Audiopile Review: There’s a surprising medievalism to some of the 21st century’s most next-level electronic music. We’re thinking about the air of rarefied religiosity hanging like a veil over Akira Rabelais’ deconstructed choral loops or Sarah Davachi’s sad drones. For more evidence of this trend, behold our record of the week: ‘Campana Sonans’ by Jake Muir. Here, a link to religious institutions of the middle-ages is made explicit. The label’s blurb describes it as “a synapse-popping electro-acoustic soundwalk around Western Europe’s cathedrals, chapels and churches”. So, it’s a collection of processed field recordings, and yes there are plenty of those. But this one will truly, truly pop your synapses. Those who’ve been following Jake Muir’s increasingly impressive output will know only too well that he belongs in the exulted company of Rabelais and Davachi. Muir is a true master of ye olde DSP magic, and ‘Campana Sonans’ transmutes the sounds of church bells and cathedral-space room tone into a distinctly musical and powerfully psychedelic ambiance. Long story short: you probably shouldn’t drive or operate heavy machinery after listening to this one. It could easily be seen as a subversive project: the LA-to-Berlin hipster artiste queering the sound of religious ritual. And that’s not a million miles off. But Muir’s deconstruction is not desecration; it’s done with real reverence. He clearly has deep respect for the spiritual significance of the spaces he samples, and for the communities these spaces exist in. It’s interesting that some of the field recordings were made in Oswestry, a British border town where even long-term residents might struggle to tell you if you’re in England or Wales. ‘Campana Sonans’ exists on the borderline of sound and music, of the sacred and profane. And if that all sounds a bit hifalutin, let us assure you this is some of the most simply beautiful and pleasing ambient music you could hope to hear. But while the music may be surprisingly accessible, we should make clear that the record itself is likely to disappear into obscurity. It is an extremely limited run, and we’re among a very small, select group of stores that have managed to secure copies.

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A synapse-popping electro-acoustic soundwalk around Western Europe’s cathedrals, chapels and churches, 𝑪𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒏𝒂 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒏𝒔 skews recognizable sacred soundscapes, proposing a contemporary mythology that muddles the past, present and future. Following on from his critically-acclaimed 𝑩𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝑩𝒍𝒖𝒆𝒔 full-length, American sound artist Jake Muir familiarizes himself with German and British sonic architecture by studying some of the medieval shadows that still hang over Europe’s streets, even as they continue to evolve. Manipulating environmental recordings captured in Germany and England, Muir presents an impressionistic juxtaposition of parallel cultures: the UK’s distinctive “change ringing” technique, where a team of bell-ringers play long varied sequences on a set of tuned bells; and Germany’s more sober style, with monotonous peals that add rhythm to daily life.

When Muir moved from Los Angeles to Berlin back in 2019, it wasn’t just the German capital’s damp weather and long, dark winters that came as a surprise. He was immediately struck by the city’s anomalous acoustics, and one particular element stood out: the resonant church bells that echo around Berlin throughout the day to mark time, and for 10 minutes on Sundays as a call for mass. Gathering his field recording equipment, Muir acquainted himself with his new home by following the sonorous clangs, wandering from kiez to kiez to capture each church’s distinct auditory flavor. And the more material he collected, the more engrossed he became in the history of bell ringing, prompting a deep dive that would shuttle him across Germany and into Italy, Belgium and the UK.

On 𝑪𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒏𝒂 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒏𝒔, Muir trains his focus on Berlin, where his journey began, and on England, where he encountered the most elaborate bell ringing practice. 𝘌𝘳𝘻𝘬𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨 is a hypnotic lattice of sounds recorded all over the German capital: at Parochialkirche, a reformed church in Mitte; at evangelical church St. Matthäus, at Sophienkirche, another Mitte landmark; and at St. Mathias, a Roman Catholic church just in front of the Potsdam Gate. By fusing the liturgical chimes with snippets of local ambiance – traffic, chattering tourists and birdsong, for example – Muir takes a blurry snapshot of the city, queering its idiosyncratic color spectrum with his various digital processes. Using reverb to replicate the acoustic properties of both the streets and the church interiors, he subtly disturbs the timeline, stretching out brief peals into long, mesmerizing drones and turning garbled voices into ghostly babble.

The environment alters considerably on 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘴; Muir uses the same technique and applies it to recordings made at the 1000-year-old St. Oswald church in Oswestry, St. Bartholomew’s, Edgbaston and Holy Trinity in Stratford-Upon-Avon, home to Shakespeare’s final resting place. Here, Muir methodically untangles the change-ringing process, linking back to 𝘌𝘳𝘻𝘬𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨 with a single bell tone before moving inside the church itself and documenting the ringers’ shouted instructions, blending the calls with the bells’ mathematical cyclic patterns. Muir memorializes what in 2025 is a dying art-form – a community skill that’s disappearing worryingly quickly as young Brits lose interest in the church and its rituals. Unsettling distortions bite into the undulating sequences and underneath the noise, Muir highlights the music’s latent euphoria, drawing out its most celestial tonalities.