LONGFORM EDITIONS – #41
Ever since 2018, Longform Editions has published batches of four titles by four different artists every two months. The musical curator of the series is Andrew Khedoori, alongside Mark Gowing who designs the remarkable typographic cover for each release.
This month (December 2024), edition #41 will be released, presenting tracks 161-164, by Sanae Yamada, The Nighttime Ensemble, Reign Of Ferns, and Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt.
As its name reveals, all pieces are relatively long, sharing the intention ‘to foster and celebrate immersive listening experiences for the musically adventurous’. Which, by the way, implies that the music can not always be labeled as ‘ambient’. It can be ambient, generative electronics, improv, modern classical, field recordings… just about anything that fits the concept as long as it is ‘immersive’ and/or ‘adventurous’.
The ‘long-form’ length can range from around 20 minutes to over one hour. Musically, the editions cover a broad and somewhat hard-to-define range of styles.
Below are two examples from the latest batch:
Sanae Yamada – a member of the ‘proto-punk, fuzz-trance outfit Moon Duo – explores a different territory in her calm and gentle piece Flowering Tree.
On Suspended Between Worlds, Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt ‘use vocal intonations as the key source to conjure cocooning compositions of dream-like ambience’.
Each piece in the Longform Editions series can be obtained separately, but with a subscription, you’ll receive all editions (ánd some subscriber-only releases) for no more than $6AUD (3,70 EUR or $2,60 USD) per month.
VARIOUS ARTISTS – ILLUMINATIONS III
In the twelve years of their existence, the Dronarivm label has built a firm and reliable reputation of releasing nothing but quality ambient music. And doing so, they also built a strong network of artists – as is demonstrated by their 100th release: Illuminations III.
For this 24-track (2hr24 minute) compilation, they invited musicians who released music on the label to create a track in collaboration with another (Dronarivm-)artist of their choice. As a result, there is an amazing array of unique music spanning ‘the vast musical spectrum of the genre we generally call “ambient”‘.
There are (of course) many familiar names in the list of contributors. Naming them all would result in a long list, so I’ll only mention a few: Chihei Hatakeyama, Offthesky, Henrik Meierkord, Andrew Heath, Snufmumriko, Enrico Coniglio, Machinefabriek, The Green Kingdom, Porya Hatami, Celer, Aaron Martin, Anthéne, and so on and so on… But I guess that’s enough to spark your interest.
More good news is that this compilation is free to download! But by way of saying thanks, you can of course also add a donation which will help finance future projects.
Illuminations III is primarily a download-only release, but if you prefer to have a physical edition the album is also available as a print-on-demand double CDr.