Nashville Ambient Ensemble: Light and Space
Centripetal Force

Early last year, composer, keyboardist, and Nashville Ambient Ensemble leader Michael Hix was putting finishing touches on music he'd written for the group's follow-up to 2021's Cerulean when the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee asked if the group would consider recording a series of pieces for its upcoming Light, Space, Surface: Works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition. Taken by the idea and drawing for inspiration from eight artworks featured in the show, he promptly wrote new compositions for he and his bandmates to record, the material designed to function as accompaniment to the museum visitor's tour. The response to the music was so strong, Hix and company decided to issue it as the group's sophomore album. Reflecting the deep connection it had to the project, the group delivered a live performance at the site's main gallery in front of the Norman Zammitt painting, Untitled, 1984, shown on the album cover.

On Light and Space (350 vinyl copies and CDs), Hix is joined by Deli Paloma-Sisk (vocals), Jack Silverman (guitar), Kim Rueger (piano), and Luke Schneider (pedal steel), all holdovers from the Cerulean sessions, plus, new to the fold, classically trained violinist Alicia Enstrom. The eight tracks are inviting atmospheric spaces within which the partners interact and upon which they impose their personalities. Compositional structures are in place but designed to facilitate improvisation, and in keeping with the ambient genre and the exhibition-based concept, the forty-two-minute recording unspools at a contemplative pace tailor-made for reflection.

Enstrom's expressive violin glides across a lustrous base of piano and synthesizers in the opening “Band in Boston,” Paloma-Sisk's soft wordless voice, Silverman's guitar, and Schneider's pedal steel also adding significantly to the music's allure. As the piece advances, it becomes clear that there's nothing impersonal about the group's approach; on the contrary, the music is distinguished by the identity of each soloist. To cite another example, “Prism” takes flight moments into its run when Enstrom soars alongside Paloma-Sisk. Schneider's glorious pedal steel's at the forefront of “Waveguide,” on the other hand, which also makes room for Vangelis-like synth timbres and emotive turns by Silverman, Paloma-Sisk, and Enstrom. The enrapturing dialogue effected between synthesizer, violin, piano, pedal steel, and vocals on the softly percolating “Crystalline” is surely one of the album's peak moments. Don't be surprised if your thoughts occasionally turn to acts like Mazzy Starr and 17 Pygmies as Light and Space lays out its absorbing terrain.

While all of the members are integral to the band's sound, special mention must be made of Enstrom for the immense impact she has on the album, even if much the same could be said about Paloma-Sisk and Schneider. The Nashville Ambient Ensemble tills fertile ambient country ground in a way few others do; if anything, its merging of ambient-electronic elements with instrumentation associated with country and classical genres is executed so seamlessly, it's a wonder it's not more commonly done.

May 2023