We’re delighted to present a very special interview with Jeff Pearce. He’s an Indiana based musician who composes beautifully ethereal ambient guitar music, and is one of the pioneers of the ambient guitar style. Jeff has released a gorgeous new album called SKIES AND STARS just in time for some cooler weather here in the northern hemisphere. We’ll be speaking with Jeff about the inspiration behind his new album, as well as look back on his career which spans two-and-a-half decades. So please join us for an insightful conversation as we stargaze with guitars!
Jeff Pearce's music is available at Amazon, Bandcamp and other music retailers.
"Polly Fae (known previously as Paulina Cassidy) returns with quiet bewitchment on her new album of 15 swirling atmospheric pieces straddling the boundaries of ambient and dream pop. Awakened with trance-inducing melodies from the threshold of earthly and galactic realms, Dreamwalkers escorts the listener into a reverie of ghostly tones and enticing chants. It’s ethereal, gossamer and shimmering, evoking in-between times and places.
With sparse electronic instrumentation and Polly’s signature half-whispered soft, sultry vocals drifting from the recess of the subconscious, the tracks sculpt a private universe of floating, silky aesthetic. Polly’s voice is a graceful instrument beneath a wisp of echo and dreams; the fluidly-layered pieces draw the listener into her world of audible art.
Steve Davis, associate producer of HEARTS OF SPACE Radio Program, wrote about her recent album: she creates “….a quiet masterpiece, both earthly and ethereal. Through her music, lyrics and images she guides us through an alluring world that seems strange yet familiar, distant but as close as your heart. The veil of the dreamworld is near; the Eternal Feminine is calling.”
These compositions are love letters for the passionate heart with a desire to drift into worlds unknown. Born of vortex storms and a kiss of stardust, Dreamwalkers unearths hidden aspects of the soul from the depth of dreaming. Float into eternity with a spaceman and run astray into the dark of night with the fawn moon. Enchanting and tranquil, yet shadowy and peculiar, the lullaby-esque songs bring to light an au courant rendering of the nature of reality and its arcane kinship to the celestial-bound dreamer. Rest your head, and open the door to a new reality.
“Dream pop, with a capital D.” – Rock Portaal
We first met Polly with her hypnotic version of ‘Frosty the Snowman’ on Projekt’s 2012 Ornamental holiday sampler. In 2014, we were given Sugar Wingshiver, a full album of whimsical and lushly-textured songs. 2018 brought Drawing up a storm, an album of aqueous melodies, and the beginning of 2019 brought Phantom Gardens, a landscape of lush songs from otherworldly plant life. She returns with Dreamwalkers, a new album of sensuous compositions to transport the listener to another dimensional space."
Indiana-based musician Jeff Pearce has been releasing music since the early 90s, debuting with an album in 1993 called Tenderness and Fatality. He followed up that recording in 1996 with The Hidden Rift, a landmark album that featured what would become Pearce’s unmistakable signature sound of composing ethereal ambient music entirely on electric guitar by applying innovative methods of digital processing, delay effects and layering techniques. Subsequently releasing other significant albums in this pioneering style, including two now-classics, To the Shores of Heaven (Hypnos, 2000) and Bleed (Hypnos, 2002), Pearce earned glowing praise in prominent publications such as Billboard magazine and Allmusic, with the latter naming him “one of the top two electronic guitarists of all time”.
Jeff Pearce would later record a couple of albums on solo Chapman Stick followed by an atmospheric piano album in 2012, until eventually making a stunning comeback on ambient guitar with the release of his 2014 award-winning album With Evening Above. While Pearce’s music has remained in that perfect zone ever since, his latest album, Skies and Stars, which has arrived just in time for the fall season, further expands on the deep sonic immersions of previous compositions like “Downdrift” and “A Long Winter’s Sleep”, as well as those found on his 2001 album The Light Beyond.
Spanning approximately 56-minutes long, Skies and Stars is comprised of three spellbindingly beautiful compositions. The first two tracks are longform excursions while the third cut is a shorter piece. Conceptualized around a theme of stargazing and sky-watching, Skies and Stars begins at twilight dusk with the piece “Evening Clouds”, as metallic, mist-filled swirls seemingly mimic the slow formations of cirrostratus clouds drifting across the sky. The fading incandescence of sunlight has almost disappeared from the horizon, as the composition gradually modifies into various intangible and imaginative shapes along its 28-minute course.
Ensuing next at nearly 24-minutes long, “The Stars Above My Childhood Home” is perhaps my personal favorite piece on the album. Stirring a deep sense of mystery, the night sets in with metamorphosing modulations of dreamily Delphic tonalities unveiling a sky full of constellations. Finally, at a standard 4-minutes long, “The Last Bright Lights” guides us through the nocturnal cycle's darkest point into the remainder of the night, as tenebrous tonal formations of fathomless expanses eventually dissolve with the astronomical dawn.
Another gorgeously brilliant album from Jeff Pearce, Skies and Stars seemingly transpires from the perspective of a listener-observer remaining on planet earth while peering out into the cosmos. In that sense, perhaps ‘deep sky’ music is an even more fitting description than ‘deep space’. If you’ve ever seen breathtaking photos of the Bolivian salt flats (or even experienced this wonder for yourself) in which a person is surrounded by the cosmos reflecting their light onto the surface below, listening to this album brought many of those images to mind, as well as that of navigating a ship in the open sea at night with only the stars as a compass.
As a longtime fan of his work for many years now, I highly recommend Skies and Stars to those who love Jeff Pearce’s ambient guitar albums along with any enthusiast of the ambient-space genre! ~Candice Michelle
For more information please visit the artist's website. This album is also available from Bandcamp, Amazon and other music retailers.
We’re honored to present a very special interview with Mark Dwane who’s just released an album called Martian Apparitions, a sequel of sorts to his 1988 landmark album The Monuments of Mars. Known for his signature brand of ambient symphonic and sci-fi inspired electronica, Mark creates highly imaginative soundworlds using electric guitar synthesis. Likewise, he’s carved out a unique niche with his music, which explores fascinating themes surrounding historical mysteries, ancient mythologies and unexplained phenomena. So please join us for some otherworldly conversation as we investigate the inexplicable!
Music from several Mark Dwane albums can be heard throughout the interview and are available at Amazon. His three most recent albums are also available in Hi-Res digital download from Bandcamp.
Returning back to 2016, this year was very busy for Kansan dronescaper Steve Brand, who released several reissues of his older albums in new packaging and two brand new recordings, The Path Of The Heart (May, out on relaxedMachinery) and Leaving The Hive (September, released on Steve's Pioneer Light Music). The first CDr edition of Leaving The Hive, limited to 25 copies, comes in a 5"x7" bi-fold booklet featuring an additional poem card and signed art card. The cover image is stunningly delightful.
Subterranean gossamer flickers and meandering buzz of the bees reveal the title composition, nearly 22 minutes long "Leaving The Hive". The listener is immediately taken into the lushly colorful wild garden, yet surrounded by all mysteries of the natural environment. Then transmuting into calm cascades of longing quietudes, silently peaking vistas and fascinatingly embracing moments of stillness. But intensifyingly mindscaping drone spirals keep on permeating across the mesmerizingly organic stratum. Aural bliss!!! The 20-minute piece, "A Light Spinning In A Valley Somewhere", immerses the ears with a nocturnal symphony, but the stage is quickly stolen by high-pitched twists. Earwarming tranquility is juxtaposed by traversing piquancy, but then hypnotically galloping laid-pack pulses join the scenario, occasionally supported by Miette's meows. And after evanescing through soothingly engulfing contemplative path. Another rewardingly chameleonic composition, a thrilling beauty! The next track, "Simple Things", glides through enigmatically expansive sceneries, where lachrymosely humming blankets commingle with poetic piano glimpses. Ambrosial listening experience awaits here! The closing "Climbing A Mountain That Never Was" gets just over the 22-minute mark. An array of translucently glimmering tinkles persistently interacts with sinuously soaring meridians, balmy natural insignias and intangibly diaphanous hang drum traceries. Meditatively euphonious and intriguingly gratifying conclusion!
74-minute Leaving The Hive is undoubtedly another tour de force recording by Steve Brand, an ambient composer extraordinaire. Leaving The Hive might be a bit more experimental, maybe a bit more unsettling at times, but that's how it reflects the theme about the phenomena of Mother Nature and our presence in it. At the same time, this album is exquisitely transporting, exceptionally profound and significantly guiding with the hallmarking amount of peculiarly authentic mysteries thrown in. A true masterwork indeed!!! And by the way, I am way behind my review schedule, so it's not surprising Steve Brand has released in the meantime a bunch of new albums, for example three chapters of Near Series (all CDrs via Pioneer Light Music during 2017), Spiritual Science 2CD with Ishq (October 2017, reissue) and Near Series: Glow CD (April 2018), both on ...txt recordings or two CD albums on Dutch label Datableom, Upwelling: Emergence (January 2018, a compilation) and Graduated (May 2019). And most recently since August on Pioneer Light Music, the newest Counterintelligence CDr is available. It's quite obvious, all these sonic gems get my highest recommendation!!!
Reviewed byRichard Gürtler(Sep 03, 2019, Bratislava, Slovakia)
Off Land has just released a gorgeous new album titled Field Tangents, which features sixteen ambient tracks created from environmental field recordings and melodically floating atmospheres. It’s available on multiple digital download formats and limited edition compact disc!
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
“Off Land returns with 'Field Tangents', a beatless, seamless, ambient kaleidoscope. 'Field Tangents' combines live performance audio merged with studio sessions to create something that is both unique and familiar. Archived field recordings from various times and locations form a subtle spine, connecting the album's sixteen tracks. Richly melodic and eerily emotive, 'Field Tangents' transports the listener to a prism outside of space and time.
Digital downloads of the album also include the full seamless CD version as a bonus track.”
Motionfield is back with a brand-new album titled A Clear Horizon which enthrallingly takes the listener through eight shadowy ambient sound passages. It’s available on multiple digital download formats and limited edition compact disc!
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
“A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive” Alfred Hitchcock.
When asked his definition of happiness, Hitchcock’s intimate answer talked about the removal of negative energy and emotions to provide himself with a clear road ahead to allow his creativity to flourish. With his latest release, Petter Friberg challenges us to go beyond what we think are our limits, fully embracing a sense of flow so that both time and space are forgotten, to give us a renewed energy and joy in a more creative purpose and better quality of life.
A Clear Horizon is an exquisite ambient work composed to invoke these feelings and ideas where hypnotic patterns weave around drifting synthscapes, subtle melodies and evolving loops. Let your mind drift and head towards your own clear horizon.
Collaborative duo Matt Borghi and Loneward (the latter being the recording project of Mike Carss who also records as Altus) have released an ethereally mesmerizing new album called The Still Guardian, which is comprised of spaciously haunting drone expanses!
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
"Seven years have passed since Mike's previous collaborative work. Ambient guitarist Matt Borghi joins Loneward, and they journey together to explore lighter and darker colours, all the while under the watchful gaze of the still guardian."
