The ambient electronic music of composer/conceptualist and rave music pioneer Mingo is easy to miss. It isn’t a genre of music ballyhooed in the press or by public relations gurus, it isn’t something they highlight on Spotify, and you won’t see lead reviews for it in Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, et al. Mingo and other artists like him are working along the margins of the modern music world, they always have, as their iconoclastic vision for music struggles to find purchase in the world of verse-chorus-verse-bridge and so forth.
He’s not interested in being a part of that world. His latest ten track release Particles in the Mist begins with the release’s nominal title song. “Particle” is heavy on atmosphere and has an almost breathy, yet crystallized form during its first quarter. A gradual transformation occurs, however, as the song progresses, and the track soon takes on a different form. Mingo mingles a strong cinematic feel into how he develops the opener as well. There is a smattering of percussion, far from convention, near the end of the second track “Everywhere Nowhere”. Outside of that, however, the album’s second cut is largely a synthesized descent through the void with intermittent passages breaking through like swaths of light. This is a compelling but ultimately bleak composition.
Actual melody emerges from Mingo during the fourth track “Empty Room”. It isn’t joyous uplift, however, mined from Mingo’s customary rumbling electronic foundation of despair. It lightens the occasionally claustrophobic feel of the performance without diluting its power and provides a lifeline for connecting with a wider than usual audience. Tracks such as “Second Reflection” continue exploring Mingo’s signature style. The base synthesizer drone bedrocking each track sounds like those clips you can find of what interstellar bodies “sound” like in space. It’s ghostly, slightly icy at points, and other times may remind listeners of lava boiling in the mouth of a volcano just before an eruption.
“Folding Space” is a far brighter piece than many of the earlier songs we’ve discussed. The drone attributes of the cut aren’t so mired in the lower end of the register and, while there’s no discernible melody per se, it nonetheless has a far more delicate touch than its brethren. His inventive yet highly unconventional sounding percussion leaves a mark yet again with the track “Visible”. Many listeners will experience a sense of emergence from this cut like something becoming, and the song’s glacial grandeur is apparent.
The finale “Melting Time” has a lot going on. Sharp-eared listeners may hear a sort of classical influence in the swells and ebbs of this composition, and it likewise embodies several emotions, among them a feeling of departure or leave-taking. There’s a great deal impressive about Mingo’s latest release Particles in the Mist and one of its consistent highlights is how his material elicits and conjures emotions far more common in conventional songcraft. His talent for invoking them with such unusual yet oddly familiar textures is one more factor placing him in a category all his own.
Garth Thomas
credits
released June 27, 2022
Composed, recorded, engineered and mixed,
at Sonarweb Studios by Mingo.
supported by 4 fans who also own “Particles In The Mist”
This album, mixed from two concerts on both sides of the Atlantic that DiN main man Ian Boddy played in 2012, fits my current (and re-awakened) appetite for Berliner Schule stuff perfectly. Music to watch galaxies form by... Carsten Pieper
supported by 4 fans who also own “Particles In The Mist”
The works of many artists in this space tend to be heavy, almost spiritually taxing. State Azure, on the other hand, always lifts my spirits with his work and gets me into a productive zone. I am thankful for your contributions. 69dragynz
supported by 4 fans who also own “Particles In The Mist”
Every time I go listen to some other ambient artist and come back to State Azure's works I am blown away anew by the high quality of his productions. They have depth, they have color, they have emotion. There just aren't enough good things to say about them. Thank you, sir. 69dragynz