Antwerp-based sound artist, David Edren, has released his first set of patient painterly “synthscapes” since 2018’s Tea Notes – a collaboration with Jatinder Singh Durhailay, for which I had the pleasure of penning the prose for the sleeve. The new record, Relativiteit Van de Omgeving comes with a poetic press release that encourages you to stop, take in your surroundings, slow down, and seize time. It’s no surprise then that the pieces seamlessly mix the electronic and the organic, and can be broadly described as “novo new age”. Tunes tailored from tastefully tumbling, tinkling temple chimes, bells, gongs, peaceful piano, and machined, marimba-like percussion. A synthesized sighing, heavenly wordless harmonies, adding an otherworldly, enchanted edge throughout. There are 12 tracks in total, a couple of them super short, several possessing a stately calm, a mythical, magical, mood, as if describing a ceremony centuries old. 

– schaatsenrijder swims in high-pitched sine waves, that sing almost above perception. Massaging relaxation centres. Less music, maybe, and more a mind-altering drug. Reflectie in de Schemering, meanwhile, is a wistful waltz. 

Vertraag!, perhaps, is the standout. Part new age, yeah, but also part art house movie score. Its Eric Serra-worthy melody making it “pop”, as opposed to a deep listening descent into a meditative void. Its keys, cold, icy, “futuristic”, like some forward-thinking, far-reaching, Detroit techno relic. Ambient at its most accessible. Omgeving is a final serene, celestial float. 

David Edren’s Relativiteit Van de Omgeving is out now on Not Not Fun.