Michael Hix, founder of the Nashville Ambient Ensemble, is stepping into a quieter, more intimate world with his solo debut, Wonderful Aspiration of the Source. The forthcoming self-titled album trades the Ensemble’s layered instrumentation for the simplicity of an electric guitar, revealing a profoundly personal journey inspired by Zen practice, meditation, and a reawakened relationship with the instrument that first drew him to music.
“Wonderful Aspiration of the Source is my lineage name in the Zen tradition I practice,” Hix said. “This album came from a place of needing to simplify. Music stopped being a standalone pursuit and became part of my mindfulness. These songs are more from the heart.”
Recorded live at The Golden Tone Zone in Nashville with Trevor Nikrant (Styrofoam Winos) behind the console, the album unfolds like a meditation on stillness. Gone are the synthesizers and pedal steel textures that defined the Nashville Ambient Ensemble. Instead, his B-Bender Telecaster, processed through looping setups, becomes an orchestra of tones, shimmering one moment, bending plaintively the next.
Tracks like “Deer Park”, improvised after a meditation retreat in California, are like spontaneous prayers, while “Lattice” and “Arrivals” pulse with warmth and clarity. Hix’s guitar tone is deceptively simple yet immersive, conjuring the qualities of ambient synth music despite being entirely guitar-driven.
In this way, the record reminds me of Nick Millevoi’s Moon Pulses (2024), which is another guitar-centric instrumental album that creates an enveloping soundscape similar to ambient music.
On Wonderful Aspiration of the Source, Hix’s restraint is among the album’s core strengths. Recorded live, you can feel how each piece is grounded in breath and presence. The result is a collection of ten tracks that, in many ways, distills Hix’s mindfulness practice into sound.
While it may stand apart from Nashville’s mainstream musical identity, Wonderful Aspiration of the Source aligns perfectly with the city’s experimental ambient scene, where quiet innovation thrives in the margins.
It’s not a “Nashville record” in the traditional sense, but it still carries a kind of outlaw spirit, one that eschews genre for something much more radically human, intimate, and unconventional.
As another hot summer grinds on, Hix offers this collection to us as an invitation – or perhaps a mantra – to slow down and stay in the moment, no matter how much noise bellows over the airwaves.
Soon, the seasons will change, as they always do, and summer will give way to fall. So, sit with this new record and savor each sound.
Set for release on September 19th via Centripetal Force, Wonderful Aspiration of the Source will arrive just in time for the autumnal equinox. The album will be available digitally, on CD, and as a limited edition “peaceful pink” vinyl, a fitting format for music rooted in calm and quiet beauty.
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