Purl - Form Is Emptiness

Archives: 2016

In my mind, Purl will always be a Silent Season guy, for one rather silly reason: his album Stillpoint was the second CD I ever bought from the label. And a humdinger of a record it was, so perfectly capturing such a sublime vibe the dub techno print cultivated at that point. Never mind that would end up being Mr. Cimbrelius' last release with Silent Season, or that he'd only had one other item with them before (Deep Ground). In my mind, Purl was Silent Season, and always will be.

That's obviously completely erroneous though, Ludvig shopping the Purl brand among many labels throughout his career. Heck, even by the time he'd put out Stillpoint, he'd already had more albums out on Dewtone Recordings than any other label. The following year, however, he made his debut with a little ambient print just getting their feet wet, with a similar aesthetic to Silent Season (densely layered dub drones, naturalistic cover art). He'd go on to release many more there, plus their off-shoot print. For all intents, I should be thinking Purl as an Archives guy more than a Silent Season guy. Nope, still can't quite shake it.

Purl being on Archives makes sonic sense, and Form Is Emptiness delivers exactly what you'd expect of the pairing. Ludvig's drone tones are given more prominence, but his dubby rhythms aren't completely jettisoned either. In fact, they're often downright heavy, some serious low-end throb going on in the track Unlearn even as gentle, ethereal pad work weaves through the bass. Elsewhere, Under Mjuka Vatten and Willow (Graft I) keep the dub techno pulse steady, focusing more on the subtle harmonic tones layered overtop. And if final track Terra Lumina, at sixteen minutes in length, didn't make room for at least a little beatcraft during its runtime, it'd be a big waste of sonic space indeed.

Still, Archives is generally more an ambient label than a dub techno one (there's Faint for that), and Form Is Emptiness offers the beatless stuff too. Vissna washes layered strings and synths like waves upon a seashore, while the titular track expands on Vissna's ideas to grander scale. Not to mention most tracks have at least some ambient dithering at their starts, gradually leading in whether there's a rhythm or not. Yep, there's all the things happening that should make this a standout Purl album. Well, almost.

Honestly, I think this is more an Archives issue than a Purl one. The label, while very dependable at providing a particular type of ambient, does tend to sound rather samey. I've brought up this critique before, and it holds true with Form Is Emptiness, a sense of repetitiveness settling in as the album plays out. Having heard Ludvig across many prints now, I can only conclude this is more him making music in the Archives style. Great if you're down for more with a little dub techno rudder, but may not leap out at you as essential as his other releases.

Warmth - Wildlife

Archives: 2019

Agustín seems to have done well for himself now, finding his footing in a way overcrowded ambient scene. Something has to be that tipping point though, where one's success goes from ultra-niche hobbiest to algorithmic search engine approved. It'd be easy enough pointing towards landing some prominent names for his Archives print as one such tipping point, and having acts like Purl, Halftribe, and Gallery Six certainly were gets. I'm more curious about Mr. Mena's own output though, where his Warmth project was seen on equal footing as other ambient luminaries. It's not like his pre-Archives material was gaining much attention, mostly floating about various ambient and dub techno netlabels with little notice. Even his initial material on Archives didn't generate that much buzz.

Is Wildlife that one Warmth album you need to hear, even if you're not a fan of Warmth, then? Hard to say, but it certainly feels unique among his catalogue. Unlike other releases within Archives', erm, archives, this one does not feature some lovely bit of natural scenery. Rather, a big ol' mama grizzly bear adorns the album's cover art. At least, I assume it's a mama bear, as the inlay has a couple cubs running about, plus the Wildlife Addendum record features a shot of the whole family together. Right, having some sort of actual wildlife as the art for your album called Wildlife makes one-hundred percent sense, but what I find interesting is Warmth's Retrospective (2016-2021) collection also features a prominent grizzly. Agustín must feel some personal connection to these magnificent ursine to reuse their visage, is what I'm saying, which leads me to believe Wildlife is, indeed, that one Warmth album you need to hear, even if you're not a fan of Warmth.

Is the music any good though? Well, it's more ambient drone in that Archives stylee, so if you're down for more of that, you're likely down for this. I haven't tired of it yet, and don't sense I will anytime soon. Gads, there's just so much music in Archive's catalogue!

But yes, you have that fuzzy, dreamy timbre the best of dubby drone has to offer in Wildlife. Where gentle tones seemingly drift across fog covered mountain lakes at dawn. Where subtle, echoing sounds emanate from distant corners of pre-dawn shrouded forests. Where melancholic pads settle layer upon layer such that you're lost within their sonic embrace. Some tracks offer quiet, reflective moments (Owls, The Bear, Wildlife, Dawning), others a more disquieting tone (The Woods, Sonora, Shine, Soil). A couple artists add some acoustic flair to the dense synth drone (Pepo Galán in Shine, Robert Farrugia in Dawning), but this is primarily Agustín's show.

So yep, this is definitely another solid outing from Warmth, and if you're unsure where to dive into his discography, about as good as any place. Well, unless you want to get the whole kit and caboodle with Retrospective (2016-2021). Either way, you're getting at least one more release with a prominent Kodiak on the cover.

Shuta Yasukochi & Carlos Ferreira - Quiet Reminders

Archives: 2020

A simple little release, this. Two tracks, both about fourteen and a half minutes long, and two remixes, averaging nine minutes between them. I suppose that barely constitutes this being an album proper, reaching over forty minutes in total. Still feels rather skint though, like there could have been more ideas explored over the course of its run time. So it goes with ambient, I guess.

The artists behind this album are Shuta Yasukochi, Japanese, and Carlos Ferreira, Brazilian. This is not as odd a combination of ethnicity as you'd think, Brazil having the second largest population of Japanese heritage in the world. Some hundred years ago, there was a large influx of immigration there, mostly to work coffee plantations and other agricultural enterprises. A big reason for this was the United States massively reducing the amount of Japanese immigrants within their borders, and with Japan still trying to find its way out of its post-feudal era, many went to Brazil for a better chance at life. I guess it worked out well enough, seeing as how a few million souls remains there to this day. Whether this has anything to do with Carlos and Shuta meeting each other to collaborate, I haven't a clue, but hey, always fun to divert this music blog into a history blog, right?

Both had been active making music since at least the mid-'10s, growing decent Soundcloud profiles in that time. Shuta even got his first album out on Archives half a decade ago, while Carlos was working with other artists, including some psychedelic rock thing called Ansiedaed, including a song called Drabula. It's not indicative of what he's making with Shuta.

Still, he does put his guitar skills to some use with first track Floating, even if it's just the gentlest of electric strumming. Not even strumming really, more like soft plucking, with a little effects pedal providing subtle delay. Meanwhile, Shuta provides the soft, droning synth pads, the higher layers of timbre imparting a feeling of, well, floating, like wispy clouds caressing alpine peaks. Yes, thank you, Archives, for once again giving an album the most perfect piece of cover art. Naturally, it's a piece that's not in any hurry to move along, but the lighter synths do grow steadily more pronounced as it plays out.

By contrast, An Endless Dream goes atonal, very little about it as harmonious as Floating. The drones are quite subdued, there's a layer of quiet, dubby field recordings churning in the background, and the sparsest of idiophonic instruments offer what little melody Shuta and Carlos are willing to give. I kinda' zone out on this one.

The two remixes come care of Hilyard and Archives-head Agustín, under his Warmth guise (of course). Hilyard turns Floating into more of a standard shoegazey ambient outing, but holy...! Warmth goes about as close to dark ambient drone as I think I've ever heard from this label. Now I want to check out that Darkest Place album from him.

Warmth - Life

Archives: 2020

It's only appropriate the first artist album I'm covering from Archives is from Agustín Mena. Between this print and its sister one, Faint, the chap has released somewhere in the ballpark of twenty items in the past half decade, with no slowing down in sight. Granted, as the Archives headmaster, it's only natural he'd be publishing his works through them. And hey, if a pile of other artists want to join in on the fun, there's plenty of room in the digital realm. Too much, I sometimes feel. Believe me, the urge to splurge is real, but fortunately I'm too broke right now to do so.

Warmth may seem like a rather generic, bland alias for a project, but when you hear Mr. Mena's style of ambient drone, it's an incredibly apt description. Like many modern ambient composers, he has some lineage in the realm of dub techno, so shares some sonic similarities with the Silent Season continuum. Rather early on though, Agustín ditched the beats and went full-on drone, and has mostly remained there ever since.

Now, I know what you're thinking (my FitBit links me directly into your cerebellum.. oops, shouldn't have typed that out loud!): “Great, just another ambient drone artist among the hundreds to thousands already out there. Why should I bother with this one?” And I says to you, I says, I do: “BECAUSE!! It's just that damn good!”

We all know I go through a lot of ambient music. Like, a lot. Much of it, I generally enjoy, but rarely has the genre provided something that immediately grabs me and won't let go for an instant. Warmth is such an artist that accomplishes this. Right from the start on this particular album titled Life, opener Breathe lays in spacious field recordings, soft analogue fuzz, and a gently caressing melody of airy synth pads and decaying tones. So simple, yet so good!

Follow-up Safe continues with the field recordings ambience, some of which sounds like the rustling of leaves in the wind, focusing more on the layers of sonic timbre, while You're Not Here features a melancholic melody that reminds me of 36. Well, such as you can hear it, performed impossibly quiet and muffled through all manner of fuzz. Life mostly plays out in similar fashion, some tracks going more mysterious (Passage, The Mourning, Leaving), others more melodic (Roads, the titular cut). About the only real quibble I have is the whole LP runs rather short at only thirty-five minutes long, but hey, at least Warmth doesn't needlessly noodle along either.

I suppose you could also say there isn't that much difference between each piece, almost to the point Life could play out as one long composition. I honestly thought that might have been the initial intent, as the pauses between tracks on the CD seemed a little off. I then noticed there is a continuous mix version, but the pauses are there as well. Huh, not so continuous as we were led to believe.

Various - Heights

Archives: 2020

Finally, I get to talk about Archives! Not that this Spanish ambient label is some utterly unknown entity. Nay, they've been operation for over half a decade now, steadily releasing albums at a solid clip of several items per year, with such names like Purl, Halftribe, and Gallery Six making appearances. Throw in gorgeous naturalistic cover art with each release, and you'd think Archives would be on the tips of more tongues within the ambient-o-sphere.

Honestly though, if it wasn't for the Purl connection, I probably would have completely passed Archives by. As I've said in the past, when there's so much ambient music being released by the hour, one tends to focus their interests on specific artists and labels after a while, trusted go-tos and the like. Occasionally a Discoggian dive or a spiffy write-up in a 'zine might lure you in for a closer look, but in my experience, such times are rare. We are very much creatures of habit. Maybe, if I'd happened upon the cover art at least, I'd have given Archives a shot (they are very lovely landscapes), but I haven't seen much of their output in the usual blogs and store-fronts, to say nothing of being almost a non-factor in getting attention of the Almighty Algorithm. Nope, it was strictly the fact Purl released an album on there in 2020 that I ever learned of the label at all.

With that in mind, you may expect Archives to mostly be on that slightly dubby, layered drone type of ambient business, rather like Silent Season on their beatless days. Well, I don't know about that with any authoritative measure, as I've only gotten four CDs from the label thus far. I suppose it's handy that we're starting this mini-plunge with a compilation then, a tasty appetizer of various artists on offer before taking in a proper meal.

And hoo boy, am I ever diving into the ambientia obscura here. Andrew Tasselmyer. Shuta Yasukochi. Pepo Galán. Sphereuleus. Snufmumriko. Not to say these are complete unknowns abroad – some have even made appearances on Kompakt. Out of the eleven tracks featured on Heights though, I only recognize two off-hand: Hilyard, due to her collaboration with ProtoU on Cryo Chamber; and Warmth, because he runs Archives, and thus has a ton of material on the label.

Tasselmyer's Columns opens things up, and it's a pure drone-tone piece, eventually fading off into white noise and wind. Ellis' Canyons edges closer to modern classical, gentle piano piercing dense layers of calming, dubby drone. Heights mostly flits between these styles of ambient throughout, pieces ambling along and generally maintaining a tranquil mood. While every artist does bring something unique, you probably won't notice much variation unless you're paying close attention.

And that's fine, Archives' brand of ambient clearly intent on existing as nothing more than a cleanser for your headspace. As such, you'd justly believe it'd remain overlooked and obscure, but it's just so darn good at it!