Brian Eno developed his concept of ambient music after an episode of convalescence led him to contemplate the ways that nearly subliminal sounds can influence one’s experience of a space in ways analogous to the presence of smells and lights. Building upon the foundational influence of enforced bed rest, most of his ambient pieces are quite long, sometimes testing the limits of the media that deliver the recordings to listeners. On Strider, the New York-based duo of Joanna Mattrey and Steven Long intentionally turn that durational parameter on its head in their determination to devise a set of ambient songs. Its eight pieces are brief, and the whole album lasts just 32 minutes. While neither musician sings, their intent to compose songs leads them to devise lyrical melodies, typically delivered either by Mattrey’s Stroh violin (a fiddle equipped with a metal resonating horn, once popular in pit orchestras and the earliest recording studios) or by Long’s organ and synthesizer. (The player not developing the melody tends to sustain sounds that change much more gradually.) Despite the brevity of the pieces, each one imports a sense of space that could easily transform a listener’s experience of their own environment. This effect is often enhanced by auxiliary sound sources: Long’s crackling shortwave-radio static and Mattrey’s string tone on “Host” might make your room feel more dusty and dim, while field recordings of the slosh and crunch of ice floes on the Hudson River are likely to set you looking for your extra pair of woolly socks. This project falls short of one measure of ambient music, but that’s not necessarily a problem; Long and Mattrey’s evocative miniatures are simply too vivid to relegate to background listening.
Joanna Mattrey & Steven Long’s Strider is available through Bandcamp.
