Amber Disc – Joel Noct Brinson (2025) – Album Review

Album: Amber Disc

Artist: Joel Noct Brinson

Release Date: February 27, 2025

Full disclosure, this album made my Top Ambient Albums of Spring 2025 even though it came out in February. I would have added it to my other list, but time moves differently for everyone I guess. The first time I heard this album, I wrote down that it “hums in your soul,” which still feels right, but it’s also something stranger. It feels like you’re in a womb. Not your mother’s womb, someone else’s womb. This record feels like you’ve been submerged inside someone else’s womb. Is it Joel Noct’s womb? Maybe it’s the proverbial womb – the sonic membrane that separates consciousness from oblivion.

Amber Disc reminds me of the best corners of Coil, especially 7-Methoxy-β-Carboline. The music seems to exist in two different places at once – one place is a spacious, glowing sound cathedral in a dark cloud city and the other place is an intensive care unit where they try and keep the ghosts alive with analog equipment. It occurred to me when I wrote that sentence that I’ve hit my vape pen four times in the past 15 minutes. It stays.

What I like about this album is that the edges blur into each other and what’s left is the hum of life and vibration of awareness. It’s an incubator for something not entirely terrestrial. The drones seems to move in long, patient arcs way out in the distance. The artifacts are an accumulation of tones and I can almost swear they have a memory. It gives the impression of something that has always existed. It feels a bit ancient, or maybe the word I’m looking for is “immediate”, as if you’ve stumbled onto a forgotten transmission still looping in an abandoned spiritual observatory.

It builds upon itself with restraint and patience. The listener needs to catch up, but they have all the time in the world to do so. What are you waiting for?