les halles ~ zephyr

les halles ~ zephyr (not not fun, 2018)

 «Zephyr takes its name from a light westerly wind, which aptly evokes the warm, weightless, whispering spirit of these beguiling electro-acoustic designs». not not fun

Baptiste Martin always been good at making pastoral landscapes with just few touches of flute loops and transparent veils of delay, but this time he surpassed himself. This record sounds way too good! It feels exactly like a gentle wind which envelops you softly from the very first seconds of playback. Nature is always like this – there's no such thing as imperfect wind or nonideal wave in the sea. Our mind tends to evaluate everything (like I just did few lines earlier) and we always seek for some abstract perfection, comparing things – and that's completely normal, that's the way mind works. Also, it would be weird to state that evaluation is bad, right? 

But my point here is that things are always have some place relatively to each other and when we say something about them, this relation is the starting point of our judgement. What I'm trying to say is that some things feel perfect as they are because then don't change given configuration. They just give you a possibility to see from another viewpoint. Thing becomes a portal to new vision. That's why this music is so perfect, its ability to realign simply amazes! Few minutes in and you're completely in a different world. Everything around remains the same, you are the same – but your perception is different. World definitely needs more music like this. Not really emotional. Not simply relaxing. Just making you more attentive to things. Not escaping reality, but accepting it. Sharpening the perception. Just like the wind reminds you to breathe deeply, just like the sun emerging from behind the clouds reminds you to look around... 

Gentleness and calmness of Zephyr may feel contrasting with our world, but carefully realigning your vision Les Halles' music gives you same feeling which wind itself probably has. Endless motion. Unstoppable flow. Of course, there are moments of stillness and moments of storming rage. But after all it's just a motion, state of being. The more steady it is, the more you see. Correlations, interconnections, cause and effect... If music is a state of air, then life is a state of mind. 

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CYBEREALITYライフ ~ v i r t u a l r e s o r t ™

CYBEREALITYライフ ~ v i r t u a l r e s o r t ™
(Memory No. 36 Recordings, 2013 / theINFINITIpool, 2018) 

Of of the genre's pillars in vaporwave, "virtual resort™"  by CYBEREALITYライフ finally gets cassette reissue the newly formed TheINFINITYpool label, which already put out some no less iconic releases by Amun Dragoon, MindSpring Memories and Fujita Scale. Perhaps this album may not sound as unique as it used to be because of the clichee abundance happening with the genre these days, but CYBEREALITYライフ was one of those who introduced them in wide use. Virtual vacations to the cyber-space resorts already were in 90s, in Roger Zelazny's epic book "Donnerjack" and this album may be a really nice companion for such fantasies – advertisement breaks, weather channel's music, lounge jazz, 80s to 90s, subtly ironic atmosphere of new age and futuristic chill-out... Cheerful atmosphere of consumption, the rhythm of the buyer, briskly moving from one store to another in the brightly lit endless corridor of a shopping mall... A virtual paradise for ideal consumers only!

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marta smilga ~ lunar maria, vol. 1

marta smilga ~ lunar maria, vol. 1 (crash symbols, 2018)

«'Lunar Maria' was created in Marta SmiLga's home studio on a barge in Riga across many cold autumn nights, when the sky was clear, full of shimmering stars and bright, embracing moonlight». ~ crash symbols

When I saw this tape for a moment my thought was "oh, new Lunar Miasma album!", probably because this is something that is not going to happen anymore and I was a huge fan of those psych drone analogue synth space excursions from Panos Alexiadis. But it's from Latvia this time, and Marta SmiLga is surely are well-experienced synth explorer – so when I listened to this album, it seemed like I'm there again, on this nostalgic road towards stars... Guide has changed, but the space is the same. The pace is slow, not much of psychedelia is going on, we are experiencing more thorough and scientific approach. Yet, it's as breathtaking as it was when I was five and saw an astronomy textbook for the first time... Yellowed pages with galaxies, planets, comets, asteroids and of course – lunar map. Gasping admiration. I remember telling my mom that there are seas on the Moon (and even one ocean!), but those are not real seas and that Lunokhod went there and people went there, and... And she was saying okay, okay, good... Ten years later I was out every clear night, sitting with my self-made telescope, sketching lunar surface in my observations journal, all those craters, mountains and seas – watching how shadow slowly changes the picture on the edge of light and dark... 

Yes, music can provoke a lot of nostalgia! And that's the beauty of it, the miracle of memory and perception. Listening to slowly changing delicate compositions on this tape brings this subtle feeling of childish excitement mixed with awe and admiration, which was probably best captured in Kubrick's Space Odyssey. Gazing into a deepness of the Universe and realizing equal profoundness of your own mind. It's perfectly reflected by ringing resonance of Marta SmiLga's drones and tiny detailed veils of microsounds around them. Thin surface of events around barely perceived vastness makes all the sense. No matter how cold or dark space is, our mind finds it strangely attractive because it mirrors something inside us, because we are same thing... And same thing happens with music here. Isn't it wonderful?  

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zazz ~ soft harbinger

zazz ~ soft harbinger (inner islands, 2018)

"Zazz is the long distance collaborative project of Ang Wilson and Braeyden Jae. Out of mutual admiration for each other’s musicality and expression, the project came to life when the two decided to develop a creative dialogue through sound, sending files back and forth with no pre-determined aesthetic or agenda. That space of not knowing and openness nurtures the trust and respect that guides the project. It allows for an honesty and presence that can be difficult to tap into when the course has already been charted. 

Soft Harbinger follows the thread of gentle and pastoral work that Braeyden has pursued with his project, softest, and that Ang has been known for, both with their solo project, teasips, and with Electric Sound Bath. Soft Harbinger is the debut album from Zazz and it’s a beautiful opening." ~ inner islands

Vernal equinox is definitely a good day to share some peaceful music with the world and honestly I can't think better place to look for it than Inner Islands label. For many years now it keeps this delicate flow of acoustic sensations which adds something meaningful to our world. Just a little bit of harmony... 

When David Bohm, one of the quantum physics pioneers, discussed his theories with attendees, he described our world as a hologram and the difference between hologram and usual picture is that each part of hologram keeps the whole picture. So if you tear a regular photo you'll have fragments which can't really tell you what was captured on the original (especially if it's really small fragments), while each piece of broken hologram will have same picture in it, just more blurred than original. Each tiny piece of it will be same, just less detailed... When I read about it in my childhood, guess my life was irreversibly changed that moment. If the Universe is holographic in its nature, it means each tiniest part of it is the universe itself. And of course I knew about it before – metaphorically, from tales, myths, from poetry... But this was science, huh! 

But yes, your yoga teacher or psychologist are right when they say each person is a universe. But important part here (from physics) is that if even smaller part contains the whole picture, it can be so blurry that you'd never tell that something's there. It's hidden, it's out of reach. Parts must be connected, integrated and here lies another trick moment – there is a big difference between a part and a fragment. A bunch of letters may create some words but you need a concept of harmony to create poetry of it. Rhythm. Waves. Patterns... There is no music in the world until the listener appears. A mind with an idea of harmony. And that's the hologram, the picture of the whole, the music made of natural noises, the very beginning of it. 

Of course we don't need to go metaphysical to enjoy music. We even gone so far that we can see harmony in something which was considered dumb noise only a few decades ago. I guess that's inevitable process, that's seeing the bigger picture. Following the patterns of harmony. I'll leave the question about nature of the harmony itself because I'm trying to talk about music here and music is obviously my favorite thing in this Hologram. Simply because it doesn't need words to make you feel these things. It always connects you with other people, events, places and sensations, you become something bigger than you was. And in case of Zazz it does that thing so delicately, that you may lose any thoughts just after few minutes spent inside these blissfully repeating patterns of universal harmony... If each musical track is a hologram then these two sides are filled with so many things that you'll need an eternity to explore them all. It's just like a window into the wider space. Wide as world itself. 

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inner travels ~ yonder

inner travels ~ yonder (sounds of the dawn, 2018)

Flickering music at the edge of natural and abstract. Invisible structure of morning air. Web of tiniest threads connecting perception with so-called reality... New tape at Sounds of the Dawn it's always a revelation and each Inner Travels' work is an expanding universe of intuitive knowledge about phenomena we usually avoid to notice in our daily routine. All these barely noticeable nuances, a multidimensional space between what we call "myself" and "everything". You know they are endless, but it's your personal infinity, your own universe created on the edge of what you see and what you think you see. The game of life and death. What you believe and what is hidden. 

Despite its purely electronic nature I always see Inner Travels as music about nature. Yet it's not simply landscaping or ecologically inspired – the weaving of the sound here is abstract enough, yet with a strong rhythmic background. I'd say it's the air chiming. All kinds of air: morning, evening, air above lakes... But it's not about the air – like a book is not about pages and letters. When I'm trying to express that feeling Yonder gives me, it vanishes... When this music was born, it did same thing. Nuances of the perception, the miracle of memory which we often take for granted. Something was here for a moment and then vanished, but it lives in our perception... Not just a static picture, but vivid object, living thing. Of course we have a mechanism in mind which says "that is real and this is not". "It's just a memory", "it's just a dream"... Safety mechanisms. But listening to Inner Travels I feel like this distinction dissolves in the ripples of sounds. It's all same thing, one thing. No matter how you call it, real or made up, it lives its own life, it has its own infinity of nuances, true miracle! Just like everything else. 

listen ~ support

rhucle ~ handmade ocean

rhucle ~ handmade ocean (polar seas recordings, 2017) 

Since 2014, young ambient producer Yuta Kudo aka Rhucle managed to publish more than fifty albums full of calmest ambience. You can safely trust this music to lull your children, use it as a growth stimulant for domestic plants or simply put it on 24-hour repeat without fear that something suddenly will change dramatically there. Rhucle albums sound absolutely same! It took me two years to start to distinguish them from each other (and I even published one), but even now I will not agree for a blind test. We all know Celer, Hakobune and Hatakeyama-san, and Yuta clearly studied with the best, but, in fact, what he does with his music is even more diverse in a sense. Yes, in every Rhucle album you'll hear sea waves, whispering springs, brooks and all other kind of water element. And his ambient sounds behave in similar fashion - instead of a static drone, Rhucle threads simple tones into undulating patterns causing the resonant frequencies to tremble - just like ripples on the water surface or streams inside a river body. But where Will Long ascribes another beautiful concept or situation, in order to justify another portion of the humming sounds with some reason (doing that, apparently, for himself - for me it's absolutely fine when music even doesn't have a title), Yuta won't do anything - same simple titles like Quiet Moments or Someday in the Rain, same sounds and the same murmuring water - absolutely pastoral, truly Japanese impressionism.

And this is his strength and his courage - not to try to surprise anyone with something, not to compete whose drone is more fat or deep... Just doing what he likes most. And repeating it again and again to the perfection. It's absolutely natural. The river flows every day just as it did yesterday. And maybe, at first glance, nothing changes in it. But you should slow down, calm down and just start looking - and you start to notice how thousands of tiny grains of sand change patterns every minute. As the reflection of the clouds trembles on the surface of the water. How infinite variability is combined with the disarming saturation of statics... This definitely has something Japanese and generally eastern in it - where we see simple, everyday things, Japanese find an infinite number of shades, nuances, meanings. And makes art of this. Maybe I'm just being stereotypical, but It seems to me that Rhucle mastered zen of ambient music - maybe just for himself, not necessarily for everyone... But that's how it usually happens, isn't it?

listen ~ support

baldruin ~ biotische verwitterung

baldruin ~ biotische verwitterung (aetheric records / cloister recordings / black horizons, 2017)

«A disquieting record to accompany the nightmare of now. Baldruin documents this darkness, finding some hope in the helplessness. Buried within these grooves, lies a dizzying array of crepuscular sonics. Barely alive, it drips with dread. Rachitic loops return to us, like traumas. A sticky submission. My goodness, these earworms are infectious.» aetheric-records 

If this world is going to an end – let's dance! Why not? Oh, there is so much fear and dread, and awe, and horror, and hope, and loneliness, and death-death-death is everywhere! But why not to dance? It all begins in light they said. Send your prayers they said. But what's in the end? Baldruin says 'Vom Ende' and then nightmare just begins, spinning its way back to your memory, turning everything upside down, changing the faces and places in the same canvas like in the most disturbing David Lynch movie. Yet, we can dance a bit. Because why not? Okay, despite being groovy and glitchy and gloomily enjoyable this record is not about decadence. It's definitely Baldruin's most creepy work to date, sometimes so disturbing that it gets physical. Something in the stomach. So you better move your body, because these aural rats are everywhere, their skins are soft and warm but they are red inside and they want you be same way... It feels like everything collapsing, yet there is something hidden in the sound which gives you strength to look, to face this storm. Apocalyptic, yes – this records definitely has its own transcendental virtue usually avoided by many. If it's usually calming escapism or filth and decadence in case of 'apocalyptic music', Baldruin paves his own way far away from both. I'd call it necessary vision. To look at thing as they are. As you just came out of wilderness and faced human world for the very first time. Not knowing what's good and what's bad. Not knowing where to go, because your wilderness is gone. And everything else is going to end as well... And it isn't dark at all. It's just how it is right here, right now, when you go by the streets – just one step away from the usual safe road. It may be literal, but can be in your mind. Just one, just little tiny step. And new wilderness unfolds, The Real of the Now. It barks, it bites, it pleases, it laughs, it fists your guts. But after all we know that we created it. So why not to dance with it? 

listen ~ support

son ash ~ easy listening for the hearing impaired

son ash ~ easy listening for the hearing impaired (År & Dag, 2017)

«'Easy Listening For The Hearing Impaired' is a collection of timbral, rhythmical and structural studio experiments for analogue synthesizers, sequencers and reel tape. Part of the material stems from free improvisation, while other parts are composed from more strict and conformational principles. The album is concerned with the idea of beginning and becoming, and an increasing expanse is embedded in the progression of the album, that gradually unfolds its ramifications over time». År & Dag

After years of dedication to ambient music it can be hard to focus on weirdness and playfulness of modern electronic music. Surely it's not that hard in general, your mind just gets so comfortable with the idea of music without unexpectable turns and sharp angles that it becomes inseparable from daily routine. Even without calling it consumerism or escaping, it's enough already to say that one can easily become 'hearing impaired' to any other kind of music. With this in mind I finished my first listening to this record, staring to the ceiling, completely lost and totally inspired. Taken first as the controversial eye-catcher, the name of this album unfolded as a little epiphany – even having the all music of the world before us, we usually select just few styles for personal comfort remaining deaf to anything else. Voluntary deafness, John Cage's archenemy. Of course, there is contrariety to it, hunger to complexity and ingenuity, which drives so-called avantgarde to limits of reason. But beyond those extremes lays the vastness of music, which can be virtually anything for you. 

Son Ash brings a lot to this table, playing and experimenting, making fun of cliches. Sometimes it gets so calm and minimal that it can be mistaken for some Guenter Schlienz' new work, but just few moments later it turns your calmness into laughter, as it was saying 'haha, got you!' – yet within the bounds of decency. I doubt Andreas Pallisgaard (Son Ash mastermind) does it on purpose, at least I want it to be that way because it creates a picture of some kind of futuristic ambient music in my head – it still exists in terms of Satie & Eno, but already corrupted by this unavoidable post-internet vibe, when unexpected turns are not glitches of the system but are result of changed perception of the world, conscious switches. Mind changing it's focus same way as 20 years ago people changed TV channels during sleepless night, but with awareness why and what for. As we change interiors while drifting through the city to our homes. If classic ambient was pastoral in many ways and had its evil twin 'dark ambient', this new ambient cannot be named that easily. It's not dystopian or critical. It's not even weird or cynical. It's like the life itself – just changing. Just different for every one. But still it has to say something about all of us in common. Yes, this is easy listening, after all, but only if you forgot how to listen. 

listen ~ support ~ watch video

pandelindio ~ spirits of valtellina

 pandelindio ~ spirits of valtellina (2017, Novitic Industries)

Spirits of Valtellina was recorded live at I’abbazia di S. Pietro, a romanesque abbey built in 1078 by the monks of Cluny, in Cosio Valtellino, province of Sondrio, Italy ~ novitic ind.

Despite the plentiness of acoustic instruments very well adapted or even specifically made for drone music, there are not so many artist in the world plying purely acoustic drone music.  Of course one can said that this is well known route and that it's much more interesting to build something upon drone – as it does New Age music, folk and actually almost any known music. With centuries (or thousands?) of development the presence of the drone has reduced  significantly, and, probably, only Indian music tradition preserved careful attitude to it. All sounds are emerging from drone. Like a primal ocean of energy, it contains the potency of any sound. Melody is just a fleeting splash, surface ripple, but it can reflect some of the inner processes inside of this unknowable continuum. Repetition of melodic phrases and game of overtones are as natural for the music, as a murmur for water. Drone is a stalk for the flowers to bloom... And it happens time after time on this album – as natural, as in a spring garden. At ease, as the wellspring goes through stones. Pandelindio magicians learn the organic way of things through music and bestow us their admiration, which we happily share!

listen ~ support

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rhucle ~ raw

rhucle ~ raw (night coast, 2017)

Without exaggeration, Tokyo-based sound magician Yuta Kudo aka Rhucle really flooded ambient scene with his music since last year, having tapes and discs released all around the world at labels like Oxtail, Constellation Tatsu, Adhesive Sounds, A Giant Fern, ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ, Beer On The Rug... One could only dream about such list of publishers, but it is actually well deserved attention if you ask me – there are many prolific ambient artists, even in Japan only (take Hakobune, Hatakeyama, Celer...), but Yuta developed its own sense for ambient vibe so quickly that we could speak about being just a medium here. It's always seems unearthly, when artist picks his style so carefully that you can recognize his tunes with the first minutes of playback. It seems like he simply mediates the frequencies of another dimension into our reality, and it's true with Rhucle. On the other hand, Yuta's music is very well rooted in nature, in bucolic recordings of water streams and birds voices, which are inseparable from his tunes. Mellow spheres of sound slowly echoing through those recordings remind me voice of wind in the electric wires, serenity of summer days, afternoon laziness and sparkles of the starlight falling with the dusk... And when I remember those days, I can't really say how many of them were in my life – it looks like infinity in my mind. One omnipresent moment. It's so unreal, yet I can feel any slightest sensation I had! So, I guess this is why it doesn't matter how many albums Rhucle has in its catalogue, how many summer days I spent alone with nature, how hot they were, how gentle was the whisper of the water... I can only wonder how such music can be done in Tokyo, which must be loudest place on Earth, but guess such wonder as this music gives to me can only be transcendent from inside. An it brings a lot more than I can express in a review, it comes with different story every time, so Rhucle can be viewed as an amazing cure from despair, from transience of our daily life, vanishing point of the mind, halfway between the memories and dreams.

listen ~ support

 

a r c a d e ~ bilberries and mushrooms

 a r c a d e ~ bilberries and mushrooms (bering strait archives, 2017)

Hypnotic whirl of grooves and hums, layered over the ground of weird echoes. Dance of electric impulses of mycorrhiza. Drops of water on the spider web. Moonlight reflections in the crystals hidden between leaves... I can go on like this forever while listening to this tape. It came a while ago, but every time I listened to it, the more hypnotizing it was. I know that term "psychedelic" can be attached to anything these days, so let's just say it's magical. And it truly is! Once you fall into these grooves and catch the vibe of those slightly unbalanced loops, it will spin in your deck for ages. Tuluum Shimmering  tropical canoe trip with Julia Bloop and Rod Hamilton, smiling to each other under the moonlight. High Wolf-y relaxing tunes to lazy Sunday mornings, Black Joker's game of never-ending loops which erase the difference between sounds which are actually there and imagined ones. And believe me, you'll be getting many of them even when tape stops. Maybe it's just a result of long-time addiction to weird cassette loop music, but a r c a d e definitely brings some tricks along with its seemingly simple compositions. The name behind is Nathan Stephenson and I strongly suggest to keep an eye on his output - "bilberries and mushrooms" is only a debut work!

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interview with guenter schlienz

Guenter Schlienz (Stuttgart, Germany) is known for his vast catalogue of tape & cdr releases on different great labels around the world – Sacred Phrases, SicSic, Goldtimers, Constellation Tatsu, etc. He is the man behind wonderful Cosmic Winnetou label, releasing all kinds of experimental/drone/ambient artists — maybe not as frequently as we'd like, but each time pleasing the taste of any tape music geek. Creating his minimalist compositions by means of d.i.y modular synths, tape loops and field recordings, Guenter achieves the serenity of classic ambient works, while keeping the vibe of 70s kosmische musik (think Cluster or Harmonia) and sometimes reaches the territories of academic minimalism, exploring the sound as ding an sich, inspiring the listener to invent its own narrative. Being part of Navel band since mid 90s, Guenter's place in music world has a long, but still almost unknown story which continues nowadays with further explorations of all kinds of ambient music.

~~~

Pied Paper: First of all, I'm curious about how it all started for you — ambient music, synth building, tape releases, etc. I know that you were involved in many other projects before, call you tell a bit about them too?

GS: phew, where did it all started… definitely many many moons ago. was active mid till end 90s in some heavy stoner psychedelic rock band. was the guy responsible for producing some "far out sounds" with his guitar and some delay pedal. so there already was this drone element in what i did. but far from recognizing it as this for myself. bit later during the same decade i did a session with a guy who did guitar and singing for another noise rock outfit. we just fiddled around with our guitars and with every pedal we could get our hands on. we recorded our very first session with some broken 4track and quite liked the results. after presenting the finished cdr people came back and reported "this is quite cool drone music". so yep, that's how we learned the name of this style. and after having the name we were able to dig deeper and learned names like Stars of the Lid, Flying Saucer Attack, Brian Eno etc pp. this guitar drone project of us is called Navel and we are still recording and doing live shows.

beginning of the 00's i quit doing this rock band stuff, so there was plenty time to do some other things. after getting introduced to all this amazing kraut and kosmische musik (during a navel live show in france by an english man, but that's another story) there was the idea to do some kind of electronic music solo. so i needed an instrument, and after bit of research i discovered that the schematics for some modular synthesizer would be something i could manage with the training in electronics i already had. so i started soldering, first quite simple filters, later more and more sophisticated modules.

the tapes, yep, fast forward to the end of last decade. stumbled over this tape scene thing by accident via the internet (god bless it). those days i was pretty frustrated and bored by the music all the labels and magazines i knew presented, so this occurred to me like a big relief. yes. so many people and projects and bands and labels are doing fantastic stuff, exactly the music i love, right at the moment, and sell it for very low money to people all around the world. yes! couldn't belief my eyes. that the favorite medium of all those labels and projects were cassettes don't really bothered me (of course i had this "ugh? on tape? strange…" moment like everybody else i guess), because i never really stopped using this media since my early childhood days.

I like to dramatize a bit some things some times, but this discovery of the tape label scene kind of saved my artistic live. it gave me so much energy and confirmation and countless hours of joy during listening sessions that i got the feeling that i have to give something back. hence i started my own tape label.

Pied Paper: Your music sounds almost academic sometimes, especially works as Organ Studies, Loop Studies and Furniture Sounds — which, as I understand is a homage to Eric Satie. But your name is strongly associated with "underground tape scene", as we call it. Did you ever thought about making your music open for the interpretations, to write it down on a paper maybe, letting the others perform it?

GS: huh, not sure if i my music sounds bit like academic music. for sure i'm quite interested in this genre, mean contemporary composers with "classical" musical education composing pieces for concert halls and operas and stuff. like their approach to their art through quite rigid concepts, their huge knowledge about musical structures and about music of many centuries and cultures. perhaps you see my enthusiasm for their rigidness shining through my stuff? that would be a compliment for sure, at least in my opinion. and of course, if there would be a small ensemble crazy enough to perform it, i would love to write a score for them (though not sure if i would like to conduct it). but i guess your name must be some lou reed or some other in the same league to be honored like this. actually i'm pretty sure that many of those academic contemporary composers would be happily release their stuff on tape if they would only know this special scene around it.

Pied Paper: It's clear that ambient music is a wide field for interpretation, same sound can be perceived in different ways depending on the artwork, liner notes, track titles, etc. Can you tell something about your own perception of your music? Does it have some stories within, or it's just abstract form which everyone can fill with its own meaning?

as you see in the answer of the last question i like some kind of concept around the music. and if this concept even gets its visual equal with the artwork i'm more than happy. so of course, there is a story in every piece. but hey, its music, its a form of art, so who am i to dictate what some listener and spectator wants to see in it? isn't it the very meaning of any art, that the consumer of it knits his very personal meaning to it?

actually i am not able to describe what i hear in my music anyway. for me the answer to this question would lead to some kind of poem, some painting, some huge novel, some dance or any other arty abstraction. in none of the mentioned techniques 'm very good at, so please, listen to the music.


Pied Paper: Imagine a situation when you someone asks you to create music with specific mood, theme, etc. — like for a movie scene or something — would it be easy for you? What you enjoy more - improvisation or composition?

already did this, i mean creating some music for a specific use (to earn some money), and hey, that is pretty hard work (and hard earned money)! to create some music without some customers needs to be satisfied, just the personal ones, isn't really easy to do as well, but much more gratifying for the soul. its an privilege to be able to do this, and i have a (pretty time consuming) bread and butter job to create the circumstances to fulfill it.

can't really separate those strategies during my performances, both live and during my recording sessions. its always a mixture of plan and being ready to include some coincidences respectively enlightenments. actually my believe is, gained through many observations and talks about such things, that nearly every work in which i am interested in is created this way.

Pied Paper: I know that you enjoy recording outdoor, do you have any specific set-up for this?

not really specific, the equipment just have to have some possibility to work battery driven. luckily my modulars fall into this category. just to improve the handling of such adventure i have build my modulars as small and compact as possible, and since a couple of months a work on some modules who will be included into some water proofed case.


Pied Paper: Probably you've noticed that releases of first wave of cassette drone/ambient in 2009-11 was mostly lo-fi and many of same artists still doing tapes nowadays came to much cleared and well-produced sound - is that natural growth or trying to be more "mainstream"?

yes, i'm aware of this development as well. i think it just was some other group of people with bit different background which had been running those labels you' mention. In those early days of the reemerging of this medium the leading actors had had mostly a background in the noise scene. hence the tape as favorite medium, hence the cheap and ugly aesthetics of the chosen instruments. these different (don't like to ad some other evaluative adjective) sounding tapes of lately are from people without this background, they just take over the torch and work with it out of their musical socialization. so in my opinion it is either "natural growth", this sounds like some kind of improvement who isn't any need for, nor a try to reach broader audiences. the good stuff of recently is produced by people who are just as true to their own style as their ancestors had been, and therefore it is as important and equal beautiful as the old stuff.


Pied Paper: As a label owner, can you tell how many demos you receive? Which kind of styles you receive most? I'm asking because it seems that ambient/psych/drone music isn't that popular anymore - I see tons of vaporwave/webpunk tapes at new-born labels, while such imprints as Stunned, Tranquility tapes, Goldtimers are long gone (or maybe it's just old man's talk, huh).

yes, and i'm very happy about it, i receive quite a lot of demos. always love to get some new sounds for my ears. mostly the artists are very good informed about the style of the music i usually release and about the aesthetics i'm interested in. perhaps you are right, there are less people out there which do their own style of ambient/psych/drone as perhaps eight years ago, but i'm not sure about that. and as i stated in the last paragraph i think those vaporwave labels and the like took the torch of the cassette celebration and run with it their own way. and this is a good thing. who needs the 16th or whatever version of the emeralds (insert here the name of your favorite release of those years)? isn't this exactly what have happened with pop and rock music and what makes this stuff sometimes unbearable to listen to?

Pied Paper: And what are your plans for the Cosmic Winnetou in the foreseeable future?

prepare my next batch right now which will be released in a couple of weeks. but after this 13th cosmic winnetou bundle of cassettes i will need a hiatus, unfortunately. i love to do the label work, but it is very time consuming. have lots of projects for this year, music and private stuff, so i have to pull the brakes to this project for this year. but really looking forward to restart the tape label with new ideas and energies end of this year.


Pied Paper: Do you ever think about future of music? Is it possible to invent something new, or we are doomed to retro-mania, returning to same tunes from different angles?

of course there will some day somebody release some music which haven't been heard before and will blow all of us completely into the void. don't know which day this will happen, but i'm pretty sure someday it will. just look around, not only the music is stuck into retro mode. clothing, hair style, performing arts, pictorial arts, industrial design, i think that in our days nearly every form of artefacts are done with quite old ideas, just a few new kind of tools here and there. the whole mood, you can call it "zeitgeist" if you like, is like "let's try to preserve what we have", not "perhaps this is a better idea for the future, let's work on it". in my opinion everything is linked together somehow, and we have this retro mania since the 90s, starting with this global change of the modus vivendi. but nothing is forever, so i'm sure this will change someday. these thoughts are just my 50cents about a very complex question. but yeah, i think about this, and love to exchange ideas about this kind of topic.


Pied Paper: Humans already sent some music with space probes - which titles would you choose for such mission? I know you won't choose Wagner, huh :)

really nice question, this is. indeed already thought about that, and i think the nasa did a quite good job with the "golden record" for the voyager mission. very good selection which shows how wonderfully diverse sounds humans are able to produce, and each and all of them aim at the listeners heart. but always wondered if it would be perhaps a good idea to send some field recordings of this strange planet into the void, and f so, which i would chose.

some people laughing, some people fighting, a mother singing her baby to sleep, the audience at a soccer game, a sundown at the shore of a calm sea with waves and cicades and everything? what else?


Pied Paper: Okay, that's it — you can send high fives here or add something if needed! Thank you!

hey, high five to you and many thanks for those questions! took my a while to type the answers, because you found some topics and ideas i love to share my thoughts on it. and of course many thanks for your support!

perhaps i would like to ad a big "thank you" to all the readers of those lines, time is precious and i'm happy that you waste it reading them. and a big "thank you" to all the people who listen to my music and perhaps even bought the cassettes and cds and vinyls with my music on it. to know that somebody out there cares about my music means a lot to me. hugs.

guenterschlienz.de

selected albums:

guenter's bandcamp

sterne uber der stadt

organ studies

tape studies

autumn

anahita ~ tourmaline (three:four records, 2017)

"Out of the crystal clear and warm cosmic perennial waters comes forth another sparkling jewel from Anahita (Tara Burke (Fursaxa) and Helena Espvall (Espers). Two elves dancing amidst gnarled branches of ancient trees and fragrant herbs, concocting a magical potion for the mind of floating medieval cello spheres and melancholic ceremonial madrigals under the blinking eye of a pale moon and far off constellations of shooting stars." 

Bart De Paepe, founder of the belgian tape label Sloow Tapes

credits

released May 12, 2017, Anahita is Tara Burke and Helena Espvall. 

Recorded in the summer of 2010 and 2011 at the Hestian Den. 

Engineered by Derek Moench.  Mastered by Julien Grandjean at Jetlag

listen ~ buy vinyl

viviendo en la tierra de alicia bay laurel

“Celebraciones, avisos de tormenta, fórmulas, recetas, rumores y danzas campestres

recolectadas por Alicia Bay Laurel.”

Kachina Ediciones quiere editar por primera vez en castellano la guía clásica para la vida natural, bohemia y alternativa en el campo escrita por Alicia Bay Laurel en la comuna Wheeler Ranch en el norte de California a finales de los sesenta. La biblia del movimiento back-to-the-land y las comunas hippies de la década de los setenta que capturó el espíritu de toda una generación. 

Para esta edición en castellano, Kachina Ediciones ha puesto en marcha una campaña de financiación que finaliza este domingo 11 de junio, si la campaña finaliza con éxito, el libro estará a la venta el próximo mes de septiembre:

Colabora en el crowdfunding para la edición de Viviendo en la Tierra

Viviendo en la Tierra es para aquellos que prefieren cortar leña para el fuego antes que trabajar en una oficina para pagar la factura de la compañía eléctrica. Un libro diseñado sin índices, sin capítulos, sin reglas ni estructuras, un libro que se construye sobre el aprendizaje del día a día.

Escrito e ilustrado a mano por Alicia Bay Laurel cuando esta tenía tan sólo 19 años, como si se tratara de un diario, originalmente fue concebido como una guía destinada exclusivamente a distribuirse internamente entre las comunas. El libro fue publicado por The Bookworks en Berkeley, California y se agotó inmediatamente. Random House lo reeditó en 1971 y vendió más de 350.000 copias en pocos meses convirtiéndose así en un New York Times Bestseller. Viviendo en la Tierra cambió radicalmente la forma de concebir un libro y con su estilo ha influido durante décadas a numerosos artistas y diseñadores.

Más allá de su utilidad como una guía DIY de artesanía, jardinería, construcción, remedios caseros y recetas, Viviendo en la Tierra documenta la vida en las utópicas comunas de finales de los sesenta. Traducido al japonés y al coreano -y ahora por primera vez al castellano-, en 2012 el libro fue elegido como uno de los 101 libros de cocina americanos más influyentes del siglo XX. Entre 2016 y 2017, fue expuesto en varios museos en retrospectivas sobre la cultura hippie.

Pero además, para muchas personas, Viviendo en la Tierra es una fuente de inspiración espiritual, ya que es un exponente del placer de la vida sin apenas dinero ni bienes materiales, viviendo en contacto con la naturaleza y protegiéndola, viviendo en armonía con los demás.

Alicia Bay Laurel (1949, Hollywood, California) creció en un ambiente intelectual estrechamente relacionado con las artes y políticamente activo. Tras cursar estudios de arte, con diecinueve años se trasladó a la comuna Wheeler Ranch donde comenzó a escribir e ilustrar Viviendo en la Tierra, libro que le dio fama y reconocimiento internacional. Además de escritora e ilustradora, Alicia es una cantautora y música de éxito y ha grabado siete discos desde 1970. Fue alumna del reconocido guitarrista John Fahey y en su carrera ha tocado géneros tan dispares como el psych folk, el blues, la canción protesta o la música Hawaiiana.

En 1973 en colaboración con Ramón Sender Barayon -hijo del escritor Ramón J. Sender y conocido activista del movimiento hippie de los 60- escribió e ilustró el libro Being The Sun, que más tarde se convirtió también en disco.
 

Se trasladó a Maui en 1974 y desde entonces ha ejercido numerosas profesiones, incluyendo entre otras muchas la de fotógrafa submarina, empresaria o profesora de primaria.

Coincidiendo con la edición revisada y actualizada de Viviendo en la Tierra en el año 2000, Alicia hizo una gran gira musical de promoción por Estados Unidos. Desde entonces Alicia vive entre Estados Unidos, Panamá, España y especialmente Japón, país en el que goza de un enorme reconocimiento y en el que continúa realizando numerosas actuaciones musicales y colaboraciones artísticas para libros, publicidad e incluso para diseño de moda. 

Alicia Bay Laurel

 

“Este puede ser perfectamente el mejor libro de este catálogo, es un libro para la gente; por eso, si eres una persona, es para ti; si eres un perro, sin embargo, y no sabes leer demasiado bien, también es para ti, porque tiene dibujos, Alicia, Alicia, Alicia, ella es nuestra Bradford Angier particular.”
--The Whole Earth Catalog, JD Smith, 1970.

"VIVIENDO EN LA TIERRA es toda una experiencia vital. Nos presenta toda la información principal del Whole Earth Catalog con la calidez y el sentimiento que una chica con un melódico y apasionado nombre como Alicia Bay Laurel puede poseer. Es como una carta interminable que Alicia te escribiera sólo y únicamente a ti."
--The Village Voice.

“Ver, tocar o acariciar VIVIENDO EN LA TIERRA es maravilloso. Sus dibujos y diseños irradian calidez, simplicidad y sinceridad. El libro en sí es un objeto que induce a la serenidad y a la buena voluntad. Su información es realmente útil para todo aquel que desee disfrutar de las cosas buenas de esta vida en cualquier parte del mundo."
--Raymond Mungo, The New York Times Book Review

“Quiero hacer todo lo que pone en este libro. Si no puedo hacer todo lo que pone en este libro, entonces quiero soñar sobre ello, porque yo sé que si lo hago, seré una mejor persona hasta la médula de mis huesos.”
--Shuntaro Tanikawa, poeta japonés

(fotos de la comuna Wheeler Ranch de Bob Fitch)

Colabora en el crowdfunding para la edición de Viviendo en la Tierra

stag hare ~ starlights gloom

stag hare ~ starlights gloom (inner islands, 2017)

Farewell, Stag Hare!

«Starlights Gloom is an album about heaviness and lightness. Its made up of primarily sampled material from throughout the Stag Hare catalog. Its sort of a final farewell to the now decade long project, while being its own creature as well. I wanted it to be sort of feminine and tough, ethereal and grounding. It's maybe the last piece of art I have left to release that connects back to a specifically really hard time in my life. And so it was with mixed feelings that I was able to sit down with the tracks and finally finish them. By "really hard" I mean I didn't really think I was going to make it and I recorded the first versions of these tracks as a way to share a certain energy to my child as he grew up in case I wasn't around. I didn't want them to be sad, but I didn't want them to be overly optimistic either. After sitting on them for 2 years, and obviously still alive, thank Goddess, I decided I needed to finally finish these tracks and move on with my life. I used those initial sketches as a stepping off point and then just took the tracks where it felt like they wanted to go. The album isn't intended as any kind of profound statement, they are just tracks that sound good to me and I just finished them in a way that felt good. I didn't labor over them or think very deeply on them. In a way this was actually the most effortless Stag Hare album I have made, using mostly samples and short cuts to get the tracks where I wanted. And it felt fun, and it felt good. It's a bittersweet farewell to the whole Stag Hare project. I more or less have lived in the Stag Hare world for most of my adult life, and through it and the people it has been able to quietly reach I have stayed grounded and inspired. I love you all, and you all have helped keep me alive for the past ten years while I figured a lot of shit out. Still figuring that shit out, but I feel like I can finally step out of my Stag Hare safety womb and go try some other stuff.

~ Willow Skye-Biggs

listen ~ support
also here
~__~

azaleas / cloudsound / forest walker

azaleas ~ sapphire (blank_tapes, 2016)

«Long-form new-age collages. First full-length from Azaleas». ~ blank_tapes

Two years ago I had a pleasure to share a split tape with Azaleas (duo of Kyle Wade & Alice Andres-Wade hailing from Denver) on Rainbow Pyramid label and started waiting patiently for their full-length debut. Hope was not lost, and here it is, spinning in my deck on repeat mode since December! And with the first winds of the spring this music seems to unfold even broader, carrying eternal bliss of best ambient genre developments. Shimmering layers of synth soundscapes, massive drones, new-agey melodies and organic hum of field recordings... Everything in its place, all corners rounded, every transition made with care. This tape has rare ability to became more and more interesting with every spin, telling the same stories differently each time you listen to it. You may get lost in all those layers, fades and vibes, travelling between dark thickets and wide open eyes of lakes, but don't worry – the hiss of blank tape in the end will leave you under charms of these marvelous tunes with joyful smile on your face and pleasant feeling in the heart. Highest recommendations!

listen ~ support

cloudsound ~ indigo appalachia (fluere tapes, 2017)

«Reverie over outer space air space tween canopy slopes of mauve ambrosial gazes to ribbonious unfurls later spooled» ~ fluere tapes

Less is more! I always admired the ability to create pleasant atmosphere with seemingly minimalist and truly lo-fi sound. What Fluere Tapes boss Lee Boyd did on this tape easily falls into category of lo-fi drone, but the less you care about labeling, the more you receive in impression value. Actually, this tape can be a marvelous post-rock or shoegaze epic, simply recorded hundred of times from one old dusty tape to another. Yet, it has this unexplainable charm that wraps you like a cozy blanket, carrying away as a good old magic flying carpet. Massive layers of sound are hidden behind the surface of pleasant sound - same as the incredible amount of water looks like beautiful cloud from the surface. As the the artwork itself, this music is fused by light, an enormous cosmic nebula sending its glorious radiance light years away... Also I must admit that this particular album brought a lot of nostalgic moments for me, remembering those early psych/drone tapes by Deep Magic or Sundrips, feeling the awe in presence of those energies, such pure and sincere, like they are directly radiating from the artist's heart. Maybe I'm just too sentimental, but there is nothing is this world like Cloudsound. Absolute bliss.

listen ~ support

forest walker ~ uv sea (constellation tatsu)

Sincerely – I have no words to describe this album. It's clear, that with such love for ambient music I possess, album like UV Sea would turn into breathtaking experience. Forest Walker puts everything in one canvas and manages to blend all treasures of ambient genre into a single whole thing. Thing in itself. Pulsation of synth lines, deepest drones, huge waves of reverberated noises... even dusty saturated beats do no harm to this never-ending stream of bliss, supporting its torrent thought your perception channels. Is that infinity of the Universe transcending by the aural medium or endlessness of sound, forging new universe inside ours – who knows? Depends on which interpretation of quantum mechanics you follow. One thing is clear here, this music exist in more than one dimension. It spans like endless wave and each track is just range of frequencies we able to perceive. It's easy to imagine UV Sea as short part of huge intergalactic transmission, captured by limited instruments of humankind and then interpreted by our even more limited sense organs. But the message is so powerful that we can get it if not consciously, but more subtly, just intuitively. And unable to verbally express... Yet, transmission continues, so tune in!

listen ~ support

guenter schlienz / alineko / lunar devotion

«"Night Music Bundle" is our new batch of gorgeous ambient & drone music received from great artists around the world! New full-length album by modular synth guru Guenter Schlientz, whose music we are proud to release; huge one-track work by Alineko, whose stellar drones we already had in catalogue; and, finally, long-awaited Lunar Devotion compilation album, featuring many different styles of ambient on one disc, all dedicated to the beauty of the Night! 

Bundle is available in collectors edition - hand-painted wooden box with many inserts, including mandala prints, postcards, moss & custom made star finder» ~ pantheophania

guenter schlienz ~ sterne über der stadt (πάνθεον, 2017)

«Dedicated to the barely visible stars above your home town.» ~ guenter schlienz

In the gleam light of night streets we always see the same. City envelopes us, creating space inside itself, which is almost flat compared to the actual world around. Sometimes it seems that we live inside a dome of glass, like ones from sci-fi books about distant future in post-apocalyptic world. We don't look at the sky, unless it's raining, we are losing the feeling of vastness, of the universal endlessness, which surrounds our little tiny home planet. Cosmos doesn't fit in coordinate system produced by the rows of street lights. But still there are some dreamers, inspired by the blinking stars above the never sleeping towns, bringing the melodies of this elusive beauty, which hides between the city blocks, trembles over the rivers and dissipates in roars of the streets... This exquisite album by our favorite modular synth wizard Guenter Schlienz is a dreamlike journey over the routine of life, perfect companion for late night walks and leisurely stargazing.

listen ~ support

alineko ~ a guide to lucid dreaming (πάνθεον, 2017)

«A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware of dreaming. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.» ~ wikipedia

Second full-length work by Alineko is an aural excursion to the ancient art of lucid dreaming, personal reflection of the interest in Yoga Nidra and modern dreaming techniques. Being minimalist drone piece only at first glance, «A Guide To Lucid Dreaming» reveals a truly mesmerizing deepness and variety during the listening, unfolding hidden, but always present possibilities of our mind. One may hear choir or orchestra, humming of the wind or murmuring water, distant voices, whale songs, etc. – but nothing of it is present here, only play of perception. This music can be anything: meditation session, simple relaxing background or a truly deep listening experience, depending on the one's mood and surrounding. 

listen ~ support

various artists ~ lunar devotion (πάνθεον, 2017)

Nytt Land, Tmavy Kruh, SiJ, Чайник Болотных Богов, Med Gen, lost-radio, Ugasanie, Sunmoonstar, Gamardah Fungus, Nubiferous, Ongo Oruulaa

«Lunar Devotion» is a long-awaited successor of our «Solar Devotion» release made back in 2014. For this compilation we asked artists for their vision of the Moon and everything connected with it – seasons & cycles, religions & cults, dreams, fantasies, insomnia, cosmic landscapes... All of this can be found on this release, intertwined, slowly changing moods from light ambiences to deepest dark drones and back to purest silver light of our Mistress of the Night.

listen ~ support

stag hare / crown of eternity

stag hare ~ velvet & bone (inner islands, 2016)

«Velvet and Bone is structured as a gothic fable. It is about the act of self reflection through knowing another. It is about seeing the shadow and knowing the shadow. It is about seeing death and knowing death. It is about bones, and the way they are shaped by the tensions put on them by various opposing muscles. It is about the swamps of depression. It is about love in its most tragic and therefore most beautiful form». ~ stag hare

Being a huge fan sometimes stops me from writing reviews – maybe it's just subconscious feeling that words can spoil the fragility of music, especially when the music is as personal as Stag Hare are. There are so many kinds of art, of sound, ways of expression, but not that many artists are interested in putting their true emotions into art. Looks like image and the presentation are more important than revealing the personal side  of life and it's understandable. But when the image contradicts to inner story it may say something about our ability to feel the difference. What I like about Stag Hare (and the whole Inner Islands roster, actually) is sincerity, openness, fearless sharing of life as it seen by the artist, reflecting everything in music, telling stories which at some level are universal for all human beings – we just go through them by our own patterns. So, here it spins, new tape with Stag Hare's songs and this time they're actually songs with lyrics printed on j-card! «Opening (Depression)» starts with deep drone tune and it's actually not so dark, as drone ambient can be, but it has this longing which fades in second track – slowly, but confidently building sparkling layers of blissful folk song and entering the same territories Stag Hare known for, but this time with the strong presence of the new kind of energy. Dreamer has awakened and discovered that real world is the challenge and was never separated from the dream. The inner and the outer are not that different categories, simply matter of viewpoint. These songs are still dreamy and so magical, they bloom like astral flowers from the deepness of psychedelic revelation, but at the same time the thickness of the physical is present, like never-ending drone – it simply stitches once separated into whole... Natural & urban, transcendence and routine, simply life as it is. Aspiration to non-duality is primal to every spiritual being, but the ability to separate things is not less important, it's actually the only way our mind can work, endlessly dividing and then synthesizing at new levels of understanding, just to separate again... Okay, think I went too far, so let's say it's just wonderful music for everything you want from it. «Velvet and Bone» can be just beautiful background for your daily activities as successfully, as the impetus for philosophizing (which is clear in my case), it chills and gives energy, it brings joy and contains many different moods at the same time. Music of high potential to unfold. Truly personal, but universal – you may learn something from it, consciously or not. In any case, you won't regret hearing it. 

listen ~ buy tape

crown of eternity ~ dream architecture (inner islands, 2017)

«Dream Architecture contains the deep and complex harmonics of 11 gongs, as well as the sonorous tones of more than 60 bells, sound plates, sound triangles, tuned metals and singing bowls. Crown of Eternity carefully and patiently blend and orchestrate their instruments to create harmonic fields that invite the listener to dive in and not only explore the nature of the sound current, but also their inner landscape». inner islands

Some things change and some not. But it depends on the perspective, of course. Music of gongs, singing bowls and similar stuff was in the New Age genre since its inception. Of course it existed before, but not as music, but more as a spiritual practice. And this function of primal metal instruments vibrations resonating through your body remains unchanged – you'd rather hear such music at some yoga place, than in the concert club. Same private and personal feeling is present at this tape, as with Stag Hare release above. We are left alone with resonance, created with carefulness. It nurtures your senses, sets the right mood for relaxing contemplation, it gives landscape for your inner gazing... The experience of listening to such tape may be rewarding, but I guess it's nothing compared to Crown of Eternity live sets. The amount of gongs, plates, bowls and other metal resonators seen on photos has its own impression even without hearing the music! But if you had the chance to join such session at least once in your life, then you know what I mean. Here the point which turns spiritual practice into music – the act of recording. Same can be told about about any "sacred music" like tibetan monks' throat singing or orthodox chorals: when you are out of the moment of actual happening, when this is recorded or even just put into the studio or onto stage – it turns into completely different story. But this is really one big theme and it leads us away from music itself. Which is, by my humble opinion, can be always regarded as thing in itself without looking at its context and further analysis. Call me consumer, but some things need to be simply enjoyed. This tape is highly enjoyable even if my sound system is unable to produce same effect as live session with all those beautiful resonating stuff. But still, the sound resonates with my soul and think that's the most important here. Usually I listen recordings like this (Klaus Wiese, Danny Becher, Karma Moffet to name just a few) when I'm tired of any other music and it's always refreshing, kind of pleasant pause in the never-ending stream of music and always-present daily noise. Harmony & meditation, and nothing else here actually. What else do you need? 

listen ~ buy tape