• Music

    Robert Scott Thompson – Placid

    Robert Scott Thompson, the ambient music alchemist, has released several new albums recently, but I wanted to start with Placid, a rather chilling work that references works by the maestros (Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Klaus Schulze), a touch of Warszawa-period Brian Eno/David Bowie, and his own more musical compositional bent.

  • Music

    Domenique Dumont – People on Sunday

    I came across a “composer” (really, a duo) based in Riga, Latvia called Domenique Dumont. The pair consist of Latvian multi-instrumentalist and producer Arturs Liepins and vocalist, ethnomusicologist Anete Stuce, and they have produced a shimmering, gentle piece of electronic music.  From the release’s Bandcamp site: “People On Sunday is an original soundtrack to the 1930 silent film variously known as Menschen am Sonntag, Les Hommes le Dimanche and People On Sunday. The film is a key work of interwar German cinema, based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder. Part documentary, part fiction, People On Sunday follows a group of…

  • Music

    øjeRum – V​å​gnende Jeg Ser De D​ø​de

    Danish composer øjeRum has recorded for and with some of the best ambient and electronic music labels active today, and this latest release is published by the estimable Room40 Records out of Australia.  From the release Bandcamp site: “While recording, radio waves and static electricity interfered with the signal – sometimes subtly, sometimes more pronounced – supplying the recording with an accidental ghost accompaniment. This chance encounter let me to contact Scanner as I knew of his use of radio waves and police scanners. The result was the two remixes accompanying my piano recording. “Vågnende Jeg Ser De Døde” is…

  • Music

    Various Artists – TogoPop: Marche Noire

    I realized I didn’t have many records from Togo listed on the blog, so, going down the rabbit hole, I found this curious compilation on TogoPop Records.  It sounds NOTHING like what I was expecting.  If anything, the artists on this compilation sound more like they were influenced by French 1980s Cold Wave and Italo Disco.  It’s a weird record, and brilliant for it.

  • Music

    Leisure Time 閒暇 – Normal Music

    Taiwanese band Leisure Time 閒暇 produce a music that sits in that hazy area between real and fake jazz.  I think the quote the band used by the legendary Donald Fagen of Steely Dan sums up their sound best: “There was sort of cheap music, tv music, movie music. By cheap I mean, not really in a disparaging way but it’s written to support something else. […] And so, I both like real jazz and fake jazz, and also, fake fake jazz.” Real of fake, it’s pleasant listening.

  • Music

    Shane Beck & Michael Brückner – Extended Sigh

    There’s little I can add to my dear friend, the Last American Poet, Shane Beck, and heir to the Berlin-School throne, Michael Brückner, so I will let the gentlemen speak for themselves.  You can read further at this release’s Bandcamp site: In what turned out to be a spontaneous burst of inspiration, poet / lyricist / spoken word artist Shane Beck and electronica composer Michael Brückner created this circle of five pieces together that are based as much around the mystical splendor of nature as on the vast inner landscape of human longing for eternal love, spiritual transcendence and integration of…