As soundtracks to seduction go, none more leftfield (nor less likely to succeed in this parish...).
Oddi wrth y brawd
Showing posts with label ambient. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambient. Show all posts
April 18, 2012
April 02, 2012
Spirit Canoes - Stag Hare [2011]
Ultra tranced out glissando chill, chilluns. Tribal peyote grooves for yer inner voyaging pleasure. Quality.
Oddi wrth y brawd
March 06, 2012
Hesperia - Magdalena Solis [2011]
Oddi wrth y brawd
March 01, 2012
Sterntaler - Michael Rother [1978]
Assisted by Neu! and Harmonia producer Conny Plank and Can's Jaki Liebezeit, Rother straps on precision engineered guitar, bass guitar, piano, synthesizer and electronic percussion and whooshes suavely horizonwards.
Der Rother-Club.
01 Sonnenrad
02 Blauer Regen
03 Stromlinien
04 Sterntaler
05 Fontana Di Luna
06 Orchestrion
Das Bonus 1993:
Lichter Von Kairo |
Patagonia Horizont
Südseewellen
Oddi wrth y brawd
January 26, 2012
Melancholia - William Basinski [2003]
14 short, er... melancholy tape-loops from early 80s. Akin to Satie's less jovial moments played by Boards of Canada on faulty equipment...on an overcast day. Soothingly repetitious and proof that Mr. Basinski is more than a disintegrating one trick load of pony. Efficacious as a fistful of xanax.
Oddi wrth y brawd
better than dolphins
January 17, 2012
Solaris - Eduard Artemiev [1972]
Disquieting, meditative electroacoustic musique concrète for the masses.
(Composed on Russian ANS synthesiser folks)
01 Part I, Bach
02 Part II
03 Part III
04 Part IV
05 Part V
06 Part VI
07 Part VII
08. Part VIII, Bach (Remix #1)
09 Part IX
10 Part X
11 Part XI
12 Part XII, Bach (Remix #2)
13 Part XIII
14 Part XIV
15 Part XV
16 Part XVI, Bach (Remix #3)
17 Part XVII, Bach 2
Oddi wrth y brawd
space is the place
January 09, 2012
Alien Dreamtime - Space Time Continuum with Terence McKenna
Multi-media event live document. San Francisco February 1993. Spoken word, visuals, music n didgeridoo.
Oddi wrth y brawd
teleological
January 04, 2012
Begegnungen II - Eno, Moebius, Roedelius, Plank [1985]
Something of a selection box: driving horizonwards Neu homage (Conditionierer); proto psy trance (Speed Display); gagaku influenced ambient (Mr Livingstone); fruity Eno vocal atmospherics a la Another Green World (Broken Head). Both prescient and strangely outmoded.
December 27, 2011
Oiseaux Du Birds of Venezuela - Jean C. Roche [1973]
Post-Christmas double tooth pain travails coming down. Work your magic, birdies.
"At night fall, around even the meanest of ditches filled by the daily rain, myriads of toads and frogs struck up a concert, which, through its sheer intensity, muffled all other surrounding noises. When I penetrated the forest, I could hear bird species literally by the dozen and individuals by the hundred, all calling and singing together at dawn and at dusk... This time I have not devoted a side of the record to the presentation of species one by one, preferring above all to provide a musical illustration of the Venezuelan atmosphere."
-liner notes
Oddi wrth y brawd
December 17, 2011
E2-E4 - Manuel Göttsching [1984]
30 years ago this month Manuel Gottsching recorded a long - 59m20s - track called E2-E4.
Pump's & Sounds' own David Elliott:
"I was living sur le continent at the time and, with my friend Wolfgang, met Manuel exactly a month before (in Cologne, playing a concert with Klaus Schulze) and exactly a month after (in Berlin, interviewing various musicians). We got wind of the track, but it didn't get released until two and a half years later in 1984 on Schulze's In Team label, split over two sides of vinyl. I gave it 5 stars in Sounds. It's a wonderful piece of music - racey sequencers, just two chords and some fine guitar - but it wasn't until 1989 that it became 'known', courtesy of the Italian Sueno Latino club remix".
Meant only as something to listen to on a flight to Hamburg, it's since been compared to Eno, Reich et al and in The Wire as "in its own unassuming way, one of the most revolutionary and important albums ever made".
You better believe it. Disco minimalist heaven.
Oddi wrth y brawd
cabin doors to manuel
December 09, 2011
November 05, 2011
Ineffable Mysteries From Shpongleland - Shpongle [2009]
Collaborative psybient antics from Simon Posford n Raja Ram. Darn good.
Oddi wrth y brawd
November 01, 2011
October 08, 2011
Memories of Sasaki san - Mika Sasaki and Various Artists [2005]
Sasakisan's work collected n re-constructed by artists various: Greg Davis, Hans Appelqvist, Steve Roden included. Sasakisan be no musician in strict sense but prone withal to creating journal-like pieces entire from cell phone melody composition tool. Skew whiff sketches in miniature. Nothing less than charming.
Oddi wrth y brawd
October 06, 2011
Magic Thread - Susumu Yokota [2000]
"Somewhere in the process of evolution the spinning and weaving of thread became possible for humankind. How did this come to pass? It can only be that the thread is possessed of magical properties."
Hmm...mebbe. What aint in doubt: fibrous electro-mutations n energetic beat systems, the weft of watery surround sound n hazy reflux unravelling fluid distortions n thrum. Occasional binaural scritchy warble spindling slow motion warp speed ambient.
Oddi wrth y brawd
August 31, 2011
Abandoned Cities - Harold Budd [1984]
Worlds remote n dead, space deep n sombre. Expansive yet claustrophobic. A stranded nexus between something and nothing. Colour n emotion bled out in protracted keyboard drones of Eno produced ambient wash. Anaemic flickers from n exhausted star.
Bracing.
Oddi wrth y brawd
dark star
July 03, 2011
Sadly, the Future Is No Longer What It Was - Leyland Kirby [2009]
A step on, up and perhaps backwards. Amnesiac fog 78s sampling plunderphonics stripped away, leaving a frequently piano driven ambience recalling Harold Budd, Max Richter, and Erik Satie even. Elegiac and melancholy vacuum hum and static crackle. Kirby / Caretaker is still in mourning, though no longer for a history repressed and returned in spectral form. More straightforward modernist angst: fin-de-siècle paean to degeneration, cohesion and connectedness. More haunting than haunted.
Oddi wrth y brawd
July 02, 2011
Le Divin Cagliostro - Silence & Strength [2006]
"Mesmerising" journey through life of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro [1743-1795], Grand Copt, Egyptian Freemasonry ritualist, numerologist.
Dark ambient, esoteric neofolk.
Oddi wrth y brawd
y b r a w d
1 2 2 1 6 4
11
2
June 29, 2011
Discreet Music - Brian Eno [1975]
Placid intoxication. Instantly, eternally familiar.
Liner Notes:
"Discreet Music" (30:35) Recorded at Brian Eno's studio 9-5-75
Three Variations on the Canon in D Major by Johann Pachebel
(i) "Fullness of Wind" (9:57)
(ii) "French Catalogues" (5:18)
(iii) "Brutal Ardour" (8:17)
Performed by The Cockpit Ensemble, conducted by Gavin Bryars (who also helped arrange the pieces)
Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part.
That is to say, I tend towards the roles of the planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results. Two ways of satisfying this interest are exemplified on this album. "Discreet Music" is a technological approach to the problem. If there is any score for the piece, it must be the operational diagram of the particular apparatus I used for its production. The key configuration here is the long delay echo system with which I have experimented since I became aware of the musical possibilities of tape recorders in 1964. Having set up this apparatus, my degree of participation in what it subsequently did was limited to (a) providing an input (in this case, two simple and mutually compatible melodic lines of different duration stored on a digital recall system) and (b) occasionally altering the timbre of the synthesizer's output by means of a graphic equalizer.
It is a point of discipline to accept this passive role, and for once, to ignore the tendency to play the artist by dabbling and interfering. In this case, I was aided by the idea that what I was making was simply a background for my friend Robert Fripp to play over in a series of concerts we had planned. This notion of its future utility, coupled with my own pleasure in "gradual processes" prevented me from attempting to create surprises and less than predictable changes in the piece. I was trying to make a piece that could be listened to and yet could be ignored... perhaps in the spirit of Satie who wanted to make music that could "mingle with the sound of the knives and forks at dinner."
In January this year I had an accident. I was not seriously hurt, but I was confined to bed in a stiff and static position. My friend Judy Nylon visited me and brought me a record of 18th century harp music. After she had gone, and with some considerable difficulty, I put on the record. Having laid down, I realized that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level, and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn't the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music - as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience. It is for this reason that I suggest listening to the piece at comparatively low levels, even to the extent that it frequently falls below the threshold of audibility.
Another way of satisfying the interest in self-regulating and self-generating systems is exemplified in the 3 variations on the Pachebel Canon. These take their titles from the charmingly inaccurate translation of the French cover notes for the "Erato" recording of the piece made by the orchestra of Jean Francois Paillard. That particular recording inspired these pieces by its unashamedly romantic rendition of a very systematic Renaissance canon.
In this case the "system" is a group of performers with a set of instructions - and the "input" is the fragment of Pachebel. Each variation takes a small section of the score (two or four bars) as its starting point, and permutates the players' parts such that they overlay each other in ways not suggested by the original score. In "Fullness of Wind" each player's tempo is decreased, the rate of decrease governed by the pitch of his instrument (bass=slow). "French Catalogues" groups together sets of notes and melodies with time directions gathered from other parts of the score. In "Brutal Ardour" each player has a sequence of notes related to those of the other players, but the sequences are of different lengths so that the original relationships quickly break down.
London, September 1975
Groundbreaking.
Oddi wrth y brawd
June 28, 2011
Riceboy Sleeps - Jonsi and Alex [2009]
Transcendent shifting waves,strings and treated piano. Submarine soundscapes. Giving the lie to ambient as boring, capturing interest and weaving introspective spells in welling majestic calm. Slow build crescendo. Godspeed You Black Emperor with all the lull and none of the squall. Fragile and built to last. Begone all evil. Begone.
Oddi wrth y brawd
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)