This track by Seah and Mykel Boyd (working together as post doom romance) is part of an elegant series of sound art made in their local area. Mellow and very engaging music.
Tag: Field Recordings
Categories
Esa Ruoho – Collage
Esa Ruoho is a project out of Finland who works with really long, sinewy drones and atmospherics to get lost in on a headphone trip. Fine ambient music, something rare in a time when the term is so badly abused.
Our friend Jeff Gburek continues to release astounding experimental music, with this release being a collection of scattered acousmatic works which flow together surprisingly well.
If you can imagine John Cage’s Roaratorio, calm spoken word and field recordings which make you forget you’re in front of your stereo rather than enjoying the sounds of nature in some Eastern European lake area. You feel a sense of sublime calm, with a guide and friend, your own Virgil, perhaps, chatting with you as you walk in the fields rather than into the bowels of the inferno.
Tamarind Winds has to be the best album of 2022 for me to get lost in. Composer and friend of the blog Jeff Gburek continues to awe with the magic he imbues in each instrument he touches, spinning haunting drones, field recordings and soothing the senses with his rebab. From his Bandcamp site:
Various parts of the traditional Javanese rebab are made of tamarind wood, hence the flavor, the aromatic suggestion of the title. These are spontaneous compositions, duets and trios created in thye studio among me, myself and I. There are no effects or plug-ins used other than reverb chosen for one setting for each live recording session. Two songs are left raw in the spirit of ancient field recordings. Some musical figures may seem to repeat as if looped but they are imbal, hocketiing, call and response techniques, created interactivelty in the dubbing process. The occasion for the album was a series of rehearsals undertaken to get back into shape to record the rebab with Orphan Sound System for an album due next year, which seems to be going well. Hope you enjoy the music and are off to a relaxing summer of 2022. Peace.
It’s cliché to say that Gburek makes otherworldly sounds, but for the life of me, I cannot find another set of words to express what effect this album has had on my ears.
Categories
Midori Hirano – And I Am Here
According to Midori Hirano’s Bandcamp site, “this album was initially released on staaltape by Rinus Van Alebeek in 2015 as a very limited edition of cassette tape.”
It’s a gem of experimental music because Hirano’s background blends a classical music, a commercial music background, and what would end up being termed as “Japanoise,” the beautifully violent experimental music which exploded in Japan and worldwide throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Hirano crafts 24 sound vignettes on this album, and the end result is something akin to John Cage going mushroom hunting with Aki Takahashi while listening to Hijokaidan on headphones. Eclectic, but it works very well.
Welcome to the first proper release promotion of 2022, and it’s quite a lovely way to begin the year. Blackford Hill is a record company out of Edinburgh, Scotland, and they offer up a compilation of ethereal independent music from bands like Ultramarine, Emily Scott, Kate Carr, Jake Tilson and a host of others, providing 31 tracks.
From the Blackford Hill Bandcamp site:
The prospect from Blackford Hill is wide-ranging and far-reaching. This recently established label, curated by designer/publisher Simon Lewin, is based in Edinburgh and shares its name with a prominent topographical feature of that city. This compilation, ‘Transmissions / Volume One’, is a mapping of interests and affinities, a setting out of current coordinates, a taking of bearings but also a projection of possible routes of travel.
The duo Ultramarine channel the tangy atmosphere and languid cyclical pulse of an English estuary through their distinctive ambient techno. Poet Liz Lochhead recites a sonnet in celebration of love while Andrew Wasylyk’s piano scans the measures of an enraptured heart. A vocal ensemble led by Hanna Tuulikki performs new music that reverberates not only with the history of Gaelic song, but also with calls and cries of shoreline birds once imitated within that tradition. The fertile imagination of Lomond Campbell unlocks a spacious looking-glass world, a virtual zone that stretches out beyond his piano’s keyboard. Bow Gamelan Ensemble, metropolitan adepts of bricolage, discover sounds that lurk within saws.
Through Blackford Hill, Lewin and co-curator Tommy Perman extend a warm welcome to a selection of musicians, singers and artists in sound they have encountered and befriended across the years. Invariably they are individuals who deeply value their creative independence and approach their work in a spirit of exploration. Their own passionate involvement, integrity and excitement transmits. Often these artists are also highly responsive to the particularities of place. They prefer immersion within specific landscapes and the various histories they embody, to the abstraction of ideas and theories or the demands of a certain style. Their projects and their recordings are personal and grounded; they have character and context and that transmits.
With ‘Transmissions / Volume One’, Blackford Hill welcomes receptive listeners in search of a fresh outlook and new perspectives. From the luminous voices that glow from Simon Kirby, Rob St John and Tommy Perman’s ‘Sing the Gloaming’ to the wah-wah scintillation of Richard Youngs’ ‘Thought Plane 2020’; from the psychogeographical resonance of Kate Carr’s ‘The Owls Were Calling That Dark, Dark Night’ to Jake Tilson’s tantalising acoustic snapshots of instrumental music heard on the streets of Paris and New York, or to the reedy tones generated by water flowing through Sam A Mcloughlin’s homemade river harp in Healey Dell near Rochdale, the prospect from Blackford Hill is indeed wide-ranging, far-reaching and warmly inviting.
All profits from the sales of ‘Transmissions / Volume One’ will be donated to Shelter.
There is a book attached to this compilation, marrying gorgeous images with equally sumptuous music.
Categories
E.U.E.R.P.I. – Timid Memories
We have a new band to follow, and they’re out of Bulgaria. E.U.E.R.P.I. produce a sonorous and pleasantly dark ambient music that sounds heavily influenced by the works of Steve Roach, Matthias Grassow, or even Lustmord. E.U.E.R.P.I. have proven to be as masterful at using field recordings, blending them into their live performance as documented on this record. One to watch out for.
Our first review on returning to Brno is a burner, naturally. Our friend, man of the world, and experimental music composer Jeff Gburek comes by these pages again with a droning masterpiece.
This is not the ordinary drone you hear reviewed on these pages, though, truth be told, nothing I review is even remotely ordinary. The backstory is almost as impressive as these waves of hypnotic (in the best of senses) drones are.
To catch the whole story, read Jeff’s writeup on how this fine album came to be. When he advised me of the album the word Kaszubian brought back memories of a kind doctor who helped me out about 25 years ago when I was going through some digestive disorders. I’ve heard plenty of folk music from the region, but to hear of a relic from that area producing something so engaging kept my attention wrapt throughout.
Categories
Flora Yin-Wong – Holy Palm
After coming across an interview over at The Quietus with the London based composer Flora Yin-Wong, I wasn’t quite sure of what to make of her work. The new album they discussed, Holy Palm sounded fascinating, less so by the interviewer’s rather tepid questions but more so by the evocative answers Flora was giving. I cannot say that she is or isn’t a religious woman (though as a rationalist, perhaps she would enjoy the works of the Cappadocians), but her fascination with sacred spaces adds something interesting to this album, where drone, field recordings, and a warm take on something that reminds me of electroacoustic music flow elegantly into each other. It’s an astounding release from a new name for me. Treasures like this are why I love sharing music.
Categories
Alejandra and Aeron – España 1998-2004
Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman have been working together as sound and multimedia artists since at least 1997, and perhaps farther back, though their prodigious corpus vitae isn’t so clear on when, exactly, they began recording together. One can surmise that they have been collaborating on CD since 1998, if this compilation is anything to go by.
What do we find from their oeuvre? Electroacoustic music that has a hazy, dreamlike quality to it. There are gentle rumblings, drones and bits of electronic music that have a nearly magical quality to them. It’s pleasant music with which to daydream – experimental without being overly academic.