Lorenz Weber * Bistro Boy

LORENZ WEBER – A SHEPHERD’S LIFE

It’s a commonly known fact that musicians – especially those in the ambient genre – have to have a side job to be able to earn a living. But I doubt there are many whose side job is being a shepherd. Lorenz Weber is – or was.

On A Shepherd’s Life he combines his experiences as a shepherd with his music. His quiet piano phrases are combined with sounds he recorded during his work as a shepherd. In that way, the twelve-track album is “a diary-like sound collection that provides an intimate snapshot of a shepherd’s life in the mountains.”
The track titles describe the condition of the moment: Tension, Awe And Wonder, Uncertainty, Sky Clears, Rest Day, and Stillness. Those are all the piano pieces, while A Thousand Lives, A Thousand Landscapes, A Thousand Raindrops, A Thousand Emotions present the different field recordings.

If you want a visual impression to go with the music, Weber also has a collection of prints “to make this world of the shepherd closer to you”. You can browse them [here].

BISTRO BOY – AMBIENT SHORT STORIES

Until now, I have never heard of Bistro Boy (Reykjavik based artist Frosti Jónsson) – even though this is his ninth album since 2012. But Ambient Short Stories is a pleasant introduction, that immediately caught my ears with the bright high notes combined with the ambient sax in the opening track Colour Arrows.
After dropping out of classical piano lessons, Jónsson focused on electronic music: ambient-fused electro, often introspective and melancholic.

Starting with (“not always successfull”) improvised melodies on his saxophone, and letting these grow into something else, the album grew into a collection of melodic, free-spirited and uplifting tracks. And to me, this feels like a relief in between the overwhelming lot of dark and haunting ambient music currently available.

There’s a right time for everything of course, but sometimes it feels like ‘positive’, brighter, ambient is more difficult to create than the darker kind. Someone unknown described Bistro Boy as “one of the most creative Icelandic electronic projects that can use sounds to remove weight and gravity from reality”.
It seems that’s exactly what the world needs most right now.

There’s still enough room for melancholy on Ambient Short Stories too, though: Frosti ‘Bistro Boy’ Jónsson ‘aimed to evoke emotions, tell stories in sound, and paint a sonic landscape for the audience’.