sferic

Zaumne

Parfum

sferic

Properly stunning fever-dreamweaving on this new one from sferic, the label behind modern ambient classics by Space Afrika, Perila and Jake Muir, featuring a typically scene-stealing appearance by YL Hooi and occupying an elevated space at the intersection of flickering dub-pop and ASMR soundscaping. If you’re into anything from HTRK to Malibu, Félicia Atkinson to Voice Actor, consider it a major life enhancement. Zaumne is the alias of Mateusz Olszewski, whose last album could be found on the excellent Mondoj label, home to Antonina Nowacka, Piotr Kurek, Claire Rousay, More Eaze and other likeminded lowercase producers. For his Sferic debut, Zaumne enlists YL Hooi - a constant source of inspiration for many of us here, as well as Metoronori and the muted sax of Patrick Shiroishi. Loosely inspired by Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil’ (soft spoken extracts of which appear throughout), the album is a sort of exercise in escapism and sensual wandering. Throughout ‘Parfum’, faded pop is fleshed out with surreal elegance: all flickering neon and half-heard whispers suggestive of blurred late night fantasies; liminal, abstract, and highly evocative. Sounds hang in the air like incense, caressing the senses with an intentionality that's missing from so much landfill ambient. On opening track 'Voyageur’ he sets the scene with pastoral field recordings, dragging a pitched voice and elongated pads through a rhythmic throb that reduces dub techno to a faint knock. There are echoes of music from the fringes of the afterhours club scene too: Andrew Pekler's obscure imaginary landscapes, Jake...

Muir, Jake

Lady's Mantle

sferic

Sublime, smudged and looped ambient/pop layering from Jake Muir (Further Records, Touch), the third release on sferic following Space Afrika’s excellent ‘Somewhere Decent To Live’ album. Huge recommendation if you're into Jan Jelinek, Pinkcourtesyphone, Conjoint, Studio Pankow, Andrew Pekler, Fennesz...  sferic cruise the best coast with Jake Muir, an artist and field recordist hailing from Los Angeles, California, where he’s previously recorded and released albums under the Monadh moniker for Further Records and Touch, the latter of which on the compilation ‘Live At Human Resources’, where he took part in a beautiful group tribute to Jóhann Jóhannsson along with a number of solo contributions.  On ‘Lady’s Mantle’ Muir constructs a poignant sound world crafted from samples of well loved American pop smudged with aqueous field recordings made everywhere from Iceland to the beaches of California. In nine succinct scenes, the results loosely limn a wide sense of space and place with its fading harmonic auroras and glinting, half-heard surf rock melodies rendered in an abstract impressionist manner that suggests a fine tracing of in-between-spaces, perhaps describing metropolitan sprawl giving way to vast mountain ranges and oceanic scales.  In effect the album recalls the intoxicated airs of Jan Jeinek's Loop Finding Jazz Records and Gramm project, as well as Pinkcourtesyphone (a.k.a L.A. resident Richard Chartier) and Andrew Pekler’s sensorial soundscapes and even the plangent production techniques of Phil Spector. But for all its implied sense of space, ultimately there’s a paradoxically close intimacy to proceedings which feels like...

Space Afrika

Somewhere Decent To Live

sferic

“Space Afrika return with a long anticipated new album of mutable ambient frameworks somewhere between Lee Gamble’s ‘Diversions', Jan Jelinek, Huerco S and The Connection Machine. Recommended late night listening…  Ambient duo Space Afrika offer a bird’s eye view of the city centre at night with Somewhere Decent To Live; their keenly anticipated first LP on sferic. Unshackled from dancefloor needs, but still inspired and feeding off its spirit and romance, the pair respectfully acknowledge the undercurrents of Jungle, dubstep, ambient techno and deep house which feed into their home city’s late night economy, dowsing their tributaries back to dub and rendering the findings in a quiet, modestly lush ambient haze with a flawlessly anaesthetising effect.  Taking gaseous form as a series of dark blue hues and electromagnetic subbass impulses, the vibe inside is delectably elusive. Unlike their previous transmissions on Where To Now? and Köln’s LL.M., the pair’s dancefloor urges are dissolved in favour of suggestively mutable ambient frameworks this time, leaving the kicks in the club whilst they appear to float overhead like the dead kid embarking his Bardo in Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void.  In firm but gentle style they feel out eight interlinked headspaces, drifting like spectral flanneurs from the Diversions-like opener uwëm/creãtiõn to intercept telepathic thoughts from Teutonic friends in the percolated subs and drizzly ambient clag of sd/tl, before arriving at the most arresting moment in their catalogue thus far with the masterfully widescreen yet immersive bly and its sublimely smeared...