Consider this the start of a very soothing trend: after somehow making it through the first 13 years of this blog without posting up any ambient pedal steel jams (that I can recall), here's the second one this month. "Slip/Fall" is a gorgeous, shimmering looped pedal steel dreamscape from Mississippi's Kell Kellum. The languid, gently sweeping opener from his new record Adding to the Ashes serendipitously began to take shape as Kell was doing some soundtrack work for a friend's documentary; he tells us about the origin of the track:

"Slip/Fall started out as two separate pedal steel loops I recorded as soundscape for a friend's documentary. As the recording progressed, the engineer and I couldn't help but love how well the two loops segued into each other. A decision was made to combine the two loops and form one track. I then had to call my friend, telling him I had gotten emotionally attached to the track, and asked his blessing to keep ownership of the track. He was gracious enough to oblige. At that point I decided to make a record. Slip/Fall came about by happenstance, giving way to the making of a whole record."

Kell's Adding to the Ashes is out May 11th via Oxford label Muscle Beach.