“Ambient music” (the scare quotes are mine) has been all the rage these past few years, especially in the context of club music (does anyone remember “deconstructed club”?). The new record, Of No Fixed Abode by Miradasvacas, the duo of Madrid-based artists Pablo Mirón and Juan Vacas who also run the art collective Real No Real, often sonically could fit the description of ambient music, but to me the generating concept is distinctly different; it may end up in the same place, but only by coincidence.

On the first track, the longest on the record by far, droning consonant, diatonic harmonies a la Andrew Chalk are broken up by dissonant clusters from a reed organ—a timbre I can’t help associating with Raymond Dijkstra in this context—or jarring fragments of stop-start tape recordings. The distinctly lo-fi sound world is a well-needed break from the hi-fi Ableton sheen of much contemporary “ambient club music,” preferring a more raw, art brut approach to both recording and performance (Brian Eno vs. David Jackman… or something like that...). Also, that Sean McCann mastered it is fitting, as the record sits nicely in the sound and aesthetic world of McCann’s own label Recital.