This “Bell Study” by Dave Seidel, aka Mysterybear, uses light echoes of looped gamelan samples to create a quiet, peaceful sonic space that has a rhythmic component even as it suggests itself for reflection and contemplation. In theory, or at least based on the barest of descriptions, the combination of melodic percussive tones and a fairly rapid sequencing should gather the listener’s attention rather than what happens here, which is that it provides a kind of gentle lull. It’s music that you can focus on, but also music that encourages you to not focus. The result is hypnotic. The tones themselves have a similarly self-contradictory beauty, in part richly tonal and at the same time lightly sour, especially when the loops allow for beading and overlays that expose subtle harmonic dissonances.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/mysterybear](https://soundcloud.com/mysterybear/bell-study-2017-04-17). More from Seidel, who is based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, at [mysterybear.net](http://mysterybear.net/music).

The title track of April Larson’s [*It Was Misplaced*](https://aprillarson.bandcamp.com/album/it-was-misplaced-2) is an echo chamber of strings, layer upon layer of strings, half representing stasis, the other half momentum, and between them finding an uneasy truce. “Sorry, You Know About the Pain” seems built, as well, from strings, but they’re muffled, as if heard from the floor above, with the exception of one tiny screech, as if a single string on a single bow is getting through the obstruction — the result shows a level of pixel-perfect detail that drone music rarely achieves let alone aspires to. The whole album explores drones, from the choral-like “The Shape of Wings in One of Many Worlds” and “A Quiet Life in a War Zone” to the hush of “Black Arctic,” its out-of-focus drama like a Richter painting.

*It Was Misplaced* was released back in 2013, but I only just heard it this week after falling for her brand new album, [*Up Below*](https://polarseasrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/up-below) on the Polar Seas label. These are more drones, denser and less specific in their constituent parts. Listen as a beading rumble infuses “Floating,” or a thrilling wind surfaces in “The Excavation.” Gorgeous stuff.

*It Was Misplaced* originally posted at [aprillarson.bandcamp.com](https://aprillarson.bandcamp.com/album/it-was-misplaced-2), *Up Below* at [polarseasrecordings.bandcamp](https://polarseasrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/up-below). More from Larson at [soundcloud.com/april-larson](https://soundcloud.com/april-larson).

This elegant, gestural piece for modular synthesizer cycles a bit of low-key, atmospheric glitch several times in a row before a joyous little rupture occurs. When that happens, just prior to three minutes into this nearly four-minute piece, the whole sense of time shifts. What had felt slow and relaxed takes on a more sublime bearing. Once you know what’s hidden beneath the surface, it’s impossible to not sense its presence on repeat listens. What had been calm and collected now feels anticipatory, like a stop-motion image of a flower that quite suddenly, in strong daylight, blooms.

There’s also a lovely, misty video for it on YouTube:

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/lightbath](https://soundcloud.com/lightbath/a-window-into-another). More from Lightbath, aka Bryan Noll, at [lightbath.com](https://lightbath.com/).