Andrew Heath and Harry Towell are two names regularly featured on Ambientblog. Both are active musicians, and Harry also runs the Whitelabrecs label. The two worked together in creating a new and promising ambient music label called Driftworks.
Driftworks specialises in lower case, ambient and minimal music from artists that specialize in soundscape, experimental electronic, and electro/acoustic music, often containing fragmentary melodies and field recordings. Together with the label launch they also present The Inner Echo: a community platform ‘based around the Whitelabrecs and Driftwork record labels, and the wider Ambient music scenes’.
The label launched with three titles: albums by Andrew Heath and Harry Towell (as Glåsbird) themselves as well as a short album by Peter Maynard called Upper Tranquility Fields.
The label launched on February 7, but was obviously highly anticipated: the (notably too small) physical editions of all three albums were sold out on the first day of pre-order.
ANDREW HEATH – SIGNALS AND CODES
Inspired by ‘academic research into paranormal activities’, Signals And Codes presents Andrew Heath‘s trademark ‘lower case music’: subtle, immersive soundscapes crafted from acoustic instruments like guitar and piano, incorporating found sounds and field recordings as integral musical elements.
“I continue to explore a dreamlike impressionistic world through my sound palette of piano, guitar, electronics, treatments and field recordings. Signals and Codes further explores this lighter tone. One which drifts and then coalesces occasionally when fragments of melody surface.”
Though released as a single CDr, Signals And Codes turns out to be a double album (CDr buyers receive a download code. Literally ‘doubled’: the ten tracks are all remixed by different artists but presented in the same order as the original album. Together, these twenty tracks present two hours and fourteen minutes of music. The list of artists remixing the tracks demonstrates the vast network around Heath and Towell – most of them have published work on Whitelabrecs before.
Signals And Codes (the original album) itself is beautiful and a pleasure to listen to, but it’s also nice to hear what other artists do with the original material. The source – Heath‘s music – remains clear, but each remixer definitely puts his (yes, they’re all male) own spin on it..
GLÅSBIRD – GLACIAL DRIFT
Until Spring 2024, Glåsbird was an anonymous artist. But now we know that it’s one of the aliases of Harry Towell (also known as Audio Gourmet, Spheruleus, and other names). Glåsbird always presented soundtrack-like music, closely related to different geographic locations.
Like Himalaya (2022), Glacial Drift links to mountains: in this case the Swiss Alps. A series of photographs from the Alps from 1938 – ‘portraying glaciers, mountains, and valleys showing a very different world’ – was the primary inspiration for this album.
But, realizing that Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings premiered in the same year, a different perspective emerged: the connection with modern classical music that inspires him.
“Clear themes developed with each track representing a year and studying the techniques, equipment and sound aesthetic for a particularly acclaimed artist, starting with Samuel Barber.”
These other artists are not named explicitly, but each tracks name is year for its name (1938, 1948, 1959, … , 2016, 2022) – so you’ll have to do some research to find out to whom Harry is referring.
The music in these 10 tracks follows ‘the evolution of Ambient, Avant Garde and Minimalist music over the course of the 86 years’. Thus, the album presents different styles: starting as (modern classical) orchestral work, it slowly turns into more electronic, sometimes more ambient soundscapes. But there’s always a link to Glåsbird‘s modern classical ‘soundtrack’ music. On a different level, with the starting point of the 1938 Swiss Alp photo in mind, it also speaks about “the effects of global warming, accelerated by humans and industry.”
