Firelight_remix

Thanks to Steve Roach & ProjeKt for the New Year’s freebie from the Timeroom. The first tune, ‘Emotion Revealed‘, is a little too “poppy” & light for my taste…but the 2nd offering, ‘Firelight‘ is another in a long line of fine Roach drones.

So…sitting in the l@b, with Bowl games on the tube & Sam Adams Winter Lager gathering frost in the back porch fridge, I decided to whip up a little ambient/drone goodness…using some scraps hanging out in file folders, here & there  (crafted with l-o-n-g fades)

58:19

>> 01.13.16 – remixed to include a new track 1

>> 02.02.16 – remixed with new tracks 1 & 4

01 Ambient Landscape – Aqua Orb [Immersion Drone]
02 Sophia Loizou – Ghost Box
03 Joachim Spieth – Isolated Mix 58 (excerpt)
04 Marcus Guenter – Ejecta
05 Chris Russell – Scilia
06 Steve Roach – Firelight (excerpt)
07 Cousin Silas – The Delta at Sunset
08 Rumforskning – Fremtiden (excerpt)
09 M Dempsey – Blue Moon

[Some of] the Best of 2015

From Igloo Magazine
(most link to Bandcamp, SoundCloud or the artist’s web-page/site)

 

elements_vee

An all-vinyl ‘elements‘ edition that starts off slowly with a few solo piano numbers, then branches out into trios, quartets, big bands and a few Dixieland ditties to close out the mix. The 3 live numbers (Goodman, Hamp, & Satchmo) are spliced together to sound as if the same crowd.

This was two-thirds ripped using albums from my father’s old collection (kept in protective V.R.P. sleeves all these years – the Ellington album purchased in 1953!), as well as a few off my own shelf.  But it’s all LP (wink: stereophonic!) from the first tink of the piano to the abrupt ending of `South’.

The Hampton track alone is worth the download, and the Louis Armstrong number will make you smile…never mind the nostalgic snap, crackle & pop. Ah, vinyl!

01 Thelonious Monk – Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea
02 Kirk Lightsey – Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum
03 Dexter Gordon – Ruby My Dear
04 Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy – Think
05 Count Basie – The Second Time Around
06 Miles Davis – Round Midnight
07 Earl Hines Trio – The Girl From Ipanema
08 The Benny Goodman Quartet – Memories of You
09 Lionel Hampton – Lady Be Good
10 Louis Armstrong – The Faithful Hussar
11 Harry James – Sweet Georgia Brown
12 Duke Ellington – Take the A Train
13 Wynton Marsalis – Knozz Moe-King
14 Sphere – Flight Path
15 Phil Napoleon & his Memphis Five – Limehouse Blues
16 Al Hirt – South

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all my ambient artist/net-label acquaintances ,  & friends! Have a joyous holiday season; and we hope you’re able to spend it safe & warm with your friends & family.

Theia, by Markus Guentner

Delicate, sparse & beautiful!

An important addition to the ambient audiophile’s collection because of the dense, micro-viscosity awash within the compositions. Subtle depth & micro-abrasive causticity plumb the very reaches of the ambient multiverse & give salve to battered eardrums & craniums. No “mere” drone-scapes here…but essential ambient/mixological connective aural tissue for the ardent mixer.

[In other words…..I like it!]

Orchid, on Earth Mantra

This a fantastic agglomeration of ambient & causticity…I’ve already snagged several tunes for the 2016 mixological year.

Btw, for those of you who don’t know, 2016 IS the Year-of-the-Ambient-Mix (an’ I go that bona-fide!)
;- )
___________________________________________________
“ORCHID” is the result of 5 months work by some of the most dedicated and talented people I’ve had the good fortune to know. From the first notes of Steve Brand’s wonderful “Near Silence”, you know you’re in for something special on this release. The breadth of composition and style here – from the sweeping pads of Altus’ “Phantasm” to the haunting piano of Robert Scott Thompson’s “Song of the Standing Stone” – is simply breathtaking. There is no avenue of ambient left unexplored in the more than 100 minutes of this compilation. Minimalist, electro, space, melodic and dark ambient – each finds a place on “ORCHID”.

The title for the release is born from this diversity of styles – orchidaceae is a massive and incredibly diverse family of flowers, each with it’s own ineffable beauty. The parallel between this beautiful family of flora and the music on this release was all too easy to draw.

My deepest thanks to all of the amazing artists who gave their time and talent to bring this release to life. Special thanks to peter james, for not only his brilliant contribution but for his impeccable mastering and to Steve Brand, whose beautiful track is only equaled by the stunning visuals he created for the release.

As with all eM releases, “ORCHID” is free for download. Should you wish to pay for the album, you are free (and, if I may say, encouraged) to do so. All proceeds from sales of “ORCHID” will go directly into the maintenance and upkeep of the earthMANTRA label.

Please enjoy.

Geoff – eM

Tracklisting:
1. Near Silence (eM Mix) – Steve Brand
2. Phantasm – Altus
3. Pourquoi Faire – Mathieu Lamontagne
4. Tetrahelix – Massergy
5. Unfurling – Roy Mattson
6. Blue Moon – M Dempsey
7. The Word Will Not Awaken – peter james
8. Entrance to Mahãyãna – Christopher Alvarado
9. Endless Moon – Scott Lawlor
10. Song of the Standing Stone – Robert Scott Thompson
11. Goloka – Chris Russell
12. Weightless – åpne sinn | peter james

2 0 1 6 . . .

. . .is right around the mixological bend. We’ve been working on some sound excursions we think you’ll dig.

Good mixes are, for me, the new albums. I rarely if ever listen to entire albums. I graze, listen with mixing in mind, cut the chaff,  arrange the remaining compositions in a specific order with like-minded tunes (ambient, experimental, classical, jazz, etc), give it a name & then listen to them.

Every once in awhile, say with David Torn or Vijay Iyer, there’ll be tunes so fantastic that I keep them on my phone to play solo – but that’s rare. Mixes, for me, fit the Brian Eno definition of Ambient: as interesting (active listening) as they are ignorable (passive listening), whilst napping, computing, blogging or reading (and occasionally Nordic Tracking [bad weather days] – I run long distance, sans tunes) .

Anyways…we have some completely brand new things to deliver, as well as several remastered (with new tracks added) stand-out mixes from our Art of the Mix days (when we mixed as ‘g.a.b. l@bs‘ – prior to starting this blog, the FB page & Mixcloud).

These (below) will get us through January. And then, I guess we’ll mix some more . . .

‘Aerial View’, ‘elements_vee’, ‘Digiseeding’ (tribute), ‘elements_micro’

: )

Sus Tayn Z[ee]

Sus_Tayn_Z, a new (and for the moment free) download from ProjeKct 4 (King Crimson).
Notes
Let Alex “Stormy” Mundy explain how this rip in the space time continuum by Fripp, Gunn, Levin & Mastelotto actually came about.

“I found a CDR with a couple of bass and drum grooves from Tony and Pat from the Sept 2004 KC rehearsals. On their own I wasn’t sure wether I could make a tickle from them or not. So I thought, why don’t I add RF on top? I went looking for something that might work and it led me to the p2 sessions of Live Groove. I took the Sus Tayn Z from 19 April 1998, which also had Trey on it. I then edited them, and there we are – a NEW P4 piece.”

D/L: http://www.dgmlive.com/archive.htm?artist=12&show=2025

Watch:

Personnel: Robert Fripp, Trey Gunn, Tony Levin & Pat Mastelotto

This could probably be remixed from 2:05 to 5:51 by someone clever . . .
(& then added…here) ;- ]
or here:

Digiseeds, on Ultimae Records

This is a great compilation of ambient, ambient-dub, glitch & experimental/pop-ambient – I’ve had it on headphones for this past week & like it more with each listen. Particular faves are tracks 1, 4, 5 , 7 9 & 10…but they’re all great. Hats off to Mr. Lubos Cvrk for organizing, arranging & contributing to this project!

12.12.15
On the drawing board…’DigiSeeding’ a cross-pollinated tribute Ambient/Dub/Tech mix to this compilation…early 2016.

12.11.15
Listening . . . . . . . . . . .[Mmm… : ) ]

12.10.15
Eagerly awaiting this about-to-be-released compilation on Ultimae.

DIGISEEDS:  Various Artists – Compiled by Ambientium

01. SONMI451 – The Circadian Clock
02. JANI R – Morning Lit Rooms
03. STATE AZURE – Vertigo
04. AMBIENTIUM – Heartbeat
05. ONE ARC DEGREE – Seven Years of Summer
06. MANDRAX – Melting
07. OCOEUR – Outside
08. MARTIN NONSTATIC – Glia
09. CLOOWER WOOMA – Human Disease
10. LARS LEONHARD – Lucid Dreams
11. SYNAPSIA – Slowly Awake
12. SONMI451 – The Circadian Clock (lazy afternoon remix)

e m p t y spaces

A retro, ambient/experimental mix (updated from 2006’s original podcast) comprised of glitch, fizz, sub-atomic dub & slices of ethereal, compartmentalized s p a c  e | 82:01

01 Aphex Twin – Parallel Stripes
02 William Fields – Colors
03 Ulf Lohmann – Because
04 Sun Electric – Echelon
05 Krill.Minima – das Licht durch dein Fenster Schatten wirft an die Wand (the light through your windows casts shadows on the wall)
06 Off the Sky – Like Caustic Lights Bending Backwards
07 Digitalis – Basis
08 Lammergeyer – In Praise Of Darkness
09 Ian Boddy+Robert Rich – Turning Out
10 Pan Sonic – Aaltopiiri
11 michL – Raga Two
12 Kim Cascone – Dust Theory 4
13 Jan Jelinek – Them, Their
14 Pan American – Remapping
15 Ponton – Kamen