N Chambers - Air Example (2019)

Chicago's Love All Day label presents the sublime new full length album by Norm Chambers, his second for Love All Day following the 2012 cassette release "Blue Grotto", which was issued under his Panabrite moniker. One of the most consistently original & creative composers working in electronic music today, "Air Example" pulses with all of the lovely melodies and unexpected turns we’ve come to expect of him. The fruit of two years labor, these twelve works represent a disparate group of material that somehow manages to hang together effortlessly, like some mirage shimmering in the distance.

“The idea of an “air example” evolved out of just stringing the words together randomly one day. It sounded intriguing, but empty. However, it stuck with me, and then I started daydreaming about strange concepts and ideas regarding containing air (not particles, but the conventional concept of air as an invisible presence). That there could be a tactile way to compare the different “types” somehow, as if such a thing is immediately quantifiable. Of course you can measure different air quality but not in this funny, imagined way of just having little boxes that house different types of air with a range of qualities and attributes and putting them side by side. As soon as you in any way open or compromise these boxes the air is immediately indistinguishable from the air surrounding it. Either that or you have constructed a new whole made up of this distinct grouping of particles. This all means nothing, basically.

I immediately felt this concept could apply to the music I was creating over the gestation of this album. These sounds don’t come to the table fully ready to fit in with one another, but given an overarching idea they can unite and represent this overall blob of sound. They are ideas born out of vapor, aimless jamming or inspired discovery, and created on different equipment or recording set-ups, under various states of mind. I labored over this grouping of tracks – and many more - for up to two years. At the end, these pieces comprise the odds and ends of two years of work having gone through the mill —none of the tracks seeming to fit together at first glance perhaps, but ultimately kind of strange taken individually as well.


The ideas speak to different scenes and feelings... from melancholic noir tendencies, to more textural dub passages. From fourth world rattle, to random electronics. It also touches on many sounds from my years of musical discovery, strains that subconsciously sneak back into my mind while looking for newer muses.”

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"Air Example gathers newly dreamed material from Norm Chambers, the Seattle, WA-based conduit of new age sound (in the most literal sense) sometimes operating as Jürgen Müller, Panabrite, or Spiral Index.

Chambers’ veneration of early electronics and concrète / tape music is built out into vividly synthesized worlds, embracing every day imperceptible and textural varieties. The ghost of dub and its mutant ancestors are invoked, as are polyphonic mallets and ancient metallic grooves, smattered with elemental residue, foamy vocoder spray and plenty of scuttling life.

Air Example’s twelve portions are the upshot of two years’ work, connected by and contained in the conceptual vessel of the album’s title - each a receptacle for invisible but essential ether: pure inspiration bottled and presented.

Air Example is Chambers’ second offering to Love All Day (following his 2012 cassette album Blue Grotto, as Panabrite), the Chicago label peddling immeasurably thoughtful releases such the reissued Traveller by Warren Sampson and the modestly majestic Synthesis by Planetary Peace." - Commend Music, NYC