The central thematic piece in this mix is Christina Kubisch‘ “Tea Time (Autumn Leaves Mix)“, from Gruenrecorder’s “Autumn Leaves” – male singers communicating as if they were birds, twittering words like “Who’s awake?“, “Me Too!” and “Who cooks for you?“.
This spring-like chatter evokes a strange and hypnotic landscape sometimes unnerving, sometimes comforting.
This mix was created february – march 2008, together with “True“. It was definitely an early spring that year!
The brand new Fluid Audio label kicks off with a promising start: a compilation album donating 50% of its profits to charity. (Toybox Charity foundation, supporting latin america’s street children).
One may wonder how much funds this may raise in times where ambient musicians hardly make enough money to break even on any physical CD release.
Just realising the fact that the ‘average Guatemalan street kid’ has an average life expectancy of four years should make you buy this album.
But the music included proves to be rewarding too – raising expectations fairly high for future releases on this label.
According to my dictionary, ‘Allegaar‘ translates to ‘Hotchenpotch‘ – but I can imagine there may be a better word for that!?
Just like the previous mix (“Leftover Mix“), this 2008 mix has no special theme, it’s just a collection of tracks mixed together fairly randomly. But in their new context the tracks seem to start to tell their own new story!
This could have been one of the shortest reviews of this weblog: I simply could state that this music induced some of the deepest sleeps I experienced when listening to ambient music. And please don’t doubt that that is meant as a true compliment!
Even the found environmental sounds included in the tracks could not disturb the peaceful quiet and the balanced harmonies of this music. And most of the real-time environmental sounds merging in from outside can’t either.
This fact alone makes this album one of the most impressive I heard this year.
Though the title may give the impression that this mix consists of ‘second choice music’, that is definitely nót the case!
These tracks did not find their way to a 2007 Folio radio show, but were too good to stay unnoticed. So I used them in this ‘2007 end-of-year’ mix. It serves these tasty ‘leftovers’ as one uninterrupted delicate stew.
A few years ago, ‘Ambient Music‘ used to be almost synonymous to ‘Electronic Music‘ in regards of instruments chosen and production process.
But gradually, acoustic instruments crept in, maybe as a reaction to laptop concerts proving to be quite boring – throw in a ‘real’ musician playing a ‘real’ instrument (cello is favourite for its sound) and any live show is far more interesting to watch.
A lot of this music can hardly be called ‘ambient’ any more. Some of it is modern classical music, some of it has firm roots in ethnic folk music or even folk psychedelica…
Enter Solo Andata. Australian duo (Kane Ikin and Paul Fiocco), creating great ambient soundscapes which are as much ‘electronic’ as they are ‘acoustic’, still definitely also ‘ambient music’.
Their second album (Solo Andata) is released on the 12k label, mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and with cover art by Taylor Deupree. Any more recommendation needed?
No special theme for this mix…just flowing, quiet music…
This mix was broadcast paired with ‘Final Sleep‘ in june, 2007.
In this mix the title is taken from the Adrian Klumpes track.
Obviously, since it’s very hard to earn a living (or even a part of it) from creating ambient music, a lot of musicians creating this kind of music offer it for free.
From their own websites, through netlablels or using archive.org, bandcamp.com or one of the many alternatives for sharing music.
So if you take some time to do a good search you may find quite some nice music (and a pile of rubbish too).
No special theme for this mix…just flowing, quiet music…
The title obviously comes from the track by Svarte Greiner.
(This mix was broadcast paired with ‘Be Still‘‘ in june, 2007, which will be published next week).
