Not Waving & Romance - Eyes of Fate (2021)

Not Waving & Romance turn heads into candyfloss with this sublime full-length opus, a keenly awaited follow-up to that Romance tape of mottled modern classical loops that sold out in an hour at the end of last year. If you’re looking for a smudge of blissed ambient in the vein of The Caretaker’s ‘Persistent Repetition Of Phrases', classic Stars Of The Lid, or even Arve Henriksen’s sublime ‘Chiaroscuro’, this is it.

Identified as a consummate collaborator in recent years on records with Jim O’Rourke, Mark Lanegan and Jay Glass Dubs; Alessio Natalizia aka Not Waving is now found at his most amorphous alongside Romance - an enigmatic figure who appeared from outta nowhere with that stunning ‘You Must Remember This’ tape in late 2020, and now lends their midas touch to the nine immaculate pieces on ‘Eyes Of Fate.’ It’s ambient music of a genuinely rarified, elevated calibre, or what the duo tongue-in-cheek term “mythological, Old Testament ambient”, a phrase which signifies a pointedly classicist approach comparable with seminal records by The Caretaker/Leyland Kirby, Brian Eno and SOTL, but with results that also coolly resonate with the modernist realm of castles in the sky ambient inhabited by the likes of Malibu, Kareem Lotfy or AYYA.

The duo’s first recordings explore the fertile territory between secular and religious music that has long fascinated them, and perhaps most poignantly in an age when allegories of the divine and existential bliss and terror are felt most acutely. Using a palette of choral voices looped and diffused into the ether, they recall The Caretaker’s dank parlour ambience in ’Tropic of Desire’, but equally make room for more grandiose statements in ‘While My Heart Is Still Beating’ and ‘Visions of Light’ reminding of GAS at his stateliest, while vignettes such as ‘Sleepers, Awake!’ are redolent of the intervals to Carl Craig and Derrick May’s ‘Relics.