DOVS Map a New Ambient Zone for Balmat

‘Psychic Geography’ leaves drums behind to explore inner topographies.

Roland TB-303, Juno G, Prophet 5, Elektron Octatrack MKII, Make Noise DPO and René, Mutable Clouds, SH-101, Behringer TD3, Sherman Filterbank: On Psychic Geography, DOVS let these machines shimmer, sway and dissolve. The duo, Vienna’s Johannes Auvinen (aka Tin Man) and Mexico City’s Gabo Barranco (aka AAAA), recorded the album together in the studio, working minus drums to explore a more narrative, beatless form. Their first release in six years and debut for Balmat, Psychic Geography picks up a thread left dangling on their 2019 LP Silent Cities, where three ambient outliers hinted at deeper currents beneath the acid. This time, they dive all the way in.

Untethered from 4/4, their music moves with eerie, liquid grace. Familiar TB-303 contours warp into vapor trails. On “Vernal Fall,” tonal shifts unfold like weather systems. Silence carries as much weight as any note. Auvinen described it in release notes as a chance to create “more complex structures,” and the result is exactly that: music full of ambiguity and spaciousness, as vivid and mutable as a dream. You can practically feel the circuitry warming the mix, voltage, tone, drift rising off the surface. This is ambient music with presence, not passivity. It doesn’t fade into the background; it opens a passage. The louder you play it, the clearer the terrain reveals itself.

The album is also a natural fit for Balmat, the ambient-leaning label run by Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne. “We have both been listening to ambient and experimental music for years,” Sherburne told Objects and Sound, “and even on the radio show, we had a habit of starting the show kind of mellow and gradually increasing the intensity. But in 2020 during the pandemic… our radio shows started becoming more heavily ambient-based, much more than we previously had been doing.” The label’s Instagram bio reads, simply, “A label with a cloudy outline.”

We’ve written about Balmat before, just as they issued their first few releases. Their catalog includes standout releases like Languid Gongue by Luke Sanger, µ-Ziq’s gently glowing 1977, and Absent Friends Vol. III from Minor Science, each exploring a different ambient and experimental drift facet. All of the label’s covers are illustrated by José Quintanar, whose hand-drawn line work lends a subtle, cohesive signature to the imprint’s visual identity. As with listening to Balmat records at full volume, on vinyl the 12-by-12 format lets the covers breathe. The artwork blossoms at full scale, inviting closer inspection.