“Drifts” is the new album by Arp (Modern Obscure Music, 2025),
aka New York-based artist Alexis Georgopoulos (RVNG Intl, Smalltown
Supersound, Mexican Summer).
It is his first for Barcelona imprint Modern Obscure Music (Actress,
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Eiko Ishibashi, Jim O'Rourke, Merzbow).
A collection of transfixing, storm-like compositions, “Drifts” traffics in
understated, tranquilized vapors — one part Ambient Classical, one part
Club-adjacent ambience. Pitched, reduced and re-sampled, the album's
glowing abstractions — using piano, harp, strings & modular synthesizer
— explore the emotional terrain between aftermath and renewal, blending
the unstructured immediacy of improvisation with the elegant sculpture
of composition.
Featuring contributions from Takuma Watanabe, Patrick Belaga (PAN),
and Marilu Donovan (LEYA) and artwork by sculptor John Chamberlain,
the album's cinematic suite of impressionistic, ambient works invite the
listener into a vast, mapless space of dreamlike non-linearity where
interior and exterior landscapes bristle with intimacy and electricity.
Abba Funn by John Chamberlain, 1979.
Permanent collection, the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas.
© 2025 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Arp Drifts (Modern Obscure Music)
"Alexis Georgopoulos has a remarkable talent for reinventing himself with
virtually every release. He gave us neo-kosmische etudes on his 2007 debut,
In Light; krautier textures on The Soft Wave; full-scale Another Green World pastiche on More; expansive drone music on Inversions; Balearic pop on Zebra; ZTT worship on New Pleasures.
Drifts is something new once again: electroacoustic treatments of piano, harp,
and strings, electronically misted into a luminous fog. This is not particularly
demanding music; the consonant textures of his source material ensure limpid tone and agreeable warmth no matter how noisy the treatments or abstract the reassemblage.
But that’s also not to say that it is simplistic music, either; particularly in its darker moments, like “Shifted,” it feels like it’s concealing more than it’s revealing. Other tracks, like “Seaweed,” are marginally more “musical” in their structure, and flat-out gorgeous in execution. Progressing through the album’s 12 relatively short tracks, I’m reminded of a maze lined with clouds, the contours shifting every time you turn a spongy corner."
— Philip Sherburne, Futurism Restated
“Best New Ambient” — Bandcamp
“Best New Albums” — NPR All Songs Considered
“RIYL — Ryuichi Sakamoto, Carsten Nicolai, Fennesz” — Boomkat
