Veroníque Vaka; Dirk Serries; Robert Scott Thompson; Damián Anache
Enigmatic strings from Iceland, introspective disorientation, acousmatic ambient, and generative music for passive contemplation. …..
Enigmatic strings from Iceland, introspective disorientation, acousmatic ambient, and generative music for passive contemplation. …..
Xerrox Vol. 3 is the third part (duh!) in what is going to be a five part series inspired by the process of copying.
All three parts have their subtitle: “Old World” (Xerrox Vol. 1, 2007), “New World” (Xerrox Vol. 2, 2009) – and now Vol. 3 is labeled: “Towards Space” .
This mix is made to be published in the excellent series of mixes on the “Sounds of a Tired City”, part of the larger website with the same name.
It is published exactly on its first year’s anniversary, so it’s in fact a birthday present too!
Inspired by the site name, I decided I wanted to try to create a sonic ‘walk’ through a ‘tired’ city.
A mix with a lot of scene changes… like walking through an unknown city on a (quiet sunday?) morning – finding hidden surprises and marvels around every corner..
“Mental Health Hotline” is the second ‘collaborative dialogue’ created together with Christophe ‘Klankschap’ Ywaska.
(The first was “Both Were Moving“, 2012).
Each selection a reaction to the previous addition means the story may have some unexpected turns and views… especially with over 50 samples crammed into this adventurous hour of sound!
Be prepared for a dazzling – and possibly somewhat disorienting – joyride…
Not counting their recent collaboration “Drowning in the Sky“, with Sleep Orchestra, “Solstøv” is Pjusk’s fourth release – and their third for the 12K label.
Since their debut in 2007, the Norwegian duo (Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik and Rune Andre Sagevik) have built themselves quite an impressive reputation.
With “Solstøv”, (Sol – Sun / Støv – Dust) they don’t disappoint – to say the least!
“Dream Sequence“ starts with a rumbling distant thunder and the dripping sounds of water in a bathroom nearby. Slowly – very slowly! – drone chords set in to create a calm soothing sound. But underneath, there is the dark foreboding sound of a low register piano pulse…
“We are Snoqualmie Falls, and this is the soundtrack to our dream life. Where we’re from the birds sing a pretty song, and there’s always music in the air.”
Snoqualmie Falls – named after the scenic cascade in Washington State – is Jeff Stonehouse (a.k.a. Listening Mirror and Jffstnhs) creating the music and Alicia Merz adding her ethereal vocals.
For this mix I aimed to create a dreamlike and timeless atmosphere – dark (but not too dark). It is calm, yet there are many shifting scenes, many passing landscapes and some conflicting emotions… When it ends, (I hope) it feels as if it was much longer than it actually was …
If one of the criteria for ‘ambient’ music is that you can comfortably fall asleep to it, I guess you’d better skip this particular mix. Although it starts quiet and reassuring with soothing vocal chords from Silvestrov’s “The Lord’s Prayer”, the mood disintegrates and sometimes can become rather unsettling – depending on your own personal ‘incidental memories’, of course.
For reasons I can’t really explain, this mix works better if you listen on speakers instead of headphones – just let the airwaves flow for maximum immersion.
Imagine this:
A museum dedicated to the ancient Egyptian art, with thirteen rooms (“fields”), divided in seven “areas”, with a 64-channel soundscape accompanying the exibition combining abstract and somewhat haunting electronic sounds with partly edited, partly montaged texts spoken from ancient Egyptian poems (with titles such as The Book of the Dead, The Prophecies of Neferti, The Teachings of Ptahhotep).
Sounds like a soundscaper’s dream, doesn’t it?
Yet, this is exactly what Mark Polscher realised for(/with) the State Museum of Egyptian Art (Munich, Germany) for the project named “The Pomegranate Tree“.