Ambient/Drone charts

Review: The Analogue Attic microverse is defined by a unified commitment to the deepest ideas of where house music can head, and no one embodies that spirit better than Alex Albrecht. On this latest 12" he's heading into the velvet folds of low tempo chugger 'The Blacksmith' and downtempo dream state 'Coles Ridge' with elegiac piano sparkling atop fathoms-deep pads and the softest of percussion. This is house music as a vessel for pure relaxation and sentimental meditation, and across six tracks Albrecht offers up balm after balm to soundtrack oceanic realms of calm - a much needed tonic for the frenetic pace of modern life.

Review: Chocolate Hills is a duo made up of Paul Conboy and Alex Paterson, Orb founder and Orbscure Records boss. Their excellent Yarns From The Chocolate Triangle is one of those albums that is tailored made for listening to on good quality headphones, a lush and world class ambient soundscape with vivid designs and bright colours all in high definition. It draws on library music, exotica, kitsch, Balearic, downtempo, folk, spaced out pop and even d&b, all loosely based on an imagined nautical journey to the Bermuda triangle and back. All is calm at sea as you bob and drift on these roomy and magnificently realised sounds, mixing organic and electronic sources and taking a more gorgeosuly idiosyncratic route than the latest Orb album.

Review: Trip-hop meets modern digital ambience on Gi Gi's latest for INDEX:Records. Nothing but the music meets the ear here, plunging us into ricochety sonic hotwirings from the jump. Allusions to dancehall ('Maiolica'), dub ('Palm Slick') and illbient ('Lilted Song') ring true here, while a vocal feature on the track 'Sinews' - from fellow mic-caresser and expert moniker-coiner Hysterical Love Project - yields a sound that recalls something like the combined sonics of HTRK and 3XL. A not-to-miss EP for anyone who loves it textural.

Review: Uwe Zahn might have been active under his real name more recently, but his longtime Arovane project has always remained steady apace. That being said, there's also a great impetus to reissue his music going at the minute: Lilies is the ambient musician's fourth album, and was originally released in 2004 by City Centre Offices, a label run between Berlin and Manchester. Inspired by a trip to Japan, there is an unmistakable eco-ambient undercurrent to this album. Out of print for almost two decades, Kepler do the good work of reissuing it now: Lilies is exquisite, with its laboured rhythmatics and lush synthetic plucks providing a blueprint for generations of Western ambient (techno) artists to come.

Review: Dino Sabatini returns to his own Outis Music label with another mesmerising selection of deep electronic sounds that seem to take plenty of influences from dub, downtempo, ambient and trip hop. The open has a creeping melodic sequence that is forever subtly shifting and brings a sense of eeriness to the smooth and unhurried dub rhythms below. 'Inenarrabilis' is then a double quick flurry of tiny synth loops and trippy effects then 'Plena Lunae' allows you to breathe once more and sink into a vast dub soundscape. 'Ego Experior' shuts down with some paranoid baselines bubbling up through a slowly churning groove. Some quality work here for sure.

Review: Pont Neuf approaches its quarter of a century of releases with Shore serving up a fresh blend of the old and the new on this Life Is A Blur EP. It kick off in laissez-faire fashion with some heavenly ambient, then 'Constant Motion' is a synth-drenched house kicker with jazzy leads. 'So Low' is more progressive and a little darker, while 'Thinking Out Loud' cuts loose and slows down from some sunset downtempo bliss. 'Ascent' rounds out with kaleidoscopic melodies that have you gazing off to the stars.