The sound of Akashic Crow’s Nest begins with the use of an image synthesizer which turns very long photographic images into audio output, in the manner of a piano roll. The initial part of composing this music is thus designing the picture. For this latest project, the first audio output is converted to midi and run through a different softsynth, before being subjected to a battery of effects to get to the sounds you hear on this album.
Download from Webbed Hand Records
Excerpt:
Bloom, Trope and Air are three applications developed by Brian Eno and the musician / software designer Peter Chilvers that brings to the iPhone the concept of generative music popularized by Eno.
Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.
Darker in tone, Trope immerses users in endlessly evolving soundscapes created by tracing abstract shapes onto the screen, varying the tone with each movement.
Air is described as “An endless Music for Airports”. It assembles vocal and piano samples into a beautiful, still and ever changing composition, which is always familiar, but never the same.
Air features four ‘Conduct’ modes, which let the user control the composition by tapping different areas on the display, and three ‘Listen’ modes, which provide a choice of arrangement. For those fortunate enough to have access to multiple iPhones and speakers, an option has been provided to spread the composition over several players.
In the August and September 1977, two Voyager spacecraft were launched to fly by and explore the great gaseous planets of Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager I, after successful encounters with the two, was sent out of the plane of the ecliptic to investigate interstellar space.
Voyager II’s charter later came to include not only encounters with Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1981), but also appointments with Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989).
The Voyagers are controlled and their data returned through the Deep Space Network, a global spacecraft tracking and communications system operated by the JPL for NASA.
Although space is a virtual vacuum, this does not mean there is no sound in space. Sound does exist as electronic vibrations. The especially designed instruments on board of the Voyagers performed special experiments to pick up and record these vibrations, all within the range of human hearing.
These recordings come from a variety of different sound environments, e.g. the interaction of the solar wind with the planet’s magnetosphere; electromagnetic field noise; radio waves bouncing between the planet and the inner surface of the atmosphere, etc.
In 1993 NASA published excerpts from these recordings in a set of 5 CD (30 minutes each) called Symphonies of the Planets (now out of print).
This is the CD 1.
“Long Now (aka Pelissero Wine)” is a rare, limited edition promotional CD by Brian Eno, produced in 2002 to celebrate an Italian wine and offered to wine sellers. The wine is the Pelissero’s Long Now, so named in honour of the Long Now Foundation.
It features five unreleased tracks, in the same mood as his 2003 album, “January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now“: these compositions experiment possible melodies and atmospheres for bell towers.
Relying on digital bell sounds (from FM synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7), processed through various reverbs and delays, these compositions create strange and hypnotic soundscapes, between ambient and experimentation, with cycles of repetition ruled by mathematical laws.
The Azienda Agricola Pelissero is a family-run vine-growing estate located in the district of Treiso, in the heart of the zone of production of Barbaresco [in Piemonte, Italy].
Here we can hear excerpts from tracks 1 and 3.
Description by Off Land (aka Tim Dwyer, the author):
Let’s go back to 2006.
I used to hate my job, the dead-end brainless work.
Even more, I used to hate my commute.
An hour by subway what would take 20 minutes by car if I had owned one.
Everyday I walked to the subway, switching lines in town and took a 2nd line to the end.
I dreamed that one day the subway would take me past the last stop, just keep going.
Or maybe I would end up somewhere else, somewhere new.
Music was my salvation, my soundtrack, those two hours each day.
With or without music the commute was a score I listened to countless times.
On two occasions, for posterity, I recorded the commute.
Now it’s 2009 and my life has changed so much.
I look back into the dust of times and accompany a soundtrack to those days of travel.
This was my commute.
The Process: Commute is an experimental concept album about commuting. The album is the length of my commute in 2006. I recorded my commute four times (2 out and 2 back), overlapping all four audio recordings into one 68 minute sound collage. This soundscape became the foundation of the composition and the subtle ambiance heard throughout Commute. Tones were designated to various sounds; watery piano for people & chimes, dulcimer drones for cars, drums for rain & subway tracks, low drones for subway cars, and synths for general ambient noise. The structure was entirely in the hands of the field recording collage. It was my conscious decision however to break Commute up into three sections. Each section represents a different leg of the commute (1 – The walk to the subway / 2 – The ride downtown / 3 – The 2nd line outbound).
Published by Resting Bell netlabel. Download from here.
Sylvie Walder and entia non (James McDougall) are well-known names in the netlabel-world and beyond. Sylvie Walder released collaboration-albums with Phillip Wilkerson, Siegmar Fricke, and “_” (as Kakitsubata). entia non has released solo-works on test tube, IOD, u-cover, Resting Bell and contributions on compilations for duckbay and Slow Flow Recs.
On “bewilderment“ Sylvie and James create a rich and deep organic sound-cosmos. Droning background-layers, instrumental fragments, field recordings, voices, athmospheric glitches and crackles, all assembled to a breathing, living collage. Especially the first three tracks work with this sound-model. Based on Sylvie’s piano recordings, James built up an impressive ambience by processing, re-arranging and re-structuring the material. The last track “le petit lac“ is more guided by Sylvie’s piano playing with only very subtle accouterments and mastering by James. The artists cooperate together over the huge distance between France and Australia, but the result actually sounds like they have sit together in the same studio and knew eath other since their school days.
Published by Resting Bell netlabel. Download from here.
Excerpts:
Matúš Mikula, aka 900piesek, è slovacco, uno dei giovani musicisti elettroacustici europei che creano una sorta di science fiction ambient con un po’ di nostalgia degli anni ’70.
L’album, dal titolo Dea Varanus, è pubblicato da Test Tube ed è scaricabile qui.
All four tracks emanate sound through a dense and foggy underwater-like world… as if we were in a different dimension. Audio data is served to you using computers and machines from another time. Referencially, this is ambient electronics circa 1970’s, while some keyboards sound definitely like Vangelis, Blade Runner period, which is actually very appropriate.
Dear listener, we recommend the use of headphones throughout this journey, as the fine subtleties of the atmospheric and environmental audio pieces you’re hearing will surely gain much detail simply because of their use.
This is a ‘vintage modern classic’, with drones. Enjoy.[Pedro Leitão]
Excerpts: Ra
Ok, un po’ di tranquillità dopo lo sforzo organizzativo del Premio Nazionale delle Arti.
Eno ha concepito questa musica nel 1998 per una installazione realizzata in collaborazione con Jiri Prihoda a Praga. Il CD risultante è stato poi venduto a un’asta di beneficenza per £ 400 nel Gennaio 2001.
Si tratta di una lunga traccia ambient (un’ora di musica) in cui varie linee melodiche in loop con durate diverse vengono sovrapposte casualmente, nel classico stile della musica generativa di Eno. Il risultato sonoro è simile a Music for Airport, ma privo di loop sensibili e con la differenza che qui gli interventi sono ancora più radi. Ne risulta un insieme che evolve molto lentamente, sempre diverso ma sempre uguale.
Ve ne proponiamo un estratto di circa 15 minuti.
Brian Eno – Excerpt from Music for Prague (1998)
Ben Stepner costruisce atmosfere meditative tramite chitarra e computer. Semplice ambient music, sotto molti aspetti banale, ma vengo sempre colpito dal potere della consonanza.
Qui non si parla di tonalità e nemmeno di modalità, ma solo di sovrapposizioni di armonici che a volte (non a tutti) inducono uno stato di relax.
Sleeping in the Forest è distribuito via Soundcloud.
Un brano come esempio:
Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) played a very important part in the concept and development of ambient music. One could say that ambient music is not a music to be listened to, but a music to be heard, as a subliminal background creating a soundscape for various places or buildings. Supermarkets and elevators are usually places where a poor music is played, one calls it muzak. Brian Eno’s idea was to conceive a sophisticated musical soundscape instead of this anonymous FM music, and he chose airports as the best places where such a music could be heard and understood, creating an unusual and quiet sonic background among all the noises and announcements of a airport terminal.
Music for Airports is a masterpiece, with its subtle piano tracks, its complex electronic treatments, its choral parts, and its slow and organic development.
In 1998, Point Music, a label directed by Philip Glass, released this amazing interpretation of Music for Airports by Bang on a Can: Robert Black (bass), Lisa Moore (piano, keyboards), Evan Ziporyn (clarinet, bass clarinet), Maya Beiser (cello), Steven Schick (percussion), a choir of female voices and additional musicians playing pipa, flute, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, mandolin and mandocello.
This chamber music ensemble plays Eno’s compositions with fidelity and creativity at the same times. The acoustic instruments create a rich harmonic soundscape and add a very original touch to the original recording.
This peaceful, quiet and slow music is very evocative and poetic: the cover version is as beautiful as the original…
Excerpt from Brian Eno – Music for Airports 1.1 – played by Bang on a Can