Topogramme - Home Camping [Review]

It’s always nice to get some new genes in the ambient pool. I do tend to filter a lot of my ambient coverage through similarly lower-case minded labels, although I realised today that for some odd reason, Oscarson hasn’t really been one of them, meaning the same old names have a tendency to keep cropping up - certainly no bad thing. But still…

So, it was nice to stumble across Topogramme’s debut album recently. Details are thin on the ground, but from listening and his Instagram I now think he’s possibly German, can play a guitar and probably a host of other instruments, and is currently finding his way around various software and hardware music production tools. Not much of a picture I know, but fear not, his music says a lot.

The poignantly entitled “Choral Singers On Grandad Memorial Day” opens proceedings with some damp sounding field recordings giving the random, yet coherent sonic palette and compositional mosaic a grainy air, and the EP a most pleasant start. Gentle piano then politely guides the found sounds and machine murmuring through the speakers, before “It Will Never Be The Same Around Here” provides another consummate exercise in synergising recorded snippets of life’s sonic minutia with more traditional ambient electronic sounds. The guitar noticeably enters the fray on “Drawing Pencil Hearts”, adding a warm glow once more to the creaking, droning, almost spent embers. Next up, “Summer Scales and Winter” is as good a slice of ambient Americana as I’ve heard this year, and leads us by the reins to the post-rock hinting, gingerly distorted, sprawling EP-closer “A Nice Place Inside The Buildings”. The EP is a really satisfying, mightily impressive, all-too-short debut, but I am hopeful this is just the start of Fabig’s ambient adventures.

For more great new ambient music check out Tomoyoshi Date and Stijn Hüwels' great new Tatemono album on Laaps recordings.

This review ran in TSMM's October 4th newsletter. If you'd like album tips direct to your inbox or the Substack app — plus the odd bit of industry insight and existential musing from TSMM HQ — you can subscribe here.

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Playlist Companion

Find Topogramme in the Slow Ambient Playlist.