Carlos Dengler has a strong sense of arrangement and cinematic accomplishment, the spectrum of sounds is balanced and well constructed. The melodies originate in the bass, while the spectrum of instrumental and other sounds gives a rich and peaceful feeling, a lot of natural instrumentation, a lot of acoustic instrumentation. If you like Patrick O’Hearn, Erik Scott, Brian Eno, or Yes, you might enjoy Private Earth.

After an enthusiastic debut on the global ambient electronic and new age music scenes with Aqueduct (April 2022) and Ecospheres EP (September 2022), NYC-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Carlos Dengler releases PRIVATE EARTH, an acoustically rich album that expands upon his interrelations with nature.

Imagination can bring about a feeling of enthusiasm you get from someone or something, exposed by way of a creative act or idea, a sudden feeling of enthusiasm, or a new idea.

“There is definitely a relationship between my source of inspiration in natural landscapes which came about from all of my exposure to natural landscapes over the last 10 years and the art that I do today.” Denlger expands, “I’m always in the sort of mind frame when approaching my compositions, sort of how the music can be installed somewhere in an environment, say somebody’s living room or somebody’s headphones or speakers while they’re trying to fall asleep or trying to act, do yoga or, or how the music may function as a score or as an underscore as a meditation app as an installation in a gallery space, for example, but that’s always for recordings, never live.”

In this sonic journey, I am walking in the wonderous uninhabited regions, the path goes through several locations, first the wilderness of sand, then into the darkness of night. There is the dawn, there is a lake, there is a cave, and there is a mountain to behold. The feeling is always lush and refreshing, restful and relaxing, beautifully interesting, as well as both engaging and contemplative. The palette used by Dengler in his latest album, Private Earth, sounds like it includes the trinity of piano, flute and guitar, with an amazing full range of exotic instrumental accents, sometimes with birds and sometimes with vocals.

Now the scene is quiet and emerging, an exotic little caravan is approaching. We are at the edge of endless wilderness, the arid landscape is blooming now, “Desert Flora” (12:49). The colors inspire a tingling up my spine, I hear the birds signifying, one here, later one there. Soon the dawn turns into a hot sky and the distance is burning forever, with some fantastic heat mirages shimmering. Watching and listening to the brisk and mystical stride of the caravan, the increasing tempo energizes as the caravan’s steady slow pace persists. There are lots of hidden brief solo voices deep out there. The drums talk with the bass all during my view of the momentary course of the desert journey in bloom, the grandeur grows and deepens.

Next are fingers of peace and tranquility, a breath rings, “Violet Night” (8:22), I love to listen as the night blossoms with melodic positive energy, spirits rise and sparkle, almost slowly. “I went about writing “Violet Night” in a completely unusual way which is, I just made sure to write the entirety of it on the acoustic guitar and I took my time kind of creating a chord progression that made sense, what came about out of that chord progression and then also orchestrating it for flute and piano and all the other instruments that are on.

“There was just this picture of a very saturated hallucinogenic kaleidoscopic kind of evening. Perhaps Absinthe has been imbibed or something like that, you know, it sort of starry night Van Gogh style experience of the evening, maybe like a summer night in that respect how summer nights with a little bit of alcohol or other, intoxicants can sometimes have a very ecstatic and blissful experience. There’s just something about that chord progression that makes me feel like it was night and not day. It’s sort of like an evening piece, so that’s why it was called “Violet Night.”

Energizing and hopeful, “Golden Dawn” (7:17) is bathed in light, an ambient and acoustic soundscape grounded in fretless bass and accentuated by delicate acoustic guitar. Imagine watching the sky change into day, greeting the sun, slowly growing brighter and lingering, the melody seems to be concluding, then calmly repeating.

Now imagine walking up to the water, looking out, then setting out into the water, “Ancient Lake” (9:31). The bass pulls the rest of the orchestra along further and further, then the guitar has it, and keeps it steady. The story is always deep in the water under the lake, and the melody haunts me, I love the lingering ringing.

“Solemn Cavern” (7:29) holds a path guided by flute, I am walking carefully down and down into the earth. There are fantastic lights along the way as the atmosphere seems ever darker. There is peace in the darkness, the air feels wide open. I love the deep resonant gong that emerges, we are inside a gigantic chamber that is resonant and simple with many instrumental voices. The track ends on the shore of an underground lake, I hear the gentle waves breaking. The piano leads us as up the mountain we ascend, each instrument shines and shares taking the scene. I hear hand instruments with ringing strings, slow and calming, an imaginative palette of delicate detailed tiny sounds made large. Now I hear more water sounds, and wings flying.

As we rise the view is magnified, rising spirits. The orchestra brings the first view of the sky and rock, “Rising Mountain” (7:01), some birds make the story even more melodic. I feel a traveling sound moving along under a bright sky, the ringing metal energizing the flow, emerging new instruments and new sounds, finger snaps through layers that stay uncomplicated and always uplifting.

What exactly is ambient music? There is much to ponder. Dengler contributes his thoughts, “What ambient music is, is a an attempt, I think, on the part of the composer of the particular piece, to create a sound tapestry that is exceptionally spacious and lacking any sort of melodic content and sort of just creating patterns that are transporting to perhaps different modes of thought or feeling different states of consciousness. It’s a spiritual music as far as I see it, or at least the types of music that I like that fall into the ambient genre are spiritual or they can even be ritualistic like Byron Metcalf, for example, who uses frame drums all the time, which are sort of the main event, but they’re all dry and repetitious that they kind of can induce a trance state. Ambient music in that respect is very distinctive from any other types of music, which I feel call much more attention to what either the musicians are doing or what the composer is doing at that moment. Whereas with ambient music, the main event is not so much the music itself but the state that it puts you in.

“I think absent that sort of state, there’s not much to put your attention to, which is also why it’s a music when it’s such an incredibly difficult music to try to achieve from the composer’s standpoint because they have to just remove their ego from it in a way that you know, all other musics kind of encourage such as, you know, let’s say, I don’t know, even classical where there are events, there are no events in, in ambient music. So that I think is one of the things that makes ambient music rather distinctive.

“I was dealing with a lot of or seeing a lot of pictures kind of going through my mind as I was composing all of these pieces in the pictures were all natural scenes, of course, as usual with me, but very, very specific. So it felt like what I was trying to achieve here was a, you know, sort of setting of six, you know, a diorama, if you will, of six very broad settings that are endemic to the earth, and that’s why each track for example, has a descriptor plus the noun. So “Rising Mountain” or “Solemn Cavern” or “Desert Flora.” These are all scenes and almost like in a museum like in a museum of natural History. So for me, that was very much what was behind calling it Private Earth. There’s also a personal streak through this album, I would say, maybe even an intimate one. There was like an emotive aspect to all of the scenes. So it wasn’t just an objective setting of the scene, but also an emotive aspect.

“So even in the titles of the tracks, you have “Solemn Cavern.” It’s a solemn experience, or “Rising Mountain,” as it’s an uplifting experience. “Desert Flora,” it’s dry, you could imagine it’s a dry experience. I’ve been in the desert and it’s an incredibly spiritual experience. And it’s part of that has to do with the sense of how dry it is out there. So I wanted to convey a lot of that sort of personal, you could say private content to these experiences of these scenes on the earth. I tried to imagine what a private experience of Earth would be like something that would belong only to you but would be universal because it’s on the earth and has everything to do with the earth.

And do you think you’ll ever perform your current music live?

“No, I don’t think I actually ever will. I’ve always been a little bit skeptical of live music, especially amplified live music. My whole orientation towards this genre is very, very sort of produced, studio oriented, compositionally oriented, not necessarily intended for the purposes of translation to a live setting. I am kind of a technophobe. And I have a hard time seeing how we, who are these sort of apes with phones, are up to the challenge of, of dealing with, with all the stuff that technology specifically induces upon us.

“I think if there’s one thing that characterizes the perception of affairs in the globe today, at least from the Western mindset, is a feeling of worry, despair, and confusion and dissociation. And so there’s just a lot of dissociation from reality induced by the invasion, I guess you could say of technology into every single sphere of our lives. I think maybe a large extent of that is due to the fact that technology enables us to see everything that’s going on. I’m afraid that it probably also induces us to create things that are going on that actually aren’t.

“I wouldn’t be shocked if perhaps it’s also somewhat of a reaction or a response to what’s going on in the world today and, and the problems that I perceive, which are environmental problems, geopolitical problems, geological problems, anthropological problems, things that affect the entire planet.

We are conscious of ourselves as inhabitants of a planet probably more than ever in the history of human civilization.

“So I suppose it would only be natural for someone that has been exposed to the amount of natural landscapes that I’ve exposed myself to in the last 10 years to then suddenly respond to what’s going on in the way that I am maybe through this art. Although I just want to make sure to clarify that it’s not conscious. The conscious part just comes from what I’ve directly experienced: the trails I’ve been on, the landscapes I’ve traversed, the wild spaces that I’ve explored. I’m not necessarily thinking about world geopolitical problems, you could say when I’m composing, but like I said, there could very well be some kind of unconscious relationship there.”

He concludes, “People have said that the music is pretty cinematic, which I think is interesting. I always wonder if people are responding more just to the fact that it’s so ambient and instrumental and orchestral sounding, sort of which, you know, movie scores tend to be like, they tend to be very open, and ambient, and so forth. I mean, they need to be unless they’re like, you know, bombastic for certain dramatic scenes or action adventurous stuff. I think the art of it is less with underscoring you’re going to see, you’re going to hear things that are going to sound out of place when you hear it by itself, when it’s not locked to the picture.

The artist considers Private Earth more live sounding than his previous works, and says the compositions were developed at very different times and in different ways, a departure from his usual approach. The result is a refreshingly eclectic and transportive album of six generous tracks incorporating gentle guitar, synth, flute, and percussion, dappled with nature sounds.

“In all of these tracks, I sought to feature acoustic elements prominently and unambiguously, which gives this record a much more live feel,” says Dengler, adding “Contrary to the vibe of my releases in 2022, this album is somewhat firmly situated in a prog rock esthetic from the ’70s; the tracks are all long and the phrasing is slow, stretching over several measures, and there are multiple sections to each track that shift and evolve. Keith Bonner is featured on flute and Alto flute on three tracks — with “Violet Night” being entirely improvisatory on his part – which adds a lithe and airy movement to the material.”

Dengler’s foray into New Age and Ambient Music represents a fascinating evolution in his musical journey. Known for his influential role as the original bassist and keyboardist of the band Interpol during the post-punk revivalist scene, Dengler’s exploration of new genres showcases his versatility and artistic growth in multiple fields. Since departing the rock scene in 2010, Carlos has gone back to school earning an MFA in Acting and established a writing career as a personal essayist. While Aqueduct was his first proper music project in twelve years, the period 2010-2022 brought an essential new focus to Dengler’s artistic life and his music compositions.

Fans of Dengler’s new music experience the intricate blending of his Gothic 1990s roots (especially the neoclassical variety popularized by Dead Can Dance), with his passion for the ambient works of “spiritual minimalists” like Arvo Pärt and Henryk Gorecki, and his love of music by more “active” sounding new age artists like Patrick O’Hearn, David Darling, Will Ackerman, and Constance Demby. The influence of these masters can be heard in Private Earth, empowering Dengler to explore the infinite possibilities of organic textures and electro acoustic soundscapes.

Dengler’s recent works have been welcomed in the New Age and Ambient community with enthusiastic reviews and support from Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END, NPR’s Tones & Drones Podcast with Jason Miller, SiriusXM Spa, The Morning Breeze, OneWorld Music Radio, Modul303 and others globally. Music reviewer Robin James commented “In Private Earth, the spectrum of instrumental and other sounds gives a rich and peaceful feeling.”

By embracing new genres during his own artistic growth, Dengler has personally tapped into the transformative power of music as a medium for introspection, relaxation, and connection with nature, highlighting his ability to reinvent himself and his commitment to exploring diverse musical landscapes. PRIVATE EARTH presents an exciting chapter in this renowned artist’s career that captivates and invites listeners to don their headphones and immerse themselves in the beauty and introspection of his hopeful and evocative soundscapes.

Private Earth (Carlos Dengler Music) is an independent release, available worldwide in a variety of physical, digital, and streaming formats. A limited-edition physical pressing of 100 CDs in a billfold-style package (with signature), is available exclusively on Bandcamp, along with Private Earth T-shirts. A hyper-limited artisanal wooden and metal box set of Private Earth is due for release in May on Bandcamp; go to https://carlosdengler.bandcamp.com/album/private-earth

TRACKLIST
1 Desert Flora
2 Violet Night
3 Golden Dawn
4 Ancient Lake
5 Solemn Cavern
6 Rising Mountain
Learn more about Carlos Dengler: https://www.carlosdengler.com/