"Immersion is the key word when it comes to ambient music, at least in my opinion. Realistically speaking, it’s the one deciding factor on which your entire creation hinges when you dabble in the already densely populated world of drawn-out, spacious sounds; after all, what good is an album full of slow-burning, meditative music if it can’t convince the listener to let themselves dissolve in its sparse palette of tones and movements? Therefore, I wouldn’t exactly call it a risqué statement to assume that your only chance at listener retention depends on your ability to present them with an immersive, all-encompassing sound experience. Otherwise, your music will just blend in with the swathes of non-committal, middle-of-the-road ambient records that might sound pleasant at first but completely fall apart upon closer inspection.

Luckily, Baltimore, Maryland-based solo artist John Lane – alias A Journey for Giraffes – spared himself such a banal fate by ensuring that his new album Spool not only sounds right, but also actually feels the part.

How this was achieved is probably a question better suited to be answered by its original creator; alas, my own thoughts on the matter will have to suffice for now. The most obvious point of reference would be the overall aesthetic Lane gave Spool through his artistic choices. You see, his latest A Journey for Giraffes endeavor pulls from the genre’s past and (relative) present to achieve a unified idea of where things might be heading in the future. Alongside modern, drone-based exploits popularized by the Tim Heckers and William Basinskis of the world, we also get noticeable nods towards the genre’s humble new age beginnings. These are largely based on the inclusion of airy synths, bells, and ambiguously world music-sounding snippets. By effectively mingling the old with the new, Spool seems to have somewhat fallen out of time, sounding neither contemporary nor unduly dated – it’s rather timeless, in a way.

Another way for Lane to achieve a palpable sense of immersion was to tether some of the album’s tracks to certain locations, colors, or complete works of art. I don’t know about you, but I always find it exciting when the music I listen to acts as a portal into new worlds or even other artists’ œuvre. For example, the album’s tenth track, “Slope at Senko”, is named after a piece by 20th-century Japanese printmaker Kawase Hasui. As an avid admirer of the ukiyo-e style of woodblock printing myself, I found this to be a wonderfully exciting interdisciplinary rabbit hole. Through this arguably small connection, Lane gave the song a whole new sense of wonder, discovery, and belonging, in turn enhancing its immersive effects on anyone willing to follow its trail of breadcrumbs.

As a largely album-focused discipline, ambient music is notoriously hard to meaningfully dissect in review form – any attempt at describing single tracks runs the risk of becoming either redundant or, at worst, painfully esoteric. So if you noticed that I’ve been putting off discussing any of the actual songs on Spool, this is why. It’s a fruitless endeavor to try and pick apart what’s basically meant to be one enveloping atmosphere, at least as far as I’m concerned. So instead of giving you any concrete pointers, I would prefer to just let you soak up the ambience for yourself this time around; I think you’ll find this to be the preferable option, too.

Spool is not a crass, striking reinvention of the ambient genre; neither is it a navel-gazing, indulgent retreading of ideas and concepts that have been put forward a million times over. Instead, it treads a comfortable middle ground of feeling both inventive and familiar enough to satisfy your curiosity and habitude in equal measure. With his A Journey for Giraffes project, John Lane toes this particularly fine line tastefully enough to continuously carve a sizeable niche for himself in an oftentimes overbearingly uniform genre, and Spool is a testament to his artistic success."
~ Dominik Böhmer
everythingisnoise.net/reviews/a-journey-of-giraffes-spool/

"The criminally unknown John Lane – in obscurity parading under the delightfully envisioned A Journey Of Giraffes appellation – transduces abstract and complex concepts into ambient soundtracks of the mysterious, diaphanous and often strange.

Five albums in with the ridiculously prolific North American label, Somewherecold Records, Lane once more explores and expands his sound; changing and modifying his deep understanding of the ambient genre on every release. And as with each project, the unassuming artist is inspired by a chosen theme: perhaps a work of art, a location or a book (see both the Armenia and Kona albums for example).

The latest album, Spool, is no different in that respect, being subtly, almost amorphously imbued by the late WG Sebald’s acclaimed trilogy of cerebral travelogues: The Rings Of Saturn, The Emigrant and Vertigo. Lane taps into the author’s preoccupied themes of the ‘loss of memory’ and ‘decay of civilizations, traditions and physical objects’.

Spool is bookended in this respect by two fairly low key New Jersey boroughs only ever observed by Lane from a car window; fleetingly glanced at as turnings on signposts whilst driving up and down the ‘turnpike’. Yet both locations have led Lane’s imagination cogs to start turning, as he daydreams about the lives of those who’ve made those small towns their home. ‘Swedesboro’, as the name makes pretty clear, was founded by Swedish immigrants over three hundred years ago, and is known for its fine balance of ‘urban forestry’ (thank you Wikipedia). Here, that inconspicuous enclave is soundtracked by suffused fuzz, ascending elevators, lingering electric piano notes and indistinct workshop sounds: like a Twin Peaks sawmill. ‘Glassboro’ meanwhile, built on an early history of glass making, gets an almost ghostly, etched and translucent score – there’s also a constant communicative knock like sound that could be someone stuck in a tank.

The album’s other geographical reference points are the beautiful Japanese woodblock printed artwork scene ‘Slope At Senko’ and ‘Campfire On Gibraltar’. Kawase Hasus’ original enervated snow blizzard picture is rendered a suitable evocative flutter that sounds like someone changing channels on a static fuzzy snowy TV set on the first of those tracks, whilst the second is a near hymnal cooed embrace of the elements, set around that title’s crackling flame licked campfire side.

Elsewhere the album embodies the idea of the traveller, who can never settle, yet soaks up the psychogeography, depth and atmosphere of each place they visit. Lane does this with compositions that stir the merest traces of the Japanese school of ambient electronica and electric piano notes that wouldn’t sound out of place on both Roedelius and Thomas Dinger’s solo works.

Lane’s Spool is yet another layer, another explorative page on a log journey that I hope leads to greater recognition. Composing in relative isolation, releasing unheralded works of brilliance, he damn well deserves it."

Dominic Valvona
Monolith Cocktail

"Spool is an apt title for this collection of ambient yarns. John Lane, the musician behind AJOG, unwinds several threads across these 14 tracks, touching on places and times; of constantly moving yet needing to periodically stop and scan the horizon. The lumbering songs slowly evolve, adding layers and instruments along the way like fellow travelers on the journey. Out now on Somewherecold records."
~Ryan Anderson
Sonixcursions