With her new album ‘In The Light Of Air’, Anne Thorvaldsdottir once again shows that she is one of the most innovative contemporary composers, and has developed a style that is almost immediately recognisable. And unmistakeably Icelandic in nature.
Soundtracks are hot. And quite a lot of them border on ‘ambient’ music because of their inherent atmospherics. Or on ‘post-classical’ music because of their instrumental arrangements.
‘The Revenant’ combines the best of both worlds!
Autistici (David Newman) and Justin Varis present eight ‘synaesthetic’ interpretations of various colours.
They are completed with another eight remixes from different artists that seem put the colours in the perspective of their surrounding landscapes.
Together, these two cd’s are a truely caleidoscopic collection!
Various artists remix the original tracks – with remarkable results!
Marilli Remixed is a collection or remixes from Michel Banabila’s debut album “Marilli” (1984) – an album that Banabila cosiders ‘too embarassing naive’ to re-release. The remixes prove there’s nothing to be ashamed of…
Different kinds of “Landscape Music” from three duo’s and one ensemble.
With releases from From The Mouth Of The Sun (Aaron Martin and Dag Rosenqvist), Christina Vantzou, Mark Lyken & Emma Dove, and Jón Ólafsson & Futuregrapher.
There is beauty in darkness – and there is often darkness in beauty.
Both are present in these releases from James Murray, Offthesky, Mute Forest and Ugasanie (ordered by increasing darkness)
Catching up some more:
an eclectic collection from young spanish composer Mauro Beltrán, ‘tactile’ music from Tatsuro Kojima, fragile yet virtual memories from Drawing Virtual Gardens, and an astonishing (surround) set by JesterN best described as ‘ambient electroacoustic breakcore’.
Catching up with some beautiful releases from the past few months:
Albums from Gideon Wolf, Michael Begg (Human Greed), Thomas Ragsdale and a collective of Bigo & Twigetti artists producing their album from scratch in only seven days!
“Somehow, in Europe, over the last century, as complexity and inaccessibility became equated with intelligence and the avant-garde, we lost something along the way. Modernism gave us so many stunning works, but we also lost our lullabies.”
Long-form compositions are a challenge to a composer, because he (she) has to deal with the audience’s relatively short attention span: not many people will be able to focus and keep their concentration for 4 hours or even more. For this reason, it is no surprise that long-form experiments are often found in the realm of ambient music. Ánd that they are often dealing with ‘sleep’ – which instantly solves the attention span problem too.
