In addition to his own annual music review, my friend Tracy has compiled blog posts in which people reflect on their music from 2020 in a list. He asked me if I had done a post of my own too and the answer was no (and is yes now, that you read this).
new age
Musical Meandering
Finding new music is often quite interesting, like picking fruits from trees that line a meandering path through an orchard, with many little side-trails branching out left and right that lead to different trees with different fruits. I guess it’s similar to getting a little bit lost while browsing maps, dictionaries or encyclopedias (all activities that stimulate the introvert mind, I’d say;-).
I’m eternally grateful for that one episode of KEXP’s “Music That Matters” podcast which featured LOMA’s “Black Willow” because that in turn helped me find Shearwater, for example (described here: The Road to Shearwater). Here’s another one of those meanderings, finding “I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950-1990” – and it begins with Blade Runner.
Stevie Be Zet – Archaic Modulation (1993)
Stevie Be Zet’s “Archaic Modulation” is definitely on the lighter side of ambient, veering into the “New Age” genre probably. It features the at-that-time quite typical, relatively “clean” synthesizer sound that I associate with the Trance genre releases from the German Eye-Q label during its heyday (famous for Sven Väth, Ralf Hildenbeutel, and many others).