Louis Gardner - The Lake (Whitelabrecs) [Ambient Pop]

The Slow Music Movement
Oct 5
2 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's October 1st Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

The cover for Louis Gardner's The Lake release, showing a blurred monochrome image of snowy landscape with a barn and leafless trees. Overcast sky creates a calm, muted atmosphere.

Details are thin on the ground but apparently Louis Gardner is a London based songwriter and composer. He announced himself to the world in 2024 with a “mixtape” for NX Records, which I’ve just discovered is the record label, radio station and interdisciplinary workspace housed in the Department of Music at Goldsmiths University, and which releases music from the students and graduates - what a great initiative.

Musician Louis Gardner lounging on a brown leather sofa, holding a violin with his feet on a guitar. Casual setting, candle on side table, relaxed mood.

The Goldsmith connection takes me back to my days as a long-running resident DJ at the New Cross Inn, a bar opposite the university. It was an unholy blend of students, “characters” from the council estate at the back, the new wave of local trendies slowly gentrifying the area and a few stray Millwall hooligans who needed a break from hitting people round the corner on The Old Kent Road. On the whole everyone co-existed amicably, but when it went wrong it tended to go very wrong. I was once interviewed by the police when someone came back and tried to shoot the doorman for throwing him out, and on another occasion had to duck behind the decks when someone launched a firework rocket through the front door for a laugh, oh the good old days.

Anyway back to the present and the surprise appearance of Gardener on a digital subsidiary of Whitelabrecs - one of my pet ambient labels, which after the often abrasive nature of his debut mixtape would be the last place you’d expect to see him. But so as not to cause a fuss it seems like he’s decided to mellow out a bit, hone his singer songwriter chops and swaddle the words in ambient folk folds, and it doesn’t half suit him.

Accompanying him on this continuous twenty three minute voyage of intimate song craft is a sparkling piano refrain that survives the track length by dint of its pleasant nature and calm disposition, not to mention some welcome tangental noodling from Gardner. To add a slight edge to the gentle piano and almost reticent vocals, some string sounds are sampled and chopped, the snippets then artfully deployed at random intervals to mitigate the sweetness, and just to be sure some bassier synth sounds or effected cello, I’m not sure which, add some low frequency heft. It’s a singular slice of intimate, ambient singer songwriting, I just hope there’s more to come.