The top 25 vinyl records from 2021

In recent years, the constant bombardment of pandemics, deforestation, fires and tragedies generated a correlate of tranquility in the art world.Of course, there will always be artists who decide to deal with the injustices of the world raising their voice, but there are also those who choose subtlety and silence as tools to create our own refuge that allows us to discover other ways to relate to our planet and with thesound.It should not be a surprise, then, the growing popularity that ambient music has gained in recent times, a musical genre that already has at least six decades of existence and groups a huge and diverse accumulation of sound artists who use a languageInstrumental, ethereal and minimalist to express yourself.

While we are still preparing to travel this 2022 that does not promise less uncertainties and anxieties, the indie team today chose the 25 ambient albums that accompanied us during the year that left.

Forest without trees - Forest without trees

Trueno

After gathering the dance and experimental electronics tracks that he published between 2014 and 2018 in the excellent compilation of the lost years, the project of Argentine Tomás Fernández Bonilla turned the page with a neoclassical work inspired by Pampean folklore.The homonymous forest album without trees is a work of maturity and orchestral ambitions, with spaced synthesizer pieces, wind instruments and meditative Creole guitars.Away from the raves that saw him born, Bonilla enters the mysteries offered by the field, the starry night and the ancestral voices that sigh in the wind.- Eric Olsen

Celer - With and Not Without

Independent

This could not be an annual list of ambient music without the presence of Celer, who year after year makes about ten hours of music (which is very much).With and not without is undoubtedimmersed in an exultant atmosphere, taking us to an address, one could say, triumphant.While it is true that his formula is the same, somehow, it works, it always works.- Gabriel Giménez

Druida & The Folklore of Shapeshifting - The Prowesses of Enduring / Construções Abandonadas

Independent

The Prowesses of enduring / abandoned building is a split between The Folklore of Shapeshifting, a group from San Justo, west zone of Greater Buenos Aires;and Druida, Brazilian producer of Curitiba.Each side, as well as its members, are opposite: the side commanded by the Argentines is discreet, with samples of rural style and desolate atmospheres, such as the soundtrack of a traveler who fits the side of the route.This side is mainly served as the guitar, both classic and electrical, oscillating between the consonant and the dissonant, but always with a mystery quota, of incognito style.The only enjoyable moment is when there is a melody accompanied, in the best Emeralds style, in the great "All of the Neighborhood Kids Watched and no One Said Anything."Side B in charge of Druid is much more direct, noisy, of the post-industrial stick, with more pounding and fairness.- Gabriel Giménez

DYB - Wind Memory

Animal Temple

There is a deep nostalgia crossing electronic wind memory experiments.The Argentine producer Dyb made a sentimental journey through memory, excavating in images and situations that he believed forgotten to bring them to a present that finds him fighting against uncertainty and melancholy.Inspired by classic composers such as Debussy and in Celtic music, the intercaphic piano passages with cathartic moments where distortion floods all space.Dyb continued the year with three more albums, look far, invisible and disorder in the room room, long tracks with field recordings and deep textures that feel like symbolic sequelae of the emotional inspiration that he managed to find in the wind memory.- Eric Olsen

Animated Entity - Night Pulse Test

Figure friend discs

During the last ten years, Marcos Díaz has used his alias animated entity to deepen his various solo interests outside his other projects such as forests and miraculous medal. The concerns of the Argentine artist range from the Shoegaze, the Tango, the Beats Lo fi and the DUB, and were collected in the excellent selection of reminder, published last August by the South Cassette's Cassette Seal. But night pulse test, the mini album he took last summer, finds him developing his most ambient beta, with long and nebulae textures that blur without contours or recognizable forms. Recorded in 2014 but rescued and mixed in December 2020, these three tracks live in the same plane as other milestones of the genre Watermusic from William Basinski and the mystical experiments of Klaus Wiese, bringing to the front the spatial frequencies and vibrations that seem to be in The bottom of our thoughts. In line with its tradition of summer releases, this new year was no exception: last week Díaz published the melancholic and golden driver non-linear. - Eric Olsen

Federico Durand - Herbario

Laaps

Botany and ambient music have a historical relationship that found its most popular exponents on albums such as the classic Green of the Japanese musician Hiroshi Yoshimura and the Odyssey of synthesizers plantsia of Canadian Mort Garson.However, Federico Durand's is a more intimate and sentimental work, based on the personal selection of her favorite herbs and plants that can be found in the town of the summit in Córdoba, where he recorded the album.This is one of his most delicate works from his music album for Manuel 2014. But while that album was motivated by nostalgia and family duel, Herbarium is an exercise that has both botanical alchemy and fantasy, an invitation to get lostin its Eden of small piano melodies and tape textures.- Eric Olsen

Gas - Der Lange Marsch

Kompakt

Der Lange Marsch was announced as Wolfgang Voigt's last work as gas, and hearing the whole piece makes some meaning: the seventh album of the German artist is a “recapitulator” of 20 years of Ambient Techno.Finding kinships in gas music is not a complicated task, but here the intention is quite direct, since old frets were used with the task of being evoked again.For example, both track 1 and 11 contain fragments of "Zauberberg 1", perhaps the best opener of any gas album;Tracks 7 and 9 repeat the melody of "Konigsforst 1" and "Konigsfort 5", as well as track 8, which is undoubtedly "Pop 1".The strategy of revitalizing old classics can be imperfect, but you can think of these works as an exclusive gift for his followers, who may find a much more special and symbolic character than a casual listener.- Gabriel Giménez

Green -House - Music for Living Spaces

Leaving Records

One of this year's most popular albums was Green-House's debut, Artistx Orifundx de los Angeles, California that has consecrated himself in the mind of the press as one of the promises of the "New New Age".However, Music for Living Spaces is not so much a spiritual investigation as a work that feels a favorite daughter of the botanical plants obsession and the interior minimalism of the composer and pianist Erik Satie.Thus, the alias of Olive Ardizoni seeks to infect her fascination and empathy for her non-human life forms through tender melodies of modular synthesizers who mimic flutes and ballad patients who take their time to root and flourish.- Eric Olsen

I HOED ON BRAWL FOR THE First Time In 10 Years To Find Out That 9 Year Old Me

— Steph Wed Jul 21 11:41:02 +0000 2021

Joa Joys - Basement Meditators

High Heal

Joa Joys seems to create each of his albums as if it were a story.There is a narrative patience in her songs, which takes the time to introduce a space, create characters and venture them towards the unknown.Basement meditators is no exception, a New Age mini fable published with a documentary about the fictional band that served as a conceptual engine for the creation of the album.In its bright world of flutes, subtle pianos and textures Lo fi, the project of the Argentine Joaquín Ledesma orchestra in MIDI code This instrumental concert that inspires inner peace and jovial curiosity in equal parts.- Eric Olsen

Kodama - Yume no Mori

Side Quest

To create his second album, the Neozylelands musician Kodama said he sought to erase his author's footprint and let the music become the conduit of a superior force.Inspired by the birds and infinite valleys of his country, the artist tried to touch as little as possible, leading to his nature to speak by his own.Yume no Mori is an album full of silences and barely perceptible sounds, and even in his most musical moments, as in the enveloping synthesizers of "Seeds and Other Magic" or the underwater textures of "Pictures of Floating World", Kodama chooses Correrseof the focus of attention and simply a guide towards vast interior landscapes.- Eric Olsen

La ola interior: Spanish Ambient & Acid Exoticism 1983-1990

Lesos Bongo Joe

This compilation explores the most environmental side of the Spanish Under scene of the eighties influenced by the Germans of Kosmische Musik and Krautrock music as well as the search for "acid exotism" in its permanent search for trance and contemplation.The Bongo Joe label was in charge of compiling some of the recordings from the independent stamps of the Peninsula such as Dro, GASA and the comet of Madrid, and gathered some faces known as the magnate of the European New Age Suso Sáiz and Madrid's Miguel A.Ruiz- Gabriel Giménez

Lumtz - River

Animal Temple / South Bruma

El camino de Lumtz hacia la relajación y el minimalismo alcanzó su momento de mayor síntesis en Río, el disco de cuatro canciones que grabó solo con un sintetizador Korg Volca FM y publicó en marzo a través del sello Animal Temple y en cassette con su propio sello South Bruma. Es el trabajo más conciso del artista establecido en Bariloche, una exploración libre de melodías en loop que se sienten orgánicas por más que vengan de un teclado secuenciador. Tal vez inspirado en el poder de la simpleza que encontró con Río, el músico continuó el año con la publicación de Día cero, Tascam Memories #1 y #2, tres obras que profundizan su relación con el cassette como instrumento. - Eric Olsen

Malibu - United in Flames 24th February 2021

NTS RADIO

A few years ago, the French producer Malibu is responsible for creating, in the form of mixes, sound landscapeFebruary 24 program one of the best to date.In it we find the registered mark of Malibu: Ambient Trance and a sea of synthetic strings, shy voices loaded with reverb, nebular sound passages, introspective and flourishing sounds, all within a selection that includes Evian Christ and Argentine Leandro Fresh.- Gabriel Giménez

Miguel Ángel Tolosa - Nostalgia (Circa 1987)

LINE

Nostalgia of Miguel Ángel Tolosa found obvious comparisons with The work of The Carataker or with Melancholia by William Basinski, but that does not make a less personal album.The Spanish artist recovered some old samples of classical music that he recorded in the eighties inspired by his first encounter with Music for Airports de Brian Eno, and used that forgotten and melancholy patient as the creative engine of his album.The result is nine deeply sentimental loops, wrapped in vinyl frying and an aura of delicacy to the edge of oblivion.- Eric Olsen

Mu tate - let me put mySelf Together

Experiences Ltd.

Night, wet, fluorescent, like the sea with Luciferina: that strange phenomenon that causes seawater to emit an almost electric and hypnotic blue light that is only seen in the shadows.Let me put myself Together of Mu tate is basically that, a noctilucent tour that usually practices of printing, touch, relationship with the skin, pores, river.It also gives us spaces for the confluence of the body, as in "Impulse", a trivial and nakeGabriel Giménez

Onsy - Metaconc

Quiet time tape

Quiet Time, another characteristic seal of the adjoining ambient, within its catalog offers us the second Onsy album, an essentially modern, almost alienof a Dub as deep as the Pacific Ocean.For forty minutes, this work appears to be a rough, rugged piece, but it breaks with a melodic section that configures a much more organic and reflective finish.- Gabriel Giménez

Pauline Anna Strom - Angel Tears in Sunlight

RVGN Intl.

Pauline Anna Strom's posthumous masterpiece leaves us with more questions than answers.Published months after her death, Angel Tears In Sunlight is a surprising job for an artist with 74 years of age who had not published anything in more than three decades of silence.The ten tracks that compose it feel like a tireless spiritual search, and although the press always associated its career with the American New Age music scene of the eighties, there is nothing improvised or homemade in the transcendental ambition of this album.As a kaleidoscope, Strom shows us the common contact points of the musical relationship between humans and machines through the times.A timeless expression of one of the most intriguing electronic composers in the history of gender.- Eric Olsen

PDP III - PILLED UP ON A COUPLE OF Dves

Shelter Press

PDP III is a trio formed by Britton Powell, Huerco S. and Lucy Rilton, who with their debut offer us a range of sounds quite different from what we have accustomed to us.Pilled Up on a Couple of Doves is ambient in high-shed, even feels heavy, swelling low frequencies that make it a direct robust material to want to crush us in the first listening.The latter is very clear about the end of "Walls of Kyoto", which with an intense noise layer in Crescendo hits your chest through a Ladino Kick as if we were talking about a Prurient project, for example.All these aspects are encompassed in the Colosal Closer of twenty minutes "49 Days", which, if we continue with the analogies, could be how the end Boss of some Shadows of the Colossus style game, since it feels incredibly titanic.- Gabriel Giménez

Pandant - To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands

West Mineral Ltd.

After an excellent debut with Make Me Know You Sweet, the alter ego of Huerco S, Pandant, returns to take things a little further and advent us into a new unknown excursion.In this case it increases the frivolous character that distinguishes this alias, configuring caps of crunch, hustle and pounding, playing with a mechanism that revives the most classical concrete music, and magnifying the textures as if it were Brian Leeds took courses at schoolof Greg Stuart.He once again leaves us with a dark and diffuse material but at the same time are part of the appeal.- Gabriel Giménez

PERILA - How Much Time It is Between You and Me?

Smalltown Supersound

Perila is the Aleksandra Zakhanko project, who is part of what I like to call the “group of new producers of Ambient 2K20”, just like Huerco S. and the catalog of West Mineral Ltd (Ulla, Exael, Pontiac Streator), artists who offer a kind of dream ambient plagued with textures, using the loop as a main tool and manifesting a nostalgic section as a badge.How much time is between you and me? On the other hand, it acquires a much more opaque side, in turbulent cases and above all things a dynamic journey that, without marryIt results in a somewhat diffuse but leftover work from the versatile.- Gabriel Giménez

Picnic - Picnic

Daisart

Picnic is an Australian duo with a fascination with the noises that seem accidental, almost inaudible frequencies and homemade loops.His homonymous discuEnglish electronics producers in the nineties.As much as they come from different contexts, Picnic manages to tend a common thread among their guests and thread them using abstract textures on the edge of ASMR.- Eric Olsen

Pop Ambient 2022

Kompakt

Since its first edition in 2001, the classic compilation of the German label Kompakt has become a classic every year.This time, the most recent selection cured by Wolfgang Voigt continues the path of coldness and drama of the last compiled, away from the luminous and warm tones that had captivated in previous editions such as Pop Environment 2002. Although the list of collaboratorsIt does not differ much from what Voigt has accustomed us (Max Würden, Thore Pfeiffer and Joachim Spieth are present), Pop Environment 2022 manages to sound so fresh, cohesive and necessary as every year.- Eric Olsen

AIMÉ SELVA - Sketches

South Bruma

As a member of the analog America, the ambient textures are nothing new for Aimé jungle.However, in her first work as a soloist, the Argentine artist maintains an almost childish curiosity along the eight small sound notes of her.Sketches is a selection of tracks that Selva went up to her Soundcloud, some three years ago and others more recent.We hear her play with digital glitches, guitar loops and broken melodies;But what makes sketches such a hypnotic album is that creative freedom to experiment with sound without any other claim more than the game and fortuitous finding.- Eric Olsen

Animal Temple Vol. 2

Animal Temple

Realizar un compilado que se sienta cohesivo es un arte en sí mismo, y el colectivo de artistas Animal Temple logró perfeccionar la técnica en su segundo intento. Esta selección de tracks provenientes de músicos argentinos y hondureños se siente como una expresión fluida, cada canción se derrama en la siguiente sin fuertes diferencias de estilo o tono. Animal Temple Vol. 2 sin dudas se trata de un hito para el género en Latinoamérica. Antes de que termine el año, el sello publicó un tercer compilado, esta vez en una beta más electrónica y menos minimalista aunque con algunas joyas ambient como los tracks de Lumtz, Dyb y Pablo Swiss. - Eric Olsen

Ulises Conti - Listen to the little fingers of the feet

Metamusic

In his eagerness not to make any album equal to the previous one, the Argentine sound artist and composer Ulises Conti lashed out at one of the few genres that had to be deepened: the field recording.But listening to the little fingers of the feet is also a kind of pending project for Conti, product of a trip that he made 25 years ago to the Amazon to live with the Tenharim indigenous community.As a sound newspaper of that trip, the album brings together "ritual songs, bells, ships, insects, waterfalls, monkeys and watches", at times ordering those records in a narrative way and for others creating a large collage of memories.- Eric Olsen