It’s hard to keep up with so much great music out there.
Here’s a selection that brings you from modern classical to futuristic dub (via reel-to-reel tape delay)!
Hightlights from Monochromie; Visionary Hours; Peter Grech; Northumbria and Mogano
At the end of every year, everyone remotely involved with music seems to be obsessed with creating all kinds of ‘end-of-year’ lists. Releasing an album in the very last week of the year means it’ll probably fall through the cracks of those lists: too late for the 2014 list, and to early for next year’s.
I have no doubt that Kate Carr’s “Fabulations” would’ve been included in many lists if it had been released earlier.
But now that it hasn’t: just forget about your lists and start listening.
“Become Ocean” was inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and the references to the endless oceanic movement are clear from the very beginning. Like there are different ways to look at the ocean’s movement, there are also are different ways to listen to this piece: you can just ‘follow the larger structure’, but you can also focus on the multitude of details underneath it..
“It may be the loveliest apocalypse in musical history” – Alex Ross, The New Yorker
Robert Rich‘s “Somnium” – released in 2001 – was (and still is) one of the landmark monuments of ambient music. Based on his experience playing sleep concerts since 1982, this 7 hour work was especially composed to be your companion during the night, following the natural flow of sleep cycles.
The original Somnium DVD (that was the only format then that could hold such an amount of music) has long sold out now.
But the good news is: there is a successor to this project now: “Perpetual” (and its physical release also contains the original “Somnium” recordings)!
Thomas Köner is perhaps the Jules Verne of ambient-electronic soundscapes: his sounds seem to come from the deepest ocean, the centre of the earth, the vastest spaces imaginable. If you know his work, you will often immediately recognise his sound when you hear it – and maybe feel it before you even hear it.
Knowing his back-catalogue, the choice of a piano as the main instrument for his new album is somewhat surprising. Piano notes are clearly fixed in time, as opposed to the stretched sounds Thomas Köner usually applies. It is, in a way, a bit of a “rigid instrument”.
2014 is a good year for Porya Hatami (based in Sanandaj, Iran).
After releasing two collaboration albums (with Lee Anthony Norris and Lcoma, respectively), and a solo album (“Shallow”) earlier this year, his new album “The Garden“ is now released on the Dronarivm label.
“Souvenirs van de Woeste Grond“ (roughly translates as “Souvenirs from the Wasteland”) is a part of a landscape-inspired art project inspired by the Dutch province “Overijssel”.
“In this project two artists (Heidi Linck and Hans Jungerius) collected stories about the countryside landscape in order to save them from obscurity. In the second phase of the project eight different artists make a souvenir based on the collected stories.”
This particular album (available as digital download or limited edition CD released by the adventurous Esc.Rec label), is one of those ‘souvenirs’!
It seems I have missed some things in the past: Micromelancoliéis a new name to me, but according to the discography on his site, Robert Skrzynski has already released around 30 titles (cassettes and CD/R) since 2009.
Micromelancolié is a great name for his project.
Likewise, “It doesn’t belong here“ is a great album title, since that is exactly how the music sounds: as if it doesn’t belong here.
There is something special with the sound of passing cars, especially when recorded at night. They always bring a feeling of loneliness, of things passing by and leaving you behind. They make you think of where to go…
For “Lay-By Lullaby“, his latest album recently released on 12k, Janek Schaefer recorded the sound of cars passing by on the M3 Motorway (“Right at the end of the road where J.G. Ballard lived”)
