12 Songs: The L.L.Z.
“Listening to something is an act of surrender. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” —Brian Eno
…and that’s coming from a man whose music is the sonic equivalent of a slow-moving cirrus cloud. Eno’s ambient discography definitely leans towards the “ignorable” side of this spectrum, but that’s sorta why we love it, and why we’ve based this week’s theme on this concept.
Not all of the music you’re about to hear is explicitly “ambient.” But the idea that specific requirements must be met in order for a song to be worthy of the title has always seemed a bit ludicrous to me. It’s more about reaching the L.L.Z.
Here are 12 songs that hover somewhere between the subconscious and conscious, neither demanding attention nor shying from it, discreetly existing in the L.L.Z…
the Liminal Listening zone.
Featuring:
Witch Egg: The adventurous madcap-jazz side project of John Dwyer of Oh Sees, featuring a motley ensemble of L.A. scenesters. Listen closely to: Nick Murray’s drumming.
Sarah Davachi: Heir to the Harold Budd/Eno throne. One of the most important artists ambient artists of the last decade.
Pharaoh Sanders and Floating Points: Flickering synapses, frequency sweeps, and sine wave tsunamis… “Kuiper” is what I imagine it sounds like inside the brain of Sam Shepherd, the mastermind behind Floating Points. Revisit our trip deep into the groups’s discography here.
Machinefabriek: A good band to über-dramatically stare out your bedroom window to.
““Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?” ”
[above artwork by Pavel Tchelitchew]
