With Open Arms - some place like home

With Open Arms is a new collaborative project between electronic music producer Dan Robertson (known for his solo projects Trice and Arkayik, as well as being one half of the drum and bass duo Head Space) and ambient musician Ben Rath (also known for his acoustic lo-fi project Slow Heart Music and the electronic project Astral Harmonies). Old friends from a previous time, now living in different parts of the country, both artists re-connected over a shared love of electronic ambient music. Collaborating together for the first time, the project started as an experiment in sound collage, inspired by the likes of Klara Lis-Coverdale's ‘Grafts’ and Sean McCann's ‘Music for Public Ensemble’. Both artists contributed to a shared library with a variety of different loops, samples, audio recordings, and snippets of ideas composed and recorded in isolation from each other. These were then used as building blocks for compositions, playing with combinations and arrangements, trading ideas back and forth, until a coherent structure started to emerge. The final piece comprises a forty-minute-plus journey of multiple intersecting parts, beautifully mastered by George Mastrokostas (Absent Without Leave), that charts a trajectory through atmospheric ambience, electronic composition, subtle rhythms and melodic phrases, field recordings and looping guitar drones. The overall effect is an ambient music that works as accompaniment but also yields rewards from attentive listening, moving through shades of light and dark, at times soothing and at others stimulating and emotionally affecting. The title of the album, along with many of the track names, speaks to themes of finding home in a complex, unsettled, and unstable world. Both artists have found themselves in search of community in their own lives, and this music is shared with affinity for and in solidarity with those who find themselves far from home in times of such intense political and social upheaval and change.

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