Tag: ambient music

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: EYRE LLEW Returns with Cinematic “Bloom”

Initially conceived as a studio project back in 2014, Nottingham, UK-based trio EYRE LLEW — Sam Heaton (vocals, guitar), Jack Clark (drums, piano) and Jack Bennett (guitar, piano) — have developed and honed a sound that meshes elements of shoegaze, post rock and dream pop and channels influences like Sigur Rós, Frightened Rabbit, Bon Iver and The National into cinematic, emotionally overwhelming soundscapes. 

2017’s debut album, Atelo was released to widespread critical acclaim with the album landing at #25 on Drowned in Sound‘s Top 100 Albums List of 2017. 

During that same period, the Nottingham-based trio also established themselves as a compelling live act, playing over 300 independently booked shows across 23 countries, including sold-out shows across their native UK, the European Union, Latvia, Lithuania and Asia. Adding to a growing profile, the trio made the rounds of the national festival circuit playing sets at Glastonbury‘s John Peel Stage, The Great Escape, Dot to Dot, FOCUS Wales, Y Not Festival, Ritual Union, Rockaway Beach, Alternative Escape, Handmade, Glastonbury’s Shagrai La, Icebreaker, Perth Music Expo, 110 Above, Beat The Streets, Splendour, Riverside, On The Waterfront, Farm Fest, A Carefully Planned, Hockley Hustle, and others. Internationally, they’ve played sets at Singapore’s Music Matters, Taiwan’s Beastie Rock, South Korea’s Zandari Festa, Germany’s Umsonst Und Dresden, France’s FIMU, Belgium’s Fifty Lab, Sweden’s Future Echoes, Lithuania’s Zagare Fringe Festival and What’s Next In Music, Hungary’s HOTS Outbreakers Lab, Latvia’s Riga Music Week, Estonia’s POFF Shorts, Poland’s Seazone Music Festival and Conference and SpaceFest. 

EYRE LLEW’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Bloom is slated for a September 18, 2026 release through Penance Music Group. The new album is deeply informed and influenced by pandemic-enforced quarantines and lockdowns.

For the bulk of their time as a band, they defined themselves by seemingly constant motion: Cities blurred into one another. Border crossings were routine. Their lives revolved around airports, late night drives, ferry ports, backstage rooms, festival fields, hotel corridors and long-distance journeys. As a touring band, success, such as it exists, was often measured in miles traveled, crowd size and momentum developed and sustained.

They kept moving because that’s how it always was. As countless touring bands would view it, slowing down would mean — on some level, at least — slowed momentum. And stopping would mean accepting failure, when “making it” seemed to be just within their grasp.

Much like countless other touring acts across the globe, the pandemic managed to dismantle their trajectory. That relentless forward motion that had shaped their identity for the better part of a decade just suddenly stopped. Tours vanished. Plans dissolved. The result was an uneasy silence. Understandably, for the trio, it was devastating.

But in the stillness, something else emerged for the band — space: The space to rest, reflect, recover, feel and importantly, to make different choices. The band made a quieter, more human recalibration, shifting away from survival to towards sustainability. Rather than constantly feeling that they had to prove something, they moved towards building something — and choosing meaning over the endless chase of momentum. 

The result was Bloom. Written during lockdown and the subsequent years, the album is about several things simultaneously: presence, the love that feels like home, stillness as strength, devotion without spectacle, grief without melodrama, healing without performative optimism, growth that happens slowly, privately and honestly. 

Whereas their previously released material was frequently defined by scale and endurance, Bloom‘s material is defined by intimacy and grounding. Its songs are built from small moments rather than big, grand statements. It’s about choosing to stay. Not just in relationships but in places, in moments, in emotions and in identity. 

The shift in the band’s approach, fittingly led to a shift in their sound. While the album’s material continues to carry the vastness they’re known for, it lives alongside of a sense fragility and restraint. Instead of actively attempting to overwhelm the listener, the band is trying to meet the listener where they are right now. 

The album will include the previously released “Miningsby” and the album’s second single, album title track “Bloom.” While being incredibly cinematic, “Bloom” captures the contented sigh of a hard-won, well-deserved intimacy, describing the couple at the core of the song as flowers blooming, which is remarkably fitting for the season.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Simon Raymonde!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Simon Raymonde’s 64th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: EYRE LLEW Shares Painterly “Miningsby”

Initially conceived as a studio project back in 2014, Nottingham, UK-based trio EYRE LLEW — Sam Heaton (vocals, guitar), Jack Clark (drums, piano) and Jack Bennett (guitar, piano) — have developed and honed a sound that meshes elements of shoegaze, post rock and dream pop and channels influences like Sigur Rós, Frightened Rabbit, Bon Iver and The National into cinematic, emotionally overwhelming soundscapes.

2017’s debut album, Atelo was released to widespread critical acclaim with the album landing at #25 on Drowned in Sound‘s Top 100 Albums List of 2017.

And during that same period, the Nottingham-based trio have also established themselves as a compelling live act, playing over 300 independently booked shows across 23 countries, including sold-out shows across the UK, Europe, The Baltics (Latvia and Lithuania) and the Far East. The trio have also made the rounds of both the national and international festival circuit, playing sets at Glastonbury‘s John Peel Stage, The Great Escape, Dot to Dot, FOCUS Wales, Y Not Festival, Ritual Union, Rockaway Beach, Alternative Escape, Handmade, Glastonbury’s Shagrai La, Icebreaker, Perth Music Expo, 110 Above, Beat The Streets, Splendour, Riverside, On The Waterfront, Farm Fest, A Carefully Planned, Hockley Hustle, and others. Internationally, they’ve played sets at Singapore’s Music Matters, Taiwan’s Beastie Rock, South Korea’s Zandari Festa, Germany’s Umsonst Und Dresden, France’s FIMU, Belgium’s Fifty Lab, Sweden’s Future Echoes, Lithuania’s Zagare Fringe Festival and What’s Next In Music, Hungary’s HOTS Outbreakers Lab, Latvia’s Riga Music Week, Estonia’s POFF Shorts, Poland’s Seazone Music Festival and Conference and SpaceFest.

Building upon a growing profile, EYRE LLEW’s highly anticipated sophomore album Bloom is deeply informed and influenced by pandemic-enforced lockdowns. For the bulk of their history, the band defined themselves by seemingly constant motion: Cities blurred into one another. Border crossings were routine. Their lives revolved around airports, late night drives, ferry ports, backstage rooms, festival fields, hotel corridors and long-distance journeys.

As a touring band, success, such as it existed, was often measured in miles traveled, crowd size and momentum developed and sustained. The band kept moving because that’s just how it always was. Slowing down would mean — on some level, at least — slowed momentum. Stopping would mean accepting failure, when “making it” was just a little bit out of reach.

Like countless touring acts, the pandemic managed to dismantle their trajectory. That relentless forward motion that shaped their identity for the better part of a decade just suddenly stopped. Tours vanished. Plans dissolved. The result was an uneasy silence. Understandably, for the trio, it all felt devastating.

But in the stillness, something else emerged for the band — space: The space to rest, reflect, recover, feel and importantly, to make different choices. The band made a quieter, more human recalibration, shifting away from survival to towards sustainability. Rather than constantly feeling that they had to prove something, they moved towards building something — and choosing meaning over the endless chase of momentum.

The result was Bloom. Written during lockdown and the subsequent years, the album is about several things simultaneously: presence, the love that feels like home, stillness as strength, devotion without spectacle, grief without melodrama, healing without performative optimism, growth that happens slowly, privately and honestly.

Wher eas previously released material was frequently defined by scale and endurance, Bloom‘s material is defined by intimacy and grounding. Its songs are built from small moments rather than big, grand statements. It’s about choosing to stay. Not just in relationships but in places, in moments, in emotions and in identity.

The shift in the band’s approach, fittingly lead to a shift in their sound. While the album’s material continues to carry the vastness they’re known for, it lives alongside of a sense fragility and restraint. Instead of actively attempting to overwhelm the listener, the band is trying to meet the listener where they are right now.

The album’s first single “Miningsby” is a slow-burning and atmospheric tune that’s simultaneously cinematic and intimate, while evoking a loving, patient calmness. The track is about something that’s somehow both difficult and easy — being present when your loved one is struggling with anxiety, depression or something else.

“Rather than trying to dramatise that experience, ‘Miningsby’ is about something quieter and harder: staying, listening, and offering warmth,” the band explains. “It’s a love letter to emotional endurance, grounded in small moments and the hope of better days ahead.”

The song’s title came from a bit of serendipitous happenstance. When the original demo files were saved in an old, rural Lincolnshire studio, they were geolocated to Miningsby, a tiny nearby village. For the band, the title — and in turn, the town’s name — became an unintended marker for a place and time that no longer exists, but continues to resonate through the music, much like the fleeting yet beautiful moments the song memorializes.

The song’s origins manage to mirror its themes. The song was recorded on a baby grand piano that the band no longer owns, in a studio they’ve since left behind. The song captures something gone yet the feeling of being held through it all.

The song sees the band framing love through tangible, physical moments and sensations — breath, warm, light. But along with that, there’s a sense of calm, loving patience and the belief that things can get better with love and through time.

The accompanying video, shot in black and white features the band performing the song in studio.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Robin Guthrie!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie’s 64th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Allegories Return with Atmospheric and Shoegazer-like “Baker’s Lung”

Since the release of 2022’s Endless, the Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays  Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — have released a growing collection of standalone singles.

Earlier this year, the duo shared “DREAMCRUSHER” and “Stay Out Of The Basement,” the first two of a series of singles that originally started out as a bare-boned ukulele sketches that were gradually transformed into idiosyncratic electronic sound sculptures.

“Baker’s Lung,” the third single in the Canadian duo’s ongoing ukulele sketch series is a lush, dreamily ruminative track that sees the JOVM mainstays pairing introspective lyrics focusing on the inevitability of morality, the search for meaning in the face of mortality and the always elusive pursuit of fulfillment with swirling, shoegazer-like electronic and acoustic instrumental textures.

As the duo explain, the song sees the duo asking several questions: As you imagine the future, how do you build when the foundation of what you thought mattered no longer fills that space? What do you do when your time is consumed by the hours of a career — especially a career that’s not super fulfilling or what you’ve dreamt of doing? Can you just contemplate everything to death? Or can you follow the breadcrumbs to fulfillment, maybe even enlightenment? Probably not. But it’s worth asking. And worth trying.

The result is arguably, one of the duo’s more cinematic and otherworldly songs — while retaining the uneasy quality that they’ve been known for.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Shares Broodingly Eerie “Stay Out Of The Basement”

Since the release of 2022’s Endless, the Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays  Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — have released a growing collection of standalone singles, including the first cover of their history, their take on Talk Talk’s 1984 smash-hit “It’s My Life” and “DREAMCRUSHER.“

The duo’s latest single “Stay Out Of The Basement” sees the duo mischievously blurring the lines between playful fantasy and broodingly eerie undertone, anchored around Bentley’s plaintive Thom Yorke-like delivery ethereally floating over a minimalist production featuring skittering beats and swirling. reverb-soaked, shoegazer-textured synths. The song evokes the simultaneous feeling of snuggling in a warm blanket — but then feeling something grab at your toes.

“‘Stay Out Of The Basement’ is the second in a series of songs that started on ukulele—but this one took a left turn. I wrote the original idea, dropped it into Pro Tools, and handed it off to Jordan. Usually, we keep parts of that first take—vocals, lyrics, melodies—but in this case, none of it made the cut.

The original version had solid ideas, but it didn’t fit the new direction. The vibe, the vocal phrasing—it just didn’t connect. So we started fresh. What you hear now is entirely built around Jordan’s instrumental, and the final vocal fits it naturally.

Each song in this series lands somewhere different. Some stay true to the original demo, others evolve into something completely new. ‘Stay Out Of The Basement’ is one of the rare ones that left the ukulele version behind entirely.”

The accompanying visual features the duo performing the song in studio, as reel-to-reel tape machines run. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Allegories Return with Dreamy and Mournful “DREAMCRUSHER”

Canadian experimental pop outfit Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — can trace their project’s origins to their members’ penchant for indulging in unconventional musical pursuits. Bentley and Mitchell founded anthemic indie rock outfit The Rest — but after doing that, they happily embraced any opportunity to indulge their more outeé inclinations and desires. 

Back in 2014, Bentley and Mitchell began writing and recording material with no clear destination in mind, dabbling in everything from neoclassical compositions to hip hop. Gathering further inspiration from DJ’ing house and hip-hop nights, the act began to create electronic music that often shifts between the mainstream and underground spectrum. 

Throughout the past decade plus or so, the duo have had extremely busy schedules: Currently, Bentley works behind the scene in the music industry. Mitchell operates a restaurant. And yet, Allegories almost always found a way to creep back into lives — even if only as a private amusement between the pair.

During that same decade or so period, the pair winnowed down 35 song ideas into their nine song album, 2022’s  2022’s Endless. Endless marked their first full-length album in over 14 years. “There’s a moment during the makng of an album, where you don’t know if you’ll finish it,” the duo say.“Endless was riddled with these cynical epiphanies. It’s unavoidable when you’ve spent over half a decade tinkering away. But as we closed in on the finish line, there was a sense that this could be the last work you ever complete. That spurs the process on, giving urgency. If you spend 14 years between albums, you want to make every note count.”

Since the release of Endless, the JOVM mainstays have released a growing collection of standalone singles, including their first cover, their take on Talk Talk’s 1984 smash-hit “It’s My Life,” which was also famously covered by No Doubt back in 2003.

The duo’s latest single “DREAMCRUSHER” a dreamy and ethereal, lullaby of a track that sees the duo meshing elements of ambient electronica, dream pop, shoegaze and experimental pop in a way that’s simultaneously mournful yet contented, anchored around a lived-in, hard-won wisdom. Thematically, the song is reflects on ambition, failure, disillusionment and the inherent hope of creative rebirth, of a new door opening towards something better — or bigger.

Initially conceived as a simple ukulele sketch, “DREAMCRUSHER” took on a life of its own through the duo’s unorthodox creative process. Without hearing any melody or lyrics, Mitchell built an entirely new arrangement, based on Bentley’s initial chord progression. Bentley then responded with a final version that drew from his original version and Mitchell’s atmospheric reimagining.

“I think there’s an almost conflicting nature to the song in both the overall narrative and the sound design,” the duo’s Bentley says, “This song embraces the annihilation of dreams but also the beauty of what grows in their place.”

The song’s title turns out to be a recurring personal moniker that Bentley uses with tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. “I have jokingly referred to myself as the ‘DREAMCRUSHER,’ not because I’m cynical, but because of my own outsized goals and working with others. who also chase wildly ambitious dreams,” he explains. “The song holds both the devastation and the quiet hope that something even more magical might emerge.”

The accompanying visual features the duo performing the song in studio, as reel-to-reel tape machines run.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 63rd Birthday, Simon Raymonde!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Simon Raymonde’s 63rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 63rd Birthday, Robin Guthrie!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Cocteau Twins co-founder Robin Guthrie’s 63rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bohemian Cristal Instrument Shares Gorgeous Teaser for “New Nature”

Splitting her time between Los Angeles and the Czech Republic, the Czech-born singer/songwriter, producer and musician Lenka Moravkova is the creative mastermind behind the indie electro pop project My Name Is Ann and the solo experimental electro pop project  Bohemian Cristal Instrument. 

The Czech-born artist hails from the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic, a region famed for its glass industry. Inspired by the region’s history, Morakova created several striking multimedia installations based on the sound of local glass factories during their decline. Those installations also helped inspire and inform the Czech-born artist’s Bohemian Cristal Instrument project — and the unique instrument at the center of the project. 

In the early 1950s, siblings Bernard and François Baschet developed a new instrument, the Cristal Baschet. With a Cristal Bachet, metal rods are embedded into a heavy plate to form the elements. Each metal rod is accompanied by an attached glass rod. The metal rod’s length, weight and position at the equilibrium point help to determine the sound’s pitch. The player gently strokes and/or rubs the glass rods with wet fingertips. Moravkova’s Bohemian Cristal Instrument is a unique version of the Baschet’s Cristal Baschet that follows the Czech-born artist’s original design. With her unique instrument, the Czech-born artist creates immersive and hypnotic soundscapes that pair the otherworldly acoustics of the Bohemian Cristal Instrument with ambient and pulsating electronics and her vocals. 

2017-2019 was a busy, breakthrough period for the Czech-born artist: In 2017 she went on her first European tour, which included a one-off collaboration with William Close and The Earth Harp Collective as a headliner at that year’s Colours of Ostrava. She performed at a TEDx Talk and with Grammy-nominated artist Bora Yoon at Los Angeles’ The Broad Museum. Live footage of Moráková in the California desert went viral, amassing over two million views. 

UNICODE EP, Maravkova’s Bohemian Cristal Instrument debut was released in 2018. The following year, she performed at Eurosonic Nooderslag. She was shortlisted for SXSW twice — back in 2020 and in 2022. 

Maravkova’s latest single, the slow-burning “New Nature” is the first single from her upcoming Bohemian Cristal Instrument full-length debut. “New Nature” continues a run of dreamily ambient yet remarkably cinematic and gorgeous material. Featuring gently oscillating synths, broodingly ambient electronics, twinkling keys and the lush theremin-like tones of Moravkova’s unique instrument, “New Nature” according to the Czech-born artist is set in a post-human world, where technology, humanity and nature are all merged to create a new unity. While the song acts as the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic landscape, it offers a sense of a bright, hopeful future.

Along with the single, Maravkova shares a breathtakingly gorgeous video teaser, which manages to evoke the hopeful and futuristic sweep of the accompanying cinematic song and her gorgeous Bohemian Cristal Instrument, suggesting that she becomes one with her instrument.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bohemian Cristal Instrument Shares Cinematic “New Nature”

Splitting her time between Los Angeles and the Czech Republic, the Czech-born singer/songwriter, producer and musician Lenka Moravkova is the creative mastermind behind the indie electro pop project My Name Is Ann and the solo experimental electro pop […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: WØØLS Shares Painterly “Flooded”

Brock Woolsey is a Californian-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, electronic music artist and creative mastermind of the solo recording project WØØLS. With WØØLS, Woolsey uses a mix of acoustic and digital instruments to create a collage sound characterized by textured synths, fuzzy tones, soft pianos, heavy low end and driving drum patterns that draws from Jon Hopkins, James Blake, Tycho, Shlohmo and Weval among others.

The Canadian artist’s latest EP Santa Rosa is slated for a June 14, 2024 release through Hit the North Records. The EP’s third and final single “Flooded” is a painterly almost shoegazer-like track that opens with a symphonic-like synth melody before quickly featuring glisten synth arpeggios, skittering beats, tape saturated fuzz and twinkling keys in a song that twists, turns and morphs into different textured passages before bringing listeners back to the beginning.

“Flooded” was inspired by Woolsey’s first analog synth, a Sequential Prophet Rev 2. “I was listening to Machinedrum heavily while writing this song. The bridge is a nice break in the song. Delicate piano chords run with tape cassette saturation” says Woolsey. The track opens with a symphonic melody, eventually carrying listeners through a roller coaster of textures and passages. The bridge provides a break in the reoccurring melodies, nearly sounding like a completely different track before making a full circle, bringing listeners back to the track’s essential melodies.”