TENGGER

Nomad

TNew age duo produce their most radiant set to date.

ENGGER (their caps, not ours) are a prolific South Korean/Japanese duo who specialise in a hypnotic new age sound somewhere between the meditative krautrock of Popul Vuh and the ‘environmental music’ of 1980s Japan.

With its connotations of hippie spiritualism, ‘new age’ music has often been viewed as the poor relation of ambient, but TENGGER transcend these preconceptions. Nomad is their most rarefied offering yet. Achime sets the scene, a rolling synthetic arpeggio with celestial voice and birdsong, music as a channel between man and nature, lulling us into a different state of consciousness. Water evokes the lapping of waves on a small pool, vocals softly colliding against each other like raindrops in the wind – close your eyes and it could be a particularly chilled Aphex Twin or Boards Of Canada. There’s a level of detail in TENGGER’s music that sets them apart from other drone artists, sounds nimbly woven together rather than painted in broad brushstrokes.

The album closes with the 10-minute Flow, another mesmerising loop shrouded in heavenly luminescence, a conference with the angels that vibrates with devotional intensity.