Filling Out a Silhouette

A drone by Cousin Silas

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Sometimes the drone is the text, and sometimes it’s the subtext. It’s the text when it’s the overarching sound. It’s the subtext when it fills out some other overarching construct. The latter is the case with “Emporium Drone 005” by Cousin Silas. In it, the contour of a lush melody — halfway between neo-classical and popular song — played at a sedate pace is treated as if it were a silhouette, a shape left to be filled by an assembly of Silas’ drones. The overall effect is that of an orchestra heard through a thick, velvet scrim.

More from Cousin Silas, aka the English musician David Hughes, at [cousinsilas1.bandcamp.com](https://cousinsilas1.bandcamp.com/), as well as at [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_Silas), which lists the over 80 albums he has released since 2001.

In Situ

By Haik, from Japan

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

You can play this video in lots of contexts. You can play it on your phone, or your laptop, maybe in a little side window, or real big. You can project it to a screen. Or you can play it on a tablet. I recommend tablet. The reason I recommend tablet, specifically iPad, is this video was performed in the software called Samplr on an iPad. To play the video on an iPad is to play it on the same device where the music was performed and recorded — in situ, as it were. (The Samplr app recently received an update for the first time in something like half a decade. It had continued to work fine, but its developer finally modernized it, resulting in a deserved resurgence of popularity, resulting in videos like this one.) Here the sampling app is put to ambient purposes. As the musician Haik works through the samples, you can track the correlation between actions and sounds.

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video originally published at [YouTube](https://youtu.be/I-nWN31uW2E). More from Haik, who is based in Japan, at [twitter.com/haik_am](https://twitter.com/haik_am) and [instagram.com/haikmusic_](https://www.instagram.com/haikmusic_/).

Deep, Fluxing Pulse

A cello-less track from the OO-ray, aka Ted Laderas

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The OO-ray is Ted Laderas, best known for his shoegaze-drenched cello music, wherein he runs his trusty analog four-string instrument through a shifting array of loopers and synths. Laderas is also handy with synths on their own, as this gently throbbing, tastily peaked-out ambient track displays. Listen as the deep, fluxing pulse pushes past its breaking point at times, and then how the spirited rasps of noise get folded back into the greater whole.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/ooray](https://soundcloud.com/ooray/rings-and-whole-tones). More from Laderas, who is based in Portland, Oregon, at [15people.net](https://www.15people.net/) and [waveguideaudio.bandcamp.com](https://waveguideaudio.bandcamp.com/music).