Mike Cottone makes music for the slow season

The Shelby Township soundscape artist has seen his audience grow with increased attention on ambient music.

When the glow of the holiday season fades and things slow momentarily before a new year kicks in, that’s when Mike Cottone’s sound finds a home in your head.

Cottone has made the calming, contemplative and serene his bread and butter as The Green Kingdom, an ambient music making pseudonym he’s used to craft soundscapes under for the past 20 years.

As that type of music has seen an increase in demand, the Shelby Township recording and graphic design artist released two of his best, most focused albums to date in 2024, Arcadian and Horizons. Released via The Slow Music Movement, Horizons is a more rhythmic, Balearic take on his core sound, Cottone says, while Arcadian is intended to evoke simplicity, innocence and contentment in an increasingly chaotic world.

“I like to change it up from one album to the next,” Cottone said. “Some introduce more electronic elements and sequences while others are more organic in terms of the instrumentation.”

Through a plethora of guitars and effects pedals, synthesizers, electronic sources, sampled textures and field recordings, The Green Kingdom’s sound has anonymously slipped into the subconscious of a healthy fanbase that tops 24,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Cottone’s soundscapes have found their way to fresh ears as the genre of ambient music has grown in popularity on streaming platforms in recent years, becoming the default “background music” for spaces like coffee shops and playlists that help people study and sleep.

One track from his 2014 album Expanses, Untitled 2, has gotten more than 5 million listens on Spotify behind its appearance as the title menu music for the video game Hotline Miami 2. It helped generate interest in his music with a wider audience behind the drone-sampled composition Cottone arranged into a chord progression on a 1960s Gibson hollowbody guitar.

“I'm so thankful for that as it has not only introduced my music to a wider audience, but I've been in touch with so many listeners as a result of them hearing the song and seeking out my music,” Cottone said. “It really means so much.

“I don't think I've recorded with it since, but I feel like there is some magic in that guitar!”

From age 12, guitar has been Cottone’s weapon of choice. After he consumed every kind of guitar-based rock he could get his hands on as a teen, Cottone veered into exploring foundational electronic and ambient music made by artists like Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Autechre.

He later got into the recordings of artists like Stars of the Lid, Fennesz and some of the earlier 12k releases as he began contemplating how to craft his own ambient leaning sound with the pile of guitars at his disposal.

Over the past 15 years, Cottone has been steadily prolific, releasing albums on several noted ambient labels including Dronarivm, ROHS!, Lost Tribe & Sound In Silence, Home Assembly Music, Hidden Vibes and Past Inside The Present. This past year saw him release three albums, with another The Green Kingdom full length in the works. Despite an often busy schedule, Cottone said he’s continually looking to strike the right balance between work and creative endeavors.

“I'm always working on multiple things at any given time and jumping around between projects as time allows,” he said. “I've had a bit less time as of late with work and family things, but I'm hoping to have more studio time this winter to finish some things. Sometimes it lines up where a bunch of things are finished and labels can release them shortly thereafter, but I also want to be conscious of not putting too much out there.”

With a graphic design job during the day, Cottone said he finds time to work on recording projects after normal working hours or on the weekends inside a small studio setup in the basement he refers to as his refuge.

Cottone uses FL Studio as his digital audio workstation for recording audio and sequencing. Beyond that, he tries not to overcomplicate things with a recording interface and MIDI controller hooked up to his laptop, along with a couple of hardware synths and a bunch of soft synths and effects.

He’s also got guitars — lots of guitars — as well as plenty of effects pedals. For recording, Cottone typically uses his '94 American Strat, J Mascis Jazzmaster or the PRS SE NF3. He records guitar direct, using the Neunaber Neuron pedal as his amplifier, while The Walrus Audio Slöer reverb pedal has been a big part of his sound more recently.

“I'm not overly techy when it comes to my setup,” Cottone said. “… In terms of guitars and effects pedals, I have a lot, but I've been trying to pare things down a bit lately.”

If Cottone has a quintessential sound, he might have achieved it on Arcadian, his fourth album he released via the Sound in Silence label in April 2024. Long describing his compositions as blurring the lines between soundscape and structure while keeping a sharp focus on melody, Arcadian feels like it achieves Cottone’s artistic statement behind song titles and soundscapes that evoke something more rural and pastoral.

“The mindset for Arcadian was to evoke a contemplative, peaceful feeling of a time when we existed more closely with nature,” Cottone said. “A time before the hectic world we live in today. It's still accessible of course, but my hope is that the music can provide an escape for the listener as it does for me.”

Even if his music might encourage it, Cottone has no plans of slowing down in the coming year, with a couple of collaboration projects in the works. He’s also planning on another The Green Kingdom full length he says is in the early stages.

“I'm not sure where the album will end up as anytime I have a clear direction in mind before going into anything it always changes by the time I'm finished,” Cottone said. “I've been leaning toward trying to do more of a straightforward "ambient guitar" album lately, but we'll see what happens.”