The best ambient music has two distinct ways of pulling you in. On one hand, the genre’s purpose is to wash over you or to pass you by. The clue is in the name: ambient music is in the ether, it is furniture, made for semi-conscious immersion rather than immediate connection. But it can connect. There are those rare albums that achieve a second way, albums that, despite their slowness or their beatlessness, somehow become utterly engaging or even transcendent. Eno at his best fits the bill; so too does Inoyamaland’s Danzindan-Pojidon. And so did M. Sage’s 2023 collaboration with Zander Raymond, Parayellowgram, four ten-minute compositions of lush, blissful complexity.
Also in 2023, Sage released a solo album, Paradise Crick. These shorter pieces utilised a blend of artificial and natural sounds to chronicle Sage’s deeply felt affinity to the natural world. By turns dreamy and earthy, they introduced the sounds of old-time Americana – fiddle, autoharp, harmonica, even a penny whistle – to the lambent electronic flutters and programmed beats of Sage’s Moogs and Rolands. Paradise Crick was his first album on the always-rewarding RVNG label, and Tender / Wading is, superficially at least, cut from the same cloth.
But this is no mere sequel. Sage has dived deeper into the landscape that inspires him – namely the hills and rivers of his native Colorado – and moved further towards acoustic and highly personal methods of creating atmospheric instrumental music. It’s there in the cover art – a sculptural semi-abstract assemblage by Sage himself that speaks to rock and water, wood and sky – and it’s there in the opening track, The Garden Spot, a sub-two minute collage of field recordings, gentle acoustic guitar and a background of acoustic chimes and shimmers: this is an album that owes as much to the old, weird America as it does to newfangled technology.
On Wading the Plain, one of the album’s lead tracks, the glitchy electronics form a kind of riverbed for the melodic clarinet and piano to flow over. The formula remains throughout – melodic ideas constructed dually on piano and clarinet with synths and percussion acting as a kind of trellis to which the sounds can cling – but this doesn’t mean that things get samey. The balance between repetition and variation is often what gives this kind of music its character; in this case, it is tipped slightly in favour of the latter. Whether it’s acoustic percussion like the clopping of a pony (on the gentle ramble of Witch Grass) or delicate, almost nostalgic combinations of piano and clarinet (Chinook), Sage is always willing to admit new sounds into his palette. One idea frequently chases another off the end of the page, only to return at a later point, slightly altered. This kind of playfulness is always welcome; even more so in a genre that can sometimes take itself too seriously.
At the album’s heart is the comparatively long Open Space Properties. Here we witness a melody being born from a marriage of the two primary instruments, to a backdrop of cooing doves and a combination of acoustic strings and percussion that sounds like a sedated country band playing Faust. There are also elements of free jazz and neo-classical music in the mix (Sage is a member of Fuubutsushi, who travel even further down those particular highways).
With Sage’s music, close listening is recommended. You will notice new things on every listen, like the subtle shifts of Fracking Stralite’s watery field recordings, and the way the same track juxtaposes the cosmic and the earthbound: swooning woodwind and gloopy synths underpinned by crackling, papery effects. Sage has the disconcerting ability of making traditional instruments sound futuristic and electronics seem ancient. He can also conjure crumbling decay or new life in the same instant, as on Field House Deer (Mice), with its skittering, dissonant synths and forceful piano. And he knows how to tie it all together: the final track, Tender of Land, begins with the cries of geese in flight – a symbol perhaps of the album’s twin themes of wildness and home – and unfurls into a lush amalgam of neoclassical sounds and post-rock structure, hinting at the constant change and unruliness of nature, another of Sage’s preoccupations.
Tender / Wading is a quietly sublime album. It achieves all of the goals of ambient music without being hamstrung by any of its genre tropes. Unafraid to reach into the past, and unafraid of its own big heart, it is textural, varied, consistently interesting and frequently moving.
Tender / Wading will be released on September 26, 2025, in vinyl, Japanese import CD via Plancha, and digital editions.
Pre-Order: https://lnk.to/rvngnl122
Tour Dates
* 09/27/25 [US] Salt Lake City, UT @ UMOCA w/ Sam Prekop
10/08/25 [US] Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
10/09/25 [US] Portland, OR @ Show Bar
10/11/25 [US] Los Angeles, CA @ 2220 Arts
11/07/25 [US] Chicago, IL @ Constellation
11/08/25 [US] Philadelphia, PA @ Asian Arts Initiative
w/ Patrick Shiroishi except *