To commemorate its most fruitful and diverse year of releases to date, the label trio of Past Inside the Present, Healing Sound Propagandist, and Fallen Moon Recordings is proud to offer Past/Present 2024, a compilation featuring more than three hours of blissed-out ambience, dark drone, gritty experimentation, and everything in between. Across its varied climates, tracks from legendary producers like 36, bvdub, ASC and James Bernard flow alongside those by mainstays like Slow Dancing Society and Black Swan, and newcomers to the label including Innesti, Inhmost, and Angela Winter. The result is a remarkable portrait of a vast range of personalities, each pushing the boundaries of modern composition and textural expression.
Opening the collection is a masterful, sprawling mix by LA’s Inquiri (aka Lacey IQ, who debuted on PITP this year with See You Someday), offering a new perspective for the heads, and a perfect primer for the uninitiated. The 71-minute, seamless excursion – recorded live in a single take – blends a carefully curated set of pieces into a striking showcase of all the styles that these labels embrace. Even with decades of experience as a DJ across many genres, Lacey notes, “Ambient work is quite challenging to mix; it has to be worked and managed, constantly and precisely, in order to keep things moving and engaging, especially if you want to maintain a cohesive storyline and have your own narrative voice.” As a result, throughout the set, she keeps at least three faders up at a given moment, blurring the borders between artists and atmospheres to compose an impressionistic whole from a broad palette.
The remainder of Past/Present 2024 is a knockout sequence of two dozen tracks, handpicked by label founder and mastermind, Zach Frizzell (aka zakè). From the warbling storm of T.R. Jordan’s tape-decayed lament, “Swapped”, to the angelic hues of marine eyes’ “hushed”, there is no shortage of beauty born from cosmic reflection and melancholic, inward gazing. Elsewhere, Black Swan notches up the intensity with “Perhaps We Never Were”, and Ausklang bring their mastery of ambient post-rock to “Burning Bridges”, a standout from their Kairos LP. Other entries from the likes of Marc Ertel, Kilometre Club, Julien Demoulin, Lia Kohl, and Nitechord guide the listener through varying landscapes of light and shadow, harmony and dissonance, drift and rhythm.
Such stylistic variety across these labels is underscored by their insistence on absolute creative freedom, a natural result of being completely artist-run. This unique sense of kinship, and first-hand understanding of working outside the mainstream, shines through in the consistent high caliber of output, and is backed by steady love from dedicated followers and international music press alike.
“If I had to choose one word to define 2024, it would be resilience,” remarks Frizzell. “This year started with the difficult decision to pause vinyl releases due to a range of factors, most notably skyrocketing costs. Despite the practical woes, we stood strong; and by "we”, I mean our loyal fans and close-knit ambient family. It was the unwavering support of listeners, and the fervency of our artists – who created some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard – that made our bonds grow tighter, and no price can be placed on that kind of unity.”
From its modest beginnings as a music blog, aiming to spread the gospel of underground ambient and drone artists, Past Inside the Present is now home to an ever-growing artistic community in pursuit of the world’s most inventive and engaging quiet music. The label and its sisters count scores of releases between them, many of the most notable and accomplished having emerged in 2024. Frizzell and his crew of ambitious, like-minded friends look forward to a new year of continued musical adventurousness, with the promise of many more to come.
