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Lawson & Merrill — Analogues
(Bandcamp Neuma LM-A, 2025, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-09-24

Analogues Cover art

On the follow-up to Signals (2022), David Margolin Lawson and David Merrill give us five more tracks of their distinctive variation on ambient electronic music. Within their world of sound, the long synthesizer washes of floating ambient are occasionally infused with sequences, punctuated with percussion, or morph into chordal progressions. The opening track, “An Arabian Twilight,” starts with slowly drifting synth notes, with a high, twittery sequence making almost subliminal appearances, then about halfway through the thirteen minutes, a groove develops on percussion and fragments of Middle Eastern melodies wander in and out of focus. There’s a significantly louder climax of drums and synths a bit past ten minutes in, likely to startle you if you’ve turned up the volume due to the quietness of what went before, but it lasts only a few seconds before a long fade into nothingness. Pointillistic notes come and go in the early minutes of “Tundra (Dusk, Dark, Dawn),” along with obscure burbling noises, transitioning slowly into a beautiful section of shimmering bell-like notes and stately low synth tones. Lawson & Merrill’s music definitely has a relationship to that of Tangerine Dream, but you have to remember that while we all remember the pulsating sequencers first, there were a lot of abstract sections of atmospheric sounds and obscure echoes on albums like Stratosfear. There are also similarities to the pre-synthesizer electronic music of Edgard Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others. While much of Analogues is rather quiet, and the tracks develop very slowly, for the most part the music has too many sudden sounds to qualify for ambient — certainly not suitable for drifting off to sleep, and too eerie for meditation. But it’s full of fascinating sounds, and shouldn’t be judged by what it doesn’t do or what it’s not suited for. It’s a soundtrack for a journey across a creepy, desolate landscape, and a notable addition to the legions of electronic music available today.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Lawson & Merrill

More info
http://lawsonmerrill.bandcamp.com/album/analogues

 

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