Music makers

The solo project of Alicia Merz, Birds of Passage has released many haunting near-whispered songs, bringing ambience and folk together in an often brooding way.

Self-described “experimental new age/meditative music”, involving a lot of field recordings made while tramping. Their self-titled first release from 2019 has over 33k views on YouTube.

Anita Clark (Motte) and Indira Force (Flying Nun singer-songwriter Indi, ex-Doprah) combined their violin, synths and vocals to make dramatic ambience.

A prolific Dunedin synth artist, releasing ambient for 21 years so far. He first started making electronic music while studying Forestry Science at the University of Canterbury, and in the following years at the University of Otago while completing a degree in Botany.

Berlin-based duo Vases is made up of Mitchell Sullivan and Ross Alexander. Their album 17 Vignettes (Cosmic Compositions, 2019) is made up of short, bright synth pieces.

A duo of Rosy Parlane and Dion Workman that released murky lo-fi loops in the late 90s, sometimes with the Geiger counter pulse of the most minimal techno.

The ambient solo act of Spook The Horses’ guitarist Donnie Cuzins, Loam made music ranging from big synth drones to light pieces laced with delicate electric guitar.

Anita Clark’s Motte project is focused on looping violin and more recently her voice too. Synthy embellishments floats freely, with her occasional pizzicato as direct as the rhythms get.

Gydja is an alias of Abby Helasdottir, actively creating “dark ambient for dark goddesses” since 2001. Expect deep, heavy drones. In April 2021, Dutch label Winter-Light released Ár var alda. (Icelandic for “In ancient times”.) There are also plenty of releases on Gydja’s Bandcamp page, stretching back to Machina Mundi (2007). To my ears, this… Continue reading Gydja

The work of Christian Unkovich-McNab, the one Acid Police release currently online looks and sounds like ambient takes on what may have started as dance material, with the last track stretching out over 25 minutes to take up the whole B-side of a tape.