GENRE: Electronic, Acoustic, Ambient, Drone
Label: Earth Mantra
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 00:48:42
With Up From Here, Jon takes his music to a higher level, retaining his breathtaking fusion of Americana and dark ambience, but adding an even more potent dose of bittersweet reminiscence, with even stronger visuals and evocative themes. Where his previous release blended Jon's various influences seamlessly, with Up From Here, the fusion is so complete that one cannot say with certainty where one influence ends and another begins. It all forms one inseparable innate whole, an assembly of fascinatingly articulate ambience unlike anything else we've heard. In fact, atop the obvious ambient structure, we would also call this music post-gospel. Not the kind of slick gospel that comes at you from a Hammond B3 or a Wurlie and a polished Stratocaster, but more like Libba Cotten Piedmont gospel, shuffling off into the twilight with two chords and no answers. Simple, sweet, plaintive and sad with the sadness you get when you hit bottom, hopeful with the hope that it's all up from here. Really profound stuff that hits home on multiple levels. As usual, Jon's process is almost as interesting as the music itself. For many of the pieces, he recorded string band quartet and quintet versions live, straight into the computer, and then decomposed them into ambient arrangements. Others, like Run to the Rock were improvisations that happened in the spur of the moment. Regardless of how he created it, the work stands tall on its own, the kind of ambient music that crosses so many boundaries that nearly everyone will find something to love.
| TRACKLIST |
| 01 - World Without End 02 - Lacrimae 03 - Run to the Rock 04 - When She Loved Me 05 - There is a Gentle Hand 06 - Up From Here |
Creative Commons license: Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivs 3.0
