Manifestazioni, by Carlo Giustini

“A manifestation is an object that clearly shows or embodies something abstract or theoretical”

These are five untamed field recordings captured between the desolate streets of suburban Treviso in late June 2018.
Five explorations of the secret language whispered by its houses and by the slow and mysterious movements of its inhabitants exhausted by the summer heat.

Matter owns a hidden language, a dusty and ancient one.
Sound is matter.

Matter is a tactile manifestation of something that is higher, or at least something that lives hidden among the cracks of our everyday life.

Something vast, which is capable of moving matter and space.
Something speaking in codes.

The movements captured in this work are sometimes brusque, sometimes more tired and dragged.

These are five declarations of love towards a more real world of truth, a world that is hidden but that somehow manifests itself continuously through the familiar sound of objects and everyday life.

All five recordings are first single takes, recorded on worn out tape rolls found here and there.

All recordings captured with a rusty Phillips portable tape recorder and a contact mic.

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JON HASSELL: POWER SPOT (ECM 1327)

A comment on a recent mix inspired me to post this review from 2012. Enjoy!

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JANUARY 5, 2012 | TYRAN GRILLO

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Jon Hassell trumpet
J. A. Deane percussion, alto flute
Jean-Philippe Rykiel keyboards
Michael Brook guitar
Richard Horowitz keyboards
Brian Eno bass
Richard and Paul Armin RAAD electro-acoustic strings
Miguel Frasconi flute

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Recorded October 1983 and December 1984, Grant Avenue Studio, Ontario
Assistant  engineering: David Bottrill and Roman Zack
Produced and engineered by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois

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American composer and trumpeter Jon Hassell is best known for his music of the Fourth World, which he describes as “coffee-colored classical.” The definition becomes clearer once you immerse yourself in the sounds of Power Spot. Hassell’s career is as varied as his education. A student of both Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pandit Pran Nath, he is known for overlooking idiomatic barriers in favor of something far broader. Nath left an indelible mark in Hassell, who turned to the master’s voice for guidance in his own playing. His unmistakable tones are achieved by singing into the instrument, thereby drawing clusters of sounds from a single exhalation. This recording is significant for a number of reasons, not least for indicating a moment in sonic history in which the electro-acoustic universe was beginning to spin some of its richer, more majestic galaxies. The music on Power Spot radiates like a supernova waiting patiently for the traction of celestial bodies to fan its clouds away, revealing softly spinning globes of breath and vapor. With such evocative titles as “Wing Melodies” and “The Elephant And The Orchid,” one feels almost overwhelmed by the range of possible imagery. And yet, like any question of mode or genre thereof, these words disappear behind the music’s waterfall.

At first listen the album may seem to blend into a broad wash of sound, but lean in closer and you begin to hear the details emerge. The title track is perhaps the most potent, opening this portal to a wellspring of beats and train whistles. Brian Eno’s amphibian bass slithers through a pond of liquid mercury, fading into the gaseous darkness from which it sprang. Otherworldly connotations are bound to reveal themselves, and nowhere more so than in “Passage D.E.,” which sounds for all like the soundtrack to a documentary of some undiscovered planet. Notable also is “Miracle Steps,” where live percussion provides marked contrast to the synthetic overlay, drawing in the process the album’s most beautiful cartography.

Power Spot is one protracted aerial view, a bubbling primordial soup of circuits and blips, funneled through such progressive sense of direction and atmosphere as only Hassell can activate. Unlike much of the knob-turning to grace the many electronic albums of the 80s, its sound is strikingly effusive and organic. In this ocean, one finds that the light of life shines brightest on the inside. It is a light that no clouds can obscure, a light that no darkness can close its eyes around. It is a journey of transience, of transport, of futurism and antiquity, of none of these things. Influential? More than words can say. Just listen to Paul Schütze’s Stateless, or the works of countless others who’ve clearly drunk from the Hassell font.

A perfect specimen.

shimmering undercurrents, arc 6

Arc 6; the unplanned culmination of a mix series that I didn’t mix. The series concentrated upon the works & legacy of Brian Eno (solo work, collaborations & production projects with other artists). Joe Miles, a.k.a. 12vman, came up with the idea for the series & then contacted me for assistance with the cover art – which I happily created. Along the way I made a suggestion or 2 regarding tracks for future editions and that was that . . . (or so I thought).

The series was more compilation than mix because the tracks weren’t segued, simply ordered by track – nevertheless it was well received by me & the rest of the ArtoftheMix.org community.

Then, after he had completed the 5^th edition – we got to talking about another “final” edition. Eno had just produced Paul Simon’s “Surprise” and that got our wheels turning . . . Joe mailed me a CD with his tracks & I got to work. At the time I was using Roxio Music Editor – which was nice software for a beginning mixer, but was limited in its segue ability. But we punched it out to rave reviews & that was that . . . (or so I thought).

Last Christmas, I reloaded the tracks into Audacity & remastered it using the same track order – but rather than individual tracks (segued, but with electronic bzzt in-between those tracks) I output it as a single mp3 for zero interruption on playback.

And so, here it is: Arc.6

Download

Tracklisting

01 Eno, Brian – Notting Hill (edit)
02 Another Green World – Becalmed
03 Brian Eno & Jah Wobble – Like Organza
04 Brian Eno – Triennale
05 Toto – Prophecy
06 Brian Eno & Harold Budd – The Chill Air
07 Philip Glass – _Neuköln_
08 Brian Eno -The Big Ship
09 Jon Hassell – Solaire
10 Brian Eno – Bottomliners
11 Shiveree – Fat Lady of Limbourg
12 U2 – Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World
13 The Talking Heads – Mind
14 Brian Eno & David Byrne – Quran
15 FarFlung – The True Wheel
16 Eno-Moebius-Roedelius-Plank – Conditionierer
17 Paul Simon & Brian Eno – Sure Don’t Feel Like Love
18 Brian Eno & John Cale – One Word
19 David Bowie – Red Sails
20 Brian Eno – King’s Lead Hat

Winter Restlessness, by Mount Shrine

Mount Shrine (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) serves us a warm and inviting ambient album.

Rain pounds the temple as you look out across snowy mountains from a lotus position. A wet furred hare seeks refuge beside you, curious about the kettle of hot tea that rests at your side.

A distress call led you here, transmitted to a frequency on your Ham radio. The journey here was long and filled with majestic sights. Isolated villages, melting snow in forgotten valleys, the robed order of the silent all calmed your mind. The rolling fog followed you every step of the way to enlightenment.

Recommended for lovers of subtle field recordings and sleep ambient. Warm, inviting and atmospheric. Best enjoyed with a cup of hot beverage on a rainy day.

• Released July 24, 2018
• Written, Produced, Performed – Cesar Alexandre
• Artwork & Mastering – Simon Heath

TONUS Tribute (mix)

The TONUS Tribute mix: 75:21 | An ‘e l e m e n t s‘ side project.
(unstable, discordant & audiologically dysfunctional)

This raw & untamed project initially began with over 14 hours of music. That was chopped to 3 hours as the palette of

T O N U S

material with which to begin – and the segueing/mixing/editing beg an at that point.

Overlays, ghosted audio imaging and l-o-n-g segues tapered it all down to a 75 minute mixture (+ another 67 for part 2) of ether-jazz, drone/glitch & experimentation – with a goal of showcasing TONUS within a construct of an elements deliverable.

Think of it as a cross between John Cage & The Slow Music Project— a sparse & minimalist soundscape. It is, primarily, an Experimental (in terms of compositions used)  mix; then Minimal (as regards its sparseness of sound) then Ambient (due to its level of quietude) & lastly, Ether-Jazz.(because 80% of the tracks originate from A New Wave of Jazz artists).

We’d like to give a “shout out” to Silent Records for providing many of the corollary artists needed to make this a proper audiological “fit”.

01 TONUS – Cagean Morphology (edit x)
…………………..Interpolating
…………………..a. Quiet American – Beach Rain
                  b. Masaya Kato – Column
…………………..c. Protofuse – Data Thread
…………………..d. Frieband – Emanate, part 1 (excerpt)
02 TONUS – Texture 1
03 TONUS – I
04 Khem One – Modal Gauzes No 1
05 David Lee Meyers – Upper Air
06 TONUS – Point A
07 Zero Ohms – Translation
08 Lingua Lustra – Steamloc to Oblivion
…………………..Interpolating TONUS – IV (excerpt)
09 Kali – Maya

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Jonas Kasper Jensen | Within The Temporal Experience

Clang (DL)

– Special to Toneshift.net by Darren McClure

Jonas Kasper Jensen is a visual artist who also works in the realm of sound art and composition. Since 2010 he has released audio editions of his sound installations, under his own name and the Kasper Knigge moniker. Last year he released his first material that strayed from the gallery environment and relied on purely musical and composed elements. 2017’s Layers of Bridges on the Danish label Clang, explored the connection between music and art, and contained a sculptural quality that applied tactile textures to otherworldly drones. Recordings of girders and beams cast a heavy, wrought-iron feel to that release.

His new album, Within the Temporal Experience (available 9/28), again on Clang, is a continuation of Jenson’s interest in sound-as-object. The metallic tones of his previous release have been smoothed out, but not entirely flattened on this collection of six pieces. Stringed instruments have been processed to form expansive, slow building drones that cascade and immerse the listener. There is a sense of drama in these pieces, with subtle details shimmering in the spectral haze. Album opener “An Indeterminacy Of Silence” takes its time to fade into full volume, adding layer upon layer of harmonic colour, with occasional chord changes that steer the track in subtle new directions.

At times the material is static, but dense, like on “A Shape Within A Material”, where a sustained cluster of chords create cinematic tension. “From The One To The Other” is quieter, more restrained. A soft hiss dances on the periphery of the track, balancing out the frequencies between low-end ebbs and mid-range dust. These differences in tones are always complimentary, never competing, and allow the listener to really sink into the spaces between them.

The final piece, “The Passing By”, is an achingly beautiful way to close the album. An orchestral-like section that reminds me of Fennesz’s most heart-wrenching work, but minus the grit and noise. It shows that, despite being process-oriented and conceptual in nature, Jensen’s work is not without emotion.

Silent Rising

Ambient + Drone | 85:49

A new mix-collection of sleepy ambient & drone compositions, l-o-n-g
fades (1.5 – 2 minutes) & entrenched/encompassing audio. It begins with
a s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, excerpted section of track 4 (another piece of which is
segued in-between tracks 8 & 9), contains several custom audio mash-ups
& was inspired by the cover art – which is a shot of earth’s sunrise from the
silence of outer space.

It’s always interesting to me how a mix takes shape/evolves. This originally ended with track 7. But because I hadn’t used anything from The Circular Ruins in awhile, I went searching on DataObscura (track 9) . . . & then an email from Stroboscopic Artifacts (track 10) hit my inbox . . .
: )

01 Mount Shrine – Lifeless Indoors (stretch edit)
02 Eyes Cast Down – Exquisite Divination of Patterns
03 Susperia Electra – Free Floating in Space [expedition 24]
04 Mount Shrine – Lifeless Indoors (full track)
05 Lucette Bourdin – To the Stars
06 Mystified – The Luminous Deep II (Urban Discourse edit)
07 Broken Harbour/Ambient Landscape – Wavetable.1
…….(Geometry of Shadows+Reflecting Pool – treated mashup)
08 Dziadosz Mrenca – Mirage (Spheruleus Rework)
09 The Circular Ruins – Vanishing Shore
10 The Lotus Eaters – The Idea of North

Download

Kompakt Announces Pop Ambient 2019

Kompakt‘s next Pop Ambient compilation comes out on November 30th, 2018. The label’s calling it a “change of pace” compared to previous entries in the series, in that it focuses more on acoustic and avant-garde ambient styles.

“The 100-percent kick drum-free Pop Ambient series is the most endearing and enduring concept that I have had the pleasure to curate,” says Kompakt boss Wolfgang Voigt. “For this special edition, I create a homogenous experience that would both appeal to our followers and continue our tradition while integrating new micro-facets from neighboring musical universes as much as possible.”

The tracklist is full of previous contributors to the series, including Yui Onodera, Leandro Fresco, Thomas Fehlmann and The Black Frame (AKA Jörg Burger, who records under monikers like The Bionaut and The Modernist).

Tracklist

A1 Thore Pfeiffer – Alles Wird
A2 Coupler – A Plain Of
A3 The Black Frame – The Uncertainty Principle
B1 Kenneth James Gibson – Gone Too Soon
B2 Morgen Wurde – Schien Immer feat. Maria Estrella
C1 Gregor Schwellenbach – Rot 2
C2 Last Train To Brooklyn – Bluebird
C3 Max Würden feat. Luis Reichard – Zweitens
C4 Thomas Fehlmann – Karenina
D1 Leandro Fresco – Araña De Vidrio
D2 Yui Onodera – Cromo 3
D3 Triola – Adren
D4 Max Würden – Core

Kompakt will release Pop Ambient 2019 on November 30th, 2018.

 

Resolution, by Nunc Stans

More deep ambient journeys from Nunc Stans.

Detailed, immersive, and expansive organic soundscapes that will encompass and entrance. Stand here awhile, one step beyond, and experience it unfold before your eyes (to the very end).

• Composed in the Spring of 2018.
• Performed, mastered & designed by Anthony Paul Kerby.
• Album artwork and treatments by APK.
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Faster than Ice Cream . . .

Our mixes melt faster than your favorite brand or flavor . . .
. . . even Häagen-Glädjé
;– D