Download Nascent Zones, a collection of lost songs from Philly ambient artist Tadoma

For many musicians and artists, editing is a black hole. In the case of Joe Patitucci, the guy behind Philly ambient outfit Tadoma, a collection of songs-in-progress was keeping him from advancing musically. He’d been tweaking and re-tooling these recordings, some of which pre-dated his 2011 debut LP Field Notes by about four years. In an effort to clear the table, Patitucci deleted all of the master audio files from these recording sessions.

The songs weren’t completely lost, though. Last night he released nine of these works-in-progress on his Bandcamp as a new Tadoma LP collection called Nascent Zones. Patitucci doesn’t regard these as finished songs; each is a rough mix that he went on to further refine and change, before hitting a wall and hitting delete.

Listening, you can hear several different approaches and directions this music could have taken. We hear a bright and blooming Four Tet-esque patter on “Rover” and a minimal and melancholic acoustic guitar on”Contact” (owing a definite debt to one of Patitucci’s favorites, Brian Eno). Some songs are under a minute, while “Welcome to Ethno Probe” approaches ten minutes, its decidedly sinister industrial pulse recalling Oneohtrix Point Never.

“While I regret this loss and not being able to perfect the mixes we’re all left with, I’m happy to have these out in the world for all to enjoy, myself included,” Patitucci writes. LIsten to Nascent Zones below, and get a name-your-price download of the collection on Bandcamp.