ambient music, other-music

Max Richter – (From) Sleep

“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.

other-news

Sleeping, or what….? (+ Folio_Archive)

In case you are wondering about the recent lack of activity here: don’t worry – there’s a good reason for that:

Apart from the short holiday I enjoyed, I am now busy preparing an exciting project to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ambientblog, later this year.
Details will follow soon – and it will definitely be worth the wait!

(And to fill the gap: here’s a Mixcloud link to the archive of radio shows I compiled for NPS Folio from 2006 until 2009).

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Kenneth Kirschner – Compressions & Rarefactions

It was Brian Eno who once described ambient music as ‘music that is as ignorable as it is interesting’ – but it may very well be Kenneth Kirschner taking this concept to the extreme.

“Time, space, repetition, pattern, the very very big and the very very small. There’s an effort to be a part of the continuum and to recognize it, to try to remove the self if possible in a recognition of the bigger things. Also, neither of us is afraid of the dark.”

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Michael Fahres; Miguel Isaza; Naviar Series 006; Circuit Integré Vol. 1

Michael Fahres presents a radically different vision on ‘environmental music’;
Miguel Isaza manages to find a balance between the temporal and the eternal;
Naviar Records demonstrate that a community can generate strong (or even stronger) results;
and: the introducton of a new series exploring the lively Polish experimental electronic underground scene.

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Mike Cooper; J Butler; Tambour; Lunae Lumen

Mike Cooper’s Fratello Mare is a journey you’d better not begin unprepared: it’s exploring the beauty of the Pacific yet somehow also resembles Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas…!?

Furthermore: some music to calm down to: guitar pedal soundscapes by J. Butler, and two short neo-classical EP’s by Tambour and Lunae Lumen