Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source

Michael Hix is a founding member of the Nashville Ambient Ensemble, an ambient Americana collective whose 2021 album Cerulean was one I discovered in the spring of that year along with Luke Schneider's pedal steel ambient drone lp Altar Of Harmony. In some ways I always associate them with lockdown and also with Isaac's death. The combination of traditional instruments and synths, ambient drones and plucked strings, was more or less the only music that made sense to me for a while in the period after he died, the weeks and months in late 2021/ early 2022. Elegy (appropriately enough) is from Cerulean. 

Elegy

Michael Hix is about to release a solo album titled Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source, ten instrumentals for electric guitar partly inspired by his Buddhist meditation and partly by a need to simplify (part of the same thing I imagine). There are two tracks currently at Bandcamp, Cadence and Deer Park, both played entirely using electric guitar, no synths or pedal steel, just a Telecaster and some live looping set ups. Both conjure Vini Reilly gone to Nashville to some extent for me- minimal and emotive guitar playing, crossing the blurry lines between ambient Americana and cosmic country. 

Forty Minutes Of Ambient Americana

Of all the photos I took in Lindos, Rhodes two weeks ago, I think this is my favourite. We went a few miles down the coast to Pefkos, a seaside resort and after eating wandered down to the beach. On the way back up I noticed this room, a rest stop for taxi drivers. 

There was a Saturday afternoon a week after Isaac died when I put some music on, the first time I'd chosen to listen to music since he'd gone. The only music that seemed to work for me was ambient music, no words or chords even, just something to fill the awful, chasm of silence. The tinnitus that appeared after his death was quite extreme, it still is at times, and ambient music drowned it out. One of the features of the Greek islands is the constant noise of the cicadas, insects that live in the trees and make a sometime huge sound, coming and going in what sounds like an orchestrated way, swells of ambient insect noise. Lying by the pool I found that the cicadas sometimes matched my tinnitus, a similar pitch and frequency to the sound in my ears. In some ways I found it quite comforting and the cicadas were as much part of our holiday as the sun, the pool, the mousaka and the acropolis. They also reminded me of the music I listened on that Saturday afternoon in December 2021, an afternoon that felt so long it could still be going on. The albums I played were by three artists who make ambient Americana, traditional instruments such as pedal steel guitar used alongside synths and FX pedals to create a wash of ambient sound- Luke Schneider, Nashville Ambient Ensemble and SUSS. This is a forty minute mix of some of the tracks from those three.

Forty Minutes Of Ambient Americana

• Luke Schneider: Lex Universum
• SUSS: We Pointed Them North
• Nashville Ambient Ensemble: Cerulean
• SUSS: Ash Fork AZ
• SUSS: No Man's Land
• Luke Schneider: Invicta Affectio
• Nashville Ambient Ensemble: Elegy

Luke Schneider is a pedal steel guitarist. His debut solo album Altar Of Harmony came out in 2020. It is an entire world in itself as a record, otherworldly soundscapes. Both Lex Universum and Invicta Affectio are from it. Luke's  new album came out this summer, It Is Solved By Walking, five new pieces of music.

SUSS's We Pointed Them North is from an EP titled High Line, pedal steel, ebow and loops that sound like wide open spaces of the American landscape- the Paris, Texas landscape. SUSS are from New York oddly enough. No Man's Land is from Promise, SUSS's full length album from 2020.  

Ash Fork AZ is from Night Suite, a record inspired by driving long distances through the night on Route 66- endless road, truck stops, horizon, the white line down the centre of the road going on ahead. 

Nashville Ambient Ensemble are exactly as their name states. Michael Hix's synths and keyboards played alongside more traditional instruments, including Luke Schneider on pedal steel- their Bandcamp page uses the phrase The New Weird South to describe their experimental and improvised music. Their album Cerulean came out in March 2021. Their latest album, Light And Space, came out earlier this year. 

Monday's Long Song

Nashville Ambient Ensemble are exactly as their name suggests and have not long since released an album called Cerulean (already sold out almost everywhere, you might be lucky if you hunt around- there's hints of a repress). Led by composer Michael Hix and including the pedal steel of Luke Schneider (whose Altar Of Harmony from last year is a revelation and a joy), the album takes in six tracks of improvisation, meditative bliss and not a little transportation, just what the musical doctor ordered.  The centrepiece of Cerulean is the ten minute drift of Conversion, a soundscape built in the capital of Tennessee by a like minded group of musicians, a weird Nashville, with layers of synth, a meandering piano part, that achingly beautiful pedal steel guitar and a vocal coming in and out gently like waves lapping on a beach. It really is something else. The digital release is here.