Willebrant - Selected Works - Slowed and Reverb, Volume 1 [Ambient]

The Slow Music Movement
2 days ago
2 min read

The cover for Australian ambient artist Willebrant's, Selected Works - Slowed and Reverb, Volume 1. It show's a rocky shoreline under cloudy sky in black and white. Trees line the horizon, creating a moody, serene coastal scene.

Willebrant has been flying the ambient flag in Australia from his Melbourne home for the last six years. He's a bass playing musician with a fondness for field recordings who knows his way around a DAW, and is increasingly adept at combing all three disciplines into immersive ambient visions that would be equally at home soundtracking the vast, flat central expanses of his homeland, providing passive listening for contemplation, or helping to open neural pathways for those looking deep within for answers to the human condition. Quick tip, there aren't any, just coping mechanisms.

Australian ambient artist Willebrant with glasses, beard, and neutral expression in front of colorful abstract background with yellow, blue, and black hues.

Late last year he explored the slow and reverb phenomenon which is a fairly recent method of increasing your catalogue without too much effort and/or a valid artistic practise that effectively remixes an existing composition by way of automatically slowing down and adding reverb to create original new music, distinct from the original - delete as you see fit. As with everything, there are good and bad examples of the practise and Brant's reworkings in this vein of The Pilgrim EP that dropped last September, and now this collection of selected tracks, both sit in the very good camp.

The collection starts with the still relatively lucid strains of, "Rivulet". Usually the sparkle is drained out of songs during the reworking, but the chimes and sounds of our feathered friends still ring true, whilst the drones and ambient constructs drag their heels, as if trudging home from a heavy night out just as the sun is rising. "Listening Tree" and "some things considered" then bring the EP into more familiar S&R territory, casting a dulled, melancholic shadow on the release, whilst remaining relaxing rather than depressing.

"Retreat" starts with possibly the crackle of fire and a bubbling mocha pot if my ears don't deceive me, which they probable do. The woozy, lysergic strains of a campfire guitar then enter the picture as a barely moving, gently building drone slips through the middle of the arrangement, making for quite an opiated ambient folk ode to responsible substance use. "Drift II" then reverts to more typical late night ambient form before the in your face field recordings grabbed during a storm take their time to surface but then proceed to dominate the sombre atmospherics, and see this great collection out.

If it's value for money you're after then Willebrant has also kindly stitched all the tracks into a seamless fifty two minute long mix, just perfect for when you need an extended and interrupted escape from reality, and whilst you're at it check out the slightly more sombre strains of The Pilgrim (Slowed and Reverb) too.