Sunday Mix: El Hardwick

Earlier this year, London-based multidisciplinary artist El Hardwick ventured away from their Moonbow moniker to share their debut album 8 under their own name.

Hardwick’s vision of ambient music, and lived experience of its cathartic or soothing capabilities, is masterfully explored in their Sunday Mix. While words like ‘transportive’ or ‘otherworldly’ are quite often used overzealously when discussing projects quite as lulling as this, Hardwick’s gentle touch, tracklist choices and sci-fi inclinations coax assertive qualities from the undeniably subdued.

On the mix, Hardwick writes, “I wanted this mix to expand on some of the themes of 8: my recent debut album, which is a multimedia science fiction concept project.

As someone who lives with chronic illness, I see ambient music as a necessary space for rest, that is in itself an act of resistance to capitalist, grind culture. Ambient music, much like sci-fi, is both a space of speculation and fantastical escape; it so often celebrates an almost extraterrestrial aesthetic, and yet is also rooted in connecting to our earth, planets and stars, as a spiritual and ecological whole.

I wanted this mix to capture the spirit of ambient sci-fi soundtracks, using vapourware-infused drone, choral vocals and emotional, contemporary soundscapes; to imagine a future aesthetic that is human, where electronic instrumentation breathes, and synthesis sounds organic — spiritual even. Almost like a radio station broadcast from outer space, with intermittent interference from different timelines, that is both transportive but also involves a certain level of active listening.”