HERE: A Quiet Unease
Slowcraft Records

Issued digitally and as a limited edition cassette, A Quiet Unease is London-based producer Simon Vince's label debut under the HERE alias. He's been creating music for more than two decades, and the skills he's developed and refined sensibility he's nurtured are well-captured by the seven artful pieces presented on the twenty-five-minute release. Par for the Slowcraft course, the genre in question's atmospheric electronic ambient, and Vince shows himself to be a particularly nuanced practitioner of the form. His shaping of tones and textures is assured, as is his evoking of mood.

In keeping with track titles such as “Tainted Moon,” “Lasting Longing,” and “A Quiet Unease,” feelings of serenity and anxiety sit side-by-side in these productions. Feelings of loneliness and solitude couple with desire and longing in settings that feel like faded memories rendered into tangible form. In “Hiding Light,” gentle electric piano chords lay a foundation for tremulous, string-like flourishes until the material pivots into the kind of grainy territory associated with Boards of Canada. With choral breaths intoning softly, “Unheard, Unseen” and the title track perpetuate the ethereal dreaminess of the opener whilst intensifying the nostalgic ache of the material. There's a gauzy quality to these pieces that suggests commonalities with Popul Vuh, the connection never more audible than in the peaceful unfolding of “Open Cold Heart.” By implication, the title of “Where Birds Fly” suggests longing for another place, perhaps one so remote it's unreachable and the expression thus tainted with melancholy. Vince demonstrates throughout a gift for establishing atmosphere quickly and conjuring vivid, immersive, and complete soundworlds in settings lasting no longer than three to four minutes at a time.

May 2025