Ambient Sunday with: Conflict at Serenity Pools and Greg Keller #Ambient #Drone #Chill @gregkellermusic

Grabbing the late summer sun with Conflict at Serenity Pools, and Grek Keller.

Conflict at Serenity Pools, or CASP for short, is from Venice Beach California and lives in Los Angeles, with a few collaborators elsewhere. Here’s fountains / of dreams from the album California Poppy.

fountains / of dreams starts in a haze of what could be backwards sounds. It’s all terribly vague and psychedelic. And deliciously lovely. There’s an almost alt pop sense to the throb of the bass against the pulsing vocal element. Piano and flute witter away to themselves. Daydream washes of ambient electronic sound come and go in ripples and twirls.

It’s a faerie glade of a tune. Perfect for those dappled sunlight moments among the trees. 

Greg Keller from Marietta, Georgia returns after a year’s gap with Music, Vol 2 from which we have Chimes. Music, Vol 1 was deeply calming. So much so that last year I said it was “More effective than a stun gun this lowers your heart rate to near comatose levels.”

Nothing so horizontal this time. The album is an altogether perkier affair with parping sounds, field recordings, guitars, and all manner of electronica. On Chimes, that new approach is perfectly encapsulated in the lightness of touch but also the complexity of the textures.

Chimes opens with piping sounds that have echoes of chamber music and the peeping of clarinets and plucking of the harpsichord. To that is added the temples bell chimes of the track title. It shows its roots in meditative forms but is no longer bound by them. There’s a mix of pop and shoegaze and electronica and all things inbetween.

The sounds are carefully layered but handled so skillfully it’s hard to really notice. Or care. This is beautiful ambient that leaves you enveloped by a warming, winning, positive charm.

~ by acidted on October 2, 2022.