Label Notes |

KrysaliSound is delighted to present the Somerset-based artist Ishmael Cormack and his debut album Ammil. When I found his music on Soundcloud I was astonished to listen to his gentle and delicate notes. The inner seed of music is something rare to find nowadays, I think we are loosing purpose and purity resulting in this art form becoming every day more dirty. Superstructures are ruining our lifes, we need to change and again enjoy the simplicity of little things.
Ishmael Cormack comes from a little town like me and his humble simplicity captured me from the first listen, this is an imprinting that I hope will never disappear from his soul. Ammil is an amazing album and the result of his beautiful personality, maybe the best work I have ever published on the label!

Ammil started as a series of improvised sketches experimenting on the use of polyrhythms.
Deconstructed and recaptured within a 13th-century church.
The sketches focused on the use of a modest selection of instruments, electronics and found sounds.
The catalyst of the project was a journey into the paradoxical nature of the natural world.
Natures complex systems give rise to our perception of simplicity & beauty.
Ammil attempts to mimic this understanding by creating complex rhythm that give birth to subtle melody.

Reviews |

You start to think “What gives?” with an album title like “Ammil”. Seemingly chemical related, this Ishmael Cormack debut on the wine-bottle-uncorking Krysalisound pacifier is a sheer calming, “drink it all in” ladle for the Spring season that is following us in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak…

Yes, this album is ‘calm’. But the electro-acoustic drones are just something else. It recalls Paul Ferrini’s poetry, and where he says “you have to break through to where the pain is”, as if some encapsulation of wonder and release. And where the opener is light and plaintive, the second track “Bending Snow” intensifies the slushy grip of macro-movement in the soluble harmonic shifts that generate and regenerate on the entirety of the piece.

There is a great deal of “pure space” in this record, as if the mind has been filter-jug weaned several times of a liminal hymn, some kind of strange virus we call life. Of course waxing about poison is like dancing about architecture to the journalistic vanguard, at least what most on the base level think of as “good artwork” or “understandable messages”. And Cormack with this music paints that idea very clear in the listener’s head.

It sounds like he has found time to unclutter his brain of the troubles of anyone’s past and just, not to coin a phrase, rest in the peace of the present. With people dying all the time and a generalized castration weirdness of the media in recent times, where technology overtakes humanity, and racism is really xenophobia and bigotry, the openness and gentility of this sound map is an easy and inviting one to follow. It’s also a perfect starting point for the label itself, and at name your price on Bandcamp for a download it is well worth checking out.

- Fluid Radio

Ishmael Cormack is a British sound artist living in rural Somerset. His published body of work has grown significantly in the past year and focuses on what he describes as “gathering and weaving found sound with acoustics”. The quality and extent of that work is such that many followers of electroacoustic ambient music who would not have recognized Cormack’s name a year ago are now likely to find him worthy of categorizing as essential listening. After a series of self-released singles and EPs, he makes his label debut on Italy’s Krysalisound with Ammil, an album recorded at St Andrews Church in his home town, a Grade I listed building that dates from the 13th century.

“The catalyst of the project was a journey into the paradoxical nature of the natural world. Natures complex systems give rise to our perception of simplicity & beauty. Ammil attempts to mimic this understanding by creating complex rhythm that give birth to subtle melody…”

The album comprises six improvised sketches in which Cormack experiments with polyrhtyms using tape loops and a modest assortment of instruments, electronics, and found sounds with prominent use of acoustic & electric guitar. There is something viscerally organic in his work. It is richly sonorous, yet delicate in its construction with every fragment of sound perfectly weighted and separated to create a sense of balance and harmony. Readers familiar with the work of Wil Bolton or 12k artists like Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer will be particularly at home with the work Cormack is doing here, but such familiarity is not required to fully enjoy this exceptional recording.

- Stationary Travels

Ishmael Cormack is a new name to me who has also appeared on the Handstitched* label as well as self releases. I would hate to make a statement about his work based solely on a single release, but the pieces on “Ammil” have qualities that you may find on labels such as 12k or Home Normal. There is a balance of acoustic meets ambience meets micro glitch that you can find within releases on those labels catalogues. The pieces on “Ammil” are understated and spacious with a hint of barely anything going on. The tracks highlight Cormack’s desire not to over complicate the sounds, by doing so he creates this fragile and dreamy/hazy feel to his material that is noticeably multilayered. This is the type of release that is perfect for laid back listening.

- Drifting, Almost Falling

Il sera question d’ambient music et de minimaliste dans ce premier album du musicien anglais Ishmael Cormack. Une musique ambient dominée par des notes de guitare éparses autour desquelles viennent éclore des sonorités très fines, voire microscopiques, donnant un relief tout particulier à l’album.
Dès le premier titre, il se dégage une forme de brillance, un côté scintillant dans la musique de cet anglais.
Au fil des titres, on se laissera alors tout document porter par le doux halo des morceaux, par ces nappes sonores légèrement crépitantes, aux mélodies à peine perceptibles mais bien présentes.
En fin de compte, la musique imaginée par Ishmael Cormack dégage quelque chose de bucolique et de très organique, renvoyant aux éléments naturels, avec en plus une dimension spirituelle… sans doute en rapport avec l’endroit où vit Ishamael Cormack ou alors avec le lieu où a été enregistré le disque : une église du XIIIe siècle.

- Possible Musics

A bit like nature's apparent simplicity the devil is in the detail of Ishmael Cormack's new work for Krysalisound as his ephemeral guitar work bedews the calming found sounds and then evaporate in contact with the sun warmed electronic landscape.

- The Slow Music Movement

Ishmael Cormack entered the thirteenth century church of St Andrews near his rural Somerset home with a view to laying down a series of improvised sketches using tape loops and found sounds, trying to release natural but subtle polyrhythms from these unlikely sources. The overall effect, spread across the six tracks contained herein, is one of a series of faint, impressionist watercolours, rendered so subtly that at first they might drift by, but the ear is caught and slowly you are drawn into this hesitantly unfolding world.

The sounds shimmer and flicker, highlighted by the odd touch of piano or brushed guitar, but it all feels temporary, fleeting, as if scattered like ripples across a pond, hard to focus on; yet the overall effect is unmissable. It is a mosaic of sound in which it is possible to catch glimpses of stasis, but those distant images are hard to pin down and are lost amongst the constantly evolving canvas.
You can almost taste the loops at times, the tang of dust in the air, swirling in the slow unravelling of the sounds, with the sense of silence in the old building surrounding the production and becoming part of the layers of the pieces on Ammil. The feeling of the natural being drawn into the space is palpable, and the subtlety and sparseness allow the listener to insert their own images.

The sense of aural watercolours is there at every point; the dabs of guitar like stalks of flowers up close to the viewer as the rush of the found sounds moving behind equate to a distant stream, your eye drawn beyond the foreground to the light glitter beyond. Each of the six pieces here differ in these fine details, as if they were a similar image, but taken from a different perspective, time of day or event of the season. I am hoping they are real tape loops; there is something of the romantic in me sensing the joins as they pass over the heads, and the image of Ishmael bent over his splicing set, searching for the perfect length. It is a romantic notion for a romantic vision.

The idea of rhythm is most obvious on “Sister On The Shoreline”; the looped guitar intensely, slow with creaks from the body and the scrape of the strings merging with what sounds like the settling of the old building in the warm glow of the sun. As the piece continues, so you find yourself looking out for tiny details of sound, seeing if they return; but as you do so, the realisation dawns that the guitar has dropped out completely, dispelled like a wreath of smoke around your head.
Its gradual return at some point later is impossible to pinpoint time-wise, and the whole album behaves like this, slowing things down and taking you entirely out of the usual flow of things; a very welcome tonic to the trials of everyday life. Once again, Krysalisound have put their finger on the slowed down pulse and found a corner of quiet reverie.

- Freq

The British Ishmael Cormack falls under the mantle of atmospheric soundscapes in every respect. Even if the musician has been acting under the radar for a long time, this aspect will very likely change soon. The reason for this is the release of his debut album on the Krysalisound label with the title " Ammil ", which will officially see the light of day at the weekend. Located in the area of ​​the ambient , the composer interleaves facets from other areas of music to create a spherical soundscape.
Ishmael Cormack is a British sound artist based in rural Somerset . He is fascinated by tones or sounds of acoustics in an aesthetic guise. He uses tape loops and polyrhythms to create a sound that reflects the cyclical nature of the natural world in the constraints of man-made time. The first sound impressions came in autumn 2019 with “ Autumn / Worn ”, his last work “ For Muriel” dealt with his grandmother in acoustic form. The album " Ammil " was recorded in a church from the 13th century in order to let the volume of sound come to the fore.

Ammil has first and foremost become an album that will captivate you immediately, with the calm and fragile arrangements. Textured and melodic soundscapes, dreamy and romantic in the structures, like a gentle wind that gently blows through your hair. Caused by ethereal guitar effects and electronic tangents. The collages of sound and noise contain an essence of empathy that gently pulls the listener in order to bed on acoustic clouds of near perfection. The predominant emotional breadth consists of feelings of longing, warmth and meditative harmony with oneself. Familiar dimensions with light poetry that reach deep under the skin.

Stylistically, the album may be in the ambient genre, nevertheless it branches out with its complexity in musical areas of neoclassical and experimental music. Even marginal traces from post-rock are nested, which would actually be indispensable in these` sound spheres. Different pieces with lengths between 4 and 11 minutes offer enough approaches to bring Ishmael Cormack's understanding of music closer to the listener. Especially the last two tracks “ Sister On The Shoreline ” and “ Slow Ungive ” allow a touch of retrospective and nostalgia, perfectly encased with electroacoustic sophistication. If you close your eyes to songs like “ Bending Snow“, Then pieces of the puzzle automatically come together in your head, thoughts of succinct memories that keep warming your heart.

The conclusion is also easy to draw: Ammil by Ishmael Cormack is cinematic music with a tendency to pursue one's thoughts. During the creation of sound and feeling, the musician draws from an immeasurable pool of creativity and ingenuity. An aspect that is also strongly expressed on the new work. Has slight traits from the compatriots' beginnings of July Skies and Epic45, which goes very well with the whole thing. On February 15, 2020 you can then integrate the album into your playlists and will surely let it rotate very often. The album was mastered by Francis M. Gri , who is by no means a blank slate on this page.

- Gezeitenstrom Musik


sowhatmusica.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/ishmael-cormack-ammil/

www.radioaktiv.it/ishmael-cormack-ammil/

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