Corntuth - The Nightingale Floor (Flow State/Aural Canyon) [Ambient]
Corntuth is a music producer based in Brooklyn, who's been releasing ambient music for the last six years for the well-regarded purveyors of all things chill, Flow State. Little is known about this enigmatic artist: his real name hidden, face unrevealed and his Myspace-reminiscent website not giving anything away either - sort of refreshing in this age of letting it all hang out on social media.
There's always been a whimsical feel to his music; a sense that ideas, improvisation and vibe were more important than structured composition, and that's part of the charm, and I, for one, have been happy to go with the flow. His new album, The Nightingale Floor, incidently jointly released on cassette by the ever-reliable Aural Canyon for the analogue obsessives, is something of an evolution, in that there's a rhythmic skeleton to several of the tracks, although the manipulated drum machine presets are nicely twisted into fresh and ambient sympathetic sounds and patterns.
Corntuth's trusty Yamaha DX7 is dusted off again, although I have a suspicion the dust has never really settled on his favoured synth, the classic sounds providing a reassuringly familiar element to the dreamy atmospherics that sound like they seeped in from a mellower, more altruistic neighbouring dimension. Field recordings grabbed from a recent pilgrimage to the ambient mecca of Japan add a subtle dose of life's oft-ignored soundtrack, as the album oscillates between playful duets with our feathered friends, vaguely stirring low-gravity cinematic moments, new-age noodling, ambient Americana strumming, melancholic drones and Corntuth's communing with the natural world. It's another winding wander through the world of ambient music, and I'm here for it.
If you want more audio idiosyncrasy, then there's plenty to discover in TSMM's blog, maybe start with Soda Lite's Earthbound album, that was also enabled by Aural Canyon.
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