The Limitless Sweet Love of Precious Suffering, by Spectral Twin

New from Spectral Twin. I especially like the track ‘Milk’ on this one.

A Winged Victory for the Sullen, by A Winged Victory for the Sullen

A Winged Victory For The Sullen is the first installment of thecollaboration between Stars Of The Lid founder Adam Wiltzie and L.A. composer Dustin O’Halloran. The duo agreed to leave the comfort zone of their home studios and develop the recordings with the help of large acoustic spaces, hunting down a selection of 9ft grand pianos that had the ability to deliver extreme sonic low end. Other traditional instrumentation was used including string quartet, French horn, and bassoon, but always juxtaposed is the sound of drifting guitar washed melodies. The recordings began with one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in Berlin on a 1950s imperial Bösendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last session on a handmade Fazioli piano in a private studio on the Northern cusp of Italy, before the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara with the assistance of Francesco Donadello. All songs were then processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape. Their secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to dangerous territory, realising that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic ingemination. In ‘Requiem For The Static King Part One’ – created in memory of the untimely passing of Mark Linkous – they have taken the age-old idea of a string quartet and then shot it out of a cannon to reveal exquisite new levels of sonic bliss. Of the 13 minute track Symphony Pathétique, Wiltzie says ‘after almost 20 years of struggling to create interesting ambient drone music, I feel like I have finally figured out what I am doing’. Notable guest musicians include Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, as well as Erased Tapes label comrade Peter Broderick on violin. A Winged Victory For The Sullen is not a side project – it is the future of the late night record you have always dreamed of. 

Released March 13, 2020

Written by Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie, Dustin O’Halloran
Published by Lid Music (BMI) / Dustin OHalloran Music (BMI) administrated by Embassy Music Corporation (Music Sales Group Ltd.)
Produced by Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie, Dustin O’Halloran
P & C 2011 Erased Tapes Records Ltd.

Jaybird Tara Pro Ear Buds

BIG #ShoutOut to @jaybirdsport for replacing my Tara Pro ear-buds (though they were a month & 1/2 out of warranty); the control pad rubber peeled up & volume decreased to 1/2; but I got the new ones today via FedEx & am a happy, #ambient, #running camper!#Thanks-GREAT buds! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/jDLugEaqYp

— Ambient Landscape (@AmbientLndscape) August 24, 2020

These are great ear-buds, especially for running + working out!

More information on Jaybird wireless earbuds:
https://www.jaybirdsport.com/en-us

surface noise 2020

A resurfaced/reworked ambient/experimental mix from 2007, and a personal favorite of mine.
“Reworking” involves grabbing the original mp3s, zooming in (using Audcaity now instead of Roxio Music Editor back then) and remastering the segues, fading in/out and, in general, creating a superior version of a favorite mix.

The project was inspired while listening to the Asperus album ‘Lie Symmetry‘ & thinking that it’d fit in perfectly with the Dialux Rouge track. And, having just watched the movie Ad Astra, I checked Amazon for the soundtrack & downloaded track 15. After that it was a matter of retro-fitting the compositions into the album’s flow . . .

Updated on 1.20.20 (*) with new cover art

79:43

Play via Mixcloud

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01 Steve Roach – Moon and Star
02 Passengers – A Different Kind Of Blue
03 Dialux Rouge – Zircon
04 Aperus – Unfrozen, Unbroken *
05 eM – Reflective
06 Thermal – Embers
07 Krill_Minima – Sommerdellen
08 Nick Parkin & Alio Die – Silent Dew
09 Plastikman – Ekko
10 Jonathan Hughes – Viscous Space
11 David Torn – Structural Functions of Prezens (excerpt)
12 A Produce – Visions
13 Off the Sky – Polar Drift 4
14 Viridian Sun – Pelior is V
15 Max Richter – Musurgia Universalis * (from Ad Astra)
16 Kirk Watson – Scarecrow *
17 360 Degrees – Interpolation 3 *
18 High Skies – Staars

Retroactions, by Kassel Jaeger

Eliane Tapes is a new series on Moving Furniture Records. All the music in this series is dedicated and/or inspired by the works of Éliane Radigue.
With her groundbreaking work already in the late 60’s and early 70’s Eliane Radigue created a path for many other musicians in the field of minimalism and drone music.
To celebrate the amazing work she has done, and still does, we ask musicians to create works that are inspired by her work and as such are a dedication to her.

ET01: Kassel Jaeger – Retroactions
The first release for Eliane Tapes is by Kassel Jaeger.

For Retroactions Kassel Jaeger created “studies” trying to extend the gesture Eliane Radigue did with feedbacks, with a different and more “hifi” setup than the one she used at the time.
In 4 studies he experiments with different feedback setups, controlled, non-controlled, processed and non-processed. He worked with 6 microphones and 10 speakers, feedbacks.

About Kassel Jaeger:
Kassel Jaeger is the project of Paris based musicians and composer François Bonnet, who is also the artistic direct at GRM. He has released multiple albums the past 11 years on labels such as Editions Mego, Senufo Editions, Unfathomless and Mystery Sea.
Aside from this he has also written several books on philosophy, science and music including the highly acclaimed “The Order Of Sounds”.

kasseljaeger.com

released February 19, 2018

All music by Kassel Jaeger
Artwork by Isabelle Vigier

Phase In, by Winterdagen

Written and played by: Mink Steekelenburg
Additional parts played by: Maarten Vos (modular synth & cello on 2. 3. & 4.), Martijn Eikenhout (guitar on 1. & 4.) and Jaap Rovers (violin on 2.).
Recorded by: Maarten Vos and Moreno Hogervorst
Produced and mixed by: Maarten Vos
Mastered by: Zino Mikorey

another space 3

Another time,
another place,
another world,
[one] final space . . .

The final mix in the series.
Alpha-form digital protagonists, aligning in perfect formation to present an aural backdrop for quiet, contemplative moments in time & space; constituting a re-fusing & melding of the often disparate voices within the vast ambient/experimental genera of rasterized sonance juxtaposed against vermilion skies & coagulant sine-waves . . .

A thanks & “shout-out” to Anthony for listening/reviewing this (to make sure it fit in with the previous two installments) & for alerting me to the de Lucca track (#14) — I certainly appreciate the “assist”!

Part 3 of 3 | 82:12

01 L’homme Invisible – L’inconnu Délicat (extrait)
02 Submerged + Julia Zanke – Metamorphes II_AL
03 Bojanek & Michalowski – Everlasting Moment
04 Caught In The Wake Forever – NV Drowning
05 The Circular Ruins – Gain Turns To Loss
06 Departure Street – Two Islands in the Heart
07 OHIO – Always
08 Ian Wellman – Nitrogen
09 Cinchel – Summer Solstice Picnic in the Field Out Back
10 HRNS – White Heron
11 Kamran Sadeghi – Loss Less (a+b edit)
12 Neuro . . . No Neuro – Just Waiting For You
13 Viridian Sun – Epihelion (edit)
14 Juan Pablo de Lucca – 3
15 Daniel McCagh – Remnants
16 Loscil – Drained Lake

Surface Variations, by Eric Holm

Eric Holm’s new album reflects on his time spent underwater in the face of a growingly precarious personal, ecological and political landscape. A series of field recordings captured both above and below the surface are reformed into a sonic palette. Via oceanic sounds and rhythms taken from mechanical diving apparatuses, Surface Variations meditates on the connectivities and dissonances between humanity and nature. 

Submerged within a marine panorama, the material frames the interplays of darkness and light — the contrasting of lively ecosystems and vast emptiness — contemplating the bloodlike essence of the planet and the eternal mysteries the oceans harbour.
The compositions draw on Holm’s time as an industrial diver, reflecting on ongoing desires to conquer this untameable domain, and a deeper humility in comprehending the limits and fragility of humans in the face of the unstoppable forces of nature.

Perceiving the ocean itself as both a teacher and a mirror, the music emerges as meditations on the human condition, seeking to imagine through the silence and solitude of water the possibility of alternative currents for life above ground.

Drifting alone, the sea becomes a timeless space for contemplation, a place to dream of new futures whilst reconciling the flotsam of the past.

Eric Holm in a UK based, America born sound artist and composer. His first LP Andøya (2014) was made from contact mic recordings of pylons carrying communications cables that connected listening stations on an Arctic Norwegian island. Eric’s second LP Barotrauma (2016) was recorded underwater while training to be an industrial diver.  

Released April 28, 2020

Svalbarð, by Glåsbird

In February 2019 we released the debut album by an anonymous artist named Glåsbird, in the form of Grønland, a sonic expedition of Greenland. The album received much critical acclaim despite being from an anonymous artist and was even featured on Bandcamp Daily under their ‘best Ambient’ feature. CD copies of this record have long since sold out, but the Glåsbird continues its flight to a new destination: Svalbard.

Svalbard lies 78 degrees north, is inside the Arctic Circle and had a population of around 2600 people and an estimated 3000 polar bears! Its calendar year divides between the midnight sun and the polar nights. The former is a period of constant daylight and the latter is the opposite. However, the dark season is broken from time to time by spectacular Northern Lights.

In Svalbarð, Glåsbird became immersed once more in this next excursion, through means of Google Earth, 360° photos, blogger accounts of the isles, maps and also, videos by Efterklang who were an obvious reference point with the band having visited.
This time, we are treated to a greater number of tracks, as ten movements weave Modern Classical influenced Ambient soundscapes. The pristine, polished reverb of Grønland is replaced with a slightly muddier, more lo-fi approach to the sound as the artist strived to present a tape-eroded aesthetic to their work. The recordings deal with dramatic landscapes, glaciers, an abandoned coal community, a seed vault, the Island’s capital city Longyearbyen and of course, polar bears. Each piece feels icy cold, yet the warmth and hiss provided by the decaying tape effects provide a comfort blanket for the listener as perhaps you take in these scenes from a lonely cabin, at one with isolation and natural beauty.

The packaging for the album includes photography from Svalbard itself, courtesy of Aldona Pivoriene who is a professional photographer based in Norway. We are also set to release the next Glåsbird album next year. Where will the destination be? For now, we hope you enjoy immersing yourself in this new set of works exploring Svalbard. 

Released August 10, 2019

Written and produced by Glåsbird
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Photography by Aldona Pivoriene (www.aldonapivoriene.com)
Packaging design by Harry Towell

Nothing is Sacred, by Markus Reuter Oculus

Pure genius: exposed and documented. It’s jazz; but sort of “anti-jazz,” too. It’s progressive, yet clearly supersedes any preexisting templates or traditional standards. It’s avant-garde, while soaring above and beyond typical confines, there, as well. And it’s ‘free jazz,’ but with preconceived structure of sorts.

One of the 21st century’s most joyously unconventional, innovative musicians and composers, Markus Reuter, under the auspices of MoonJune Records, is pleased to offer the initial Oculus project, “Nothing Is Sacred”: an album which hails as one of the most brilliant, spellbinding and ‘immediately essential’ ensemble works in decades. Joined by a stellar cast – featuring legendary King Crimson alumnus, violinist/keyboardist, David Cross; the extraordinary veteran timekeeper Asaf Sirkis, and fretless bass virtuoso (and renowned producer) Fabio Trentini; with contributions from fellow guitar pioneer, Mark Wingfield, and the iconic West Coast USA ambient pioneer, keyboardist Robert Rich – Markus employs a more premeditated, disciplined, yet radically divergent approach to group performance on this monumental session. In the process, new avenues for even more profound levels of musical communication are ventured.

“This is insane music. I used a compositional system that basically disallowed the musicians to play intuitively. They had to follow rules which served to create really strange melodies and harmonies,” Markus revealed. “In the back of my mind, I wanted to create something as fundamentally radical as was (Miles Davis’) ‘Bitches Brew,’ back in the day … sort of an improvising ‘big band’ – where each player is on their own when it comes to specific pitches, but connected in terms of a common rhythmic grid and unified texture.”

Recorded live in the studio (at the 4th annual MoonJune gathering, at La Casa Murada, Catalunya, Spain), every song is a mesmerizing journey, weaving seamlessly between various coarse and fine textures, where moments of tranquil harmony magically morph into spells of delightfully chaotic dissonance, stampeding one minute, and tip-toeing, the next.

Within the context of such challenging musical environs, some extraordinarily gifted, visionary players emote with defiant abandon, somehow, never discarding their unified ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ mindset or their polished collective dynamic swagger. Such paradoxes abound throughout this timeless classic.

Five extended compositions are thoroughly probed, despite the inherently reverential treatment they receive from the participating artists. Exhibitions of musical brilliance are overshadowed by the abstruse ingenuity of the foundation upon which they’re constructed, amalgamated sonic offerings take on a life of their own. 

Released August 6, 2020

Markus Reuter (Touch Guitars® AU8, Soundscapes, Keyboards)
David Cross (Fender Rhodes, Electric Violin)
Fabio Trentini (Bass)
Asaf Sirkis (Drums, Percussion)
Mark Wingfield (Electric Guitar)
Robert Rich (Textures)
Recorded at La Casa Murada, Spain, on May 15 2019.
Written by Markus Reuter

Performed by Reuter/Trentini/Sirkis/Cross.
Overdubbed by Wingfield / Rich.
Recording Engineer: Jesus Rovira.
Mixed by Fabio Trentini and Markus Reuter.
Mastered by Lee Fletcher.
Produced by Markus Reuter and Fabio Trentini.
Executive Producer, Project Initiator and Facilitator: Leonardo Pavkovic.

Digital Artwork by Markus Reuter.
Layout by Bernhard Wöstheinrich.