There are three short and one very long piece on Preparations, the recent album by Orchard & Ponds. The short ones range from barely a minute in length to just over two, and are entirely knowable: brief little exercises in low-slung, artfully maudlin sound. There’s a muffled recording of what is likely a mother singing to a child (“Lullaby”: MP3), heard as if through a thick wall; though always recognizable as a voice, on repeated listens it becomes a single melismatic sound, tracing the contours of the melody, and slowly dispensing with whatever words are involved. There’s an acoustic guitar ramble that brushes up against a rough harmonica (“The Drake”: MP3). And there’s a soulful mix of guitar and shards of roughly, lightly bowed violin that emphasizes the textural elements of both (“Bredoleau”: MP3).
And then there’s the title track, which at upwards of three quarters of an hour is not fully knowable (“Preparations”: MP3). Despite its title, there is no preparation for its extended near-silence, less a drone than an audio document of warm dust (for anyone who’s not an occasional or longtime reader of this website, that last description is intended as high praise). It’s a steadily paced investigation of quiet reverb, light static, and distant feedback, all given a semblance of structure thanks to some almost invisible looping, and the fact that the piece is bookended on the album by shorter, more concertedly defined works.
More details on the release at the releasing netlabel, pandafuzz.com. More on Orchard & Ponds at fluxed.net/orchardandponds.
Once upon a time, there was a dynamic in pop music in which loud and quiet sections alternated within a given song. That scenario is often tracked back to the Pixies (and, a little later, Nirvana). In contemporary electronic music, there is a scenario in which a drone changes amplitude — or volume, that is — as if following the contours of a slowly undulating sine wave, moving up and down in a manner that from a distance might appear mechanical, but that retains a lilting feel. The end effect is more rocking chair than industrial churn. 
This week, the MP3 Discussion Group extends its Finnish fixation, by focusing its collective ears on the album Dustland by the duo Gentleman Losers — this following up recent group discussions of two efforts by Finland’s Sasu Ripatti (