The original Muzak, aka Elevator Music, may represent all the music you don’t want to listen to actively.
Intended and created as unobtrusive music played in shopping malls, designed to make you feel good and spend more money without realising you hear anything at all, this kind of music definitely has it’s own -conceptual- kind of charm.
Simon Whetham’s latest release, “Mall Muzak” is about the exact opposite of that kind of music.
Well here’s a little gem that will definitely be a collector’s item quickly:
Celer (Will Long) and Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt) – two giants of the ambient-electronic improv scene – met and performed together in Tokyo in 2010, and decided to collaborate on these tracks about a year later. Exchanging an reconstructing each others audio files has resulted in this 7″ vinyl release: “Maastunnel-Mt. Mitake“.
An impressive, though short, ‘audio bridge’ between Rotterdam and Tokyo.
“Aion” is the DVD companion to Kirkegaard’s CD release “Four Rooms” (Touch, 2006).
Inspired by Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a Room” , Kirkegaard recorded the sound of deserted rooms: a church, an auditorium, a swimming pool and a gymnasium.
He then re-recorded the sound played back in the same room over and over again, multiple times, until the sound of the room became a constant drone, ultimately revealing what may be the “soul” of the room.
That is, of course, a fascinating concept in itself. But there’s another dimension to this project.
