie of a girl dancing on a lawn, the expressive, improvised dance working eerily in time with the music. Adrian Lane, Watching the Water Rise Taken from: Desire Paths (Chitra Records) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. In this album, Adrian continues his exploration of tape-saturated sounds combined with piano and vintage synthesizers. The micro-cassette Dictaphone is used to create sounds evoking nostalgia and melancholy. Although using similar starting points to his last album on Chitra Records this album is darker in mood reflecting certain situations in the world today. BinJa, Shakti Taken from: ShaktiMan (Chitra Records) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. ShaktiMan is a man of power. He weaves together three worlds: past, present and future. Field recordings, ethnic instruments and synthesizer layers. Eulipion Corps, Strange Suns Taken from: Portals (Wormhole World) © All rights reserved. Used with permission. Strange Suns is a theme for an imaginary film. I tend to see stories and characters first and then provide a musical context for them to inhabit. The track is quite wistful in tone and capture the protagonist's longing for home. David Helpling & Eric "the" Taylor, The Ice Has Dreams Taken from: The Precious Dark (Spotted Peccary Music) Release of the week © All rights reserved. Used with permission. “The Ice Has Dreams” begins swirling and ominous, its subterranean snarl unspooling like a deadly fractal, before sparse piano lifts the piece into a dimensional serenity. Throughout this work, introspectiveness gives way to monumental eclipses that yet again dissolve into spacious resolve. Like our universe in the Big Bang: once nowhere, then everywhere, the fast sudden pervasiveness of AI technology impacted the approach to The Precious Dark. Helpling and Taylor, in response, created an album bereft of inorganic beings, expressed with wood & wire instruments and vintage analog synthesizers. Electric guitars, electrified pianos and analog synthesizers were treated with a barrage of effect pedals and recorded through an analog mixing console. While there is no shortage of endless reverb tails and modulating echoes, this is a work of hands-on experimentation and “in the moment” creation. You can submit your music for the podcast via our website. If you enjoy the show please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, share it with a friend and check out the featured artists. Fancy listening to a continuous mix of music from previous shows? Then check out Audio Interface Radio which is now online 24/7 and features curated blocks of music to fit your mood throughout the day. Follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky Copyrighted music is used with the permission of the artists/labels. If you feel we've made a mistake and that your music shouldn't have been included please get in touch and let us know.
