elements_windows (single pane)

In actuality, part 4 of the elements_windows series . . . but considerably shorter & predominantly piano-based ether-jazz. A single malt mix, the pace of which quickens as the listener nears the end (tracks 8, 9 & 10). Check the boxes: quietude, temporal, experimental, euro-funk . . . a 1/2 day’s journey into Jazz.

[I’m not saying that an obsessive compulsion is absolutely necessary when crafting these slabs of sound . . . but it certainly doesn’t, uhm . . . hurt. ;- ) | 54:04

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01 Marc Sinan & Oguz Buyukberber – Upon Nothingness, White
02 Kristjan Randalu, Ben Monder & Markku Ounaskari – Escapism
03 Yaz Ahmed – Misophonia
04 Barre Phillips, William Parker, Tetsu Saitoh & Jodlle Leandre – Bleu Grek
05 Thomas Strønen & Time Is A Blind Guide – La Bella
06 Shinya Fukumori Trio – Silent Chaos
07 Hely – Chopin Space Station
08 Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin – Modul 34
09 Marcin Wasilewski – Big Foot
10 Herbie Hancock’s New Standard – New York Minute

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Deconstructing Brian Eno’s Music for Airports

Here’s a site that deconstructs and reconstructs Brian Eno’s classic Music for Airports album; additionally you can play with the files yourself!
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In 1978, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn’t the first ambient album by any means, it was the first album explicitly released as an ‘ambient music album’. The album was essentially a continuation of Eno’s experimentation with the tape machine as a compositional tool, as well as his exploration of generative music, music created by systems. In this article I’ll discuss how Music for Airports was created, I’ll break down and recreate the tracks 2/1 and 1/2, and hopefully give you some ideas about how to adopt this approach yourself.

Eno’s experiments with tape loops go as far back as 1973’s (No Pussyfooting), a collaboration with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp that employed an early experiment in sound-on-sound tape looping. For the recordings, Fripps’s guitar was run into two tape machines feeding into each other. The musical material runs back and forth between the machines, creating longs delays akin to modern loop pedals. The length of the delay was set by the physical distance between the two machines.

More . . .

About Time, by Le Berger

Samuel Landry has been working to distinguish his craft under the guise of Le Berger for quite a few years, mostly self-releasing digital-only records, mostly flying below the radar. But last year, the world at large saw what Landry was capable of on his solo debut physical release, Music For Guitar & Patience on Home Normal, which was his most ambitious and fully realized release to date. 

About Time is the follow up to Music For Guitar & Patience, another digital-only self-released record, and it sees Landry moving towards an even grander sound. It’s a double record in the truest sense, two songs that are roughly 40 minutes long, with two bite-sized bonus songs, and its drone as majestic and intimate as anything you’ve heard. Centered around the concept of time being beyond the grasp of our minds, these songs are teeming with the utmost refinement, smooth slow burning meditations on the truths and absolutes of the unknown, eschewing the shock and awe wall of noise treatment for ethereal minimalism that breathes life into the ubiquitous and otherwise inert Cosmic Dust, Landry achieves an unequalled perfection with poise and intentionality. 

– Justin Snow 

N.B. All funds gathered from the digital sales of this album will be invested in my brewery project. If you wish to learn more about said project or fund it directly please go to www.indiegogo.com/projects/les-gueux/x/13483044#/

Released April 11, 2016 

Not words & somewhat music by Le Berger 
Cover artwork by René Margraff

Zero Point (remixed)

Just got in from some killer, 4th of July fireworks . . .now onto the serious business of mix-posting:

NP: An all-time album favorite – Seofon’s ‘Zero Point‘ – remixed w/some ambient, glitch, dub…& a li’l bit o’ techno!

Remixed over the years – most recently May of 2019 & featuring a new track from the just released album from Zahn, Hatami & Mcclure; ‘Ypsilon’.
86:08

01 Pan Sonic – Ilma Air
02 Marcus Fischer & Simon Scott – Branches (excerpt)
03 Marcus Fjellström – Skelektikon
04 Seofon + VidnaObmana – Splendors
05 VidnaObmana, Steve Roach, Thermal & Seofon – Zero Point
06 Christopher Willits – Olancha Hello
07 Chris Russell – Orchid
08 O Yuki Conjugate – Binaryglow
09 Zahn, Hatami & Mcclure – Synfolt*
10 Lufth – Methane on Mars
11 vidnaObmana/Stephen Kent – Collecting the Spirits*
12 Aes Dana – Grassland
13 Von Grall – Infinitum
14 Kangding Ray – Saudade

* this version not available until July 2019

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More . . . wireless . . !

I’ve had a pair of Powerbeats.3 wireless ear-buds for a year & 1./2 . . . & just bought a pair of Jaybird TARAH Pro‘s. They’re in-ear (like BOSE) as opposed to Powerbeats ear hook. As a result, they offer increased noise cancelling power & a cool, customizable audio-graph App for tweaking the sound.

Great control pad — for accessing Siri or phone calls – & water/sweat proof (great for working out!), as well as an easy-to-use equalizer app for saving audio configurations to your phone (Rock, Ambient, Jazz, Classical, etc)

Very nice!

Glo, by Polypores

A collection of deep, immersive ambient/drone tracks, recorded live in November 2018 as part of a meditation practice. 

All proceeds will be donated to Achieve Change And Engagement, a charity focused on mental health solutions for young people:  a-c-e.org.uk

Those who pay for the download will receive 3 bonus tracks. 

Recommended playback on headphones for complete sonic immersion. 

Made using Dreadbox Erebus, Make Noise 0-Coast, and Waldorf Blofeld, through a Specular Tempus reverb pedal.

Released December 6, 2018 

Written and produced by Stephen James Buckley

A House Once Lived That Never Was, by cinchel

Recorded/mixed at Dr. Pirates Ship from March 2012-June 2013 using my fingers/pick, an ebow and violin bow on an acoustic guitar borrowed from my friend Leah and an SM57 microphone plugged into a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo. Laptop was mostly used for looping and mixing. No other effects used. 

“… is a slow movement of light strumming, reverberant humming, and an underlying rhythm like that of a far away train rattling through a dense, moist forest. The following cultural reference registers more positively with some than with others, but trust that it is intended as fully appreciative when suggested that the track sounds, for all its sublimated pleasure, like Led Zeppelin just before it bursts out of its occultist haze and rocks out. Here, however, the rock never comes. There is just the lovely murk of songless ruralisms left to lull themselves to sleep.” 

—Marc Weidenbaum (from a blog post about a demo version of one of these tracks that i posted to soundcloud last year) disquiet.com/2012/07/20/cinchel-20120718/

“…as organic as Mountains used to be and as heartfelt as Andrew Weathers, taking a guitar and a tape delay and coaxing out the softest most delicate sounds…” 

—Justin Snow (antigravity bunny)  antigravitybunny.com?p=9019 

Released June 1, 2014 

Mastered by Joe Panzner (Autumn 2013) 
Cover photo is a collage of 2 photos by Kirstie Shanley

Spartan Mettle Softens the Blow . 3

Part 3 . . . because I couldn’t help myself! (that’s why) : )

Rhetorical Question: Is there such a thing as “too much din”??

This series has been a blast to evolve & construct. I regularly run through editions 1 through 3 via earbuds (usually during workouts – audio noise creates enough distraction that the gym-time flies).
It’s also one of those fringe genres (ether-jazz+noise) that’s received a languid reception . . . but that’s often the way it goes when you’re on the bleeding edge of a new, or seldom produced, order of things (my friend Dirk Serries, of TONUS, YODOK III & multiple iterations of ether-jazz combos, can relate, no doubt).

And, as an aside, the 5.31.19 release of Michele Rabbia’s ‘Lost River‘ (ECM) caused me to add a new opening track to the project (w/ some treated drums segueing into track #2)

Given the diversity of artists cranking out noise like this, there’s an obvious market (albeit small) for all of this – but a market nonetheless. Our aim is to occasionally mix within that market. However, if you’re more of a Brahms lullaby sort of weirdo chap . . . by all means do NOT press ‘play’!!

;- D

[part 3 of 3 . . . a continuation of soft vs hard aural din]
74:37

01 Michele Rabbia, Gianluca Petrella & Eivind Aarset – Wadi
02 Ambient Landscape – Stretch Intro One+Two
(interpolating David Torn’s ‘At Least There Was Nothing’
& ‘Tritone Harmonics’ by SONAR)
03 Benedict Taylor & Dirk Serries – Puncture Cycle – V (excerpt)
04 Dk3 (Denison/Kimball Trio) – Issa
05 Andy Summers – Mare Imbrium
06 Mats Eilertsen, Harmen Fraanje & Thomas Strønen – Perpetum
07 David Torn, Tim Berne & Ches Smith – Spartan, Before It Hit (part 3)
08 Thomas Strønen & Time Is A Blind Guide – Baka
09 Giovanni Guidi – No Taxi
10 David Torn, Tim Berne & Ches Smith – Soften The Blow (part 3)
11 Medeski, Martin & Wood – Retirement Song
12 David Torn, Tim Berne & Ches Smith – Eye Meddle (part 3)
13 Medeski, Martin & Wood – Undone
14 Pat Metheny – Mastema
15 Dk3 (Denison/Kimball Trio) – Landshark pt. 2
16 Nels Cline, Tim Berne & Jim Black– Railroaded
17 Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois – Mag11 P82
18 Derek Bailey – PIE (Amatosis-Mix)

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L’océan rêve dans sa loisiveté – 1st Session, by maninkari

Around the theme of the ocean symbolising the subconscious, the hidden world and a very personal concept of “loisiveté” a combintion of idleness “oisiveté” and law “loi”, Maninkari continues exploring a weird and dreamlike world. 

As usual, the Charlot brothers resort almost exclusively to the use of acoustic instruments with oriental origins (bodhran, cymbalom, santoor, viola, cello, zurna). 

Percussion instruments especially the bodhran play melodic or textural figures, whereas stringed instruments become repetitive to a point where they embody the rythmics. 

The combination of repetition and oriental tones create a heady sound continuum providing the 10 nameless tracks with ? a mantra-like resonance. A short breathing in the middle of the album with an organ and birdsong is the only quiet moment of this tormented (but without violence), and meditative (but without bliss) record. 

The permanent state of tension recalls the rigours of law and repetition provides the calm alternative of idleness “l’oisiveté”. 
The ocean offers all of it’s grandeur to this introspective journey. 
[label info]

Released November 25, 2014

Anticipation of an Uncertain Future – various artists

Released January 1, 2017

As we move into the unpredictability of 2017, “Anticipation of an Uncertain Future” is a compilation taken from our recent and upcoming releases. 

Featuring tracks from albums by Max Ananyev, Covarino/Incorvaia, Endless Melancholy, Adrian Lane, Aaron Martin, Poppy Nogood, Ales Tsurko, Visionary Hours and Richard Youngs, “Anticipation of an Uncertain Future” aims to distract the listener’s attention from the absurdity of the times we live in … even just for 40 minutes. 

For more information about the tracks, albums and artists, visit: www.preservedsound.com/news/various-artists-anticipation-of-an-uncertain-future

 

Photo by Musa Musavi: www.flickr.com/photos/musamusavi/16726445067