Double-digit temperatures in the plus range are forecast for the weekend. At the moment we still have frosty temperatures and it's hard to imagine something like spring. Of course, comments about the weather are never appropriate given the state of the world and the discomfort in which we constantly find ourselves. At the same time, it gives the illusion of a normality that we may never achieve again, or at least not in the near future.
Music has always been my medicine for the burden on my soul, especially since it is available without a prescription.
In the last few weeks of last year, an incredible amount of and incredibly good music appeared for my ears, perhaps the chance for me to reconcile myself a little with the old year.
One who is always at the forefront and tries to help the world to a better version in his own way is Cornwell man Jon Tye, who lets us look mildly at the old year with two albums (as Seahawks & with the Ocean Moon Group).
And because there is no time to waste away, Jon is releasing his ambient dream “Ways to the Deep Meadow” on the always great Music from Memory via Amsterdam in the first month of the new year as Ocean Moon.
In the mid-1990s, Jon Tye was relentlessly focused on electronic music’s most extreme possibilities. That was the title of the inaugural compilation from his label, Lo Recordings, which aimed to map the fringes of post-rave electronic music in category-smashing experiments from artists like
Scanner, Omni Trio, and Luke Vibert’s Wagon Christ project. Lo Recordings spent the next few years pushing outward, breaking down distinctions between genres and modes of listening on comps like
United Mutations and Further Mutations, enlisting a provocatively motley crew— Aphex Twin, Tortoise, Hood, Thurston Moore, Squarepusher, Stereolab - in their demolition work.
Most extreme of all was the music Tye released under his own Twisted Science alias by turns erratic and overdriven or dusty and dissonant. But he also had other, mellower projects, and as time has gone by, the dulcet side of his music has come to the fore. In 2021, the ambient historians at Music From Memory curated a star-gazing selection of the ambient and ambient techno he produced in the early 1990s in MLO, a duo with fellow Brit Peter Smith; now the label turns its attention to his ambient project Ocean Moon. Ways to the Deep Meadow’s seven atmospheric tracks are all new productions, but their billowing pads, gently pulsing arpeggios, and general air of wide-eyed wonder sound so classic, it would be easy to mistake the album for an archival release.
The mood throughout bobs somewhere between tranquil and hypnotic, beginning with the prayer bowl and rainfall that open “Ways to the Deep Meadow.” That song—inspired by a poem by Angus MacLise, who played in the Velvet Underground an La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music before moving to Nepal—is led by gently cycling synth arpeggios whose curious rises and falls remind me of one of M.C. Escher’s staircases. “Souls Fall Away” is a buoyant froth of beatific, if indecipherable, vocals, and “Angel Falls,” a few tracks later, evokes similar heavenliness. Things really only come down to earth twice: “Day of the Voyage” is a blissed-out procession led by a halting electronic drum pattern evocative of Indian music; “Plains of Paradise” is a Balearic devotional driven by rippling congas.
Per label press materials, portions of the album were apparently inspired by artificial intelligence, as Tye sought alternatives—theoretical, philosophical, and even spiritual—to what he saw as more pessimistic or critical perspectives. It’s unclear, however, whether he actually used A.I. tools in generating or organizing his sounds, or simply took inspiration, like any science-fiction writer, from the idea of the technology. In the angelic choirs and electronic pulses of “Ways to the Deep Meadow,” it’s certainly possible to perceive a sense of optimism about technology, and press materials say that Holly Hernandon‘s Holly+ app was used to process text from Janine Rook’s Made in Dreams the exhibition that Ocean Moon’s song of the same name was created to soundtrack. But no words are detectable in that song, and fortunately nothing on Ways to the Deep Meadow bears traces of low-fidelity artifacts or other telltale marks of A.I. slop.
Those hallmarks, in fact, seem like the kind of thing that Tye might happily have worked into his music as Twisted Science, a project that often seemed guided by the desire to use new technologies in ways not originally intended. Ways to the Deep Meadow, in contrast, is a far more conventional affair; for fans of classic ambient and new age, even a nostalgic one. That fealty to familiar sounds and modes of beauty—consonant harmonies, glistening timbres, gentle symmetries—is one of its strengths. It’s a radiant tribute to the tradition that inspired it.
-Pitchfork-
Lo Recordings boss Jon Tye harks back to his time with UK ambient group MLO on 'Ways to the Deep Meadow', proposing an optimistic, immersive alternative to the perpetual doom and gloom.
It's no surprise that Tye's latest solo jaunt has ended up on Music For Memory, given that the label reissued a retrospective of MLO's work ('Oumaumua') back in 2021. And 'Ways to the Deep Meadow' is in good company next to releases from Gigi Masin and Gaussian Curve. Tye's approach is thoughtful, but never dark - the title of the album is a reference to Angus Maclise's poem 'Universal Solar Calendar', and on the first side, he takes a surprisingly upbeat look at the possibilities of AI. Inspired by the Buddhist perspective that AI could be an integral step in the evolution of consciousness, and texts from Frank J. Tippler, Jeanette Winterson and James Lovelock, Tye crafts a sequence of gently evolving nu-new age lullabies, using faded pads and animated, woodblock-like percussive cycles.
On the title track, we can hear traces of Hiroshi Yoshimura's iconic 'Green', while 'Day of the Voyage' sounds more like early ISAN, all slo-mo beatbox pulses and sugary melodies. And on the flip, Tye presents two long-form compositions, the first of which was composed for Janine Rook's 'Made In Dreams' exhibition using text from the catalogue that Tye processed using Holly Herndon's Holly + app. Written for Vix Hill Ryder's 'Wild Edges' film, 'An Ending Full of Light' finishes things off with charming musicbox melodies that wash into warm, billowing ambience.
-Boomkat-
released January 31, 2025
File under Ambient
