Julie Hill’s new album Glow Serene is a slowly unfolding ambient album that opens like a flower in slow motion with long rotational eddies of keyboards and time lapse arpeggios. It was created during a time of COVID isolation mixed with close relatives receiving cancer diagnoses. To relieve the pain of real-world heartbreak Hill turned to music as a form of meditation and the chance to bring peace and calm through music. This was further inspired by her grandmother saying that she travels in her mind to achieve peace, away from the constant experienced physical and emotional pain. This is known as Autonoetic consciousness.
Through the synthesiser’s swelling chords and her beatific voice Hill says she could “express a dream of serene health, a desire for self-love and intimacy, a memory, profound self-reflection, and gratitude for those who made me feel humanized, connected, and hopeful during difficult times. Field recordings of nature could take me out of my small apartment on Bushwick Ave to a river or somewhere birds sing”.
This works so well on tracks like ‘rove on the shadows infinite’ where the subtly of a harmoniser on the vocals mirrors the widescreen synth chords that sway gently in the mind’s eye and on ‘glow serene’ which was made in conjunction with Jack McLoughlin on guitar, Zachary Paul on violin and Zubin Hensler on horn, weaving their parts effortlessly into the mix. Hill also says ‘glow serene’ was also “paying homage to Suzanne Ciani’s early electronic works which inspired me at the time.”
Like all the best ambient music slow and steady wins the race. Sounds are expanded at a glacial pace meaning that chord transitions elongate and wash into one and this is like being gradually warmed by morning sun or watching a lava lamp slowly come to life. The final track ‘ambient bliss’ realises this in stunning form and would perfectly match a planetarium’s drift through the cosmos.
Glow Serene is anamorphous and contemplative. As PM Dawn would have put it, the listener becomes “set adrift on memory bliss” and this is a sea of tranquillity you want to drift on as it’s both relaxing and engaging. It does glow, it is serene, and a zen state awaits you.
Julie Hill: Bandcamp | Instagram
An aside:
The album allowed me to drift through my own thoughts, and internet searches, while I was listening and given how much ambient music I have listened to and loved this is the first time I decided to look up the word and found it derives from French and Latin words for “visit in rotation, surround, encircle, embrace”. It also led me to a word I have never seen before: anfractuous which means “full of windings and intricate turnings”. I told this to my friend Simon who lives in Spain and loves language as much as I do, and he told me that the word ‘environment’ in Spanish is ‘medio ambiente’.
Review by Paul F Cook
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