Final Score: Nature 1 - Stress Hormones 0

Some ambient excursions, alt-pop kookiness, spiritual jazz, nu-tropicalia, neoclassical grace and a host of hot new singles should get you through the week.

In the introduction to the last newsletter, I was extolling the virtues of my new rural existence and how beneficial being unavoidably connected to nature has been for my wellbeing - especially during the particularly trying last six months. Lo and behold, I then noticed this article in the Guardian newspaper about a former National Health Service psychologist who runs a charity successfully prescribing time outside as a treatment for mental health, and who is having better success than standard talking therapies.

As well as the serotonin-boosting sun and the phytoncides that can decrease stress hormones, studies have shown that natural sounds such as water, wind and birdsong improve mood. The fractal patterns of nature have been shown to aid recovery from stress and boost alpha waves in the brain, which bring a pleasant relaxed wakefulness, while exposure to soil microorganisms can also boost moods.

The article also mentions that the smell of nature and, if you’re particularly cemented in, that even looking at a picture of nature can be beneficial, so I’m drawing the conclusion that listening to nature-infused ambient music - which accounts for quite a high percentage of the genre I’d wager, will have a similarly positive effect too. If you’re a hard-bitten capitalist and still sceptical, then don’t listen to me, listen to the money men:

The programme works and is cost-effective, according to an independent assessment by researchers from the London School of Economics. They conducted a randomised controlled trial, following 375 people over two-and-a-half years. They found “clinically meaningful benefits” and concluded that the Dose of Nature prescription treated mental illness. Both increased nature and social connection were found to be important factors and the researchers estimated that the social welfare benefits were worth eight times the cost of the prescription.

Over the years I’ve had a largely urban existence with spells in Amsterdam, Sydney, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Lisbon and Porto before arriving at my current rural bolthole, and I’ve lost count of the times after a trip to the country that I remarked, without really analysing why, that I should do it more often, only to then immediately re-immerse myself in, and get consumed by, the urban hustle and not leave the city limits for another year or more. So for all you city dwellers, put a recurring note in your calendar to head out past the apartments, bars, restaurants, shops, offices and industrial estates, and soak up the sights, smells and sounds of nature.

Except for the Elskavon EP, and the Whispers of Rain LP review which were taken from the blog, I’m keeping the reviews super short and sweet this week, as I get have my first proper week of custody on home turf this week. In fact I’m currently trying to finish the newsletter on the train to a half-way handover point as I type. Unfortunately the second part of the handover train journey was a standing room only Easter travel nightmare, so I’m desperately trying to finish the newsletter early in the mornings or late in the evenings, whilst the little one is sleeping.

I’ve booked the week off work so I can start to meaningfully reconnect with my daughter again, and I’m happy to report the weather’s not too bad for April. The plan is not to have too much of a plan. I can’t wait to discover what she’s curious about as we aimlessly wander and cycle around the valley and its forested, hilly boundaries, or potter along the wild beaches nearby, perhaps paddling in the Atlantic as we go. It’s going to do us both the world of good on so many levels.

And, just as the doctor ordered, there’s a good dose of ambient music in all its many shapes and sizes this week.

Far Away Nebraska - La paura del vuoto (Home Normal)

L:R The cover of La paura del vuoto : Alessio Bertuzzi aka Far away Nebraska.

Italian musician and producer Alessio Bertuzzi aka Far Away Nebraska, has only been in the ambient game for the last four years, but is creative enough and made such an early impression, that this to be his fifth album for Home Normal, who, alongside Whitelabrecs, are top of the UK ambient label tree in my book.

There’s always a fluidity to his creations, perhaps down to his use of his guitar that steers many of the ambient sounds through the speakers? Coupled with his creative use of synthesizers - largely eschewing those tired ambient pads that crop up in too many releases, and yes, some of those wellness-improving nature sounds, he always seems to deliver.

This album is an ode to his mountain escapes - there’s even an accompanying poem extolling their virtues if you care to check the liner notes. It also sounds like he hit the mountains at just the right time, as there’s an unusual stillness in the air: the sun is shining, the snows have melted and the wind is kindly whistling elsewhere; leaving him to soak up the silence, and by silence I mean the absence of human noise - the goat bells, birds and mountain streams don’t count.

There’s a classical refinement to the album - fitting considering the majestic surroundings; his elongated notes, acoustic and machine sounds surveying the grandeur, soaking up the enormity of it all and contemplating the monumental forces that sculpted the scene - just wonderful. For maximum mental benefit, although I usually encourage people to listen to music with their eyes closed, try expanding the cover art to fit your screen whilst listening. And if you need a broader look at the a quieter end of the ambient spectrum then head over to TSMM’s Slow Ambient Playlist.

Elori Saxl & Henry Solomon - Seeing Is Forgetting (True Panther)

Elori Saxl has been floating around the TSMM blogs and playlists for the last five years, ever since her great The Blue of Distance LP - a charming neoclassical meditation on technology’s effect on our relationship with nature. The composer, producer and sax player Henry Solomon is news to me, but after a quick peek at his discography to see if any album covers rung a bell (I’m better at recalling images than names), I noticed he appeared on the recent Otto Benson release - it’s a small, shrinking, but supportive alternative music world out there.

Together, over the course of a few nights of recording sessions in Los Angeles, they’ve come up with something of an ambient jazz gem. It sounds like a free-flowing session - more improvised than pre-composed. There’s a gaseous quality to Saxl’s synth work - the electro-ambient currents inadvertently ushered around the studio space by the musician’s deliberate movements, although at times the sounds get cornered into rhythmic, minimal patterns which occasionally pulse or jab tones through the speakers. Solomon, for his part, adopts a similar approach, going with the ambient flow; his effect soaked, at times looped, baritone sax and bass clarinet carving their way through the electronic haze. Why ambient jazz is not more of a thing, I shall never understand?

JOÃO LEÃO & AKIM BAMBOO - High On A Rocky Ledge

The Caju Collective’s seven-inch/digital releases, many of which aren’t available to stream, are the sort of vinyl series that I would lap up to show off my vinyl digging dedication and tease other DJs with, IF I still collected vinyl, DJed, and the shipping and import costs from Canada weren’t a trillion dollars per package. If you have any interest in Brazilian music, especially the hazier, tropicalia and vintage end of the country’s rich musical spectrum, then give them a follow on Bandcamp.

On this latest release, João Leão lends his voice to a schmaltzy bossa rendition of Moondog’s equally sentimental “High On a Rocky Ledge”, keeping the song’s essence but giving the vocals a serious upgrade, as Akim bamboo takes good care of the flute. Moondog tribute paid, he then sits down with Trio Cajueiro for some initially lo-fi, somewhat homesick samba, before they remember their new, chillier, Toronto home isn’t that bad after all and let rip with a fifties-sounding perkier number that will get the Brazilian old school dancing. I suggest you start here and work your way back through the series.

Isabel Pine - Fables (Kranky)

I stumbled across Isabel Pine a couple of years ago through her Where The Flowers Grow debut LP, in which she melted her bucolic neoclassical sensibility into refined ambient electronica to provide her natural surroundings in British Columbia with the sort of soundtrack it deserves.

Her latest album sees Kranky records giving her a serious leg up the independent music ladder, and a well-deserved presence in record stores worldwide. I was just about to say that not a lot has changed stylistically in the last couple of years - which is fine by me, but then I read the release notes which said that this LP was recorded two years ago, and was an experiment to take her nature soundtracking to its ultimate conclusion, by creating and recording the music in a wilderness surrounded cabin and actually outside, hence those field recordings you hear are live rather than post-recording additions. And what a success the project was. Rather like the landscape that she inhabits, this is enduring music that will stand the test of time, and which will still sound good when a visiting alien picks up an ambient temperature-warped vinyl copy out of the ashes of our collective self-immolation many years from now.

More Eaze - Sentence structure in the country (Thrill Jockey)

Brooklyn composer and multi-instrumentalist Mari Maurice Rubio is better known to the music world as More Eaze. She’s been hard at work in the music underground for a while, bouncing around all sorts of TSMM-approved, seriously credible, leftfield labels; keeping things weird, wobbly and wayward with her wild eclecticism - often apparent in single songs, not just over the course of an album.

Thrill Jockey are the latest to support her slow but steady ascent into the wider consciousness, and with the amount of sweeter-sounding alt-pop songs on this new album, if she isn’t careful, she might just start to crossover.

Obviously, the sweet, creatively Auto-Tuned vocals are wrapped up in all sorts of compositional kookiness, splattered with psychedelic snippets, coated with sonic swirls, and shaken by compositional tremors - hell, there’s even a fair bit of Americana squeezed in there somehow. BUT there’s an accessible melodic and vocal sweetness that keeps rising to the surface that should ease the faint of heart into the Eazeosphere. Well, except on a few tracks - LOL. Maybe it was boredom, or just a desire to provoke, but don’t get too comfortable and assume you know what’s going on or about to happen: there’s some occasional abrasiveness, harsh noise passages, a rather random neo-classical track and a bit of free noise to keep you on your toes. And why not?

Alina Bzhezhinska, Tony Kofi & Tulshi - Whispers of Rain (Live) [Tru Thoughts]

Originally from Lviv in Ukraine, Alina Bzhezhinska has made quite the impact since blessing England with her presence and harp playing a decade ago. Deeply inspired by the work of the Coltranes - particularly Alice Coltrane’s harp-driven, spiritual jazz mission, she’s a keen collaborator, integrating her instrument into all sorts of contemporary, as well as classical music productions and live performances, not to mention teaching the instrument at top institutions, like Goldsmith’s college.

Originally from Nottingham, Tony Kofi should need no introduction to jazz lovers, especially in the UK. Coming up, like so many leading UK jazz lights, through the Jazz Warriors, he’s played with pretty much everyone over the years, but as this new project with Bzhezhinska shows, he’s still searching and not sitting on his well-earned laurels.

Jonathan Rogers, aka producer, engineer and studio manager Tulshi - after paying his dues as a DJ and producer ‘up north’, is now based in the less climatically challenged island of Ibiza, where he lends sonic guidance to a wide range of projects, not just the deeper dance music strains of his formative years.

Now, I’m not usually a fan of live albums, BUT, I’m making a serious exception for this live recording - captured I believe, at different locations, of Bzhezhinska and Tulshi’s Whispers of Rain album. It’s simply beautiful, and now their electroacoustic fusion project has been further elevated by the light touch saxophone and flute playing of Tony Kofi, who seamlessly slips into the project, taking it to a whole other dimension.

Much to Tulshi’s credit, gone are his more forceful electronic structures that cropped up amongst the more ambient endeavours of the original album; this time round he’s content to sit back and focus on atmospheric embellishment. He might also be responsible for the live-sounding percussive elements in some tracks - although considering the amount of chimes, rattles, shakes and hitting involved in some tracks I’d be surprised if someone else wasn’t on stage, but in the absence of conclusive credits I’ll leave that to your imagination, or not, if you’re just enjoying the music.

The album opens with the weightless, cosmic, ambient drift of “Child’s Play”, the sweetness not entirely innocent - as some dub techno pads from the studio production pulse in the background, but certainly pure, spiritual and serene - what an opener. Things then get busy with, “Nomad’s Nocturne”, the hand-played percussion giving the searching harp the propulsion it needs to ask all the right questions, whilst Kofi sits back and soaks it all up, finally lending a calming flute near the end of the quest.

The title track is next and it’s Kofi’s turn to shine; his gentle saxophone gliding serenely on Bzhezhinska and Tulshi’s warm ambient thermals. The darker cloud of “Warm Days, Cold Nights” then floats into the summer skies: a slightly off-kilter string loop nagging the ambient harp dreams like a distant alarm clock before eventually runnign out of power, leaving the leading lady to her deeply soulful harp introspection, egged on by some rolling drums and minimal keys. “Starling” then injects a moment of utter calm into the listening space; the perfect gateway for the spiritual, ambient jazz masterclass’ of “Across the Sea” and “Journey Home” which round off this wonderful live collection with their weightless, possibly wellness-imbuing sounds.

Stream a couple of tracks of this remarkable recording on your service of choice, but head to the Bandcamp underground for the full show.

Elskavon - Fragments EP, Vol. 1 (Western Vinyl)

Elskavon is just one of the various monikers of Minneapolis-based musician Chris Bartels, most of which have found their way into TSMM's playlists and blog, and which focusses on more cinematic electronic meets ethereal post-rock vibes, but whatever hat he wears to the studio, he takes some serious quality with him.

Fragments lives up to its title. The project has its roots in his Origins album from three years ago - a seriously electronic, albeit twisted and instrumental in places, alt-pop release. As with so many artists, either out of curiosity or release strategy necessity, Bartels has already released a choice set of album remixes, but is keen to stress, and rightly so, that Fragments is not a remix record, nor a revisionist exercise, but an intentional breaking - which sounds quite painful, and sort of is.

Rather than take those hooks, motifs or grooves and treat them lightly, he’s opted for deconstruction, distortion, erosion and reconstruction from the ground up - it’s not for the faint of heart, and perhaps not even for lovers of the original album. The original vocal tracks weren’t shiny in any form, but always friendly, the same, with an exception for “North Sole” - the album closer, can’t be said for Origins Fragments. Parts are torn from their roots then twisted into unfamiliar, often uneasy new shapes; then sub-consciously, rather than painstakingly, sculpted into ambient-noise forms of varying intensity and impressive length, that ebb and flow through the speakers with quasi-classical grandeur and grace, especially “Blosson and the Void (Fragments)” - assisted by its recognisable strings.

Although the mini-album will undoubtedly appeal to chillier, darker, doomier ambient fans, don’t be deterred if you are, like me, more of a lower-case ambient fan, there is beauty and serious craft in these shadows.

New and Notable.

Here’s a few choice singles I’ve covered over at the blog from some exciting new, often younger artists, plus some old favourites. Most of the singles are also teasing longer releases dropping in the next few weeks, so make sure you give them a follow.

“Experimental intentions laid bare, the track suddenly dissolves into a nineties trance breakdown that gradually gets devoured by the return of our future android overlord and her machine noise onslaught”

“a swirling, psychedelic, peak-time, leftfield, nu-jazz dance music delight”

“another genre-ambiguous gem that I’m filing under perky, pan-African powered alt-pop”

“Desmet attempts to keep sane by calmly repeating the song title like a mantra, but is enveloped by the orchestra’s existential angst.”

“It’s a mind melting fusion groove for the hips and the head,”

Don’t Forget TSMM’s Playlists and Podcast.

From ambient sound baths and wellness imbuing new age vibes to underground house via jazz, neoclassical, folk, dub and more, the twenty one TSMM playlists and podcast cover a lot of ground, and are updated regularly.

They’re available on Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon, Youtube Music, Youtube, Deezer, Soundcloud and Spotify (if you don’t worry about them not paying most of the artists on the playlists).