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Tag: ambient

9oct26

Published October 9, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Autumn is creeping in step by step. Colder starts to the day, now. The managed retreat begins. Played yesterday with Dirty Little Zine for making tiny photobooks to clip into notebooks. Dropped a frankly absurd amount of money on a shipment of magazines from Magculture.

TODAY:

ACCESSIONS:

Just received this in the post from Mia Wolff:

OPERATIONS: all the things. My to-do list is ridiculous.
STATUS: awaiting a delivery of stationery items and peering unhappily at my bank balance
READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).

I saw a straight razor and strop, plus a toothbrush stuck in a half pint of vodka. Stalin brushed his teeth with vodka.

LISTENING: right now, Night Tracks and also episode 22 of podcast Did Somebody Say…Ambient?
PAPERWORK: switched to the Pigma Micron 03 after having two brand new 0.7mm Energels crap out on me in a row with fat lines, skipped strokes, wet inks with bad flow. When did Energels get bad?

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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7oct26

Published October 7, 2026 by Warren Ellis

This is the face of a mancub who blames me specifically for the drop in temperature and the loss of the sun.

I have sympathy: it’s dark and rainy, and so is my mood.

THE RUMOURS that emerged sounded like the opening of a thriller. A young woman working in a Siberian research lab supposedly breaks a test tube containing a lethal plague pathogen. She is dead within 48 hours. Authorities race to contain the situation. The questions outnumber the answers, breeding suggestions of conspiracy. The fears may prove unfounded: there may not have been a leak at Russia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute. But the world can be forgiven for its panicked interest.

Not least because that is pretty much how Annie Jacobsen’s BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO begins.

This is my porn now.

STATUS: it’s an offline day – work and housework during day, out tonight
READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).

I said, “Have you ever had a hotfoot, Reggie?” Reggie laughed. His sidemen laughed. They went say what? in sync. I poured the bottle of scotch on his shoes. I flicked my lighter and dropped it on his feet. His shoes and socks immolated. His trouser cuffs torched. He screeched. I smelled scorched flesh. He flailed for a water glass. I tossed it out of reach. His trumpet man snatched at a belt piece. I caught his hand and pinned it flat to the table. I grabbed a steak knife and stabbed through flesh and tabletop. The blade severed bones and went in half hilt deep.


LISTENING: KINETIC VOID, various artists (“maximalist ambient”)

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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28sep26

Published September 28, 2026 by Warren Ellis

First day of reset. Index cards, paper, pens.

The deli was randomly closed – fuck you, Dan – so I stopped in at the Pipe of Port for the first time since it reopened. It’s a basement bar/restaurant that’s been in Southend since God was a boy.

Fried cauliflower, hummous, vegetables, pomegranate and smoked salmon. Rain would approve of everything but the salmon.

OPERATIONS: I got two pages done and sent before I went out to lunch. I have some copying over from a notebook and some scripting to do, and I really need to reply to some emails…!
STATUS:


READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).
LISTENING: right this second, HAPPINESS, Paavoharju + Joose Keskitalo. Making a conscious choice this week to listen primarily to CDs.
LAST WATCHED: Mock The Week, I think. I’m glad it’s back. Now I want some cable channel to bring Frankie Boyle’s New World Order back.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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17aug26

Published August 17, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Imagine a story where the events in our lives that happen online are never depicted or mentioned. A day would seem twelve hours long and the protagonists would spend two thirds of that time asleep.

I was gifted this Panerai Table Clock by a client a few weeks ago. I should be keeping it in its box, as it’s crazy expensive. But what’s the point in having things and not enjoying them? So it lives on my work desk, sitting on top of the little box containing a medal I was given in Ireland years ago. It’s a reminder to myself that I need to stay disconnected from the internet. Testing a site blocker on the laptop today.

Had dinner at the local haute restaurant on Friday night and it was as ever fully insane. There was a mushroom risotto with walnuts, walnut ketchup, fresh Parmesan and riced mushroom in place of the rice that was simply MAD and they made it just for us. We also got experimented on with a few dishes and god damn please keep doing that. We have been informed that we are Regulars now, and that is delightful.

I had an Idea on Saturday and realised I’d lost the day to sitting thinking about it, which was annoying, so I’ve booked myself a gig for next Saturday to make sure I leave the house. I am naturally so bad at leaving the house and I really need to.

ACCESSIONS:

MAIGRET IN VICHY, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+) was on sale, and it’s one I haven’t read.

MUD DUCK, Travis Malone (UK) (US+), because the author emailed me yesterday and since it’s currently free on Kindle (in the UK at least, I dunno about the US right now) it was easier to just grab a copy there.

Recently divorced and having drank himself to unemployment, Iain McHughes has no idea who he wants to be anymore. When his former rehab roommate offers him a second chance he hasn’t earned by way of a business opportunity he can’t afford to pass up, he loads everything he owns into his car and points it west on I-10.

Somewhere between San Antonio and Las Vegas, in the miles of nothing between the man he used to be and the man he hopes to become, mania, anxiety and a CB radio are the only tools left at his disposal that can help him rewrite his eulogy. Mysterious towers dot the countryside, phantom voices bleed through his radio, and Iain struggles to ascertain whether his mind is deteriorating or the world around him is. When Iain’s new business partner inadvertently pushes him into the middle of a dangerous business transaction, Iain must finally determine the legacy he wants to leave, and what it will cost him to leave it.

OPERATIONS: updating the boards, getting into scripting with one hand and story development with the other
STATUS: slow to get started.
READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: THE REGYKLA VARIATIONS I-III, ASHTORETH & ONSTURICHEIT

LAST WATCHED: PORTH TRETHEK, Mark Jenkin (2020)


DRINK: Black Cherry Mead.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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let there be light, for maybe seven minutes: 12feb26

Published February 12, 2026 by Warren Ellis

It has stopped raining for whole minutes.

As I write this, it’s darkening down again. I am still completely tapped out, which is getting really fucking frustrating now. So I’m going to leave this here and hope for a comeback tomorrow.

TODAY:

STATUS: 💀
READING: THE QUEEN’S AGENT: FRANCIS WALSINGHAM AT THE COURT OF ELIZABETH I (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Ambient Daily 48

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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12jan26

Published January 12, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I blew off everything last night: made harissa lamb shanks with truffled mashed potato, then a jar of cold ginger tea, then a jar of blood orange orangeade. But it turns out I still can’t make hummus.

TODAY:

  • Here in the UK, Ofcom is “investigating” X over sexual deepfakes, which could lead to a fine of 10% of X’s global revenue, while Musk is appearing in public with Pete Hegseth, signalling a return to the Trump administration fold.
  • Erich von Daniken died. At least one generation will remember his weird books being on the shelves of every charity shop in the world.
  • Autofocusing eyeglasses. (which makes me smile, see STATUS below)

OPERATIONS: Today is scripting and figuring out my schedule for the next few weeks, because I am appallingly behind and need to sort myself out.
STATUS: My near vision has been slowly deteriorating over the last five years or so, and I’ve been needing very strong light to read some print. Herself saw me struggling to read a small-print label yesterday, and handed me a pair of her +2 reading glasses that were laying around, as an experiment. And suddenly holy shit. Mortifying. I held on to the glasses and spent an hour reading THE NOMA GUIDE TO FERMENTATION without needing a powerful reading light. I’m 58 next month and have just ordered my first pair of reading glasses. I am mortified, to be honest.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+) and THE NOMA GUIDE TO FERMENTATION (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:


LAST WATCHED: rewatching SMILEY’S PEOPLE on iPlayer

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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NIGHT MUSIC: chroma

Published January 4, 2026 by Warren Ellis

chroma by fields we found. It’s a misty summer morning of a thing, which makes a nice change right now.

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SUCH SWEET THUNDER and FRUTIGER AERO

Published January 3, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I got gifted these two records by Such Sweet Records just before Xmas.

SUCH SWEET THUNDER is very much a chill-out record, improvised electroacoustic ambient. There’s quite a range in the three pieces on here, a collection of soundscapes that transition cleverly. I’m reminded of a few other people – there’s a flash of guitar work that made me think of Windy and Carl – but it’s very much its own thing.

FRUTIGER AERO is a shorter piece – I have to say, I’m usually allergic to saxophone, that most abused of instruments, the skronk criminal and soundtrack to every shit thriller from the eighties and nineties. But here it is pleasingly textural and carefully applied. I’m very pleased with both of these and very grateful to Such Sweet.

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AMBIENT, Alice Thompson

Published December 6, 2025 by Warren Ellis

A bit spendy for a digital album, but the third track is worth the price of admission all on its own. Those big grainy washes and slow movements that have that indefinable Philip Jeck like tone to my (tin) ear

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