Chase The Kangaroo

Over the past year, maybe longer, I’ve been drawn deeper into ambient music. Not just as background or atmosphere, which all music arguably provides, but as a kind of transport. Ambient music, at its best, feels less like sound layered into the world and more like a world unto itself. But that’s a rabbit hole for another time.

Lately, I’ve gravitated toward music without words, without conventional rhythm… just the slow drift of guitars, the steady wash of delay, the occasional pulse of a distant beat. And reverb. I can’t get enough reverb. Not just big reverb, but cathedral reverb, the kind that fills space with sound and lifts you toward some kind of emotional altitude.

So if you, too, are looking for something that breaks from the digital sameness, something immersive and unfamiliar, I’d suggest Love in the Void by Hammock.

Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, the duo behind Hammock, have long operated in that liminal space between ambient, post-rock, and shoegaze, but Love in the Void feels different. It’s louder. It’s more present. And yet it doesn’t abandon the cinematic serenity that defines their best work. From the opening track “Procession” to the closing movement “The End Is the Beginning,” the album moves between radiant crescendos and hushed melancholy, less like a playlist and more like a landscape.

In the band’s own documentary about the album, there’s a moment of disarming honesty: they mention how often fans tell them their music helps them fall asleep. The intention is kind, sure, but it stings. Because if you’ve really listened to Hammock, you know their music isn’t a lullaby. It’s a kind of reckoning. A quiet storm. Maybe even a prayer.

What’s remarkable about Love in the Void is that it leans into that tension. It’s not afraid to swell, to ache, to reach. And in doing so, it becomes something more than just ambient texture, it becomes emotional architecture.

Here’s how Hammock put it:

“In 2023, shaken awake and needing to break free of frustrations and longings, Hammock released Love in the Void. The album, the band’s loudest to date, pulses with an unbridled spirit for action and experience and a burning desire for connection…”
~ Hammockmusic.com

It’s an album you don’t just hear. You feel it. You live inside it for a while.

So give it a listen. Let yourself be Absorbed in Light. And if it moves you, well, that was the point. Share your thoughts and let me know what you think.

Love in the Void ~ Hammock

Released: 27 January 2023
Genres: Aim for somewhere close to shoegaze, dream pop, ambient post-rock, cinematic soundscapes
Producer: Self-produced
Line up: Marc Byrd & Andrew Thompson: guitars and sonic magic
Purchase On: Amazon