We Carry Eden

 I was shocked when I learned that Hanyo van Oosterom, whose CHI projects had found a safe haven at Astral Industries for many years, would no longer be releasing on Ario Farahani's wonderful label. I suspected a major break, but I didn't read a thing about it. Quite the opposite. Hanyo only spoke with the utmost gratitude and respect about his time at AI, which has now come to an end. Well, shocked is perhaps too harsh a word. I was very surprised and would not have believed it possible, especially since it was clear that Hanyo's visions are far from over. For "Carry of Eden", Hanyo has found a more than respectable new home in Music from Memory. Whether he is allowed and wants to live there long-term, or whether he will lead a nomadic life from now on when it comes to releasing new projects, time will tell. At least the latter wouldn't be inappropriate. After all, that's exactly what his music is about. Basically. But what do I know.

Reviews:

Groove Magazin:

"The sound design unfolds intuitively throughout the entire 42 minutes, tucked between field recordings and tribal percussion, looped dialogues and prayers, distant calls and enchanting flutes – as if a brief, clear glimpse into another reality. The feeling of security in a deeply shattered world. Who couldn't use that". 

Test Pressing:

“Now we have some new music from Hanyo and longtime collaborator Omar Ka on the ever-essential Music From Memory. Water ebbs and flows. Marimba-propelled tempos quicken. Gentle bass reassures. Various voices come and go but the whole enterprise is underpinned by Omar's narrative. Life comes into focus”. 

Juno Records:

"We Carry Eden is an album so deep you can plunge right into it and forget the real world entirely. It melds drones, field recordings, dub, jazz and fourth world influences across a two-part composition that features storytelling by West African vocalist Omar Ka. Van Oosterom crafts textured soundscapes rooted in meditative grooves and spiritual depth and is inspired by Patmos and Hopi wisdom. He also weaves nature, myth and memory into a unified sonic journey".

Minimal Collective:

“Where meditative soundwork, nomadic storytelling and archival instinct converge, We Carry Eden unfolds as an elemental synergy. Son Of Chi builds space. Omar Ka brings voice. In this two-part composition, the Dutch ambient pioneer reunites with the Senegalese singer, finding a natural home on Music From Memory. The result hums with spiritual gravity, inviting slow immersion".

Funkentechno (David James):

"Awesome hearing the Dutch ambient wizard on Music From Memory now, exploring more dubbed out fourth world jazz territory in collage format, flowing episodically and stitched together by the voice of Omar Ka".

Boomkat:

"Sonically, the world of ‘We Carry Eden’ is fully immersive; it ripples with depth and shimmers in detail. Motifs, ideas and fragments, arise and disappear like passing thoughts, drawing the listener deeper and deeper inwards. For those familiar with Oosterom’s work as Chi Factory, the depth and meditative nature of the work will come as no surprise".

Ban Ban Ton Ton:

"A hallucinatory, peyote button heat haze where crows caw, cattle bells rattle and then the Sahara breaks down, shifts to somewhere Spanish, serenaded by crickets and cicadas. Language gets looped. The narration supplied by cosmic guides: Senegalese vocalist Omar Ka and Elders of the Native American Hopi Tribe. 

The music is like ECM jazz meets the drones of modern, digital ambient. Seamlessly weaving together different, separate sections. Snatches of woodwinds, traditional song, and patient piano ripples. Exploring Jon Hassell’s Fourth World with gentle electro-acoustics".

Ways to the Deep Meadow

 

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

Make A Wilderness

 

Today's Sunday Service comes from the always great Jonny Nash.

After his fantastic, exotic collaboration album with Firecrackers' Lindsay Todd for Dan Mitchell's 

Island of the Gods, „Fauna Mapping“, 

( „Jonny Nash and Firecracker's Lindsay Todd get barefoot and turn out a stunner of an LP. Over the course of 12 compositions we find the pair utilising their recordings in a variety of ways, avoiding the well-trodden clichés of the "exotic" and instead attempting to achieve a personal interpretation of the flora, fauna and climate of the Indonesian island of Bali.“- Clearspot), 

Jonny appeared in a completely different place with this album, which is based on the late Talk Talk and yet of course sounds very unique and different. If you look at his back catalogue, that's not really surprising. First Album on Mood Hut „Snaker 04“ was Surf Sambas, Basslines & haunted Electro, „Phantom Actors“ melodic Detroit new Age Techno,  & 

„In „Eden“, Jonny finds his soul somewhere between a gong bath, avant-jazz minimalism and 4th world new age, at times recalling a slightly slackened version of Elodie’s sublime tension and at others recalling the drifting scents of K. Leimer’s early work, but with an opiated smudge which is not familiar to either of them, yet distinctly unique to the seductive, quietly radiant aura of Eden.“ 

- Boomkat -

„The world is supposedly a big place, but that’s not so when you travel with a guitar,” François Baschet observed. In the years following World War II, eager to circumnavigate the globe with his instrument, the French musician came up with a solution: an inflatable guitar with a balloon for a body and a foldable wooden neck. That humble invention was the origin of what Baschet and his older brother, Bernard, an engineer, would make their life’s work: sonorous objects that blurred the line between sculpture and musical instrument. The otherworldly sounds generated by the Baschet brothers’ sound structures, as they called their devices—like the Cristal Baschet, an array of glass rods played with wet fingers—have inspired musicians from Tom Waits to Jean Michel Jarre. Now, the instruments form the basis of Make a Wilderness, the first solo album in two years from the ambient musician Jonny Nash.

It’s easy to see why Nash would be attracted to the Baschet brothers’ objects, with their rich, resonant timbres, which suggest electronic sounds produced using non-electronic means. Whether solo, in collaboration with Susanne Kraft, or as a member of Gaussian Curve, Nash tends to pursue the ineffable in his music. An early EP, Phantom Actors, invoked his ambient forebears - Jon Hassell, Mark Isham, Wally Badarou—in tones and textures evocative of tropical sunsets, ripe peaches, a lover’s sigh. His music has only become more diffuse from there, the edges between synthesizer, piano, and standup bass steadily softening, as though worn away by erosion.

Make a Wilderness is his most ethereal effort yet: a modest set of instrumental sketches that feel cloaked in mystery. The glassy timbres and microtonal harmonies of the Baschet brothers’ objects lend to the desert-mirage air, though it’s impossible to discern how any of these songs were made, or even whether they were composed at all. Their movements are as gently haphazard as the clanking of wind chimes. Studies in stillness, they suggest a winter breeze whistling through a scrapyard, or the creak and murmur of a boat harbor at night.

There are no melodies to speak of, though the album’s ephemeral meanderings are not at the expense of more consonant pleasures. A minute and a half into “Shell,” a rich, reassuring piano chord rings out, and it is repeated throughout the course of the piece, regular as a beacon in heavy fog. Nash’s minimalist tendencies suggest that he has taken to heart the late Mark Hollisˋ advice: “Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note. And don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.” Nash’s touch is distinguished by its patience: He layers his tones with exceptional finesse, taking care not to waste a single sound. Each note feels earned.

Much of the album, in fact, draws its inspiration from the quietest, most secretive corners of Hollis’ and his group Talk Talkˋs discographies. That’s particularly true of “Shell,” with its ruminative piano, and “Language Collapsed,” the 10-minute centerpiece of the B-side, where vibraphone paints broad strokes across a blurry backdrop in which flickers of brass and woodwinds flash out from the darkness and disappear just as swiftly. Those ephemeral appearances mark Make a Wilderness’ defining characteristic: Gorgeous while it plays, it’s almost impossible to remember once the needle has hit the run-out groove. But that transience only makes Nash’s mood music that much more alluring. Make a Wilderness makes good on François Baschet’s youthful desire to find a sound that travels well. It’s not just portable; it dissolves into thin air.

-Philip Sherburne-

"Make a Wilderness" was released in 2019 not on Jonny Nash's own label Melody as Truth, but on the equally large Music from Memory.

File under: Ambient I Ambient Jazz I Folktronica I Modern Classical