Just sit there and hear those overlapping melodies. Just listen. Let them submerge you, drawing you in like a current below the star-studded sheen of a lapping brook. Let them take you away from wherever it is you are and most likely don’t want to be. Listen to the twinkling piano telling the synths it’s OK to vascillate between highs and lows, that it’s all part of life and everybody feels that way sometimes. Hear the modulators lift the track up and interrupt the conversation they’ve started, breaking the meditation to remind you that you can’t stay underwater forever.

And just let that sink in. This is active ambient music, not for the background but for creating a moving, transportative experience. Steve Hauschildt, former member of Emeralds, has never been one to make music you’ll forget is playing; it’s arresting and commands your attention. His most well-known work, 2011’s “Tragedy & Geometry“, opens in a similarly commanding fashion, demanding from the first seconds that you stop what you’re doing and *feel*. Just like that album, “Watertowers” demands you feel the music, feel nostalgia, feel hope, feel whatever, as long as you know you’re feeling something.

Hauschildt opens the new Air Texture Volume 4 compilation with this track, “Watertowers”. Hauschildt co-curates this volume with Berlin-based producer BNJMN, and continues the record label Air Texture‘s beautiful work in promoting ambient, drone, and electronic music. If Air Texture Volume 4 is represented justly in “Watertowers,” the compilation will likely give its listeners a gentle (of course) nudge that quiet, slow music still matters. The record is set to be released on November 3rd. In the meantime, Steve will be Tweeting here.
 

 

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