Portable
Today we’re listening to Portable, a South African electronic music producer based in Paris. We found his music in Philip Sherburne’s recent newsletter. Portable grew up in post-apartheid South Africa and has lived throughout Europe including London, Lisbon, and Berlin. His main musical output has been club-friendly techno and deep house, but on several records he subtracts the drums and arrives at “African Ambient.” The term expresses his fusion of traditional rhythms and melodies of home with sounds and structures influenced by artists like Phill Niblock and Brian Eno.1 We’re playing Portable’s new LP, African Ambient Live at Funkhaus, a performance recorded in Berlin, built around his own archival recordings from the 2000s. The best way to listen is by playing the last track, which is a continuous mix of the whole performance. We’re also playing his 2024 album, Augmented Dreams (African Ambient Edition), which is a mellow reworking of an earlier dance EP.
African Ambient Live at Funkhaus - Portable (117m, a couple tracks have vocal snippets)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
Augmented Dreams (African Ambient Edition) - Portable (25m, light vocals on tracks 3 and 4)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
We wish you a great start to your week.
Fascinating how archival recordings from the 2000s get woven into a live ambient context two decades later. The African Ambient concept bridges personal history with soundscape geography in a way that feels genuinly non-nostalgic. I've been exploring similar territoy with field recordings but hadn't thought about using them as live performance material rathr than just composition source. The continuous mix approach is smart.
Holy crap! That live continuous mix is amazing!!! Thank you!!