Tag: electronic

other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel – Music for Viola and Electronics

After they met when working together on Cloud Ensemble, Michel Banabila and Oene van Geel extended their collaboration which resulted in 2014’s “Music for Viola and Electronics”.

Both were so very enthusiastic about the new musical world that they had opened up, that they kept working on “Music for Viola and Electronics II”, which is released this month.

Judging by the (strikingly beautiful!) aerial landscape photography by Gerco de Ruijer on the cover, their collaboration will probably not end here: the crop of the (geometric) landscape on the Volume I cover photo is only partially harvested – by hand, line by line… a difficult, strenuous, but most rewarding work.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Machinefabriek/Rutger Zuydervelt: 3+1

Judged by his output alone, Rutger “Machinefabriek” Zuydervelt must be the ‘hardest working man in electronic showbusiness’.

This is a pick from the latest batch… but chances are that by the time you finished reading this post and listening to the samples his website will already have announced some newer releases…

Next to the recent albums “The Measures Taken”, “Sneeuwstorm” and “Loos”, you’ll also find a beautiful video registration of the Halfslaap performance with the Fox String Quartet at the recent 24 Hour Drone Fest at the LeGuessWho Festival in Utrecht last year.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Marsen Jules – Sinfonietta – At GRM

Marsen Jules’ (Martin Juhls’) new album ‘Sinfonietta’ is released barely a month after he released ‘At GRM’ on his own label.

It is interesting to note the difference between these two albums, as well as their similarities: in a way, the albums relate to each others like day relates to night.
But they also have a lot in common: in both albums, the notion of time is completely irrelevant.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Monolyth & Cobalt; Vitiello + Roden; Gateless Gate; How Hot is Your Cloud; Black to Comm
– shortlist –

Another shortlist for the last days of this year: beautiful soundscapes from Monolyth & Cobalt (Mathias van Eecloo, including reworks by many of his friends), Steve Roden & Stephen Vitiello, Gateless Gate (exploring the vast Siberian Landscape), How Hot is Your Cloud, and the surrealist music of Black to Comm.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Kenneth Kirschner: Imperfect Forms

“With electronic music, it’s hard NOT to create huge amounts of sound… and to me it’s often about taking things away” – Kenneth Kirschner

An overview of an impressive multimedia project on the Tokafi website, showcasing the versatile music of Kenneth Kirschner, a 20-track, 4 hour remix album and much (much!) more.

Enough material to fill your coming Christmas holidays!!

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Bad Sector – Kosmodrom

Bad Sector’s “Kosmodrom” was originally released in 2005 but sold out within a few months. It is dedicated to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Russian pioneer of astronautic theory), and shows this dedication by including original Soviet sound devices (like the Aelita synthesizer and the electro-optical ANS), mixed with space mission dialogues and fragments from transmissions of the mysterious spy channel (‘numbers’) radio stations.

Dedicated to all Soviet/Russian cosmonauts – and also recommended to all wannabe astronauts that enjoy drifting away into outer space (while not leaving home)!