Alaskan Tapes & Blu Miles Release AA-Side, “Blank Slate” / “Open Space”

Toronto ambient composer Brady Kendall reclaims his independence with two deeply textured new pieces, in collaboration with Portland-based saxophonist Blu Miles and an accompanying film by Kyle Rose.

Toronto-based composer Alaskan Tapes (Brady Kendall) returns with a new AA-side release, “Blank Slate” and “Open Space,” a quietly stirring collaboration with Portland saxophonist Blu Miles. Together, the two tracks form a meditative diptych, lush, spacious, and achingly human, that marks a new chapter in Kendall’s ongoing journey through sound and self.

Over the past decade, Kendall has quietly become one of the most respected voices in modern ambient and neoclassical music, amassing hundreds of millions of streams and earning recognition from platforms like BBC Radio 3, KEXP, and Apple Music. His music, patient, textured, and cinematic, has always been about more than atmosphere; it’s about emotional truth rendered through restraint.

“Blank Slate”/“Open Space” captures that balance perfectly. What began as a remote collaboration, Kendall sending early demos to Miles for improvisation, evolved into something wholly new.

Kendall explains:

“I had originally sent Blu completely different tracks and had him play multiple lines. When I received his recordings, I scrapped my parts entirely and rewrote everything from the ground up. Thankfully, we were doing house renovations at the time, so natural movement and noise bled into the recordings. It made everything feel alive.”

The result is a piece that feels both intimate and expansive: the sound of stillness moving, of emotion refracted through space.

Alaskan Tapes x Blu Miles “Blank Slate” / “Open Space” single artwork

The accompanying short film, Blank Slate, Open Space, directed by Kyle Rose, is a meditation on endings and beginnings. Inspired by Rose’s own move from Los Angeles to New York, it follows a couple packing up their apartment, capturing the small, tender rituals that make up a life shared.

Kendall states:

“‘Blank Slate’ was written as proof to myself that I didn’t need to conform to current structures in this type of music. Now, out of a recent record deal, I could do what I wanted — and this is what I came up with. With Blu’s help, we created something lush, noisy, and minimal. It sounds like how I felt about the situation.”

“Blank Slate” / “Open Space” embodies what makes Alaskan Tapes so singular: a composer willing to let imperfection and intuition guide him, resulting in music that feels profoundly human even as it stretches toward abstraction.