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Download a Wintry Ambient Track from Ghostly’s Heathered Pearls

Heathered Pearls / Photo by Philistine DSGN

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow: Heathered Pearls’ debut album, Loyal, came out yesterday on Ghostly International, and for seasonally affected listeners, it might just provide a lifeline through the next few weeks of holiday overdrive (and post-NYE comedown). Whether crunching through snowdrifts with your iPod or staving off cabin fever with a hot toddy, Loyals is pretty much the perfect winter soundtrack.

Heathered Pearls is Jakub Alexander, a co-founder of the Moodgadget label; layering soft synthesizers, indistinct loops, and hazy who-knows-what, he conjures the sensual, suggestive drift of Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series as well as the rain-streaked melancholy of Vancouver’s Loscil. (Fittingly, Kompakt’s Markus Guentner and Loscil both contribute remixes to the album.) His diffuse, swirling textures make for the best kind of incidental music — easy to leave on in the background, but offering plenty of substance should you prick up your ears — so it’s fitting that the album itself was, in a way, incidental.

“The songs didn’t start with a release in mind,” admits Alexander. “I wanted to share something that kept my head in these delicate yet hazy environments that I was trying to create. I never thought of making ambient to make ambient music, I wanted to make hypnotic music that had melodic substance to it.”

Loyal is available now from the Ghostly store on marbled vinyl and as a digital download; download “Raising in Our Ashes” here, and hibernate away.