ambient music, other-news

Interzone Ambient Festival + Cluster concert

It’s been quite some time since my latest post to this weblog. Holiday time, the obligatory holiday trips …I obviously had a hard time…

But the new season has a promising start:
If you live near Utrecht, Holland you should keep an eye on the following events
(and if you don’t live in Holland but are interested still, keep an ear on the FOLIO webstream as linked below):

  • Interzone Ambient Festival – 29 / 30 september, Theater Kikker, Utrecht
    This is a 2 day festival that has a promising line-up. Murcof will be there, probably to promote his new release: Cosmos. Other performers on saturday are Jessica Bailiff, Klimek and  Shuttle 358.
    Sunday will bring us a Ahornfelder showcase, with performances by Sinebag, Semuin, F.S. Blumm, Marcel Turkowsky.
    Radio 6′ Folio will preview this festival on september, 4

cluster

  • Tivoli De Helling programs a performance by Cluster (Dieter Moebius / Hans-Joachim Roedelius) on November, 7
    Don’t know what to expect on this concert, but both Moebius and Roedelius were there to define ‘ambient’ in the time their music was called ‘Krautrock’. They partnered with Brian Eno, worked with legendary producer Conny Plank, and their 30+ years of musical output is quite difficult to survey. Again, the night before this concert, Folio will present a musical preview.

Sounds promising, doesn’t it?

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Sleep Research Facility – Deep Frieze

Deep Frieze

Sleep Research Facility should be credited for one of the best names in ambient music. Apart from that, Kevin Doherty was also responsible for the Nostromo release a few years ago. Nostromo was based on the first minutes of sound from the first Alien movie (Nostromo was the name of the spaceship) (*), and the music was as deep as outer space. (By the way: you cannot find this release anymore by now, but Cold Spring Records has announced a re-release later this year).

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

John Watermann – Calcutta Gas Chamber

In 2006, Cold Spring records has re-released a record from 1993. It only recently came to my attention, so I would not have written about it on this weblog (for it would be ‘old news’) – if it’s thematic content wouldn’t be so shocking.
John Watermann‘s album is called ‘Calcutta Gas Chamber’ – and that about says all.  Story goes that the recording artist has visited India in the early 90’s and came across nightmare-ish giant gas chambers that the Indian government used for ‘population control’.

ambient music

Hilary Jeffery

Tromboscillator

Currently, I am preparing the Folio radiobroadcast for june, 26, which will feature some work played by Hilary Jeffery.
Jeffery is an English trombone player, currently living in Amsterdam. He plays quite a lot of different line-ups: with Jimi Tenor as well as with the Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble, to name just two.
His musical output is equally diverse, ranging from experimental improvisational jazz to quiet drones.
One of his influences is trombone player James Fulkerson (who surprisingly also lives in the Netherlands!), with whom he also studied.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Elegi – Sistereis

Sistereis

‘Sistereis’ is the opposite of a ship’s maiden voyage. It’s a ship’s doomed final voyage.

“All was as it had been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of it’s frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the voyage”

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Machinefabriek – Weleer

Weleer

“Weleer” (Formerly, in old times) is the well chosen title for the 2CD selection of work from more than 30 3″-cd’s that Rutger “machinefabriek” Zuydervelt released last years. Most of these will be very hard to find, so this album is a good starting point for those that want to know what sort of stuff the machinefabriek produces.

This prolific musician (from Arnhem, Holland) draws some international attention (how do foreigners pronounce titles like “gruis uit het plafond”?) with his noise and drone experiments, as well as with his lovely naïve electro-acoustics (not unlike Colleen or Goldmund).

Weleer is a varied collection, but not for the faint of heart: not everyone will like all of the tracks. It’s impressing that one man can deliver so much great work in such short time. Machinefabriek deserves all respect and praise for his work, and not only from Holland!

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Alva Noto – XERROX

William Basinski has built almost his entire oeuvre on deteriorating copies of original tape recordings. (The Disintegration Loops may be the best example).
So, when reading about the new Alva Noto release, Xerrox, I had to suppress a ‘not again’ yawn..

“Via the technique of duplication the copy often contains mistakes and glitches that differ from the original. The mutating copy emerges as a new original and thereby provides space for development”