Music makers

Music maker and soundtrack composer Sheehan’s reviews and press tend to use words like “cinematic” and “epic” a lot, with increasing references to chamber music as he incorporates more acoustic instruments.

Lyttleton-based guitarist, bassist, clarinetist, and electronic noodler Peter Wright has been making drones for decades. He has an absolutely massive back catalogue, with Discogs listing 48 albums under his name and 41 releases on his Bandcamp page. Then there’s aliases and bands on top. His music under his own name often contains distortion and feedback, sometimes tempered and restrained, sometimes just going hard out.

Alice Sparrow is using a bunch of budget gear to make big, transporting drones. Her “electronic ambient space trance from Tamaki Makaurau” is currently leaning hard in an ambient direction

Omit (Clinton Williams) is another New Zealander more associated with the noise scene (such as it is) but definitely at the quiet end. He is known for icy soundscapes made from handmade and salvaged electronic instruments, using motors to make minimal, hypnotic rhythms, sometimes in place of the typical drum machines.

Ambient noise duo that started in Sydney, making music with evolving tones and sheets of (mostly quiet) noise. Plenty of low end.

While Lilburn is fairly best seen in the context of Western classical music, some of his electronic pieces will surely appeal to ambient fans. More than that, I’d just find it weird to write about New Zealand ambient without him. He talked of a New Zealand music based around listening to and responding to our… Continue reading Douglas Lilburn

Sally Ann McIntyre is an artist from Dunedin and lives in Melbourne. She describes Radio Cegeste as an actual radio station as well as a platform for radio art.

Bill Wood and Jules Desmond are 1/3 Octave Band. They play guitars, effects, field recordings and oscillators. If your interest in ambient comes from post-rock or drone then here you go!

Team Cat Food trend towards house music, but have always been fairly atmospheric, and on their Collected Ambient Tracks (2020) have some stuff I wouldn’t dispute as ambient music.

Te Aorangi is Reon Bell, a young Auckland music maker who has put multiple albums up on Bandcamp, sometimes in connection with theatre productions. September 2020’s An Ocean’s Worth includes piano slurring into drones, distant chords, and soft layers of noise. Some tracks sit, some tracks build. A good place to start.