Meandering from one end of the spectrum to the other, with a few surprises along the way: the DreamScenes Autumn selection features Thomas Ragsdale, Dat Rayon, Max Richter, Asid & Banabila, Evan Caminiti, Gaap Kvlt, Jos Smolders, Lone Echo, Gideon Wolf, Ariadne and Mauro Beltrán
“Somehow, in Europe, over the last century, as complexity and inaccessibility became equated with intelligence and the avant-garde, we lost something along the way. Modernism gave us so many stunning works, but we also lost our lullabies.”
Long-form compositions are a challenge to a composer, because he (she) has to deal with the audience’s relatively short attention span: not many people will be able to focus and keep their concentration for 4 hours or even more. For this reason, it is no surprise that long-form experiments are often found in the realm of ambient music. Ánd that they are often dealing with ‘sleep’ – which instantly solves the attention span problem too.
Slowly preparing for autumn with the sounds of Umchunga, Ten, Erik Wøllo, Blaine Todd, Spheruleus (& Friends), S.E.T.I., Farbeak, Evan Caminiti, Offthesky & Pleq, Tatsuro Kojima, Dag Rosenqvist and Graveyard Tapes.
It was Brian Eno who once described ambient music as ‘music that is as ignorable as it is interesting’ – but it may very well be Kenneth Kirschner taking this concept to the extreme.
“Time, space, repetition, pattern, the very very big and the very very small. There’s an effort to be a part of the continuum and to recognize it, to try to remove the self if possible in a recognition of the bigger things. Also, neither of us is afraid of the dark.”
The DreamScenes selection for August: perfect for a lazy warm summer night.
Or even for not-so-very-warm summer nights.
Another musical journey guided by Pleq & Giulio Aldinucci (Poland and Italy) – Umchunga (Tehran) – Dronny Darko & ProtoU from Kiev, and Matthew Atkins from the United Kingdom.
Etheric Imprints by Steve Roach – Echotides from Erik Wøllo – a new Companion to an older album by S.E.T.I. – and a Monolith tribute to 2001 by As Lonely As Dave Bowman
Michael Fahres presents a radically different vision on ‘environmental music’;
Miguel Isaza manages to find a balance between the temporal and the eternal;
Naviar Records demonstrate that a community can generate strong (or even stronger) results;
and: the introducton of a new series exploring the lively Polish experimental electronic underground scene.
Mike Cooper’s Fratello Mare is a journey you’d better not begin unprepared: it’s exploring the beauty of the Pacific yet somehow also resembles Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas…!?
Furthermore: some music to calm down to: guitar pedal soundscapes by J. Butler, and two short neo-classical EP’s by Tambour and Lunae Lumen
