Markus Reuter is the master of the ambient touch guitar. This instrument, in the hands of this virtuoso, produces a very distinct sound. When Markus adds manipulations and treatments, the sound goes over the top, into uncharted zones.
He recorded the tracks for The Longest in Terms of Being from July, 1999 through October, 1999 with one track from March, 2000. This set is a progression and a roller coaster of emotions. Markus has chosen to take listeners on a whirlwind tour of their own psyches. It promises to be an intense journey and to run the gamut of the dark side of the self. There are brief respites of contemplative melancholia but the overwhelming moods are dark, somber and ominous. At times, the disc even threatens to go sinister. This CD, released in 2001, is an excellent companion to Markus’ collaborations, group projects and other solo efforts.
– Jim Brenholts
released July 1, 2001
Written and performed in real-time by Markus Reuter
Composed By, Performer, Guitar – Markus Reuter Cover – Michael Kuhne Edited By [Digital Editing And Assembly] – Philipp Quaet-Faslem Producer – Markus Reuter, Philipp Quaet-Faslem
A reworking of Talvin Singh’s 1998 classic “O.K.” It follows an ambient/electronic/techno path & is wrapped & designed around the simple fact that I like to run 3 times per week whilst listening to something that keeps my feet moving! Reconstructed (somewhat) from our mixtape cassette version of 1999, this version of the project utilizes only 2 more recent releases (Martin Nonstatic & Alessandro Adriani).
It was a blast, though, thumbing through the CD vault for the likes of Stereolab, Add N to (X) & the Passengers discs. Starts slow & ends up wildly flailing, as hushed tones beget drivingbeats.
Enjoy!
01 Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbetts – Tal 02 Passengers – Theme from ‘The Swan’ 03 Talvin Singh – Disser – Point.Mento.B 04 Martin Nonstatic – Mind-Ctrl 05 Robert Miles – Improvisations, Pt. 1 06 Alessandro Adriani – Hors De Combat 07 Talvin Singh – Mombasstic 08 Bill Laswell & Jah Wobble – Orion 09 Stereolob – Metronomic Underground 10 Add N to (X) – Oh Yeah, Oh No 11 Talvin Singh – Eclipse 12 Plastikman – Rekall (edit) 13 Talvin Singh – Sutrix 14 Passengers – One Minute Warning 15 Talvin Singh – Butterfly 16 Talvin Singh – OK 17 The Future Sound of London – We Have Explosive
Emil Holmstrom and Peter Wikstrom have been working on different music projects together since 2001, but in 2006 after a long journey around south asia they found some otherworldly inspiration to create The Ecovillage project.
Ecovillage say that the seventh album Arrived has by far been the most mentally challenging one to create, but also the work that could be the most rewarding to date on many levels.
Ecovillage feel that Arrived is the first album they have made that is a personal concept album that tell a certain story for the listener.
There was a hard time finishing up the album with lots of struggle at the end of creating it, but a mini tour in Los Angeles that was filled with tons of consolation, inspiring places and people to help finishing up the album.
Two collaborations from the album really make a mark. Ludvig Cimbrelius aka Purl, IIuvia, Eternell etc. who also was on the mini tour in LA and Carlos Niño who they met at two occasions and kindly contributed with lots of energy and inspiration for the album. Also Gayle Ellett who is a constant collaborator and almost a third member of the band helped out on many planes.
Ecovillage have released albums on Darla Records, Quince Records, Parallax Sounds, Constellation Tatsu, Nature Bliss and Eilean records
Released February 7, 2020 Mastered by Tobias Hellkvist Cover photo by Simon Whetham
Another time . . . another place . . . another world . . . another space.
A new #ambient mini-series utilizing a vector-forward/counter-intuitive mixing approach: here are some aural musings on sparse vacancies, barren landscapes & ambient-driven horizons . . . designed to facilitate the creation of individual sonic spaces enabling the listener a respite from the din of everyday life.
#Ambient / #Experimental / #Drift / #Drone / Part 1 of 3 79:55
01 Bernhard Günter – Kernal Panic 02 Scanner – Archive Land (excerpt) 03 Hilyard – Orpo 04 Aperus – When the Mountains Wear Black Hat 05 Devin Underwood + Marcus Fischer – Contrails + Mountains 06 Max Corbacho – Dreaming Spaces (excerpt) 07 James Murray + Francis M Gri – Ma 08 Brian Eno+ Daniel Lanois – Over The Canaries 09 AUME – Mutation, Wormhole, Primordial, Pawzeil 10 Randy Grief – Rolling Electrical Storm with Transmissions (excerpt) 11 Hammock – Fascinans 12 Strië – 87 Billion Suns 13 Benjamin Dauer & Specta Ciera – Over the Coastline 14 Strië – To Never Return Home
Just purchased this morning & playing now via headphones . . .
Thomas Zehetmair, one of the great violinists of our time, re-visits the solo works of Bach, the summit of the violin repertory. Using period instruments, Zehetmair plays the music with vividness and intelligence to produce a recording that is deeply steeped in the music and at the same time original.
The album was recorded at Propstei St. Gerold and is issued as a double CD with texts by Peter Gülke and Thomas Zehetmair. Composed three centuries ago, Johann Sebastian Bach’s set of six works for solo violin stands as one of the holy grails of the instrument’s literature – perhaps the holiest. Now the great Austrian musician Thomas Zehetmair makes his own mark in the rich history of this music, revisiting the repertoire on period instruments.
Zehetmair is an extraordinary violinist and a consistently inquisitive and self-questioning artist. He has not only played the big concertos but has given close attention to chamber music and new repertory, and has also found an extra calling as a conductor, channeling this varied experience into his return to the formidable cornerstone of Bach’s solo masterpieces. As a young man Zehetmair worked with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in his period ensemble, working with him to prepare for his first recording of the sonatas and partitas on a modern instrument. For this new recording, he draws out exquisite colours from two violins from Bach’s lifetime, both of them by masters in the German tradition, but there is nothing antiquarian in his approach – old instruments, for him, are tools with which to express a modern sensibility: alert, edgy, multivalent. His performance engages, too, with the superb acoustic of the priory church of St Gerold, in Austria where so many legendary ECM recordings have been made.
Peter Gülke, in his accompanying essay, refers to the “floating spirituality” of this music, and to how Bach here offers one side of a conversation with the performer, whom he leaves free to determine matters of dynamic shading, phrasing and bowing. Zehetmair brings vividness and intelligence to the conversation on a recording that, deeply steeped in the music and true, is at the same time powerfully original.
Born in Salzburg, Thomas Zehetmair made his debut at the Salzburg Festival when he was sixteen and started out as a recording artist the following year, with an account of the Mozart concerto in B flat (which the composer wrote at the same age). A first recording of the Bach solo works followed in 1983, when he was twenty-one.
By the mid-1990s he had recorded much of the mainstream violin repertory, but his interests in chamber music were already blossoming. He founded his own string quartet in 1994, with his wife violist Ruth Killius. The quartet made it a habit to perform all works from memory – even difficult contemporary ones – and to concentrate on just one programme per season. For ECM they have recorded quartets by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Bartók, Schumann, Hindemith and Beethoven.
Zehetmair has also formed other long-lasting partnerships, notably with Heinz Holliger, with whom he took part in a ground-breaking recording of sonatas by Jan Dismas Zelenka. And it was for Zehetmair that Holliger wrote his Violin Concerto in 1993-5, and the two have collaborated on recordings of the composer’s chamber music, all documented by ECM New Series.
From working occasionally with chamber orchestras, Zehetmair moved on in 2002 to a commitment as music director to the Northern Sinfonia, based in north-east England. He stayed with them for twelve seasons, forming connections also with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Musikkollegium Winterthur. Earlier this year he began a tenure with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.
Whether as violinist or as conductor, his intention is the same: to discover “the purpose and relationship of every single note in the overall musical architecture”.
Been digging this for a few months & have used several of Jon’s tracks on recent mixes/shows.
______________________________________________________________________________ Written and produced by Jon E.K. Mastered by Satoshi Noguchi at Mirai Sevens Studio.
All sounds compiled and created from March 15 to October 2, 2019.
Contains field recordings gathered in Argentina (Ushuaia, El Calafate, El Chaltén, El Bolsón, Puerto Manzano), Portland, OR, and Los Angeles, CA.
Pump organ on Pyramid performed by Cornelius Martin.
Photography by Cornelius Martin.
El don de escuchar es la fortuna del alma. (The gift of listening is the fortune of the soul).
A Quiet-to-LOUD ramp-up of Jazz & ether-jazz sounds unearthed from a series of archeological digs, pushing the audiological envelope; with a caution, however, to the intending listener . . .
. . . pressing play will flood your cranium with wondrously creative, aural ideas! Part 1 of 2 (with paired/similar artistic & compositional content).
78:27
01 Jan Garbarek – Ov Zarmanali 02 Max Roach-Jang Jon-Chen Jiebing – Moon Over the Great Wall pt. D 03 Reto Bieri – Lied 04 Louis Sclavis Quartet – Esquisse 2 05 London Metropolitan Orchestra – Coronation 06 Bill Frisell– D. Sharpe 07 Anders Jormin – Cæruleus 08 Nels Cline, Tim Berne, Jim Black – Momento 09 Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin – Modul 48 10 John Scofield-Chick Corea-Jack DeJohnette– El Swing 11 Medeski, Martin & Wood – Flat Tires 12 Ornette Coleman & Pat Metheny – Trigonometry 13 Nels Cline, Tim Berne, Jim Black – Rescue Her 14 Everyman Band – Al Ur 15 The Nels Cline 4 – Furtive
The cutting-edge ambient music from Japan brought by up-and-coming producer and musician Okada Takuro and sound artist duenn. This urban sound is made to be the “air” to you
“As ignorable as it is interesting” is how Brian Eno describes ambient music. Then how should this interesting yet may be ignored sound be part of our life in 2020?
Now after works by Oh Shu & BIOMAN, Jim O’Rourke, Ana Da Silva & Phew, NEWHERE MUSIC is proud to present concept album “Urban Planning” from Okada Takuro + duenn.
After Moriwaikiteiru disbanded, Okada Takuro started his solo projects with the debut album “Nostalgia”. Apart from songwriting, Okada is also active as a producer and in film score.
duenn has been working with labels from all over the world including Entr’acte (Belgium) and Past Inside The Present (US). His experimental unit 3RENSA with Merzbow and Nyantora has performed with legendary sound designer Matsuo Ohno (Astro Boy) and artist Shohei Tsuda. In recent years, duenn’s sound can be heard at galleries and exhibitions, including the latest collaboration with Shiho Yoshida.
It started from a sparkle in the discussion between Okada and duenn, “sound of the city” as a keyword. What should be the ambient music in our life, at our time? Through conversations, the two had made an important point, that is “complete an album with melodies by duenn and only duenn”, for so far, duenn has rarely created melodies.
The album has a precise concept, yet without much embellishment, probably because of the primitive melodies by duenn, being a freshman as a melody maker. For the listeners, the touch of simplicity may well remind them of the lullabies in their childhood.
duenn and Okada also had clearly divided roles during the making, with duenn on melodies and Okada on editing and producing. It is also interesting that duenn chose to use GarageBand, a tool that accessible to all for his first melody-making, which eventually turns out to be inevitably.
Respect of ambient musicians and contemporary artists since the 80s, Yukio Fujimoto and Hiroshi Yoshimura to name a few, could be recognized from this album. This is also the unique feature thanks to the continued crossover activities of the duenn and Okada. However, the two did not stop at admiring the masterpiece, instead, they focused on the cities in 2020s. The tracks are concise and comprehensive of 1 or 2 minute-long echo with the artists of the subscription era.
The artists spent two years on this creation. Imagine the commuter trains, cars, your room, local park for a walk. This is the sound of city to blend into every moment in urban life.
Ambient Landscape 