Low-fidelity gloom and murk have become a central pillar of the ambient aesthetic during the 21st century. As the tendrils of digital culture have frozen us in an ultrabright milieu defined by pristine, high-bitrate ear- and retina-stinging clarity, the lo-fi modes and sounds of everyday existence that punctuated my Gen X childhood have largely vanished from our collective consciousness and soundworld.
Younger generations now live on a globe in which sonic decay and decomposition are an anachronism as opposed to an integral part of the warp and weft (and indeed the wow and flutter) of everyday life. Radio static and the cosmic vectors of shortwave radio (as explored brilliantly in the ambient music realm by Tod Dockstader and Holger Czukay), the inherent instability of sample-and-hold analogue synthesis and its softer, Kodachrome-faded tones and timbres. Then there’s tape saturation and decay, the classic sound of cassettes after they’ve been left out on a sun-seared car dashboard for too long (as explored by William Basinski, Taylor Deupree and others). There’s also the crackle of vinyl, of course, although that sound is still very much with us, indeed, vinyl sales reached $1 billion last year for the first time since 1983. Astonishing and very revealing, one might conclude.
All of these sounds of the past, now largely disappeared, evoke the ghosts of previous decades, dreamscapes, hazy nostalgia and abandoned spaces. Indeed, it has been truly heartening to see listeners from younger generations, digital natives if you will, showing genuine curiosity and embracing this spectral sonic realm, a genuine desire to bathe their ears in a nostalgia without (for them) any associated memory. There is clearly a desire out there to step into the shadows and drift into the uncanny, to retreat from the painful glare of our 1000 lumen digital panopticon. To choose blurry magic and mystery over high-pixel-rate precision and lucidity.
Indeed, Basinski’s paean to 9/11 and tape decomposition, The Disintegration Loops, has become one of the most popular ambient releases of all time. Meanwhile, The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time, a fearsome six-disc exploration of both mental and audio decay, is almost as well-known among the denizens of TikTok (although personally I prefer his Stairway to the Stars album). And just this year, the return of Boards of Canada after aeons in the wilderness made a far bigger splash than should perhaps be expected of a 90s electronica duo.
There’s clearly an appetite out there for this kind of stuff, which brings us neatly on to Lamasz’s Fioritures (Fioritures are complex musical ornaments or fancy decorative details that are added to a melody, speech or style, Google assures me). Due out on Le Mont Analogue and arriving 25 September, this delightful new LP, while not offering anything particularly new to the Stygian gloom of this crusty ambient sub-genre, presents something of a masterclass in decay and audio detritus. The classic sound of scratchy string sections playing on a wind-up gramophone sitting at the bottom of a sun-dappled swimming pool at dusk. First track, “Meditation” sets the tone – an ectoplasmic orchestral loop that slowly traverses the upper troposphere in a manner redolent of Biosphere’s superb Shenzhou album – a simple loop in the right hands and with a deft touch can be a realm of pure mesmerism and magic. Fans of Richard Chartier’s Pinkcourtesyphone project will also feel at home here, with its decayed 50s Americana loop, like a plastic palm tree floating in an infinite void.
Second track “Les Bernaches” sucks us deeper into the cinematic miasma, like the on-board music of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine as it spirals backwards into an infinite past. “Cedres” takes us further into the realms of psychic dislocation as ominous urban field recordings weave in and around the melodic loop like a hypnagogic half-awake, half-dream state. “Signet” ups the noise-to-signal ratio significantly until we are all but buried in a deep permafrost of icy snow-white noise.
The final two tracks – “Correspondence” and “Les Voiliers” close out the set with a more life-affirming coda, gently flickering like revolving zoetropes and admirably restrained in their execution (it’s easy to overcook this type of crepuscular vibe). Recommended for those who like their ambient to convey true emptiness and worthy of being filed alongside the artists name-dropped above. Sunyata dudes!
Fioritures by Lamasz releases 25 Sepetember 2026 exclusively on Le Mont Analogue
