(2020) STRFKR - Ambient 1


Review:
Arriving four months after a collaborative fifth STRFKR album (April 2020’s Future Past Life), Ambient 1 finds bandleader Josh Hodges going it solo during subsequent time spent in Joshua Tree with a friend’s Prophet-5 analog synthesizer. A fully instrumental, nearly 50-minute set, it includes murky atmospheric pieces as well as rhythmically and harmonically structured tracks, along with entries that fall somewhere in between. Landing, like much of the album, in the realm of an improvisatory étude, “Rainzow” starts things off with wistful arpeggiation alongside intermittent melodic lines and a left finger that marks what is probably best described as 3/8 time. Both sad and playful in tone, it’s followed for the next several tracks by likewise soft, pastel-colored timbres, with some falling in a buzzier organ range. The album sticks mostly with this limited if shifting tone palette before — following the warped “Anxiety” midway through the track list — darker voices and prominent percussion parts emerge. “Concentrate,” for instance, features a rhythmic hand-drum line throughout, underpinning impromptu-sounding tunes derived from raga scales. Also in the mix are sustained, stereo-panning pitches closer to feedback or signal noise. The brief “Vergeten” lingers in pipe-organ territory, while “Zij Aan Zij” delivers an outright ominous track in what also proves to be Ambient 1‘s most formless entry. The darker moments are greatly outnumbered by the sweeter — or bittersweet — however, though the harmonically structured closer, “Sleep,” ends things with an organ lament in a minor key. As for whether Ambient 1 will hold any interest for fans of STRFKR songs, while it plays mostly like an exercise, Hodges’ knack for short melodic and rhythmic hooks does bleed through here, as does his fondness for partly cloudy climates.


Tracklist:
01 - Rainzow
02 - Work Smoothly Lifetime Peace
03 - Bunji
04 - Kaleidoscope
05 - Telescope
06 - Anxiety
07 - Zee Majoor
08 - Concentrate
09 - Vergeten
10 - Nexus
11 - Zij Aan Zij
12 - Sleep


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, electronic
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits