Ambient Sunday with: Jellybear, Maor Azulay, and Whetzel x Nogymx #Ambient #Downtempo #Electronic @heyjellybear

After staying up a bit too late after the Champions League Final here’s a triple bill for Ambient Sunday from Jellybear, Maor Azulay, and Whetzel x Nogymx.

JellyBear / Jack is a musician from southwest UK. His usual style is chiptune or experimental. But Departures is neither of these things. It’s a lovely relaxed chill.

Departures is taken from a four track EP of the same name. All tracks were created in 2020 and released at the end of the year to move on into 2021. The tune has that sense of ennui and stasis that was the hallmark of 2020. But it equally gives a really lovely track. Nothing is in a hurry to go anywhere. The bobbling sounds are all a bit stop-and-stare. Xylophones vie with liquid strings. The beats offer a sense of background anxiety to move on but not enough to overcome the languid inertia. Deliciously dreamy.

Maor Azulay offers only that, “Maor is a techno/downtempo music producer, The music is characterized by an interesting raw of colors, And the production with an emphasis on groove and atmosphere of the story.”

The track is Cracked Unity, the final track from the Signs EP. It’s a low key, rather downbeat, affair. It’s built around an electric piano riff and eventually a bobbling synth that acts in place of beats. There’s far off chanting. And in the end beats do come in but despite a bit of temporary momentum there’s an abiding sense of loss and futility here. In the end, like hope, the track fades away.

Whetzel x Nogymx is a US / Ireland collaboration. James Whetzel is a multi-instrumentalist and DJ from the States. Through his work curating for the International Fountain at Seattle Center in Seattle, WA, he discovered Nogymx. Nogymx (pronounced no-gimmicks), is an artist from Galway, Ireland but currently living in South Korea.

The track on which they’ve collaborated is Dreams of Victorialand. This is organic chill built around an acoustic guitar riff from which everything else develops. That the beats are handclaps adds to the lo-fi atmosphere. There are keening strings which give this a rural but mournful air. This could drift into casual folktronica but the crispness of the beats and the regular flashes of electronic trickery and ethereal wistfulness keep you and the track focused. A track of the purest green countryside.

~ by acidted on May 30, 2021.