John Atkinson is an ambient explorer and musique concrète practitioner based in Brooklyn, New York who made his name in the noughties as a member of the experimental rock band Aa. In recent years his output is mainly focused on recording and processing field recordings, curated and shared via his Bandcamp page. Most recently he released a collaborative album with Patrick Taylor as East Portal on AKP Recordings. AKP actually decided to nurture this relationship and put out his latest solo record "Energy Fields", a sonic response to our collective dependence on fossil fuels and overdue transition to renewables. Recorded during Atkinson's residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming – the largest coal-producing state in America, the sounds that form the four compositions on this album serve as a portal to a new tomorrow. Life signals of the local habitats are contrasted with pulsing heartbeats of the machines, while industrial drones, bleeps and hisses are arranged into ambient-like pieces that could easily serve as an opening sequence to Blade Runner. The result is sublime, slightly anxious but always captivating.
You can buy "Energy Fields" here, and stream it below.