A-Sun Amissa * Ashtoreth & Stratosphere
Orchestral symphonic drones by A-Sun Amissa and Ashtoreth & Stratosphere. Dark references to impending doom.
Tag: longform
Martina Claussen * Andrée Burelli * Clarice Jensen
The abstract soundscapes of Martina Claussen combine her voice with sound objects, field recordings, and electronics * Returning from Berlin to Italy inspired Andrée Burelli * Clarice Jensen evokes stasis and movement at the same time.
K. Leimer * Nadia Struiwigh
Two releases from the August 2020 batch of Longform Editions: a meditation on sound by K.Leimer and an Analog Dream of Nadia Struiwigh.
Longform Editions
A (belated!) introduction to the Longform Editions label/collective. Their June 2020 editions present works by Carmen Villain, Celer, Chihei Hatakeyama and Michael Vincent Waller.
Max Richter – (From) Sleep
“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.
Robert Rich – Perpetual (A Somnium Continuum)
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)!
Jeremy Keenan, Stefan Funck, Franck Condon, Glittering Hand, Kissy Suzuki
In the Shortlist sections, I will mention the albums that I enjoyed listening to, but couldn’t find the time (or the right words) for a “full” review for.
Still, I definitely think they deserve your attention, with or without extra words!
JEREMY KEENAN – IMMATERIAL
“Created largely from recordings of two journeys by boat, on the River Lee Navigation in London and the North Sea ferry to the Netherlands, Immaterial explores the abstraction of emotional and perceptual traces in sound relating to journeys. The title track utilises sound garnered from the Institute of Making in London, with direct recordings of engineered materials exposing the raw process of extracting the composition from recorded sound.