Worth hearing, what else is there to say?

http://nocna-hudba.blogspot.com/2009/03/ry...noise-2009.html

Links to a download in the comments section. It's not out in America and probably won't be any time soon, so download away.

A lot of good ambient cassettes this year.

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There’s truly nothing thats says ‘i am a musician who wants to be taken seriously as an artist, not just someone who writes tunes, damnit’, than soundtracking a film or similar. It’s really the ultimate expression of selfish egotism to foist your own work on top of something that stands on it’s own merits – and yet the impulse is repeated, over and over, up there with the tropes of ‘artistic seriousness’ like suddenly deciding to write an opera or boasting about your complicated software setup.

And here I am, not only having devised and organised the performance of just such a hijacking, but also putting the finishing touches on releasing it. And really, I’m not sure now, 5 months later, whether this is a good idea or just the equivalent of vanity publishing in literature.
The idea to do a soundtrack to Takashi Miike’s astonishing TV series ‘MPD Psycho’ came after my first watch through it in it’s entirety. So blown away was I by it’s incredible convolution of humour, drama, graphic violence and dark surrealism, that I felt (as I often do), that I had to expose as many people as possible to it, in order that their minds be blown in the same way. So, egotistic point number one there. Realising that trying to loan my already long-suffering collection of friends and acquaintances a 3 disk, subtitled japanese tv series with the words ‘OFFPUTTINGLY EXTREME’ emblazoned on the cover was perhaps a slightly hard sell, I thought of trying to host some sort of screening for it. Conversation with Macao, a friend who put on a regular experimental music night and occasional film club led to the idea of the first episode being screened as part of one of his nights; but somewhere along the way, the ‘artist’ whispered at the back of the brain, and before long the decision was made to insert myself between listener’s ears and Miike’s vision.

The idea gestated for a while before Macao suggested tying the screening in with the fairly high profile ‘Triptych’ festival, for which he was already curating an evening. With a deadline on the horizon it became clear pretty quickly that I had been spending all my time obsessively watching and rewatching the episode, creating more and more detailed cue points with every watch, building matrices of events I couldn’t possibly hope to represent. With a few weeks to go I had prepared nothing at all except for some pretty frightening looking notebooks covered in scrawled text like ‘FLOWERS MOVE TO DEATH ROOM’, ‘DEAD IMAC RAIN SNUFF SHIFT’ and, rather sweetly, ‘BEAUTIFUL GUN ROSE UNFOLDING’. All good for my hitherto unrealised book of Jack Kerouac knockoff essays but not much use.

So reaching into the grab-bag of tired ’sound art’ moves, I contacted some like minded colleagues to give me backup and cover up for my shortcomings. One of them, Chris Dooks/Bovine Life, eventually was unable to perform on the evening but painstakingly produced 27 tracks of themes and reflections on the clip i provided him, an excellent album in its own right. On the night he peered out at the audience from the screen of my Zune MP3 player, the shuffling dealer in the machine, dispensing shards of melody and drone.

The other three; Dave F/Erstlaub, Dave D/Dirty Hope and Tom/Konxompax, were given sections to work from, picked as arbitrary times of their choice. Out of context, they wouldn’t see where their parts fitted into the whole visually or audibly, in a self regarding attempt by myself to maintain control over the enterprise. Luckily for me, and the listener, they also broke into other sections at will, and the unexpected bursts that they brought remain my favourite parts of the whole piece.

On the evening, a full weekend of heavy partying for most of my friends and regulars to the night left an odd collection of casualties, sunday drinkers and a few die hard film buffs enticed by Miike’s name on the poster. The screen was faded, the stage littered with flight cases from the previous folk performers, and the majority of the audience were probably hungry to catch the epic dub techno of Convextion later that evening. And yet, and yet…when the first captions appeared, the lights dimmed and my first awkward spurts of sound emerged…something held. Despite technical hitches, at least one drunk performer, a snatch of primadonnaism, and a patch that failed to correctly count minutes and seconds (thank, Max/MSP!) the performance itself captured the attention of the room, even those for whom experimental noise and drone or brain-exposed flowerpot murder victims were, until then, a closed book. No chatter, and even the performers would lift their heads from laptops, mixers or objects and take in the whole.
So. I suppose the correct thing to do would be to say ‘the performance was the piece, the context was all, the experience intangible’, and the whole thing could pass into the memories of three or four people. The end result though, for me, is in parts worth a second listen, and considered by the other participants to be worthy of a release. I’m told you can replicate the old ‘Wizard of Oz/Dark Side Of the Moon’ trick if you start the dvd playing at the first noise heard – I haven’t tried it yet. So – there is a point to prolonging the trip into the world of my ego.

All thats left are the inevitable thanks; to Scott and Alasdair, whom i watched MPD Psycho with the first time, to Macao for encouraging the idea and realising it, and Darren at the Ivy for the technical support and encouragement, and of course to Chris, Dave F, Dave D and Tom for collaborating and putting up with my sometimes ridiculous whims. And, of course, to Takashi Miike, for creating this masterpiece in the first place – and, unknowingly, allowing me to stamp my feet all over it.
Thanks

Ruaridh Law
September 1st 08
Train from London to Glasgow

also been listening to old electronic compositions. jean michel jarre, cluster, tangerine dream. would love to hear more music from that era.

So what am I missing?

Mystic Chords is brilliant, one of his best. Some other good ones of his if you choose to check him out further

- structures from silence
- dreamtime return
- early man
- midnight moon
- magnificent void
- a deeper silence

obviously one of my favorite musicians, prolific and totally out there



I like Tangerine Dream's Exit, btw. Some of their stuff is pretty bad, though

Tangerine Dream, eh?

*Cough*

I've only waded through a few albums, but I dig 'em, so far.

I'll be honest. The first track on this album ("Cloudy, Since You Went Away") is so good that for a long time I wished the whole album could continue in that vein. The phrase 'memories from the haunted ballroom' sets the scene, but can't quite capture the aching, heartsick void at the center of the song. The horns are reduced to exhausted gusts of sound; the piano frays and wavers, reflected in broken glass. And then the vocals come in drunkenly, the vowels yawning like holes and the consonants fading to smears. An abandoned gramophone turning on in an empty house on summer afternoons, when the sun slants in through the attic window and the dust dances in the air. It took me months to get past the track and accept the rest of the album. I wanted more, wanted to be left alone in that house to sit in silence on the creaking staircase and wait for that sound to start up again, the thump of the needle hitting vinyl and that wobbling hiss before the record started up again. Instead, we get the sound vaporised, the music hollowed out into a howling storm of particles, only the briefest fragments of fractured sound leaping free before being blasted apart into greyscale pixels. A haunting of a haunting, nothing left but the memory of an echo. And it took time to discover the beauty in there, the same sort of impossibly close-up grandeur you get from Stars of the Lid where the sheer weight and scale of the sound can overpower you until you let your ears adjust to the shift in perspective. The tricky part about A Stairway to the Stars is that constant disorienting shift and unbalancing - from "Cloudy", where the song is left relatively whole, to the flickering noise of "Consigned to a Yesterday", to the doleful tread of the keys on "Date with an Angel", backed by a choir of rustling static. After a time, I began to see the beauty in the other tracks too. Tracks like "Emptiness" and "Friends Past Reunited" have their component parts dismantled, and left as little more than drones drifting between clouds of static, briefly coalescing into flashes of melody. Even still, you can hear the echoes of what once was, like afterimages (aftersounds?) left when you stare into the light and then close your eyes. Some songs are still relatively whole, dusty vinyl wobbling on the turntable until it drowns in static. "Malign Forces of the Occult" turns nightmarish, the listless drones turning shrill, buzzing at the windows as if trying to escape. But by "Robins and Roses", the storm is past and faded light trickles into the room once more, buoyed by horns united in sluggish fanfare and incantory vocals. All that remains is for the title track to lead us out and back into the sunshine, blurry organ spiralling up and into the light, "We Cannot Escape the Past" as a brief, melancholy reminder of where we've been. The only danger I feel with this record is that I might find myself lost in it, that one listen on a rainy afternoon might leave me trapped in its grey and dilapidated world, where I'd be left to roam the house, leaving stray footprints on the dusty floorboards as I search for that one elusive room where the music still plays.

Have not picked that up yet, but I'm looking forward to it. In total agreement about the artwork - it's perfect. I've been listening to the Caretaker a lot lately, but I still can't go past A Stairway to the Stars as my favourite work of his. And, since I'm never going to finish it, here's the aborted blurb I started for my album list.

Tell us a bit about Sadly, The Future is No Longer What it Used to Be. I’m also curious about the idea hinted at in the video of losing yourself/finding yourself by walking…

JLK: “A lot of work has gone into the new release. It's the beginning of a new phase of work now - something a lot more personal than before, more delicate and emotional. V/Vm had to finish really - that project had run its course - it hadn't lost its energy, but it was a project born of its time in the mid-90's. Things have changed now and we can offer a lot more…of course, V/Vm always offered a lot in terms of free digital media and that won't change now either. It was a good time for me to regroup and set up a new platform and work out what can be offered in terms of traditional formats (for music and video) and where I can go from here to push things forward.

“Not so many people have heard the new output, but those who have been exposed to it have all had very positive and very emotional responses to it (so maybe I should be worried!), but for me it's about a period of time passing between one phase and another. Transient, but fixed too, in a way. From a time where you're not fully in control, but you're still in charge of things.

“It was also born from a time of personal change…it became part of my own rebuilding process. Pacing the streets, working things out alone. Walking is an integral part in this release, especially on those days when you're not really there, but still you appear to be to others. Weirdly, on those days people don't look you in the eye as you walk, so you become kind of invisible…but when I felt more together, then the girls were all smiling at me on the streets. It's strange how a state of mind can also be visible to people out there. It's from a time where I was just lost in my own thoughts, memories and future ambitions, looking for new directions and pathways to open up.

Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was is the soundtrack to a world in decline, the heroism of modern life, a document of loss, an essay in gloom, delivered with a brutally honest appreciation of the pitiful truth

Have not picked that up yet, but I'm looking forward to it. In total agreement about the artwork - it's perfect. I've been listening to the Caretaker a lot lately, but I still can't go past A Stairway to the Stars as my favourite work of his. And, since I'm never going to finish it, here's the aborted blurb I started for my album list.

Imperial Horizon by Kevin Drumm is a further examination into sustained tone as most recently heard on his previous Hospital Productions benchmark album, Imperial Distortion, stretching out minimalism to unreached heights of serene ambient.lulling electronic drones slowly transform over the course of the hour plus piece in constant flux,echoing both an existential terror and Zen calm. mutations grow so quietly only the body opens to identify this change while the mind closes. the ephemeral and seeming lightness of the tones hang with taut balance in contrast to the method in which they are overlapped and rotated with deadly weight. How wildly divergent emotions rise, hover, and fall using so little is a mystery that only Kevin Drumm can provide. While you may not find an answer, you can certainly get lost in the question.

Leyland Kirby - When We Parted My Heart Wanted to Die



Tracklisting:
01. When We Parted, My Heart Wanted to Die (Friedrichshain Memory)
02. The Sound of Music Vanishing
03. The Beauty of the Impending Tragedy of My Existence
04. And as I Sat Beside You I Felt the Great Sadness that Day
05. Tonight is the Last Night of the World
06. To the Place Between the Twilight and the Dawn

It's taking me a bastard of a long time to get through it, but this is sounding pretty good to me. Every song feels like a complete album unto itself, and, as such, I'm kinda taking one song at a time. Through the first five now, though, and am pretty blown away by it, especially 'Tonight is the Last Night of the World'.

Know exactly what you mean Caley. I've been living with this for a month now, the second part arrived today but I’m not really ready for it yet. I’ve gone through stages of obsessing over all the tracks but And as I Sat Beside You I Felt the Great Sadness that Day is my current favourite. Never knew an earthquake could be serene. Pretty sure this will be playing when I'm on my way down to meet my maker.

Bruegel: what are the essential ambients from this year that I need to hear? Anyone else feel free to chime in.

Bruegel: what are the essential ambients from this year that I need to hear? Anyone else feel free to chime in.

Bruegel: what are the essential ambients from this year that I need to hear? Anyone else feel free to chime in.

I loved the Windy & Carl/Heavy Winged split thing.

Guiseppe Ielasi - Aix (avant-glitch stuff)

My fave 09 ambient(ish) recordings are (in no particular order):

Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country
Emeralds - st (their best yet? Quite possibly)
Leyland Kirby - Sadly, the Future is no Longer What it Was trilogy (only heard the 1/3 so far but if it’s all of that quality it could end up being my favourite ambient "album" this year)
Johann Johannson - And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees
The Village Orchestra - I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again
Kevin Drumm - Imperial Horizon
Hildur Gudnadottir - Without Sinking (maybe my favourite cello recordings outside of AR)
Mountains - Choral
Loscil - Strathcona Variations (Helmet sent me this the other day, only listened twice so far but it's amazing. Three relatively short tracks but they are powerful little fuckers)



Yeah, not sure if they are strictly ambient but I would definitely recommend both of those to dudes interested in ambient music. Same goes for:

Atom™ - Liedgut
Moritz Von Oswald Trio - Vertical Ascent
Lars Horntveth - Kaleidoscopic
Demdike Stare - Symbiosis


I need to listen to 92982 again, in the right setting/mood but all I want to listen to right now is the Shackleton album

I love the new White Rainbow disc, New Clouds. Just some gorgeous, psychedelic (lol montana) sounds.