Recording: URM

Artist: URM

Songs: [two sections]

Recorded at Handlebar (Nite Comfort 38), October 2, 2016.

URM - [section 2]

URM - [section 4]

Jamie Todd (more frequently seen as half of dreamSTATE) took a solo turn to lead off this edition of the Nite, presenting a continuous drift-suite with shorter sections fading into each other with a building rhythmic intensity. My fave bits were the most purely ambient zones, so here's a couple tastes of that — though there were also some cool explorations later on when Scott M2 (the other half of dreamSTATE) joined in for some cool touchscreen guitar slides.

[November's Nite Comfort is taking place on Sunday (November 6th) at Handlebar, with sets from Moon McMullen and Xuan Ye/APA.]

Recording: dreamSTATE

Artist: dreamSTATE

Song: National Drone Day - Afternoon Drone [excerpt]

Recorded at Ratio ("National Drone Day // Afternoon Drone"), May 9, 2015.

dreamSTATE - National Drone Day - Afternoon Drone [excerpt]

The second annual Drone Day saw a variety of local events come together. Sadly, I was only able to make it out for this afternoon set by the AMBiENT PiNG crew. (And also sadly, I only got to catch the end of Anomalous Disturbances' opening set.) Against General Chaos' swirling projections, the duo's hour-long set moved from New Age-y wisps to proggy geometric builds — but in the spirit of the day never resolved into the beat-driven zone that their sets would often arrive at. The whole thing left me quite pleasantly drowsy afterwards, and it took a while to get back into a more alert headspace, but it was a worthy administration of drone-doze.

Recording: dreamSTATE

Artist: dreamSTATE

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Handlebar (Nite Comfort 20), April 5, 2015.

dreamSTATE - unknown

Aaron Dawson is doing good work over at Handlebar on the first Sunday of every month with his Nite Comfort series, which brings together musicians from across the diverse spectrum of electronic music together in a casual performance environment. This edition saw two stalwarts of the local scenes take the stage, including ambient pioneers dreamSTATE, who have been performing together for nearly two decades (and are, in fact, curators of long-running live ambient showcase THE AMBiENT PiNG). Keeping on top of changing technology, their newest "album" Ephemeral City is, in fact, "an infinite ambient multimedia app" for iOS. Live, they covered a lot of ground, ranging from minimalist builds to Tangerine Dream grooves, showing an expert sense of momentum that kept things engaging throughout the performance.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!