The Company of Others — M. Geddes Gengras and 'Guest List'
On his fourth album for Hausu Mountain, and his first on vinyl, the restless synthesist talks improvisation, the burden of the solo record, and the surprises that arrived in the mail.
Ambient
A collection of some of the ambient music artists and releases featured on The Tonearm.
Listening to the Land — The Mystical Turn of St. Silva
The Vermont musician behind 'Forager' talks foraged field recordings, a boyhood spent in Indiana megachurches, and why he wants no part of the wellness playlist.
Speaking the Word of the Buchla — Suzanne Ciani's Orchestral Wave
On the occasion of CIANI/ORKEST, Suzanne Ciani discusses handing her solitary Buchla music to a 50-piece orchestra, the ocean and the wave beneath her compositions, and the young players bringing analog modular synthesis back.
Brings the Dawn In — Mark Barrott On 'The Exit Diaries'
Recorded in an off-grid Spanish farmhouse during a brutal La Niña winter, 'The Exit Diaries' is the sound of a musician who scrapped an entire album's worth of dark orchestral music, listened obsessively to Alice Coltrane, and arrived somewhere he hadn't expected.
Patricia Wolf — The Sound of All Creatures Great and Small
The ambient composer on her cassette release 'Yarrow,' frog taxis, the power of dormant seeds, and the dread of leaving one's recorder out overnight in the rain.
Molecules Lining Up — Meredith Bates's 'The Observer Effect'
'The Observer Effect' finds violinist Meredith Bates recasting quantum mechanics, feminist intuition, and acoustic ecology as one long, uninterrupted act of listening.
Ethan Helm's Geography of Loops
Inspired by the geological scale of Japan and the productive accidents of a standard looping pedal, Ethan Helm's 'Dreamscapes' extends a jazz improviser's instincts into the territory of self-reliance.
The Minimalist Gospel of Ben Seretan and John Thayer
On 'Sunbeam Of No Illusion', Ben Seretan and John Thayer find melody where ambient music usually forgets to look, treating amplified mistakes, grass-bundle drumsticks, and borrowed sustain as the raw material of a minimalist document of place.
Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore — "Come Join Us Here in the Future"
Barwick and Lattimore discuss 'Tragic Magic', a debut collaboration recorded on vintage instruments from the Musée de la Musique, the guilt and gratitude of leaving a burning city for Paris, and a shared dream of one day playing in James Turrell's Roden Crater.
The Intimate Machinery of David August's 'Hymns'
The German-Italian producer David August returns to the piano he has known since childhood on 'Hymns,' nine devotional improvisations treated with prepared strings and recorded to preserve every creak and breath of a century-old instrument.
In Dialogue with the Forest — Isabel Pine's 'Fables'
The classically trained string player recorded her new album across 15 wilderness locations in British Columbia, embracing imperfection, improvisation, and the unpredictable feedback of the natural world.
Insert Meaning Here — Bette A. and Brian Eno's 'Slow Stories'
Author and visual artist Bette A. discusses her 'Slow Stories' collaboration with Brian Eno, the pared-down storytelling she traces to Dutch culture, and her growing uncertainty about whether her progressive activism still fits the world she finds herself in.