Billow Observatory

Billow Observatory unites Danish musician Jonas Munk, also known as Manual, with Jason Kolb of Michigan space rock outfit Auburn Lull in a trans-Atlantic ambient project. Their recordings unfold as expansive, glacial soundscapes that now and then incorporate dub-inflected layers. The pair’s first album under the Billow Observatory name reached listeners in 2012, after which they kept refining their spellbinding, frost-tinged aesthetic across later works such as the 2022 full-length Stareside and the 2024 EP Soliton.

Munk and Kolb have exchanged music since 2006, when Auburn Lull and Manual first discussed a split EP that ultimately failed to appear. In its place the two began sending files across the ocean, gradually shaping a collection of analog-recorded guitar drones that emerged at a deliberate tempo on the Felte imprint near the end of 2012. Their second release, the modestly more propulsive II: Plains/Patterns, came out via Munk’s own Azure Vista Records in 2017, followed in 2019 by the leaner and more diffuse III: Chroma/Contour. Stareside marked a return to Felte in 2022 with its reassuring tone, while the dub-tinted Calque surfaced digitally in early 2023; both EPs were later combined on a single LP after Soliton arrived in 2024.