Cyberchump – Flutter And Flow (ambient rock)

Cyberchump, according to their website, ‘is an electro-organic duo that explores aural soundscapes of rhythm and moment’. While my rarely dormant inner pedant is keen to learn what other kinds of soundscape might exist, this gives a fair sense of the textures to be heard on Flutter And Flow. The music is far from ambient; it has a strong skeletal structure, but it is clearly directed at the exploration of atmosphere, rather than the articulation of narrative, or the erotic power of groove. There are plenty of signs of instrumental agency remaining in the music, which risks an audience …

The Echelon Effect – Field Recordings (post-rock/ ambient)

The development and inheritance of stylistic traditions is rarely as linear or orderly as is commonly imagined; the evolution of art seems to follow a process of cultural selection analogous to the biological processes identified by Charles Darwin. In art, as in nature, developmental processes diverge, converge, intersect and run parallel in unpredictable ways; just as convergent evolution produces mammals that look exactly like fish, so the pursuit of particular creative inclinations within a broad tradition can lead to rock music that sounds like ambient music, or even Field Recordings. Conversely, the body of artistic practices commonly classified as ‘post-rock’ diverges quite radically at its extremes, with heavy guitars and mathy complexity at one pole…