Sadly, most of Solar Editions comes off like a return toward a more arid era of new age, only now with tasteful reference points. It proves how creative and fun Ardizoni’s music can be when they nurture their sounds to their fullest potential. If there’s one moment on Solar Editions that serves as a reminder of why Green-House has emerged at the forefront of the new-age revival, it’s in the wonderfully whirling sonata of “Morning Glory Waltz.” With its winkingly baroque melody, the song gracefully layers one unfurling idea upon another, building to a bouncing chorus of Isao Tomita-esque synths that dance about like fanciful guests at an interstellar ball. It begs the question that haunts the current new-age scene: If the effect of the art is the same as that which it claims to critically reinvent (placating, bougie lifestyle music), why should we attribute so much experimental importance to it? The chintzy pianos and vaporwavey sway are pleasant, but they don’t really go anywhere, and none of it pushes the concept far enough to be particularly mind-opening. Take “Produce Aisle,” whose tongue-in-cheek title alludes to the fact that the song sounds like something that would play in the corporate shopping mall in Stardew Valley. There has always been an undercurrent of elevator-music easiness to Green-House’s output, but as the songs become less exciting, one wonders what ostensibly makes Solar Editions more profound than actual elevator music. Even late in the track when Ardizoni’s cloudy synths seem like they might finally come into focus, they merely resign to floating about in an anesthetic middle zone until the song ends as inconspicuously as it began. Worse is “Flora Urbana Absumpto,” whose flat pianos literally feel like a balmy waiting room soundtrack purely meant to be ignored. The results may be easy on the ears, but that doesn’t make them any less tame. Rather than homing in on one perfectly executed tonal mood, Ardizoni piles breathy flutes and kitschy sci-fi synths on top of one another, even throwing in some of their usual running-water sounds for good measure. “Mycorrhizae Dreams” drifts along on gentle krautrock-y arpeggios that, while soothing, never find a real sense of place or direction. Where Ardizoni’s previous releases demonstrated careful attention to detail, here their approach rarely adds up to much more than casual knob twiddling. Ardizoni shows flashes of their typical textural cleverness, but more often than not, these songs are overtaken by an encroaching numbness, their aesthetic gestures masking how simplistic this approach to synth music has become. In its wafting haze, Solar Editions feels closer to that original incarnation of mainstream new age that drew so much critical ire, now coated in just enough analog sheen to justify its inclusion on credible experimental-electronic playlists.
Its four tracks lack both the deep richness of Six Songs for Invisible Gardens and the silly whimsicality of Music for Living Spaces. On both of these releases, Ardizoni maintained a refreshing playfulness in their work, embracing the lighter, cheesier side of ambient and drone music without sacrificing the melodic inventiveness to pull it off.īut on their Solar Editions EP, Ardizoni demonstrates the limits of new-age music designed purely for comfort. Music for Living Spaces followed this up with a more childlike turn, with Ardizoni trading out their lush soundscapes for a delightfully quirky palette, like something a garden gnome might listen to while sweeping up leaves in their mushroom house. On their Six Songs for Invisible Gardens debut, they blended lilting synthesizers and field recordings to radiant effect, bathing the listener in a gradual, lucid glow.
#A LITTLE BIT CLOSER SONG UPDATE#
Inspired by ’80s Japanese environmental music and ’70s lounge records, Ardizoni’s music plays like an ethereal update on Mort Garson’s Mother Earth’s Plantasia-organic-seeming, swelling patches of sound meant to sit in the background of living rooms, making everything just a little more colorful.
Out of this new wave of sage-toting zoners, Olive Ardizoni’s music as Green-House has stood out.