Add to playlist: Jake Muir’s church bell soundscapes, plus the week’s best new tracks

The American found-sound artist’s new album captures all the delight and drama of European bellringing, as he manipulates field recordings into drifting 20-minute works

From Berlin via Los Angeles
Recommended if you like Philip Jeck, Félicia Atkinson, Sarah Davachi
Up next New album Campana Sonans has just been released

Some of the loveliest ambient music – in that term’s truest sense – available to us is the sound of church bells. The cascading notes heralding a wedding are the aural equivalent of the scent of freshly cut grass, in how they evoke British summer time. But played on a large, sombre bell, the monophonic tolling that announces the time seems almost nihilist: a reminder of the ticking clock of our own lives.