It’s entering rainy season in San Francisco, and all I want to do is wrap myself in a sweater, drink hot toddies, and let waves of shimmery ambient noise music wash over me.
Christian Fennesz is like My Bloody Valentine but without the pop sensibility or vocals. It’s hypnotic loops, lush tones, and white noise — but still totally accessible and beautiful. I’m a little late to the game: He’s been making music since the mid-nineties. Nevertheless, he’s now the soundtrack to so many things: late-night writing, Sunday coffee, afternoon daydreaming.
For the same reasons, I’ve been loving Growing, an ambient/noise/dance band from Brooklyn. They have a much more hypnotic, dark, repetitive bass thing going, but their earlier stuff reminds me of Fennesz. I’ve seen them play a few times in Brooklyn. I love that they are 1/3 female.
In a similar this-music-puts-me-in-a-driven-trance kind of way, I’ve been really digging The Gaslamp Killer. It started like this: in a rare instance, I was driving (Zipcar, of course) down the highway and desperately scanning for something decent on the radio. There are a few good college radio stations that were going in and out, and I locked in on one that was playing the most amazing hip-hop-laced electronica. I was mesmerized. When the radio DJ came on, I missed the artist name. But I was so into it I looked up the station call numbers, the playlist archive, and tracked down the song — the epic “I Spit on Your Grave.” I definitely dig the parts that are more electronic, weird, and dark than the jazzier parts. I also love this cover art:
