picnic: bonus LP

An ideal roll call of Ulla, Nadia Khan, Newworldaquarium, Ben Bondy, Mister Water Wet, NAP, JR Chaparro, Haji K., and many more, help tuck Picnic’s eponymous LP beauty to bed with a sublime suite of remixes and alternate versions One of 2021’s lushest ambient sides, ‘Picnic’ is a proper friends and family affair helmed by the duo’s mdo & Ju Ca, a pair of Melbourne-based souls who share that region’s prevailing grasp of ambient warmth and elemental utility. Where their debut LP, proper, also included guest spots from the likes of Huerco S., The Humble Bee, Dntel, and DJ Paradise, this new 'Bonus' follows suit to infuse the far flung yet mutual spirits of the modern ambient rhizome, dialling in subtle reflections on the originals, as well as new collaborations, that diffuse and extend its pleasures into the gauzy mid-distance. Nadia Khan opens with a blissed, puce-hued rendering of ‘dewey’ that sustains the original’s sanguine atmosphere, while new work ‘leaving a conversation’ ropes in pepper (Ulla), Monkey Twenty (Pontiac Streator), and Low Flung for a sweet patch of deep-diving smudge. Picnic’s zonked hypnagogic collaboration with Mister Water Wet ‘cliff dive’ pushes those same hazy buttons, while a standout piece of loping ambient technohouse from Newworldaquarium features a steady pulse in an effortlessly brilliant manner that's somehow distinctly NWAQ -  the man can do no wrong to our ears. Other Joe supplies bass-heavy ballast in their spongiform ambient dembow take on ‘elkhorn’ that lands shades away from DJ Python’s deepest, and JR Chaparro takes time to get between the pores on on a 9 minute version of ‘folds and rips’, and Ben Bondy smushes our temples with the light-headed, domestic rustles and rumbles of his version to ‘drops in the water’.  Trust it’s all of the sweetest ambient variety, faithfully weft for downtimes in a way that's both gaseous and heavyweight.