Hammock

Ambient duo Hammock craft shimmering sonic environments rich in textural detail, meticulously shaped compositions, and deep emotional resonance. From their formation in the early 2000s onward, the pair has issued successive installments of their evolving instrumental catalog, refining both their musical language and methodology across projects such as the 2012 release Departure Songs and the 2023 album Love in the Void.

The Nashville, Tennessee-based project originated in 2003 when Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, both previously active in Common Children, came together to create Hammock. Their first full-length effort, Kenotic, appeared on the band’s self-titled imprint in 2004, followed the next year by The Sleepover Series, Vol. 1. Exposure increased sharply in 2006 when NBC featured several Hammock pieces during its Winter Olympics telecasts of figure skating. Later that year Darla signed the duo, issuing their third album, Raising Your Voice... Trying to Stop an Echo, in November.

In 2008 the fourth album, Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow, surfaced as a studio realization of music originally written for Jónsi & Alex’s first overseas art exhibition; the record pursued a deliberately austere, minimal aesthetic. The 2011 EP The Longest Year captured the difficulties the members faced the previous year, among them the flooding of Byrd’s residence. Also in late 2011 the band issued Asleep in the Downlights, an EP recorded alongside Steve Kilbey and Tim Powles, veteran alt-rock figures and members of the Australian group the Church.

Departure Songs, released to widespread critical praise in 2012, and its 2013 successor Oblivion Hymns demonstrated Byrd and Thompson’s broadening scope through expansive neo-classical gestures that incorporated sweeping orchestral passages and choral textures. A 2014 reissue of the 2005 Sleepover Series, Vol. 1 coincided with the appearance of its follow-up, Sleepover Series, Vol. 2. The 2016 album Everything and Nothing merged the expansive climaxes of recent work with the duo’s earlier post-rock, guitar-driven foundation. Mysterium arrived in August 2017 as an hour-long conceptual statement—the first installment of a planned trilogy—written in memory of Byrd’s close friend Clark Kern, who had passed away in 2016. Universalis followed in 2018 and Silencia completed the cycle in 2019.

Elsewhere, issued in 2021, was assembled remotely amid COVID-19 health precautions, with Byrd and Thompson tracking separately at their respective homes using reduced instrumentation and production. The pair reconvened in person for Love in the Void, released in January 2023, which favored more animated material featuring passages of insistent rhythm alongside dense post-rock arrangements.