ANDREW HEATH – THE CLOUD MACHINE
After a spring that felt like autumn and a very wet start of summer, we finally had some warm/hot summer days here in Holland. And I immediately felt the need for some ‘cooling’ music, music like a refreshing morning breeze on a summer’s day. The Cloud Machine proved to be exactly what I needed.
Its freshness, by the way, came from the sound of … rain in the first track. Oh, the irony!
But it’s not only that particular recording of rain – it is also the bright way the instruments (mainly piano and guitar) are recorded, how they are embedded in subtle electronics, and also how they merge with the field recordings. The music – Andrew Heath himself calls it ‘lower case music’ – has a distinct and immediately recognizable style. And somehow I always imagine a very English landscape with it.
The music on The Cloud Machine is intended as “a sound painting of light, radiance and naive joy through the metaphor of clouds and of a gaze drawn to the skies”.
It is released in a very small (40) CDr edition on the Whitelabrecs label
PLANT43 – THE UNFADING SPARK
The Quiet Details label has only been in business since February 2023, but already has earned itself a firm reputation. The Unfading Spark is their 20th release, presenting the work of Plant43 – Tresor-resident Emile Facey, who until now released most of his albums on his own label Plant43 Recordings.
As a producer and live performer, Plant43 can present ‘everything from the deepest ambience to true dancefloor electro’. This means The Unfading Spark is not strictly speaking an ‘ambient’ album, even if it has a lot of ambient atmospheres. There are also rhythm-based tracks, although I don’t think they are aimed at the dancefloor this time.
“Here we see the impeccable marriage of widescreen synths, elastic bass and minimal syncopated percussion nodding to classic electro sound-design, with vast and polychromatic atmospheres, sparkling digital synthesis and ever-shifting distant landscapes – emotionally the quiet moments are as important as the loud and he finds the spaces between in a way that everyone who has experienced such moments can relate to.”