Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs

Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs
2012
>Ambient Dub, Experimental, Spoken Word

People often associate ambient music with soaring synthed female vocals, gossamer textures, and smooth rivers of bass with perhaps some measured silences thrown in.  Shackleton's ambient dub takes a different tack, though.  Because it builds it's songs on a backbone of tribal and African beats the music stays thoroughly terrestrial.  The expansive "soundscape" that one expects from the likes of more traditional ambient artists becomes much more claustrophobic and menacing.  There's also a prominent Middle Eastern sound to many of the songs as followers of Shackleton's Muslimgauze influenced releases on Skull Disco will be quick to point out.

If The Drawbar Organ's more dub inspired works can seem a bit baleful at times, then music for the quiet hour is downright apocalyptic -- literally.  The album culminates in a 21 minute ambient cum spoken word piece narrated by a Patrick Bateman sound-a-like as he dictates a letter to his future grandson who has traveled back in time to warn him of impending calamity.  It's more meditative than urgent in tone since the catastrophe is inescapable, but it's impact is no less powerful for that.

While the two EPs may not appeal to those accustomed to more traditional EDM, it's definitely worth a listen if you enjoy more experimental compositions.

Samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt_SThAgLPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b92UZgbdqRg