The Long and Long of It

When I first learned of ambient music -- some 35 years after Brian Eno's Music for Airports -- one aspect that fascinated me was how composers could simultaneously create a sense of dynamic changelessness that evolves over time.  Of course, not all ambient music does evolves that way; some of Eno's earliest experiments were musically static, built with asymmetric loops that created a texture that never repeated, but any one section more than a few moments long nonetheless contained the same elements as any other.  The works that I have been most drawn to are those in which one can "drop the needle" and no section sounds the same as any other, yet the changes are hard to identify as one listens to the piece across its length.  Of course, one might argue that ambient music isn't meant to be that way -- it's purpose-built background sound, creating a space, an ambience -- but I find the boundary between the indirect and passive, on the on hand, and the purposeful and directed, on the other, to be rich and enticing.  

So, my forays into ambient music have all been aimed at straddling this line, creating something into and out of which the attention can wander, but that nonetheless remains interesting enough to hold a sufficiently curious attention.  Sustaining that over time into longer forms has proven to be a significant challenge, and one that I am only beginning to feel that I'm having any success with.  It is from those efforts that this, my first album of music, has come.   

I've included brief descriptions/explanations on the pages for individual tracks.  The second and third tracks were created over the last two months, while the first is a re-release from a collection I participated in back in January of 2019.  If anyone has any questions about any of them, please feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to respond in a timely way.  Meanwhile, I have ideas for several new instruments that will likely be well-suited to ambient music and I hope to produce more in the coming months.