Category: ambient music

ambient music, exclusives

Vuvuzela Stretch Mix

Ever since I heard Pink Floyd’s processed recording of a stadium singing (on ”Fearless”, from 1971’s “Meddle”), the sound of a mega-crowd organism fascinates me as well as the mass hysteria behind it frightens me.

In fact, I really HATE football, but the 2010 World Championship brought a new fascinating phenomena: the Vuvuzela.

The deafening sound (over 125dB, which is louder than a chain-saw) is dreaded by many for its annoying sound and danger of deafening.
Still, a stadium with thousands of these horns honking continuously is a fascinating sound, which I would love to hear properly recorded (in full surround, preferrably).

So, when someone posted a link to a short sample from the US-UK match, I simply could not resist….

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Jan Bang – …And Poppies from Kandahar

The Samadhisound label, founded and curated by David Sylvian, simultaneously released three impressive titles. Together they present a landmark of the current experimental/electronic/ improv scene.
Be prepared: none of these albums are ‘easy listening’ music – in fact, a lot of this music wouldn’t even be considered ‘ambient’.

Jan Bang‘s album “…And Poppies from Kandahar” is a good start, because it contains the most ‘accessible’ music of these titles.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Toshimaru Nakamura – Egrets

The Samadhisound label, founded and curated by David Sylvian, simultaneously released three impressive titles. Together they present a landmark of the current experimental/electronic/ improv scene.
Be prepared: none of these albums are ‘easy listening’ music – in fact, a lot of this music wouldn’t even be considered ‘ambient’.

Next to David Sylvian, it’s Arve Henriksen linking Toshimaru Nakamura‘s album to that of Jan Bang.
However, Henriksen’s trumpet handling is quite different here: it includes the sound of the instrument itself (like the clicking of the valves), as well as the breathing of the player.
This perfectly fits the music of Toshimaru Nakamura – who is a household name in the Japanese onkyo (noise) and improv scene.

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Akira Rabelais – Caduceus

The Samadhisound label, founded and curated by David Sylvian, simultaneously released three impressive titles. Together they present a landmark of the current experimental/electronic/ improv scene.
Be prepared: none of these albums are ‘easy listening’ music – in fact, a lot of this music wouldn’t even be considered ‘ambient’.

If I would compile a list of all time favourite albums, Akira Rabelais’ Spellewauerynsherde (also released on Samadhisound) would definitely end up in the highest regions. 
Thus, expectations were mile-high when SamadhiSound announced the release of a new Rabelais album called Caduceus.

ambient music, MIXES

VorteX (Mix)

Since 1995, X-Rated (a weekly three hour radio show on dutch alternative music radio channel Kink FM) has been a “platform for ‘difficult’ music”. Experimental, avant-garde, poetry, soundscapes: uncensored and uncompromised.

(The FM in the channel’s name is somewhat misleading, since it’s a cable radio station that can also be received via internet or satellite).

X-Rated‘s existence for more than 15 years is nothing short of remarkable, because Kink FM (daughter of Veronica Broadcasting company) is a commercial station, while the music X-Rated features is about the opposite of “commercial”. Since dutch public radio has ended (almost) all of the experimental radio shows, X-Rated is about the last dutch program hosting experimental electronic music.

Needless to say that I’m very very proud to have X-Rated broadcast a full one-hour mix, especially created for this occasion. This mix was broadcast on the May 23, 2010 show (the first day of Pentecost).

Vortex was especially created for X-Rated. Thanks to Bob Rusche for broadcasting this on his show!

ambient music, MIXES

Fluid Radio Mix


fluid radio

If you check out the Fluid Radio Mixcloud playlist,you’ll find a lot of familiar names: it seems that almost all artists working in the contemporary electronic experimental music field have contributed one or more mixes themselves. Most of these have appeared somewhere in one of my earlier mixes.
These mixes (which are also broadcast on the  ) make Fluid Radio one of the most popular channels on Mixcloud. Fluid Radio Webchannel

Apart from that, Fluid Audio represents a label that has released some impressive music in equally impressive packages…!

The mix presented here was created specifically for Fluid Radio. It is no ‘head-tail’ mixtape, but a collage of fragments that are represented in a different context and, doing so, get a different musical meaning.
Like all of my other mixes, there are a lot of details presented in layers, creating new perspectives – ‘enhanced’ landscapes which sometimes may not be too comfortable but hopefully will be as fascinating to you as they are for me…

This particular mix was especially created for Fluid-Radio in march 2010. It was broadcast on Fluid Radio on May 20, 2010.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Marsen Jules – Yara (Remastered)

Marsen Jules’ (Martin Juhls, from Dortmund, Germany) “Yara” was originally released on Autoplate in 2004.
The (six) tracks were only available as MP3 downloads (in 192 kbps only!). And unfortunately disappeared completely in 2006 (together with the tracks from the preceding MP3 album “Lazy Sunday Funerals“) .
Marsen Jules continued to release more beautiful music on the City Centre Offices label, such as 2005’s Herbstlaub.

Lucky for us, the Oktaf label decided to re-releases both lost albums. They are now available as a physical CD as well as digital downloads (with better bitrates). The tracks are fully remastered and the Yara CD also contains two additional tracks: ‘Harfenklang’ (Harp Sounds) and the 15 minute long ‘Yara Variation‘.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Jana Winderen – Energy Field

Field Recordings  come in many varieties. From the documentary recordings, as true to nature as possible, to environmental soundscapes, using recorded sounds to create a completely new environment.

Presenting music by recording artists like Jacob Kirkegaard, Chris Watson and Jana Winderen, Touch Music is definitely one of the finest labels in presenting this form of sound-art.

After releasing her beautiful (live) recording “Heated: Live in Japan” last year, Jana Winderen‘s “Energy Field” is her new full album on Touch.
More-than-full, actually, for  (on-line) buyers also receive a free download of Jana’s live performance on the Today’s Art festival in Den Haag, in 2009.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Olan Mill – Pine

Olan Mill is the name of the duo (Alex Smalley and Svitlana Samoylenko) presenting “Pine“, the long-awaited second release of the british Serein label.  

Serein started out as a net-label a few years ago. Following the succes of their Nest-release they reformed completely, and re-released their greatest succes as “Retold” – one of the most praised (re-)releases of 2009/2010. (BTW – the Serein website does not mention it, but most of their netlabel releases – including the original NEST EP – can still be found on archive.org.)

Following up a release like that is not an easy task. But Olan Mill lives up to the expectations, without simply ‘copying’ the Nest success formula.