Akira Rabelais – The Little Glass (+Spelle… reissue)

And suddenly, without any warning, there’s good news from the ever-enigmaticAkira Rabelais:
His entire back-catalogue is now available on Bandcamp – which is good news because most of these title were unavailable for a long time now.

And at the same time a new album is released: The Little Glass (available in digital as well as in physical format).

A good opportunity to re-visit the 2006 Spelle Special Radio Show, featuring music from Spelle…, some remixes, ánd exclusive unreleased material especially submitted by Akira Rabelais for this occasion!

Guy Birkin – Tintinnabuli Mathematica Vol. I

Whenever I listen to music by Arvo Pärt, I can experience a lot of different things. But one of the last things that comes to my mind is a mathematical analysis of the Tintinnabuli (Bell- ) compositional style Pärt often uses – a quiet, minimalist, and often meditative style that (quote from the Wikipedia Page): “is characterized by two types of voices, the first of which (dubbed the “tintinnabular voice”) arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion.”

For Tintinnabuli Mathematica, Vol. I“, Guy Birkin has programmed algorithms to create generative music (random and thus relatively unpredictable music created following a pre-defined set of choices and rules) based on the Tintinnabuli style.

Marsen Jules – The Endless Change of Colour


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Marsen Jules is probably the best known alias of Martin Juhls from Dortmund, Germany, also operating as Falter, Krill.Minima (don’t forget to check the recent Sekundenschlaf“), or the marvelously named Wildach Sonnerkraut.
His different aliases allow him to experiment and expand in different directions. The previous (six) releases as Marsen Jules each feature somewhat different instrumentation but all share Juhls’ personal trademark of intricate sounddesign.

Most tracks on the previous Marsen Jules albums are somewhere around the 4 – 6 minute length each.
But his latest albumThe Endless Change of Colour (released on 12k) is different in this respect: it only features one single uninterrupted track.

Brian Eno – Lux

Considering the musical background of the Godfather of Ambient Generative Music, the introductory notes for Brian Eno‘s new album Lux are extremely short.
Of course: for those interested, Brian Eno does not need any further introduction.

Compared to its two predecessors released on Warp Records, “Small Craft on a Milk Sea”  and “Drums Between the Bells”, this release is quite different. No relatively short poppy collaboration tracks this time: Lux is a slowly developing, 75 minute composition.
A return to “classic ambient” form, the kind of “music for thinking” Eno has created from the early eighties. A genre that since then has further developed and has diverted into a lot of different branches: drone, dark ambient, dance ambient, improv, soundscapes, field recordings. Each sub-genre with their own leading artists venturing into new territories.  
But, at the very root of it all, there’s only one true Master.