Travel

Travel, an ensemble of ambient instrumentalists, drew attention equally for their extended, intricate compositions and for the sharply polarized reactions those recordings elicited. Some listeners branded the results incoherent noise, while others celebrated the quartet as forward-thinking eccentrics; regardless, the work of multi-instrumentalists Matt Hart, Darren Callahan, Eric Appleby, and Kelly Morelock remained compelling. Their first album, Opus Oil Slick, arrived in 1998 and illustrated how a punk rock mindset applied to the demanding sphere of ambient rock could succeed, prompting critics to debate its strengths. The follow-up, This Is Our ~Music, provoked the same blend of praise and dismissal while revealing a gradual turn toward more conventional song forms. By the time Me & My Friend Noise appeared in 2002, many of the group’s more idiosyncratic habits had been trimmed, resulting in a comparatively direct ambient statement.