Music makers

His Bandcamp says he’s a 17-year-old boy making music from his bedroom. He works with guitar, ebow and pedals a lot. Nice cat pic too.

Nick Guy’s High Harbour project is the electronic end of what he does: in his own words, eco-industrial volcanic port vibes and windswept instrumentals. The looping, digital textures are like the murky end of dub techno – think labels like Chain Reaction, Motion Ward, West Mineral Ltd maybe.

Mostly making friendly techno, Em Bernard’s consistent use of atmosphere and harmony happily go in ambient directions too.

Johannes Contag made three albums in the first decade of the century under the alias Sleepytime. Unlike his music with say Cloudboy, The Golden Awesome, or Mink, this solo work is focused on quiet instrumental music. The alias came about from a friend falling asleep in front of the speakers during an early mixdown.

Pat Kraus has done a bit of a swerve recently away from a large discography of raw psychedelic music mostly made from synths and guitars. His latest EP is self-described as bringing calmness and clarity of mind, and made via the chiming sounds of FM synthesis, Brian Eno’s fave sound-making technique since the late 80s.

Rob Thorne (Ngati Tumutumu) makes music with taonga pūoro and loop pedals, creating atmospheric layers in his own unique way, creating atmospheres that are surely a good time for ambient listeners. He has also become known for more experimental efforts with Fis adding electronic layers.

Shanan Holm and Michael Upton made music as Montano for almost 20 years, before changing alias to Tonkyn Pearson. Perhaps weirdly Montano’s sound went from 100% made of field recordings but not so ambient, to long spaced-out tracks mixing synths and other instrumentation with field recordings taking more of a back seat.

In recent years Sonya Waters has been making music based around wind turbines, synths, pianos, and her vocals. She released an album The Sheltering Ranges (2020) that captures this exploration.

Voronoi is the ambient electronic project of the artist, writer, and electronic musician Richard B. Keys. His music combines synthesis and sampling techniques and contains dynamic changes and digital glitches that sometimes push against the conventions of ambient music. Wordless vocal tones often feature.

Making ritual music involving drones, improvisation, and vocals, with a distinctively dark edge, Ligeia is one of the aliases of Abigail Daisy Wells.