Having only released photos of himself but no name, Three Fields is ambient’s resident Batman—nothing is known about his identity except he’s a Birmingham-based electrician who’s been tinkering with signal processors for years. If you live in the West Bromwich area and are having new sockets put in, check to see if the bloke who fits them in is blasting Enya as he pulls up in his van. You can wait till he’s finished, then unmask him.

Gaelic chillout is a far cry from the Three Fields sound, however, which focuses on harsh static balanced out by gentle instruments. “Isolator,” released ahead of debut Cambridge Blue, is his style at its most digestible: fuzzy Casios peppered with guitar, glass bells playing a melody. The exotic, misty feel screams enjoy while bathing, and implies Three Fields is meant to be savoured with candles, beads and sea minerals. But the composer keeps an air of menace in the mix and proves that ambient should be enveloping first, relaxing second. He’s probably basing the approach on real life experience—if you’ve ever cross-wired your phase and CPC feeds, you’d find it hard to assume the lotus pose too.

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⊙ :: Keyword Tags: Three Fields

Named after the signature from the world’s greatest breakbeat track, Quam is Phil Gringer, a DJ from Boston who’s far, far too clever for eighteen. Back with his fake ID from the Berlin club circuit he’s premiering “Just in Time,” a screwed-up piece of midnight funk that could out-slink producers twice his age. With talent like this, a golden future awaits. His parents should prepare for minor emancipation.

Starting with cool cymbals and a single dub techno pad, “Just in Time” sags into the nicest kind of comedown music—the kind which reminds you stuff more messed up than your drug-battered brain can still function. Using footwork and chewed-up vocals Quam pours out a Bullion DJ set on helium, the shifted diva noises recreating that “too many microdots in the nightclub” moment. He might be too young to gain admission himself, but Gringer could become the prince of the VIP area with output like this, retaining enough humour and invention to convince you he’d send back the champagne.

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Oh, the music writer’s dilemma. Deeply entrenched in “the scene,” almost exclusively friends with the callus-fingered, can’t spit without hitting an unknown savant, practiced at writing the “this stuff is great, but [something about ‘journalistic integrity’]” email, and so, in a wild stab at impartiality, writing instead about the latest Animal Collective record, which is already stained with the sweat and semen of a hundred other critics.

So isn’t it ironic (don’t ya think?) that I’m breaking my own personal no-pals-allowed code to write about a project that probably wasn’t meant for anyone but friends. And even then, only for silent friends, intimate friends, campfire friends—not the “check my shit, bro!” friends so many musicians know and, perhaps by necessity, become. Or perhaps this project isn’t really even for friends, but just for the band itself. It is, after all, called Quality Time, and its membership is just husband and wife duo Franny and (yes, I know this guy) Joe Gurba (aka the Joe), sewing tracks together from old love letters as “a way of keeping their marriage off/on the rocks.”

Perhaps the way this track feels like it’s in confidence is what makes it so affecting. No one creates a Bandcamp page without visualizing an audience, but with “Magnetic North,” Quality Time still manages to keep itself focused on that ebbing, immaterial power that quiet music sometimes (rarely) births, and that two people sometimes (rarely) create between themselves. The track is not what a producer would call “fully realized”; it’s a tinny and time-flexing, with voices tumbling gently as if caught in an indecisive crosswind. But it’s magic, the way that the Microphones or Seven Swans (2004)-era Sufjan were magic in the early aughts, a reminder of what can be done when you lock that producer from the room. It is a sad, snowed-in song that invests its scant two minutes with a romance that the listener may borrow for the song’s duration but cannot keep. Regardless of who it came from, this track will be found fumbling out of my speakers come subzero temperatures.

I trust that this tiny light of attention won’t change the fact that this is essentially a bedroom project, ambitious only in its goal of documenting, shaping, and enduring a relationship. I hope Quality Time keeps writing songs and allowing friends to peer in. But I also hope that they remain looking at themselves—at each other—and not looking back out.

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⊙ :: Keyword Tags: Quality Time

Not to be confused with Channel 9’s drivable lounge chair, Project Jellybean is Joe Gillick of south London, who at fifteen left school, got himself a copy of MODPlug Tracker and now, six years later has this: “a collective group of musicians and artists + one Dutch girl.” Trying to succeed where others fudged up in joining synths and classical instruments, Jellybean’s sound has its edge in Miss Denmark, whose haunting vocals are so fragile Nordic Múm should be filing a lawsuit. Probably the reason why her identity’s kept secret.

Lickity Split, the debut EP, has been in production since Gillick’s school days, and “From Me (For You)” is its first big seducer, filled with the kind of broken rush you can only get from ditching exams. The instruments and computers are really are fused here: hooting recorders fold into electropop, the drill percussion too staggered to allow it near the dance floor. Gillick obviously misses some of the kids he got registered with as when the Dutch girl sighs “Cut me off / Why don’t you” he mumbles a sorry accompaniment, washed over with embarrassment. His inventiveness pulls him out of the slump, and stirs frozen guitar, woodwind, drum pads, and operetta solos together—an intimacy like watching Sigur Rós eating pretzels. Strange that he chose the zany/generic name to go with it. Even if he fails to set the iTunes search alight or look credible on Massive Attack’s “also liked” list—there’s a strong early similarity here—he’ll at least know missing exams hasn’t harmed him. There’s a future in production just waiting.

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⊙ :: Keyword Tags: Project Jellybean