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Post by jk on Mar 25, 2021 6:56:39 GMT -5
This is stunning. "A New Day" from the album Sunergy by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani probably sounds even more amazing through headphones. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Buchla Music Easel, Teenage Engineering OP1, Squarp Pyramid, Moog Werkstatt and Ableton Live Suzanne Ciani: 18-panel unit Buchla 200e with a multi-dimensional kinesthetic input port and Eventide H9 processing pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22300-sunergy/
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Post by jk on Mar 28, 2021 4:24:46 GMT -5
Ever heard of vaporwave? No? Well, a short while ago my work led me into this rarefied cultural region by way of cyberpunk and solarpunk. Vaporwave music definitely falls under "mood before melody", exemplified by what I'm told is a classic of this microgenre, 2814's 2015 album Birth of a New Day. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaporwaveIt seems Mr Tubey has taken my excursions into Sovietwave as an excuse to feed me some Vaporwave, a genre I briefly dipped into last year (see above). This wondrous mix courtesy of uploader b r h m is accompanied by evening scenes in the streets and shops of a Japanese city (Tokyo?) filmed back in 1990. Fascinating -- and the kaleidoscopic musical canvas complete with squelching synths is a fitting match: PS: Still no sign of a replacement for the pulled video of Fripp & Eno's "An Index Of Metals" -- scandalous!
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Post by jk on Mar 28, 2021 14:11:06 GMT -5
This wondrous mix courtesy of uploader b r h m is accompanied by evening scenes in the streets and shops of a Japanese city (Tokyo?) filmed back in 1990. Yes, it is Tokyo, in and around the district called Kabuki-chō. It was the now demolished Koma Stadium that clinched it (followed by a spot of googling). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabukichō
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Post by jk on Apr 9, 2021 5:21:50 GMT -5
This video takes "Loneliness #3 (Night Talking)" from the OST of the 2013 film Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and loops it for more than ten hours. (I stopped after the first two.) Like other looped instrumentals it's ideal background music when working at the computer, as its built-in repetitiveness makes few demands on the listener. It also reflects my mood -- part sad, part philosophical -- on the possible end of a friendship, although I still hold out hopes for its revival in some form. Time will tell. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)
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Post by jk on Apr 10, 2021 7:37:28 GMT -5
This video takes "Loneliness #3 (Night Talking)" from the OST of the 2013 film Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and loops it for more than ten hours. (I stopped after the first two.) Like other looped instrumentals it's ideal background music when working at the computer, as its built-in repetitiveness makes few demands on the listener. It also reflects my mood -- part sad, part philosophical -- on the possible end of a friendship, although I still hold out hopes for its revival in some form. Time will tell. Nope. And to celebrate, here's some joyous music by Philip Glass, first heard years ago at a "music evening" put on at my children's grammar school: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powaqqatsi
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Post by jk on Mar 13, 2022 4:50:45 GMT -5
James Paul's YouTube blurb says it all (reproduced here verbatim):
This video presents seven audio tracks of music performed in the TANK Center for Sonic Arts, with a montage of photos of the TANK and the surrounding region in Northwest Colorado, near the town of Rangely.
The TANK Center for Sonic Arts is an unusual arts venue--a tank, literally, an empty seven-story water tank, discovered in the 1970's to have extraordinary acoustic resonance, a reverberation longer and richer than the Taj Mahal’s. At this point, The TANK is a fully-equipped recording venue and concert site, as well as a 501(c)3 nonprofit arts organization, founded in 2013. The place has become a haven for the local music community and a unique destination for artists, sonic explorers, and curious visitors who learn to listen in a whole new way.
1. Pacem - Ron Miles, Trumpet, with Bruce Odland, and Mark McCoin, Percussion 2. Sentirete - Jolle Greenleaf, soprano, and Hank Heijink, lute 3. Tank Journey - R. Carlos Nakai, vocals and Native American Flute, and Will Clipman, Percussion 4. Penumbra - Paul Klite, Violin 5. Green Boat - Elaine DiFalco 6. Zitherlandia - Mark McCoin, Zither 7. Singing River 1 - O+A, Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger
For more on the TANK and these artists, go to tanksounds.org and to our tanksounds channel on Soundcloud.
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Post by jk on May 4, 2022 4:46:34 GMT -5
This one would be equally at home in the Soviet/Russian music thread. I first discovered Edward Artemiev's Moods years ago and then it slipped from view. Recorded in 1976-1983, this feast for the ears was released in 1984 on the ubiquitous state-owned Melodiya label. The album cover in the video provides a little more information (as does YouTube):
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Post by jk on May 27, 2022 10:05:56 GMT -5
"[Morton Feldman (1926–1987)] was, to say the least, unusual. His stated goal, similar to Cage's, was to remove intention from composition; in effect, he wanted the sounds to compose themselves. Paradoxically, the more a composer wants this, the harder he has to work to get it. Feldman took great pains over his scores to keep them from sounding man-made. They lack traditional themes and development. Instead, they are rigorous explorations of timbre; no composer had an intuitive understanding of additive timbres quite like Feldman did. They also play havoc with our sense of time, both short-term and long-term. Phrases, if one can call them that, are carefully put together so as to avoid any sense of definite contour. Some of his late works take several hours to play. Even the shorter ones [such as the one linked below] seem entrancingly, hypnotically long because they seem to have no beginning, middle, or end -- they are like cross-sections of clouds. " Coptic Light was premièred by the New York Philharmonic in 1985, just two years before Feldman's death. This 30-minute piece is a shimmering web of hushed sound. In a sense, it's an example of Maximalism -- every instrument, like a bee in a hive, seems to be working on the same project, but no two instruments are doing it in exactly the same way. As one listens closely, patterns emerge, but they are elusive, and they alter as soon as one tries to hold on to them. The texture is dense, but nevertheless suffused with a gentle light. The title refers to Coptic textiles Feldman saw in the Louvre. Feldman was struck by how these fragments 'conveyed an essential atmosphere of their civilization'. A mysterious explanation, perhaps, but no less than one would expect of this mysterious composer." [ Source] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Feldman
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Post by jk on Jun 9, 2022 4:45:23 GMT -5
From Laurie Spiegel ( here) it was but a small step algorithmically -- but a giant leap musically -- to the Frenchwoman Éliane Radigue (born 1932). Transamorem Transmortem was recorded by its composer in The Kitchen (NYC) on 6 March 1974. These three enlightening YouTube comments cover most bases: "I have found this sort of music extremely conducive to states of meditation and concentration recently but it has also strangely increased my appreciation of the sound of my central heating boiler and my refrigerator!" (Jason White) "It's actually difficult to imagine a piece being any more minimal than this and still having people want to hear it, but this turned out to be quite absorbing once I hit upon the perfect combination of volume and focused attention." (Crane MP) "There's a fine line between messing around at random on an analog synth and messing around with a definite purpose. Keep in mind that she was using an ARP 2500 modular synth -- no presets, takes an hour to set up and tweak a sound, etc; you can be sure that whatever she put down on tape is there for a reason." (moogyboy6) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éliane_Radigue
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Post by jk on Jun 13, 2022 15:09:24 GMT -5
This is super. "Paris 1971" was created by Suzanne Ciani (born 1946), who has made an earlier appearance in this thread (at the top of this page). It comes from an SC compilation called Lixiviation (Ciani/Musica Inc. 1969–1985), released by Finders Keepers Records in 2012: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Ciani
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Post by jk on Jun 15, 2022 2:58:56 GMT -5
Here's another gorgeous wash of electronic sound from Éliane Radigue: "In 2000 she composed her last electronic work, L’île re-sonante [the Echoing Isle], which won her the Golden Nica at the Electronic Arts Festival in Linz in 2006." [ Source]
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Post by jk on Jun 20, 2022 8:50:20 GMT -5
For the past week or so, Mr Tubey has been thrusting this under my quivering nostrils and yesterday I relented. I can only think it was the title -- Bring Me the Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn -- that kept putting me off, as it sounded too much like gangsta rap or death metal. But it's wonderfully calming and inspired guitar music fed through electronic whatnot -- Robert Fripp without the sharp edges, so to speak. This is disc one, track two, "La Chanson de Beurrage": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_Me_the_Head_of_Kyle_Bobby_Dunn
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Post by jk on Jun 23, 2022 7:13:16 GMT -5
The Saturn Archives is a remarkable YouTube channel I often encounter these days. Their description (below) of Laurie Spiegel's mesmerising The Expanding Universe is really all the information you need. On the LP cover in the video, LS is clearly interviewing herself! 00:00 A1. Patchwork 09:45 A2. Old Wave 16:37 A3. Pentachrome 23:58 B1. The Expanding Universe "The Expanding Universe is the classic 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover's notes), all built of electronic sounds. These works, often grouped with those of Terry Riley, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, differ in their much shorter, clear forms. Composed and realized between 1974 and 1977 on the GROOVE system developed by Max Mathews and F.R. Moore at Bell Laboratories, the pieces on this album were far ahead of their time both in musical content and in how they were made. Each of the included works broke new ground, pioneering completely new methods of live interaction with computer-based logic - ways of creating music that are now reaching the heights of their popularity with Ableton Live, Max/MSP and other interactive music software entering mainstream music production. "Composed 1974-76 using a computer playing the actual sounds by controlling analog synthesis equipment using the GROOVE (Generating Realtime Operations On Voltage-controlled Equipment) hybrid system which was developed by Max Matthews and F.R. Moore at Bell labs. Interaction with the computer was through a keyboard, a drawing tablet, pushbuttons and knobs, as well as complex 'algorhythms' written in FORTRAN."
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Post by jk on Jun 27, 2022 7:36:57 GMT -5
It was a reference on Kyle Bobby Dunn's wiki page that brought me to Stars of the Lid (and from thereon to Labradford, but that's for another time). A look around YouTube soon alerted me to SOTL's 1999 LP Avec Laudenum as being a good example of their work. It doesn't suffer from the snap, crackle and pop, however minimal, that inevitably comes with the medium -- indeed, this even adds in some inexplicable way to the album's mood of "floating bliss": I respectfully dedicate this to my three favourite long-time EH lurkers: funkyclaude, miltonlumky and littleleila. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_of_the_Lid
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Post by jk on Jul 2, 2022 7:07:02 GMT -5
It was a YouTube comment by Валерий Валериев (Valery Valeriev!) on The North Bend (2010), the second studio album by Rafael Anton Irisarri, that swept me on to the mysterious IWICD ("I can't tell you why, but it reminds me of IWICD. Just on a subconscious level.") IWICD seemingly stands for "I wish I could disappear", something we all wish at times. Their 2018 album Everything Dissolves in Time consists of four tracks: "Everything Dissolves In Time" (10:07), "I Wish I Could Disappear" (9:44), "The Silent Song" (8:38) and "Dust On The Road" (7:43). Google Translate informs me that the YT blurb means "Soft, monolithic compositions telling about internal and external travels" and who am I to argue? url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Anton_Irisarri
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Post by jk on Jul 3, 2022 9:14:36 GMT -5
I've been investigating a channel called "siberian ambience", one major find being Shahead Mostafafar’s 2020 album Perfect Reflection. That said, the one track you really need to hear is the extraordinary six-minute-plus album opener, "Deep Remembering". It's one of two tracks to feature what might conceivably be a doctored shofar. According to the uploader in the Comments (the video has since been removed): "I have not heard anything like this, this instrument is common among the peoples of the Middle East, Arabs and Jews. I don't know exactly what it's called, it's better to ask Shahead himself. ... Ok it looks like a shofar-like instrument, but it has a much larger acoustic range and is very well controlled, also sounds slightly distorted. Btw I found a video on Russian YouTube, … hope you can see it too - the artist uses a special metal tip to extract more sounds from the instrument." In the curious video in question, Phil Driscoll is playing what seems to me to be a shofar made from the horn of a Greater Kudu at Lakewood Church, Houston, Texas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shofar
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Post by jk on Dec 13, 2022 9:48:23 GMT -5
I recently attended a concert that included improvisations, similar to this one, by the Lithuanian organist Liana Dolgopolova. Music to drift away on...
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Post by Mark on Dec 13, 2022 10:51:45 GMT -5
Hiroshi Yoshimura's A.I.R and Green are always go to albums for me for when I want some real laid back ambient music. They certainly fit Eno's “it must be as ignorable as it is interesting” ethos for ambient music, especially A.I.R.
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Post by jk on Dec 16, 2022 10:27:46 GMT -5
Hiroshi Yoshimura's A.I.R and Green are always go to albums for me for when I want some real laid back ambient music. They certainly fit Eno's “it must be as ignorable as it is interesting” ethos for ambient music, especially A.I.R. I see the Japanese version of Green lacks the ambient environmental sounds of the later US release. That original version is to be my listening experience this evening. Thanks for the tip. I like the way all track titles have "ee" as the only vowel! Sadly, I see Hiroshi Yoshimura is no longer with us.
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Post by jk on Dec 22, 2022 17:10:38 GMT -5
Hiroshi Yoshimura's A.I.R and Green are always go to albums for me for when I want some real laid back ambient music. They certainly fit Eno's “it must be as ignorable as it is interesting” ethos for ambient music, especially A.I.R. I see the Japanese version of Green lacks the ambient environmental sounds of the later US release. That original version is to be my listening experience this evening. I did give it a listen but found a little of it went a long way. I suppose we're not all made the same (luckily for us). Well now, it's only a small step away from Ambient to Muzak. Mr Tubey thrust an earlier upload of this at me back in May 2019 so I gave it a try. It's beautiful, if a little spooky. As commenter Shawn Spear said, "Even the reverb has reverb"! It's a perfect example of what is now termed mallsoft or mallwave: I can't resist reposting (and therefore saving for posteriority) this other wondrous comment from Francis Perlmutter: "This music is the perfect accompaniment to a solo cough syrup party – oh, for the good old days, when the over-the-counter stuff had codeine and you didn't have to worry about getting put on some federal registry list if you bought two bottles at a time. I could go all limp, boneless and happy in a shopping cart, listening to this music – it's like someone is slowly revolving me and the ceiling tiles have never been so fascinating. I'm young again, listening to this music – my waist is small, my buns are firm and high, my teeth are pink, and I have hair." Just in case this upload does a runner as well, here is the list of tracks with time stamps: 0:00–1:55: 40 Years Young 1:59–4:12: Kate McShane 4:15–6:46: Tengo Ritmo (I Got Rhythm) 6:49–9:10: Paradise Program 9:13–12:09: Birthday At The Waldorf 12:11–15:32: Star Eyes 15:36–18:25: To Bing 18:28–21:29: Volare 21:32–24:54: Whole Lotta' Sunlight 24:57–27:52: 50 Million Frenchman 27:56–29:52: Tower Of Strength 29:56–32:52: Lady Blue 32:56–35:43: At Seventeen 35:47–38:03: Am I On Time? "The mall pictured is Park City Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak
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Post by catchascatchcan on Dec 22, 2022 21:21:00 GMT -5
Thank you for this thread! I especially enjoy the first post, Drumming. I am a fan of space rock and krautrock from the seventies. After drummer Michael Shrieve left Santana, he composed a lot of wonderful experimental music. My favorite is his collaboration with his brother Kevin and Klaus Schulze, an album called Transfer Station Blue. This is the first track from that album, Communiqué: “Approach Spiral”.
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Post by jk on Dec 23, 2022 6:26:56 GMT -5
Thank you for this thread! I especially enjoy the first post, Drumming. I am a fan of space rock and krautrock from the seventies. After drummer Michael Shrieve left Santana, he composed a lot of wonderful experimental music. My favorite is his collaboration with his brother Kevin and Klaus Schulze, an album called Transfer Station Blue. This is the first track from that album, Communiqué: “Approach Spiral”.
Glad to oblige, cacc. Lovely track there, by the way. I have this album by Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook called Dark Side of the Moog IX. It's one of several of theirs inspired by the music of Pink Floyd. Another winner I bought during that same ambient spending spree was Tangerine Dream's Phaedra (1973). Edgar Froese's cover painting adds to the feeling of the immensity of deep space. This is arguably my favourite track, "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares". According to Froese: "'Mysterious Semblance' was recorded on Dec 4th. Pete [Baumann] and Chris [Franke] were asleep after a long day's recording session so I invited my wife, Monique, into the studio. I called in the studio engineer and recorded it in one take on a double-keyboarded Mellotron while Monique turned the knobs on a phasing device. This piece is on the record exactly as it was recorded that day. And this practice was to continue for the rest of the session." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedra_(album)
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Post by jk on Mar 5, 2023 16:55:23 GMT -5
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Post by jk on Jun 11, 2023 9:31:13 GMT -5
Tony Conrad (1940–2016) was never a member of the Velvet Underground but his spirit looms large in the band’s history. He had played with three of its members (Cale, Reed and MacLise) before the band's inception and had even inadvertently given it its name (see his wiki for the details). This is Four Violins, recorded in late 1964 (!) and released 32 years later: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad
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Post by jk on Mar 2, 2024 16:03:38 GMT -5
I had to laugh at the critic who after attending a performance of John Luther Adams' Become Ocean, said that "after the first 20 minutes or so, the musical ideas had pretty much run their course, and there were no further developments to justify sustaining the piece." Well, obviously -- the piece is a palindrome! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Become_Ocean
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