Chicago’s Ulla Straus has been known to produce what we know as ambient music, the kind that strokes one’s shoulders and along one’s arm, over and over, in a lovely way.
Lately, she’s been introducing some new textures into her sound mostly by way of audio recordings and it’s Kansas-based label and mix series c- that has been hosting this subtle and even more lovely shift.
They included her single, “Sleeping”, on one of their periodic ambient compilations last year—a moody blend of atmospheres including gently running water and perhaps her own gentle breathing and pads again but this time surging in fits and announcing themselves each time like a howl on some nighttime plane. Something startling that you can’t quite place, lingering in an unsettling presence, however beautiful.
Her new “at a table” mix is a feeling study of this sure but so quiet movement and explores easy listening electronica, jazz funk, plunderphonic radio composition, minimalist electronics, pianos, violins, maybe organs, vague percussion, euphoric chorals, laying back on that plane under the stars, on a tree on a hill, on the floor of a show, on the chest of someone you love, on your own pillow. It’s very nice; it prompts an invisible tear.
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