Ambient
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The JC’s favourite tunes™
For your listening pleasure
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Ambient
/ˈambɪənt/ (Adj.)
- Of or relating to one’s immediate surroundings.
- Chill.
- A highly efficient musical form since you can achieve a state of hypnotic profundity lasting ten or fifteen minutes by simply repeating the same bar on a loop, running a phaser set to a slow sweep over it, adding a few industrial sound effects and having really cool cover art.
As JC chilled to the Chromatics’ pretty cover of I Want To Be Alone the other day, an odd thing happened: quite deep in the mix, a discordant backing sounded. Perhaps a Moog, Mellotron, Farfisa, Stylophone or something exotic but, to JC’s uncultured ears, it sounded uncomfortably like a weed-eater.
Well, that’s quite discordant, he thought — it rather spoiled the sweetness of the music — but who knows? These artists feel things more deeply than the rest of us. Perhaps the intrusion broke up the saccharine affect, or commented wistfully on what we have become.
Anyway, JC carried on. Next up was Our Lord Debussy’s A Winged Victory for the Sullen — equally, but differently, portentous: tolling piano chords, shimmering synth pads — and, blow me down: there is that same discordant backing, like a leaf-blower, again!
How odd! Two tracks in a row!
Is this a genre, perhaps? A collective? Is this the trademark groove of a famous guest ambient instrumentalist of some kind?
JC got up to make coffee and as he did, spotted the neighbour in the garden with his Flymo.