New Music: Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Biosphere, Loren Dent

Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson - Extended Hands of Giving (Alpha Pup 2007)

Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson – Fill the Heart Shaped Cup / Alpha Pup

The music of Carlos Niño enveloped my life a couple of years ago. It wasn’t a conscious act really; I got into the wonderfully eclectic internet radio station Dublab.com in my senior year of college and started researching the DJ’s involved. First the worldly rhythms of Ammoncontact (a duo consisting of Niño and Fabian Ammon Alston) stole my coveted speaker time, then from there I stemmed out into Daedelus (who Niño produced), Dwight Trible & the Life Force Trio (who helped give Niño his start) and Build an Ark (featuring Niño and many other talented L.A. based musicians). I was really digging the spiritual, earthy side of jazz (Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coletrane, AACM products) and in many respects, Niño’s music is an update of the genre. His penchant is to craft moving melodies over head-nodding beats using a combination of synth and computer-based technology and live hand percussion and woodwinds. The latest product of his many studio sessions, collaborations and remixes features classical protégé Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, a 26-year-old composer who was trained on violin and viola at 4, writing symphonies in his early teens and leading live sessions for everyone from Outkast to Stevie Wonder to John Cale in his 20s. The most striking characteristic of Fill the Heart Shaped Cup is the simplicity. ‘Oasis’ opens the disc with a minimal drum machine beat, ebbing synths and the occasional vibraphone note, nothing spectacular but effective in it’s innocence. One of the album highlights, ‘Extended Hands Giving’, follows with loping, earthy rhythm, quiet synth melody, bass clarinet undertone and harp-like flurries. From this point, the drums all but subsides utilizing only hand percussion rattles seemingly from the toy box of Hamid Drake letting Atwood-Ferguson’s classical strings paint autumnal watercolor paintings. ‘Triumph’ eloquently enlists brooding brass, ‘Tide’ features a harp, clarinet, synth combination Daedelus would eagerly throw schizophrenic drum clatter over, and the album closer, ‘Through a Childs Eyes,’ is an enchanting, sleepy song that calmly drifts like a pleasant, late-night snow (watched from under your covers of course). The strongest section comes two-thirds of the way through with ‘Cup,’ ‘Changes’ and ‘Into the Depths’ as those Ammoncontact rhythms come to the forefront and the arrangements really fill out, whether it’s the shimmering hand bells of the former or eerie throb of the latter. Fill the Heart Shaped Cup is a patient 30-minutes of two distinct artists collaborating rather than competing; it’s two guys sitting in the studio late at night, sharing their awe of favorite jazz artists and trying to manifest those feelings with the tools at hand.





Biosphere - Black Lamb & Grey Falcon (Touch 2007, originally 2000)

Biosphere – Cirque / Touch

Maybe even more recognizable these days from it’s forefather, ambient house, ambient techno’s layered atmospheres and minor-key melodies are typically associated with early Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, but one of it’s most important figures is often overlooked. Geir Jenssen has been part of the movement since the beginning. Recording first under Bleep, his Biosphere moniker should be synonymous with the ambient techno, and even more specifically the “arctic sound,” but to listeners with only a vague interest in the genre, he goes sorely unnoticed. Jenssen is not just some European cat with an Eno obsession who happens to produce a glaciered sound, he is a Norwegian who actually lives just 500 miles from the Arctic Circle; he makes this arctic sound because that’s the environment surrounding him. Cirque, originally released in 2000 and now being reintroduced by Touch, could very well be the culmination of the producers decade long career (at the time it was recorded). His arrangements greatly reflect it’s geographical influence: icy, remote, glacial, beautiful and evocative. Ambient synth loops slowly touch, crack and infuse like the glaciers they’re inspired from as flurries of skittering drums, sparse vocal samples, the occasionally subtle piano line and throbbing bass slowly trudge across the horizon. The low dynamic range really keeps the music intriguing as the lightest melodic twitch instantly grabs your attention like a small black bird in a field of snow. I’m not sure if Jenssen makes this music because he wants to or because he has to; you are very much a product of your environment and Cirque can be your window to the chilling Arctic north (goddamn am I milking this arctic analogy). Though I have to admit, through the ears of Jenssen, it’s surprisingly warm and comforting.





Loren Dent - Love Song: Years of Iron Static (Contract Killers 2006)

Loren Dent – Empires and Milk / Contract Killers

In Jason S. Willaford's artist statement for his recent M.A.L.E More Abstract Linear Evolution series, he proclaims his minimalist paintings as "a series of lines drawn in, revealing organic tributaries running across a hard edge surface of primary, saturated color." I don't know the exact relationship between Willaford and fellow Texan, Loren Dent, but it's pretty extraordinary that these two artists, one visual and one audible, of such a similar frame of aesthetic thinking would find each other. Dent's latest solo record, Empires and Milk, sports a Willaford painting on it's cardboard slipcase and the music inside could find no better description than the aforementioned quote. Throughout the intimidating 77 minutes of minimal ambience from the Austin-based musician, straits of purring static crackle over saturated backdrops of commodious feedback creating organic environments in their own right. The former member of Purchase New York pieces together subtle clippings of reverberating, almost indistinguishable guitar and field recordings into ponds of warm, settling tone but keeps you from drifting off by gently gliding tiny static sailboats across the surface and letting the subsequent ripples create texture. This is a piece of music that really doesn't unveil itself until you turn up the speakers and fill a room with it's vibrations; as you let the soundwaves naturally lap against your ears, the layers unfold and the seemingly flat, ambient music transforms into three dimensions of aural surroundings. Empires and Milk is not so much a gateway recording into the world of ambient music, but it's an inviting album that can compliment achingly quiet nights quite well.