Tag: various

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Various Artists – Earthtones


EarthTones

Tessellate Recordings is a new label started by Harry Towell, well-known for curating tons of fine music for the Audio Gourmet netlabel, ánd of course for his own music as Spheruleus.

“Earthtones” is a massive compilation (26 tracks, over 2 hours) of well- and lesser known artists that all contributed a track to this album which is intended to raise funds for the next CD-releases.

Just picking a few names from the contributor list: Caught in the Wake Forever, Wil Bolton, Maps and Diagrams, Savaran, Ekca Liena, Bartosz Dziadosz (Pleq), James Murray, Damian Valles, Monolyth & Cobalt, Lauki, Offthesky, Radere, The Inventors of Aircraft. – I guess that’s enough to get you interested….

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Various Artists – Festive Greetings…


Festive Greetings

Okay: Christmas and New Year’s Holiday are rapidly approaching – you’ve probably already had your share of the End-Of-Year Top 2000 lists (full of unsurprisingly position shifts of headliners like The Eagles and Queen) – Your “Last Christmas” and “Imagine”  singles are totally worn out – as has “Phil Spector’s Christmas Album“? Even the ZE Christmas Record (featuring Suicide!) is not surprising anymore?  

Well, maybe it’s time for a slightly different approach ….

Enter: “Festive Greetings from Hibernate and Home Normal”  – and be prepared for some surprises!

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

In the Bleak Wilderness of Sleep


Bleak Wilderness of Sleep

Apart from releasing music as Spheruleus, Harry Towell also curates the Audio Gourmet netlabel, well-known for their now 40+ releases that all can be downloaded for free from Bandcamp (or from Archive.org when the Bandcamp credit runs out, but in that case I’d suggest donating a few dollars to keep them running).

Apart from these “tea/coffee-break” EP’s (all of them somewhere around 15 minutes in length), Audio Gourmet also has released a few full length albums (such as “Hidden Landscapes”). 

“In the Bleak Wilderness of Sleep”  (released may 2011) celebrates the first year of Audio Gourmet existence. And considering the contents of this compilation, Audio Gourmet has definitely found their place between the yop netlabels in the ambient/electronic/soundscape field!

ambient music, other-music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Erik Satie et les Nouveaux Jeunes

Erik Satie et les Nouveaux Jeunes cover

I guest most people listening to ambient and ‘post-classical’ music also have a special place in their heart for the music of Erik Satie. Or at least they should have.

The eccentric genius composer, or “phonometrician” as he called himself,  “the laziest student in the (Paris)Conservatoire” (where he was labelled untalented by his teachers) has left the world some of the most impressive (and introspective) compositions – of which the Gymnopédies and the Gnossiennes are the most famous.
With his ideas about Musique d’ameublement (‘Furniture music’), Satie was one of the real predecessors of ‘ambient’ music.

So any double CD set offering reworkings of his music by some of the best artists in the contemporary experimental ambient/electronic genre immediately has my full interest!

ambient music, MIXES

Subversion Guest Mix

Not long ago, Muttley’s “Isolate” mix was published on Ambientblog as a guest mix.
Muttley’s own Subversion weblog hosts a lot of his mixes, as well as the 15 Minutes of Fame series. 

The SubVersion 15 Minutes of Fame format dictates that any mix should contain no more than 10 tracks and last no longer than 40 minutes. That’s an average of 4 minutes per track.
So, when asked to do a guest mix for this weblog, I had to change my usual approach.

In the ‘collage’ mix format I mostly use, 4 minutes is about the maximum time any included sample gets played – usually far more tracks overlay at any single instance.
So I had to restrict myself in that matter, to create a ‘mixtape’ mix format for this particular issue.