Although it was created in March, this mix shows little signs of “Spring”.
There was no intentional relation, but inevitably the devastating Japan Earthquake, and the frightening nuclear disaster following it, somehow found its way into this mix.
The result: a rather dark overall atmosphere, which seems to leave little room for hope.
But at the same time, in Europe, winter retreats and daylight returns.
Nature shows that it can destroy as well as recuperate.
“The Realignment Series Part I, II and III” is a set of over two and a half hour of “Folding Drone Music”, as David Mekler (Sister Waize) himself calls it.
The impressive set is offered as a free download from his website, along with some suggestions on how to listen to this music to possibly achieve ‘a complete sense of separation from your physical surroundings’.
I can heartily recommend to download and listen to this set to anyone even remotely interested in drone music!
Janek Schaefer’s website presents an impressive list of site-location projects that are very interesting to investigate, because they demonstrate Schaefer’s perfect balance of concept, visual and sound.
(A few of them, Unfolding and Extended Play, were presented on Ambientblog earlier).
As the Artist in Residence for the 2010 Milton Keynes International Festival, Schaefer presented “Asleep at the Wheel…’: a location project for which he completely transformed the deserted Sainsbury’s supermarket into a three-lane highway at night, a ‘ghost road of cars’, where the audio is played from the in-car sound systems. From the car seats, visitors could listen to presentations and interviews thematically dealing with sustainability and the future of the earth, and how we can be able to improve that future.
“The exhibition is a thought provoking and immersive sound installation for multiple car radios, that contemplates our future. Exhibited in a vast disused supermarket, three-lanes of cars dissect the darkened interior, as the multiple hazard lights illuminate the space, revealing the finite road of our consumer driven daydream.”
Although it is his debut for Hidden Shoal Recordings, the new album by Antonymes – “The Licence to Interpret Dreams“ – is in fact his second full album following up “Beauty Becomes the Enemy of the Future” (or third, if you also count “31: Before the Light Fails”, which was a special project in a limited edition of one (!), and only partly available as a digital download after that).
“The Licence to Interpret Dreams“ fits in perfectly with the best of the recent ‘post-classical’ releases and will have immediate appeal to listeners that also enjoy releases by artists like Johann Johannsson, Max Richter, Peter Broderick and Dustin O’Halloran.
But to leave it at that description would not do justice to the versatility of this album. It is not “just” a collection beautifully constructed post-classical chamber music.
This is the first in a forthcoming series of “Shortlist”-entries. In these Shortlists, I will mention some of the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn’t find the time (or the right words) for a “full” review for.
Still, I think they deserve your attention: use the links to find more info and hear previews.
Nigel Samways – Nine Barrows Down
20 minute EP with a haunting soundscape referring to “a teenage experience of potentially baffling and unexplained origins whilst alone at night in the Dorset countryside.”
Le Berger – Expeditions on the Greyscale
Subtitled “One Tiny, Two Medium and a Grand One”, referring to the length of the four tracks: 00:11, 11:11, 11:11 and 33:33, respectively.
Beautiful minimal drone/loop set by Le Berger (Samuel Landry from Montreal, Qc), with obvious references to the work of ‘deteriorist’ William Basinski.
When I started working on this ‘single artist mix’ featuring music and sounds from Arno Peeters, I did not realise that creating a mix-collage based on soundscapes would be more difficult than one based on single tracks.
A soundscape is a collage in itself – and using fragments from soundscapes to build another soundscape is like ripping up a collage and presenting the fragmented details out of their original context, rearranging them to create a new caleidoscopic image.
The original context gets lost, and the result feels like an aural stream of consciousness that may not exactly be “easy on the ears” …. but may prove to be a fascinating exploration of imaginary territories..
“Owl Splinters“ is Deaf Center ‘s much anticipated second full album, following 2005’s ‘Pale Ravine’.
Which doesn’t mean that nothing happened in the meantime: Erik Skodvin released his “Flare” solo album, and Otto Totland partnered with Huw Roberts as Nest, releasing the beautiful selftitled album (long time most-read article on this weblog!).
Premonition Factory is the name of the ambient-electronic music project by Sjaak Overgaauw, a dutch musician currently living in Antwerp, Belgium.
‘The Sense of Time‘ is his second full CD, the follow up to 2010’s ’59 Airplanes waiting for New York’.
It contains eleven tracks of different length, presenting an impressive hour of well balanced immersive ambient sounds. Most are ‘classic’ ambient: slow washes of drones, sparsely interspersed with background electrics – a very peaceful sound overall.
Relaxed Machinery: it’s a brilliant name for a netlabel presenting “organic ambient and techno music from scratch with only the purest of ingredients”.
John Koch-Northrup, label curator/coördinator, prefers to call it an ‘artist collective’, with a different business model: the artists ‘self-release’ their album, all profit is theirs, but the collective opens up distribution channels that are normally quite difficult to reach for a DIY-release: such as digital distribution via all major channels (by CD Baby), and CDR distribution by Hypnos.
