Amble - the places across the water (Home Normal)

The Slow Music Movement
2 hours ago
1 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's September 3rd Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

This is th cover for Amble's, The places across the water album released on Home Normal records. It's hows a wooden boathouse by a calm lake, surrounded by lush greenery and mountains under a clear sky. The scene is tranquil and the photo has a faded, vintage feel.

Piano music has been a thing for the last three hundred years. It’s an instrument I love in its jazz form, but have been dodging in its classical and solo forms for a few decades, not to mention being quite disparaging about its new electronically augmented pretty dull incarnation this century. I don’t quite know what’s happened the last couple of years, maybe a mellowing with age or growing appreciation encouraged by nurturing my Slow Neoclassical Playlist, but I’m slowly warming to the naked or bikini clad sound of the instrument. Never say never.

Amble, aka Aaron Gleeson, silhouetted gazes out a window, warm sunlight highlights their hair. The mood is contemplative, with a blurred outdoor background.

Amble, the artistic name of Australian pianist and composer Aaron Gleeson, had only dropped a couple of EP before this delightful album - part of a longer series of piano improvisations recorded in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2024. The recording is serene and borderline soporific, just what I need at the moment. The playing is pleasingly minimal and melodically ambiguous, always stopping just short of tired old tropes or overly familiar progressions; more focussed on carving out space between the notes and generating atmosphere, something accentuated by the discerning field recordings which are placed nicely back in the mix, subtly hinting at the life outdoors rather than waving the nearest bird song or water source the recorder picked up in your face, like a lot of artists today.

It’s a really lovely listen, and quite the tonic.