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Drifting In Silence

Drifting In Silence

Drifting in Silence is the name of a longstanding ambient musical project undertaken by multi-instrumentalist and composer Derrick Stembridge. Stembridge chose the name as "a description of the feeling evoked by the music," intended to create the sensation of movement through regions of light and shadow. 

Discography

Desolate by Drifting In Silence

Desolate

Drifting In Silence

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Through delicately shifting ambient pads and the hum of slow-swirling synthesizers, the EP recognizes hopelessness and pushes past it with aspirations for a brighter future. The yearning drones of Desolate paint a portrait of the bleak situation brought on by COVID-19 and parse through the emotional weight of moving onward in the face of global loss.

The heart of Desolate is its ability and willingness to contemplate the ambiguities of desolation. At its most hopeless, the music broods, cold and unflinching, but as it meditates further and opens up, each track offers a way through the fog of desolation and into the light. On “Above,” that way through is the climbing yowls of a synthesizer plodding its way to the forefront of the mix. On “Forward,” the way through takes the form of a slow, passionate fade into oblivion—a coming to peace with what came before. Desolate charts an uneasy path, but it is the path necessary for recuperation.

Drifting In Silence continues its fruitful relationship with Rafael Anton Irisarri (Loscil, Telefon Tel Aviv, Biosphere) who has again provided his inimitable mastering services to polish the post-minimalist EP. Derrick Stembridge remains the force behind Drifting In Silence and he has been forging new ways to examine our world through sound since 2006.

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    Above 5:46
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    Intrinsic 4:33
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    Forward 6:45
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    Still 3:55
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    Desolate 6:08
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Away by Labile Records

Away

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Away is the new album released by ambient veteran Drifting In Silence. The project’s signature pure tones and bold minimalism return with a shroud of mystery. Just when the environment seems familiar, the entire terrain shifts, revealing what has been hiding in plain sight. The album glows with maturity and gentle attention to sound design.

Away moves slowly but methodically, the smooth swells gradually climaxing in a sublime cascade of sine waves and delicate piano work. Each track is a meditation anchored by deliberate details; enormous, lush textures are balanced with bright electronica (“Breathe”) or soft, thrumming percussion (“Obscure”, “Darkwithin”). Away revels in its use of space and the massive territory allows for Drifting In Silence to photograph with a wide lens, stretching from melancholy to exaltation in its exploration of absence and the transformational effects of time.

The album is unified by the expert mastering of genre heavyweight Rafael Anton Irisarri (Grouper, Biosphere, Julianna Barwick) and brought to life by Derrick Stembridge, the sole member of Drifting In Silence. Stembridge has operated as Drifting In Silence since 2006 and has reliably evolved its mellifluous sound while maintaining focus on the deepest reaches of human emotion.

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  1. 1
    11:11 5:25
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  2. 2
    Obscure 4:21
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    Breathe 7:10
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    Shifting 5:56
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    Away, Pt. 1 5:56
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    Continuum 7:51
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    Metamorphosis 4:57
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    Away, Pt. 2 3:27
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  9. 9
    Darkwithin 6:42
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  10. 10
    Memory 9:02
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Dawn by Drifting In Silence

Dawn

Drifting In Silence

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DAWN is carefully constructed from layers of ethereal and diaphanous counter-harmonies.

This Drifting in Silence interpretation allows Stembridge's multi-timbred guitar work to rise to the fore, embedded and informed by, but separate from the drifting aethers of keyboard.

The result is a translucent airiness that, rather than remaining lost in the chiaroscuro of self-reflection, illuminates it from within.

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  1. 1
    Without 5:18
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    Verses 4:27
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    Cursive 5:51
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  4. 4
    Sentiment 6:03
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    Dawn 5:34
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  6. 6
    Remember 6:01
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  7. 7
    Anotherway 6:01
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  8. 8
    October 6:36
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  9. 9
    Cycle 5:27
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  10. 10
    Adieu 5:09
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Artificial by Drifting In Silence

Artificial

Drifting In Silence

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Artificial, the latest offering from Drifting in Silence, is a return to form, DiS owing its beginnings to the wave of musical innovation that was just becoming known at the time as ambient music.

Derrick Stembridge, the beating heart behind Drifting in Silence, affirms, "This album is going back to the roots of the project for me. Pure ambient." A glimpse back is no denial, however, of new influences and the project's continuing musical growth. Artificial pays homage, of course, as does the entire genre, to Brian Eno. But, Stembridge says, "this album is heavily influenced by William Basinski."

In Artificial, gone is the hard-driving multilayered percussion of previous most recent releases—though the music, itself, is as multilayered as ever. That Stembridge can successfully marry the structured with the ambient is, and has always been, his particular genius.

"Empty," the opening track, serves as an overture for the rest of the album, stating the return-to-ambience in unequivocal terms. Melody is there, in a repeating melodic pattern continually stated and restated for the listener, with background ambient harmonies providing a changing context with each restatement. Structure and rhythm, too, are present, but without the necessity of explicit beat. Following tracks develop further variations whose elements, upon examination, were already present. The voices of individual instruments come to the fore; even vocals make themselves known through subtle vocoder treatments, recognizable as voices but without allowing words to distract.

For those who have followed Drifting in Silence along its journey, Artificial will welcome back DiS' from its forays into loping, locomotive percussive rhythms into soothing yet stirring ambient form—a return that is only enhanced by the awareness that it never really went away.

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    Empty 5:00
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  2. 2
    Takeaway 8:23
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    Descent 4:34
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  4. 4
    Surface 5:08
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    Oceans 5:18
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    Artificial 6:59
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    Falling 4:58
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    Origin 5:18
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    Across 5:50
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  10. 10
    Emotion 7:12
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    Stay 5:21
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  12. 12
    In The End 3:28
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    Soulless 5:34
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Place In Time by Drifting In Silence

Place In Time

Drifting In Silence

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Place In Time is a rich textural melange of timbres and carefully implied (but never overstated) melodies. In some cuts, including Never, the percussion instruments return, transformed into ambient textural and tonal layers. The percussion serves to leaven the ambient loaf, however, and the result is never jarring. The closing track, Perfection, summarizes the album’s musical thoughts, together with previous Drifting In Silence work, in a sonic landscape that brings to mind a drifting mechanical ocean.

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    Balance 6:57
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    Vital 7:10
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    Never 6:01
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    Place In Time 5:57
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    Leaving 6:18
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    Perfection 8:26
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Truth by Drifting In Silence

Truth

Drifting In Silence

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Truth — weaves a tight web from beatless and atmospheric ambiences which – unlike other artists’ deliberately combined ambient sound layers – unveil obvious structures and a clear sound design.

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    Life We Breathe 2:02
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    Andanz 5:44
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    Infall 6:10
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    Apart 3:49
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    Winsome 4:21
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    Xylence 7:45
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    Hourglass 4:24
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    After The Storm 4:38
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    Truth 13:09
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Ladderdown by Drifting In Silence

Ladderdown

Drifting In Silence

Drifting in Silence creates the space needed for associations and harmonic melodies. The listener is moved up and down in waves while they watches all parts of the puzzle combine to a whole: an extremely multi-layered and versatile ambient release which just makes you want more.

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Drifting In Silence - Oceans

Drifting In Silence - Metamorphosis

© Labile Records Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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      Away, Pt. 1 5:56
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      Dawn 5:34
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