Ambienet Chamber Space Music: Deborah Martin & Jill Haley's Rendering Time.
By John Diliberto 1/3/2026
In 1999 I coined the term ambient chamber music to embody the sound created by artists like Harold Budd, Kevin Keller, and David Darling. It was music with a classical refinement, but covered in reverb, electronic ambient atmospheres, and a more free-floating melodic sensibility. Musicians occupying that terrain grew exponentially in the 21st century as Nils Frahm, Hania Rani, Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, Balmorhea and dozens more arrived in this sound. With Rendering Time, Deborah Martin and Jill Haley take ambient chamber music into space.
I’ve followed the careers of Deborah Martin and Jill Haley for a long time. I didn’t know Martin when she was an opera or country singer, but I discovered her in the early days of the Spotted Peccary label. She was mixing mysticism and Taos drums in atmospheric music, winding her way through electronic moods. I’ve known Jill Haley for quite a bit longer. I first heard her with the acoustic fusion group, One Alternative. Since then she’s made numerous contributions to productions by Will Ackerman and has nurtured a solo career of sedate chamber music centered on her National Park series of albums which is now up to 11 volumes.
Rendering Time forms a trilogy with the duo’s previous two releases, Into the Quiet and The Silence of Grace. On those previous albums Martin’s electronics were more atmospheric and textural. On Rendering Time, they head into space with electronic whooshes, alien insect sounds, and spaceships landing. Haley’s oboe and English Horn are often calling out mournfully, a last survivor in a dystopian landscape.
That’s an interesting turn, given that both musicians derive much of their musical influence and emotional sustenance from nature. Haley, afterall, spends residencies at each national park she composes for. Yet, despite the spacey electronics, there is still an organic quality at work here. Besides Haley’s wind instruments, Martin adds Native American flute, handpan drums, acoustic guitar, Taos drums and an instrument not found on many ambient albums, a Garden Weasel. I’m not sure what tracks that might be used on because there are a lot of clackity-clack sounds on this album that help forge a delirious landscape.
With each musician coming from a classical background, you would expect that to emerge, and it does on tracks like “Spaces Within Spaces.” Haley’s Debussy-etched melody lines on English Horn are interwoven with Martin’s synth melodies, surrounded by ambient noises that are like a forest warped into the “upside-down.” While it might hint at Debussy, this track, like all the others has no clear melodic line, just fragments of melody cast into space.
Each piece conjures up a deeply-woven environment. “Cenote (Place of Deep Water)” centers on Haley’s English horn, blowing slow and low, traversing a cluttered soundscape of noises and Martin’s Native American flute. All the while, space gurgles wander through this song which takes its title from the sinkholes of the Yucatan that result in crystal clear fresh water pools. Haley and Martin’s pool is full of dark shadows.
Both artists are credited with Primordial Voice Vocalizations which you can hear on “From Source” as they breathe through native flute and space warps over a slow, arhythmic tribal drum beat. It is at once purely ambient and absolutely avant-garde, like something out of a mid-60s Stockhausen composition: primal and cerebral.
“Fitful Dreams” is one of the only tracks to offer up a steady rhythm with a three note sequencer pattern that they manipulate into different sonorities, from winds to strings to electronics. It’s a nod to Philip Glass and Steve Reich in its minimalist modes. The title is appropriate because it’s a nervous track that will set you on edge.
Conversely, “Soaring” also lives up to its title with a surging synth pad, Haley on oboe praying to the skies in counterpoint to a French horn-like synth line and acoustic guitar strumming on a march to the summit. It’s a track that, like a river, flows inexorably toward its destination.
Pastoral elements do emerge here and there and you’ll find that on “Shadow of the Moon,” albeit with spaceship landing effects. Martin strums on acoustic guitar while Haley calls out into the abyss, answered by Martin’s Native American flute. Sometimes Haley’s horn is intertwined with itself through multi-tracking creating some moving orchestrations.
The album ends on an uplifting note with “Sunlight and Starlight.” Synthesizers twinkle, digital harps pluck out a pastoral refrain, and Haley’s oboe soars heroically above it all, as the final track takes you to a new horizon.
Rendering Time will send you into timeless space. It’s an album of deep moods and primal meditations from two musicians who have woven themselves together by inhabiting an enveloping and dreamlike space that is sometimes harrowing, sometimes contemplative, and always thought provoking. Deborah Martin and Jill Haley have taken a leap into the unknown and invite you along.