I think we are all aware that the diffusion of ambient music has reached worrying volumes in recent years; and a good part of the episodes remain forgettable anthologies of creaks scattered over long periods pad exhaust yourself with the excuse of contemplation or transcendental meditation – which then maybe those who do it really meditate, but those who listen to it end up thinking only of the list of their own petty daily chores (I forgot the basil again).
But isn't that how Satie and Eno thought of it? And in some ways also John Cage, who preferred the unpredictability of traffic to the semantic and metaphorical attempts of a sonata? An evocative music that has nothing to say – and therefore says it, so that by refusing to be it is poetry as it serves us, who precisely today cannot suffer on our souls the excessive pedagogical effort of another committed artist.
The concepts fall apart, the symbols liquefy, as if written by spilling too much ink, the landscapes are emptied of details, and more than the lyrical baroqueness of quilting the silence with countless sound devices, comes the immeasurable, the inexpressible, the breath of an unknown nature.
To quote an old master, “I don't like dramatic music, I prefer the wind”; this could be the motto of Seil Records, which by its own admission defines itself as “a collective of electronic music artists who take on the difficult task of making the world a more optimistic place”. Within its publications we find well-known names such as Joggin House, KMRU, Lamasz and Thme, who have contributed with notable works to make the record company's catalog a small treasure of senseless light beauty.
Port Sleep is the latest arrival, with a sensitive and quiet work, his third release, which reinforces his warm and nostalgic timbre, stretched like a hammock between hope and melancholy. We could translate the title of the album as “until this comfort will resist”, considering human warmth as that existential transcendence which is a feeling of farewell and gratitude together, of contemplation of an overwhelming force to which one cannot resist and consciously, without resistance, abandons oneself.
The eight songs move, evolving slowly and imperceptibly from discrete electric guitar arpeggios, which reverberate like circles in water until they disappear; the conscious background noise built on sampling and manipulated field recordingbut also on a sensitivity lo-fi typical of these projects, it rounds out the sound, smoothes out its harshness and makes it a single, imperturbable flow in which to be reflected. The reflection of the listener brings philosophical greatness and small things, which the electric current makes slip away and flow there, into a cold sea that silences everything and equalizes everything.
“Wilful Vagueness”, intentional vagueness, by which one cannot help but be fascinated; music with soft colours, with the rarefied volumes of freezing dawns, and with the sounds of houses burdened by the weight of the sky. We live inside those houses, and this is the sound of our lost thoughts when we realize, among other things, that the day is passing and we don't really know why.
03/06/2026
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
