ANDREW OSTLER – THE BLIND SUBLIME
Opening with a striking full-choir chord, Andrew Ostler‘s Blind Sublime draws immediate attention – as if to say “sit down, and listen’. I did not expect to hear a choir in this setting, but what a surprise it is!
This album – Ostler’s fifth for his own label Expert Sleepers – is a surprise in more than one way. The instrumentation is partly taken from his previous albums (Dots On A Disk Of Snow for the string arrangements, Four Drones For Saxophone And Modular Synthesizer for the sax drones) and can definitely be called ‘ambient’ music. But on top of that, full choir arrangements are added, taking the album to a completely different level. This is as much ambient music as it is contemporary classical. As stated in the info sheet: “RIYL: Arvo Pärt, Stars Of The Lid”. (Sunn O))) is also mentioned but don’t think that really compares).
There are four pieces on this album – three shorter pieces on side one (of the blue vinyl album), and the 20-minute Meditation on side two. The atmosphere ranges from gentle, confident to quite intense – with the choir in the leading role this is not ambient music of the ‘ignorable’ kind.
The choir itself is not mentioned, because it does not exist: it’s Ostler himself performing the saxophones, modular synthesizers, and the orchestral and choral arrangements. The choir arrangements sound really lifelike, hard – if not impossible – to distinguish from a real choir.
I don’t know what Ostler used to achieve this, but perhaps the answer can be found on the Expert Sleepers website: apart from being a small music label they also create synth hardware and various audio plugins.
DANIEL M. KARLSSON – TOWARDS A MUSIC FOR A LARGE ENSEMBLE
You need to know a few things about Daniel M. Karlsson if you want to be his friend: “he is a composer focused primarily on texture and timbre, works extensively with algorithmic composition”, and describes himself as a “Marxist transhumanist singulitarian”. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means, check his website for an explanation. Also, the composer from Stockholm is a well-known evangelist for the open-source music coding platform Supercollider. (If you are familiar with Supercollider: the cover shows the codes for each of the 64 instruments Karlsson used for these pieces – enlarge the image for details).
This album (his third, but the first solo album on vinyl) presents music that was commissioned for the Edition Festival 2024, where it was presented on the multichannel Acousmonium (must have been quite an experience!). But obviously, these are the stereo versions.
Both pieces may be entirely computer-generated, but they sound remarkably live-like: as if performed by an ensemble “where the members are listening to each other and interacting and responding to musical events that happen within the group. […] I love that kind of thing where there is no conductor.”
“I want to make music that contains a cognitive dissonance of some kind — where you are second guessing your own ability to discern what is real. […] I want this to become a confusing, enveloping mesh of possibilities that puts you in a state of uncertainty. What is it that you are listening to?”
Towards A Music For A Large Ensemble is available on vinyl or as a (24/44.1 kHz) download. With the purchase, you also receive a bonus PDF containing the complete source code for the piece as well as a download link for the 10.5-hour (!) version called Towards A Music Of Long Duration”.