You need to listen to this collection of ambient Spanish music and 80s electronic music

Lots of La Ola Interior (Spanish exotic and citrus 1983-1990) It sounds shockingly contemporary for a bunch of songs recorded in the mid-to-late 1980s. The ambient genre as a genre was relatively well established by the time many of the artists in this group recorded their songs. But as we approached the end of the century, much of the scene in the United States and Japan began to move into New Age territory. These artists from the Spanish peninsula were trading in something more experimental.

No interior It covers a lot of stylistic ground. There are desperate drones, classic analogue excursions, discrete chants, field recordings, and yes, even some more rhythm-forward tracks. But what unites it all is the clear DIY aesthetic and demand for your attention.

Often times, ambient music is designed to fade into the background. According to Brian Eno, “It should be as ignorable as it is interesting.” And while some tracks were running No interior They can serve as background music, and most require close listening. The atmosphere here is in its hypnotic consistency and repetition, not in its neglect.

The opening track from Miguel A. Ruiz, “Transparent,” is built around a short loop of what sounds like a piano. It’s drowned in borrowed noise, indicating that it’s being driven by a low-bit-rate sampler. What unfolds is almost the opposite of what happened with William Basinski Disintegration rings. The lurching loop of gloom slowly fills in, adding more layers, building to a dense crescendo that abruptly breaks off.

This immediately leads into Camino al Desvan’s “La Contorsión de Pollo,” which sounds like Tangerine Dream played at half speed. Finis Africae’s “Hybla” is a Krautrock song filtered through Spanish and Arabic folk music traditions, arriving at something rhythmic and catchy that wouldn’t sound out of place alongside the Kraftwerk sans drums of Orfeón Gagarin’s “Última instancia.” Other tracks like Javier Segura’s “Malagueñas 2” are more orchestral, almost epic – an unresolved hero’s journey in aural form.

Many of the artists in the collection appear multiple times, giving you a sense of their place in this diverse and loosely connected scene. You can identify artists whose roots are in more traditional musical forms (Finis Africae), which are heavily influenced by American minimalist composers (Segura), and which are almost unclassifiable (Ruiz). But you also feel the drive for sonic exploration that unites them.

groups like No interior Invaluable for preserving lesser-known works by artists often overlooked by the American public. Les Disques Bongo Joe label puts out a number of these compilations and they are worth following on Bandcamp.