Nevermind Your Palaver . . . [2]

Part 2 [of 2] – the slightly rougher, audiologically feisty, younger brother of part 1 that closes with a custom landscaped & extended version of the far too short scorcher by ProjeKct Four (Mastelotto, Fripp, Levin & Gunn).
79:37

01 Otto Lindholm – Nilindigo
02 King Crimson – Industry
03 Ynos – Tears in the Rain
04 The Cotswold Gnomes – Ringing Beat
05 The Fireman (Paul McCartney) – Bison
06 Brian Eno & Robert Fripp – Dirt Loop
07 Robert Rich – Electric Ladder
08 King Crimson – Discipline
09 The Cotswold Gnomes – Sneering Loop
10 David Bowie w/ Brian Eno – All Saints
11 Robert Fripp – Breathless
12 Fripp & Eno – The Idea of Decline
13 Andy Summers & Robert Fripp – I Advance Masked
14 David Torn – Sink
15 The Cotswold Gnomes – Tripoli 2020
16 ProjeKct Four – Sus Tayn Zee (extended crimson red-exit edit)

original album cover

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ever > more > other

Always.

Robert Fripp takes a Crowdie!

My brother, Bill, attended King Crimson’s appearance @ Greek Theatre in Los Angeles last night & sent me some pictures from 7 rows from the stage.

Here, Robert Fripp documents the concert series from stage…a “crowdie” (as opposed to a selfie).

Pre-concert stage

KonneKted

The Stick Men are releasing a free digital download companion album to the limited edition promotional CD “KOLLEKTED” (Blue), which is currently available exclusively at King Crimson concerts. For this download version we’ve assembled some other favorites under the name “KONNEKTED” (Red), and included are also some rather odd tracks from the catalogue.

Enter “0” (zero) to download for free. And please tell your friends!

The Ambient Landscape mixological studio crew (Semi-Red) is hard at work remixing this KOLLEKTION as the track selections, though stellar, were not well segued and are merely a kollektion of kompositions…not a well thought out mix.
Thus, we’ve have dragged the composite tracks into our secret studio & have remixed it (and it sounds so much cleaner & smoother without the gaps) and have added a bonus track at the end, Sus_Tayn_Z (ProjeKct Four).

. . .

 

Credits:

• Released June 13, 2017
• Written by Tony Levin, Markus Reuter, Pat Mastelotto, except “Breathless” (Fripp) and “Sailor’s Tale” (King Crimson)
• Personel:
  • Tony Levin: Stick and Voice
  • Markus Reuter: U8 and AU8 Touch Guitars and Voice
  • Pat Mastelotto: Acoustic and Electronic Drums and Percussion
  • Guests:
    • David Cross – violin (on “Shades of Starless”)
    • Mel Collins – saxophone (on “Sailor’s Tale”)
    • Artwork/illustration by Maria Picassó i Piquer

Produced by Stick Men

Mixes are the New Albums

I can’t remember the last time I listened to an entire album from start to finish.

I simply don’t do that…anymore. I used to – when I was 16 & had just bought a new Bowie or Robert Fripp album – I’d listen to the whole album – but then one track would remind me of the guitar riff by another artist…or the bass line would be similar to another song…and I began making cassette mixes (non-segued @ that time) on my TEAC double cassette deck. At the time, I’d hand draw the mix cover-art & passengers in my car would marvel at the creativity it took to put everything together in an enjoyable music mix for the road trip we were on.

And I’ve been making mixes, on & off, ever since (Round 1: 1974 ~ 1990). I had taken a break for a few years – when out of the blue, my 10 years younger brother sent me a cassette mix he had made as a way of thanking me for “saving” him from a Village People fate in which his peer group was immersed. That mix, made with a dual turntable & a mixing board, contained songs from his generation (The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Sugar Cubes, Pixies) & mine (David Bowie, Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp, Ian Hunter) and we labeled it P.H.A.C. – Progressive Hits / Alternative Classics. The series went on for 11 more editions (and, as a side note, I’m restoring a few of them by recording the tape to a digital source). Then Eric enrolled in the Peace Corps and shipped off to Nepal (where he eventually met his wife) and I shipped him 3-4 more editions of ‘After the P.H.A.C.’ – adding acts like Monty Python into the music stream as well as narrated portions using a microphone.

That brings us to, roughly, the year 2000…when I mixed one of my all-time favorites, ‘Lanterna‘ (a tribute mix to the Henry Frayne album by the same name): initially onto cassette, then CD-R in 2004 and digitally in 2014. And I’ve never listened to the entire Lanterna album in toto – only by way of its mixed iteration.

Lanterna can be downloaded free here: Ambient Landscape’s Bandcamp, & will give you an entree into my mixing style.

That mixed reignited the art of making mixes within me, purely as a pastime, (Round 2: 2000 ~ Present) and I stumbled across the Art of the Mix website & joined their online community – posting under the moniker ‘g.a.b. l@bs‘. The site got glitchy after several years (though is still up & running), but the core group of elite mixers to which I palled around with began to fall apart. But I had had a nice run of things from 2000 through 2010 & resigned myself to posting purely on my blog & cross posting to Facebook (our FB account is no longer).

In 2015 I found Mixcloud, a streamlined version of Art of the Mix with better  categorization & a worldwide membership of world-class mixers…within all the genres I participated & a lot more – and have been posting there ever since.

Mixes are, for me, the ONLY way to listen to music. When I purchase or download a new album – it goes on my phone only long enough to determine what songs I like & which ones I’ll utilize to craft a new mix…usually within the same genre – but not always (my ‘elements‘ series (Jazz) is a border-crossing mixed bag of classic Jazz, European Jazz (a la ECM) & Ambient…even Classical.

Albums are categorized into folders on my hard-drive, from whence I derive my mix play-lists & the final deliverable which is then rendered with cover art & uploaded to my phone & Mixcloud.

To my ears albums are boring – too much of one artist & not enough derivation. In fact, when shopping for music, one requirement is that it be different enough to warrant my listening attention…yet similar enough to garner inclusion for the next mix project. Thus albums, CD’s & digital collections sit idle until the master (that’s, uhm…me ; D ) hand selects compositions from same as the new mix is crafted.

There are, however, 2 albums which do reside on my phone’s hard-drive & will probably never be deleted:

• Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, and  
• A Produce’s Smile on the Void.

…just because I consider them near perfection (within their respective genres).
Bottom line is: I love these 2 albums in the entirety! And I’m sure the reader also has his or her favorite.

So there you have it. The plastic & waxed shape of one man’s opinion on the topic of listenable forms of music. The mix is the thing: taking the creative input of artists & reshaping them into something better, something finer, something able to be shared without violating the artist’s creative world…AND, at least within the genres I mix…a final product that actually grants increased exposure of the artist & their work.

Thanks for reading and, if you have a differing opinion…please share it with me. I’ll read it…when I’m not tilting my head sideways to peruse the spines of stacks like these; in search of the perfect tune.

King Crimson, Fripp & ‘Heroes’

King Crimson performed Heroes at the Admiralspalast in Berlin as a celebration, a remembrance & an homage. The concert was thirty-nine years and one month after the original sessions at the Hansa Tonstudio overlooking the Berlin Wall. This is released in the Fortieth Anniversary year.

Robert Fripp
Wednesday 22nd. February, 2017; DGM HQ, Wiltshire, England.

Track Listing:
1 Heroes
2 Easy Money
3 Starless (edit)
4 The Hell Hounds of Krim
5 Heroes (radio edit)

DGM and Panegyric are proud to present for pre-order, King Crimson’s Heroes EP – recorded live on the European tour of 2016. The title track sees Robert Fripp reprise the unforgettable guitar role he created for the original David Bowie studio recording in the same city in 1977, particularly poignant in the year of Bowie’s death. Also featured on the EP are a ten minutes recording of Easy Money (Paris), a song that varies in length and solos from night to night and is always a fan favourite, an edited version (featuring the “song section”) of Crim Classic Starless often a set closer, always a stand-out moment and a recording of the three drummers’ showpiece The Hell Hounds of Krim (both from Vienna) – all previously unreleased live recordings.

The EP is completed with a ‘radio edit’ of Heroes.

A full live album, recorded on the 2016 European tour will be issued in September 2017.

S3 – Ingredients of a Mix

So what makes a good mix?

What separates a “mix” from a collection of songs? And why do some mixers resonate with their genre while others simply record a few similarly constructed  tunes onto a playlist?

Here, in my opinion, are the beginning components of what it takes to make an outstanding mix – regardless of genre.

1. Space: Define you genre: Is it Ambient (a personal addiction!), Post-Rock, Garage, Avant=Garde, Techno, House, etc. Begin by mixing within your chosen genre & shift to mixed genre once you get the hang of things & humans begin to clamor for your output.
   .
2. Sequence: In my [humble?] opinion, this can make or break a really good mix. You’ve chosen the compositions…yet there is (believe it or not) a BEST order (sequence) in which to listen to a particular set of songs. My advice is: always mix from slowest to fastest (the pace of the compositions) – that creates a “build” to the mix & leaves the listener satisfied.
   .

3. Segue:
   1. How should the songs fade-in/fade-out with one another?
      I prefer to create an environment (when I can) where the listener has trouble distinguishing where one song stopped & the next one began. However, with Rock & Jazz – genres which frequently employ abrupt endings to the compositions –  the segues should not overlap too much, but be short & crisp.
      .
   2. When should you employ l-o-n-g vs shorter segues?
      Ambient & Experimental compositions readily lend themselves to long fades & segues. Sequencing plays a big role here as the mixer will want to long-fade similar sounds so that the perception of ending/beginning is further blurred to the listener’s ears.
      Techno is an interesting genre. To successfully mix Techno, one will need either beat-matching software OR a very good ear (to avoid erratic sounds to the beat-pattern of consecutive songs).
      .
   3. When should there be a little silence (a gap in the audio) in-between tracks?
      When the ending of a song is so perfect (in Jazz for example) that the listener will want to relish & savor the crisp ending for 1/2 a second or 2 before the next composition begins. Again think Rock, Jazz & sometimes Classical.

Experiment! I can’t tell you how many mixes I have  either scrapped, left on the drawing board or left to sit while i searched for the proper compositions to accompany the “feel” of the mix.

Also – take good notes! This begins with organization in file folders:

Note the tracks you use (partials, excerpts, revisions, etc). I usually make a mix, listen to it, then revise or re-script/re-order the tracks. Once I’ve listened to the final product twice, do I even consider deleting the .aup file created by the software. After numerous revisions, you’ll forget what you mixed-blended-treated, etc. I take notes in note-pad:

Audacity (mixing software) is what I use to craft all my projects. It can do everything listed above as well as rip the output to different file formats (e.g. Bandcamp prefers FLAC files) and excerpt portions of songs for times when you just don’t wanna’ use all 27 minutes of a long-form composition ;- ] (and it’s free!)

And, finally, mix for yourself! If you like it, chances are others will too. But, if not…at least you have something listenable that you can enjoy.

E.G.

Happy mixing!!

Chuck.Berry

R.I.P. – 90 is one heckuva roll!

: )

Hopscape!

You may have seen this on Beer Advocate…and it’s official.

Sam Adams is now the official brewery of record for our label!

;- )

David Bowie, A Son of the Circus

Concert tours from Ottawa, Canada: When God was an Englishman (1976) and A Son of the Circus (1987)