Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick

During the last dozen years, the harpist Mary Lattimore and the singer Julianna Barwick have expanded notions of what it means to make ambient or New Age music, or what it means to love music that lets you get lost as it lifts you up. Lattimore first emerged as part of the fertile Philadelphia experimental scene, but a move to Los Angeles encouraged her sound to expand with vivid new directions and colors, like the blooms of yarrow and poppy come spring. She has adopted the motto “Music for applying shimmering eye shadow,” and it perfectly suits her coruscant pieces. Barwick’s music went through a similar westward expansion. After first gaining notice in New York for her astounding vocal records, she, too, headed to Los Angeles, where her 2020 album, Healing Is a Miracle, embraced not only more keyboards and enormous bass but also the transformative power of her sonics and songs.

Lattimore and Barwick have become deep California friends and collaborators. Lattimore appeared on Healing Is a Miracle, and Barwick reworked Lattimore’s “Never Saw Him Again” for a remix set. They both appeared on their fellow pal Jónsi’s 2020 LP, Shivers, and, in early 2024, they finally released a tune, “Canyon Lights,” as a duo. They drift together into a hazy space, Lattimore’s repeated harp line seeming to usher Barwick into the breeze. It seems like a preamble for more work to come, an invocation for an arrival.