#ambient-music

#ambient-music

I can feel my ears extending, hind legs protruding, fluffy tail drooping down; I have an uncontrollable urge to gnaw with my front teeth and binky (excited jump). I've traversed so many rabbit holes I myself seem to be transforming into a bunny. Throughout the year, I've thought that maybe covering a certain amount of scenes and trends would unlock some secret key to the universe-a final solid bottom, a cultural bedrock.

Landing somewhere between composer William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and DJ Screw's chopped'n'screwed production style, Desaceleradas slows the shaker-rattling, synth syncopations of cumbia rebajada into unrecognisable ambient territory. La Ronda y el Sonidero and Vinilos Trasnacionales contain hints of the signature cumbia shuffle and twanging synth melody, but Beatriz's added tape hiss, reverb and melodic warping transform the style into an eerie, ethereal soundworld of nightmare fairground music and yearning drones.

Once Was Ours Forever isn't much different, except in all the usual ways Made of the Same Stuff albums are: a bit more insular, more stripped-down, more confident and, inevitably, shorter.

Sync opens the EP with stretched and delayed cowbells, creating a pulsing analogue rhythm that welcomes listeners into a deep ambient experience.

"Listening to the track through headphones, I could feel my usually agitated pulse steady itself, mirroring the music's rhythm-calming me even as it sparked me to attention."

The album, Taba, by Satomimagae imagines a world without names or borders, creating an experience without distinctions between self and other.