Michael Scott Dawson’s ambient music draws on rural memories

Michael Scott Dawson is a Canadian producer and sound artist. Anchored by frayed melodies, tape loops, and pastoral field recordings he has crafted a body of tender and nostalgic ambient work.

On his third solo LP, Find Yourself Lost, Dawson veers toward the fringes of country and western. Although ‘cosmic’ has become catchall descriptor in both country and ambient music, Dawson reaches for something more earthly. Something more grounded. Ribboning miles of pedal steel nestle into hushed tones and gossamer textures. Reflecting on the process he states, “It took some time to find myself in it. The first few pieces I made were embarrassingly twangy. I love spaghetti and I love western but never the two shall twain.” Instead, Dawson began to experiment with alternate tunings and granular guitar. He recorded and mixed a full album, and then called upon a handful of friends and kindred peers to improvise on top of it. Treating their contributions like found sounds or samples he stole little moments, manipulated passages, and dismantled his original recordings in the process.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Dawson was drawn in a country-adjacent direction, he literally grew up adjacent to country. His childhood home was a block from the rodeo grounds in a town where everyone wore cowboy boots to weddings and funerals. Throughout the album he draws from memories of his youth, like time spent on the family farm where John Wayne movies played on an endless loop and a velvet painting of an outlaw with an eyepatch hung above the television.

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