Spotted Peccary
Articles about Spotted Peccary:
The Spotted Peccary label has been consistently putting out great ambient, space and synth music albums. Their latest release, Below The Mountain, by Craig Padilla, is no exception.
We’ve reviewed a couple of other albums by Padilla, The Light In The Shadow & Genesis. While his last two releases had more of an ambient or space music feel, Below The Mountain shows Padilla’s classic synth music side.
Fans of the Berlin School electronic music of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and of the classic seventies synth music of Michael Stearns and Steve Roach will find plenty to enjoy here.
The tracks on Below the Mountain explore various combinations of drones and modular-style sequences. Some, like Current and Wandering Though, have more of a West coast space music feel. Other tracks, like Woven Planet and Endless Road, have a more Berlin School feel. Read more…
Treasure is a new collaboration between David Helpling and Jon Jenkins on the Spotted Peccary label. Spotted Peccary a progressive electronic music label that has consistently been releasing solid ambient/new age/space music projects.
On Treasure, Helpling and Jenkins create music that moves gracefully between the worlds of space music and more rhythmic “chillout” style grooves. The CD kicks off with Grand Collision, which alternates quiet sections that focus on synth string pads and evolving textures with more propulsive sections. The track also features interesting textural guitar work, which reminded me a bit of Steve Tibbetts’ work.
This contrasting of an ambient/space feel with more rhythmic sections continues throughout the CD. On The Knowing, Helpling & Jenkins create a track that begins very quietly, and for the first half of the track they explore subtle textural variations over a repeating harmonic progressions. About halfway through, they move into a more overtly rhythmic section, adding layers of guitars and building the track to a peak. Read more…
Anno Domini is a new Spotted Peccary release from Deborah Martin & J.A.Verner. Verner is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who’s released a series of recordings featuring his unique ambient guitar stylings. Martin also has several previous releases on the Spotted Peccary label, and contributes vocals to this cd.
The music is ambient music in the tradition of Western US ambient artists like Michael Stearns, combining slowly evolving synth textures, bell-like timbres, and other beautiful sounds with cavernous reverberation effects.
The music has a mystical religious element, too, with Latin lyrics and phrases incorporated in subtle ways. The combination results in a sort of ambient liturgy. Read more…
Craig Padilla’s The Light In The Shadow, a recent release on Spotted Peccary, is a gorgeous ambient CD that features one long-form track, the title piece.
The Light In The Shadow has the floating, blissful quality of classic ambient/new age work of early Steve Roach, Michael Stearns or Kevin Braheny. The music bathes you in beautiful sounds, from washes of string-like sounds to long, tones that drift from one speaker to another.
While The Light In The Shadow is primarily a drone-based piece, it evolves significantly through its 1:03 length. At times, Padilla thins the music down to a perfume-like ambience, and at other times he builds densely layered sound collages. The piece also gradually build from a free-flowing beginning to a more rhythmic peak. Padilla adds layers of interlocking sequences that add a sense of motion, without making the music driving.
Padilla’s CD has a seductive sound, but also a depth, so that it rewards various levels of listening.
Spotted Peccary is becoming one of the premier labels for ambient and space music and Craig Padilla’s The Light In the Shadow is another great release.
Tracks:
- The Light In The Shadow
Spotted Peccary Music recently sent us a care package with a variety of their releases, and we’ve been impressed with the consistent quality of their artists and recordings. The latest recording by Dean De Benedictus, Salvaging the Past, is no exception.
On this release, Benedictus deftly mixes a wide variety of sounds, ranging from the clearly synthetic to the acoustic sounds of cello, drums and voice. He also mixes a wide variety of genres and influences, creating a complex synth music/ambient/new age style of his own.
