Toronto ambient composer Alaskan Tapes (Brady Kendall) returns with Blank Slate / Open Space, a quietly transformative AA-side release that finds him reclaiming creative autonomy through sound, space, and collaboration. Partnering with Portland-based saxophonist Blu Miles and filmmaker Kyle Rose, Kendall crafts a work that feels less like a release and more like a clearing, an emotional exhale after a long period of constraint.
Across the two pieces, Kendall leans into restraint with renewed confidence. His hallmark patience remains, but there’s a looseness here, a willingness to let instinct and imperfection guide the process. What began as a remote collaboration took an unexpected turn when Miles’ improvised saxophone lines prompted Kendall to discard his original compositions entirely and start again. The decision proves vital: the resulting music breathes with a rare sense of presence, shaped as much by human movement and environmental noise as by melody itself.
“Blank Slate” unfolds with a fragile stillness, its textures slowly revealing themselves like light through mist. Miles’ saxophone enters not as a lead but as a voice within the environment, warm, wavering, and deeply emotive. “Open Space” feels like its natural counterpart, stretching the same emotional fabric wider, allowing silence and resonance to speak just as loudly as sound. Together, the tracks form a meditative diptych that reflects transition, vulnerability, and renewal.
That sense of in-between is echoed in Kyle Rose’s accompanying short film, Blank Slate, Open Space, which quietly documents the rituals of departure and beginning as a couple packs up their life and moves forward. Like the music, the film finds meaning in the small gestures, the pauses, and the moments we often overlook.
For an artist long celebrated for his emotional subtlety and cinematic touch, Blank Slate / Open Space feels especially revealing. Free from external expectations and recent industry ties, Kendall sounds unguarded and resolute, allowing noise, minimalism, and intuition to coexist. It’s a reminder that ambient music, at its most powerful, doesn’t escape feeling, it holds it gently, letting it unfold in real time.