Music makers

James Erwin has an album of bright and sparkly synth stuff that nods to dance culture and song forms, but minus the drums.

Ike’s music has a bit of a conceptual bent, often featuring clean digital synths, spoken word samples and dramatic bursts of sub bass.

Woodbury is Wellington-based composer “juxtaposing noise and glitch textures against ambient materials”. He’s got two albums via Rattle Records, one solo and one with Peter Lilley.

Although he might be better known for jazz piano, Alan Brown’s recent music has gone very textured and ambient, with some parts generated by software, some parts improvised.

While Marika Pratley’s project is often at least a bit dancey, she has an EP with “slothersized” remixes of already mellow tracks, “exploring slowing down, lo-fi and granular aesthetics.”

Regularly involving reversed and chopped up elements, in recent years Darkslider’s music has become less rhythmic and more ambient.

Some sparse and lo-fi synth drones – at least one of which is fully made on a Gameboy, according to the notes on Bandcamp.

Landscape is an ambient project of Rory Storm. The five Landscape releases on Rory’s Bandcamp so far tend towards long synthesised drones, sometimes icy and full of echoes.

Raglan’s Jasper Boer’s released a collection of very ambient tracks as Jap Jap, incorporating singing bowls and droning synths. The album is Lemurian Bliss (2021).

Sean Monaghan has released mostly long, evolving drone soundscapes since 2008. He has been active in the net label scene, with many recent releases on US-based Zenapolæ.