Astoria

There's something about this time of year, the long slow fade through November and December towards Christmas that particularly lends itself to ambient music and found sounds. The fact that it's almost permanently half light, seemingly always either dark or dusk, the constant hubbub of half heard sounds of shoppers, radio, conversations, and the jangling, ambient- esque festive noises of bells and choirs, give the end of the year an ambient feel. The new Saint Etienne album, The Night, dropped onto my door mat this week and is sweetly timed, an album of street noises, slow drifting synths, and Sarah's spoken word songs and lists, the sound of bedding in as the sun goes down at 4pm. This EP, Astoria, by former- Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie came out at the star of November but I only heard it recently and it fits in to mid- December perfectly, four slices of ambient dream pop. Opener A Most Remarkable Woman is short, just two and a half minutes, washes of synth and a bassline and then suddenly Robin's guitar, that chiming/ breaking glass sound he conjures ending almost as swiftly as it started. 

The three that follow are cut from similar cloth. Starting Fires is glacial and stately, drums giving it a push behind the cinematic, winterscape guitars and synths.  Third track Jura is the longest on the EP,  over four minutes of calming sounds, layers of ambience- a  few minutes of calm at a time of year when its often the exact opposite. In 1986 The Cocteau twins collaborated with ambient/ minimalist Harold Budd, The Moon And The Melodies, an album that has only grown in stature since its release. Jura nods back in that records direction, synth shimmer and slow motion chord changes, a blissed out balm. Astoria closes with Smoulder which swells into earshot with piano over an ambient backdrop, layers of sounds and warm drones building- the piano edges forward and eventually drums thump in. Smoulder reminds me of Mark Peters' Innerland album of  2017, an ambient/ guitar album specifically about place (north west England), a similar blend of guitars, synths and drums, forming pictures of landscapes and winter, time and place. Robin recorded Astoria in France, in Brittany, where he's lived for a long time now. You can get Astoria here, on both digital and CD.