Ashlar - Saturday Drones (CD)

This is literally a CD of drones that Phil Edwards and Wil Bolton made exclusively on Saturdays during 2011, which is a lovely idea I think. Not just for a record but for a nice way to spend your Saturday afternoons. Actually although it does contain drones, I wouldn’t say it’s strictly a drone record, more of a warm, melodic ambient one with field recordings and twinkling guitars.

The packaging for the deluxe version is super cool and the labour of love we have come to expect from Time Released Sound. If you want to read more about that go to the press release, where they’ve got so excited about it that they’ve forgotten to say anything about the music at all, which is a shame because it’s incredibly pleasant to listen to and I wouldn’t mind knowing a bit more about it myself.

I’m enjoying the clarity of the tones that are used here - so often in ambient/drone music the instruments being played can be blurred and processed into something ethereal but unrecognisable, but this is much more organic, sometimes going along the earthy Rain Drinkers-esque route, sometimes opting for synth drones with washes of guitar twinkle and field recordings layering undulating textures over the top.

The track ‘Hope Street’ has a melody which is strongly reminding me of one of the songs from the last Julia Holter album. I’m finding the whole thing rather hard to review as I keep drifting off into its warm, soothing melodies and having to snap myself out of a slack-jawed trance to write a few more words before it gets me again. In places it’s reminding me of Black Eagle Child at his most blissed out; there’s a sense of casual reflectiveness which belies the density of texture. A really lovely CD.