Highpoint Lowlife are most well known for championing fractured, idiosyncratic dubsteppers, but they’re equally adept at spotting interesting ambient producers, and this concise EP by Alpine aka Alex Smalley, one half of Pausal, is a minor treat. With six tracks all under five minutes, ‘Fr:om Harmed Weather to Stark, Micro, Climates’ (sic.) suffers the rare affliction of understaying its welcome, but that just makes these bite-sized pieces all the more attractive. Smalley’s clearly listened to Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series, and he borrows liberally: bells and windchimes from early Markus Guentner (‘Fr:om’, ‘To Stark’), treacly synth pads from Andrew Thomas (and countless others) (‘Micro’), with the mournful, weeping tones of Ulf Lohmann audible throughout, but combined with rustic field recordings and lazily daubed effects, the result is more handmade and welcoming. It’s all over before you know it, but such is the nature of ambient music that you can go right back to the start and it will be just as fresh as the first listen.
Joshua Meggitt
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