New Journeys in Ambient – Stationary Travels

April is perhaps the most capricious month of the year in the Mid-Atlantic. Even as spring is in full bloom and the days are getting longer, one day can feel like a time jump into the middle of summer and the next can bring frost warnings that have farmers and gardeners scurrying to protect their plants. It is also a month that generally lacks the bitterness or brutality that the seasons on either side of it can bring and one that is often filled with quiet joys. Through all this, as always, music remains a constant. In this round up, we feature new ambient journeys to accompany the season from anthéne, Barry Parma Rogers, The Lonely Bell, Music for Sleep, Rime Trails, and Rayan Haïdar.

Anthéne – Perennials

https://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/perennials

Over the past decade, Toronto-based artist Brad Deschamps has developed a vast catalog of beautiful ambient recordings under the moniker of anthéne. Even in his most prolific periods, Descahmps manages to make each and every album or EP thoughtfully compelling in its own way. That is certainly the case for Perennials, the first anthéne release to come out on the Past Inside the Present imprint. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Walt Whitman and production styles of bands like Sparklehorse and Califone, Deschamps balances introspection with a sense of beauty & wonder using a modest set of tools. The label perhaps says it best when they write that he creates “an orchestra of moods” with his guitar “through an alluring combination of effects, compositional skill, and sound design”.

I was preoccupied with how we face major challenges but always find a way back to center, and the ways our emotional rhythms mirror the return of nature after every harsh freeze, you know, all these things that have their own organic pace and require a certain kind of surrender.

Brad Deschamps aka anthéne

Perennials was released March 4, 2026, on limited edition CD & digital via Past Inside the Present. The album was mastered by James Bernard and features photography by Benoît Pioulard whose original bowed guitar piece is reworked on the closing track.

Barry Parma-Rogers – In Ourselves

https://barryparmarogers.bandcamp.com/album/in-ourselves

New to my ears, and perhaps to some of yours, is the music of London-based artist Barry Parma-Rogers. He describes In Ourselves as ” a 37-minute piece of introspection and self-understanding through drone, distortion and noise”. The album, which presents the piece divided into seven seamlessly blended tracks, was created last year through a process of live improvisation and composition centered around self-made analog and electronic recordings using modular systems. In his Bandcamp profile byline, Parma-Rogers says he likes emotion with his noise, and that can certainly be heard throughout from the melancholy nature of the gentlest oscillations to cathartic swells of distortion which maintain their melodic structure.

‘In Ourselves’ expresses the many aspects of my personality and self, capturing the things I see when I look inwards, articulating how precision and abstraction, noise and emotion, can balance and exist in harmony and disharmony to create a larger, cohesive whole.

Barry Parma-Rogers

In Ourselves was released digitally by the artist on January 28, 2026.

The Lonely Bell – Memory Piece

https://thelonelybell.bandcamp.com/album/memory-piece

From the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, we have music from Ali Murray aka The Lonely Bell that echoes the remote nature of the landscape in which it was conceived. Memory Piece is an immersive sonic tapestry in which melancholic drones and environmental field recordings are woven together around a haunting melodic refrain. Capturing the feeling it conveys perfectly, Murray calls it “a soundtrack for sitting still and watching the world go by”.

Memory Piece was released digitally on April 1, 2026, via Dead Forest Records. If you enjoy this long-form piece, be sure to also check out his full-length album Time Lost which came out in February and is available on digital & cassette from the Oscarson label.

Music for Sleep – In assenza

https://mforsleep.bandcamp.com/album/in-assenza

While Italian composer Andre Porcu may have adopted the new moniker of come le onde several years ago, what did not change was his penchant for creating highly emotive soundscapes inspired by nature, literature, and self-reflection. As a reminder of this commendable continuity, In assenza, is an archival work Porcu discovered which was made in 2022 during the period before the change and never released until now. He expressed that he found the piece “strangely relevant, as if speaking to the world we live in today”, and” and was moved to share it. Indeed, it is a beautiful, compelling piece of music dappled with recordings of elderly voices sharing bits of advice or stories from their youth adding to its sense of poignancy.

In assenza was released digitally on March 7, 2026 by ROHS! RECORDS and features cover photography by Julia Rekamie. There is a note on the Bandcamp page that indicates it may only be available on a temporary basis, so be sure to purchase and download a copy if you enjoy it.

Rime Trails – Distances

https://rimetrails.bandcamp.com/album/distances

The anonymous Danish ambient sound artist behind Rime Trails is of few words when it comes to their releases, but not many words are needed for the kind of music they create. Distances is another fine outing with understated drones and impressionistic guitar loops redolent of the track titles that seem to evoke far flung places real or imagined. If you enjoy this, a deeper dive into the Rime Trails Bandcamp page should prove well worth your time.

Distances was released digitally on February 11, 2026.

Rayan Haïdar – Cities Burn as We Dream of a Return

https://rayanhaidar.bandcamp.com/album/cities-burn-as-we-dream-of-a-return

Rayan Haïdar is a multi-instrumental musician and sound artist originally from Beirut and now based in Paris. Haïdar’s Cities burn as we dream of a return is presented to listeners as a “profound meditation on displacement, longing, and the impossible distance between memory and its aftermath”. The album began as a collection of home recordings in 2024 inspired by childhood memories which took on added meaning as it became engulfed in escalating violence. Applying effects processing and experimental techniques to waves of ambient guitar, Haïdar creates a vivid and moving melancholy as nostalgia and solastalgia collide.

What emerged is not simply an album about a place, but about the way we carry our homes and the people we love within us—how they become part of our interior landscape regardless of physical distance or destruction.

Cities Burn as We Dream of a Return was released digitally on March 20, 2026, by Dragon’s Eye Recordings. The album was mastered by Lawrence English.