Guitar is often a principal instrument in ambient. I think it’s a good mechanism to bring people into the track; it’s a familiar sound that can lead you into the darker, diffuse drones. And at #7 on the Audio Gourmet Netlabel’s Top 10 of 2010 chart, Damian Valles with ‘In The Shadow Of The Occluding Body’ does exactly that! The two tracks totaling 15 minutes, ‘Umbra’ and ‘Penumbra (Nearly There)’ have melancholic clean lines from guitar along with gloomy but not downright-sad pads that wander and think. Dark but calm. There’s potentially even some oboe in there; I like these two tracks a lot!
You can get the whole disk for free at Audio Gourmet.
Damian Valles – In The Shadow Of The Occluding Body
If you like this kind of thing you’d do well to check out Long Desert Cowboy and Beyond Absence. All good material!
