navel

navel ~ meditating amoebas lp (not on label, 2024)

very far out. experimental space ambient. cosmonauts. oceans of sounds, drones, visions. since 1998.

navel is gage & floyd (günter schlienz & floyd wenzel)

no hay nada que me haga más feliz que los regalos inesperados en forma de vinilo. suena "transfer, die räume dazwischen" y ya en seguida percibes algo familiar: nuestro duo favorito de ciencia ficción está de vuelta. meditating amoebas es el equivalente auditivo del agua en el espacio exterior. un oasis rodeado de infinitos planetas y agujeros negros y meteoritos, pero también de árboles y pajaritos. new age, field recordings, notas de piano y guitarras acústicas. y esa calidez que siempre desprende todo lo que hace günter schlienz. al contrario de lo que ocurre con la música de günter en solitario, creo que requiere de una escucha más atenta para percibir todos los detalles (¿es tal vez más abstracta?), pero una vez lo haces te das cuenta del suave equilibrio entre lo orgánico y lo subterráneo. escuchar ya no es un ejercicio pasivo, es una colaboración. de la misma manera que un lector colabora con un escritor para dar vida a un libro....escuchad si no 'transfer, die räume dazwischen'.

aferrándose a lo familiar del universo, navel combina sonidos oscuros y ambientales con notas aisladas de piano y guitarras acústicas tan acogedoras como una puesta de sol. el broche final lo pone "ist das hier", que google traduce como "¿está esto aquí?" y me encanta, no imagino un título ni un final más bonito. 

...edición limitada de muy pocas copias que se van en un plis plas📀📀

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endurance & inner travels

 endurance & inner travels ~ to the ancestors
(golden ratio frequencies, 2024)

 

in the early 10s, when the cassette format has gained a renewed interest, ambient and new age were the genres to embrace it with the most love. one of the prominent projects of that period was Inner Travels, an alias of Steve Targo, a sound healer and experimentalist from Wisconsin. his albums were released at some of the best of today's new age labels ~ Sounds of the Dawn, Inner Islands and Aural Canyon. meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, in Japan, Joshua Stefane under the Endurance alias, released plenty of cassettes as well, exploring the ambient minimalism and running Muzan Editions label together with two friends. guess it was just a matter of time before Steve and Joshua crossed paths in this relatively small world of cassette music but this meeting has brought us something truly beautiful, thanks to another top new age label of our times ~ Golden Ratio Frequencies.

even though Endurance's music could barely pass as new age, there's a certain vibe in it, which makes it close to japanese "environmental music", kankyo ongaku. Inner Travels, on the other hand, was also not so esoteric, as new age could be, but more nature-oriented, with album names like Sea of Leaves, Garden Music or Earth Connection. so what we have on this album (which in fact was made 6 years ago) is an interesting blend of environmental minimalism, clearly rooted in the outputs of such giants as Hiroshi Yoshimura and Takashi Kokubo, crystal clear modular electronica which could easily top instagram trends, and sparse asian melodism, where pauses between notes possibly play even bigger role than the notes... the sort of music which tells you more between the lines ~ and that's probably the reason why there are no track names on this tape, only their duration.

the listener is invited to a ceremony, which sometimes echoes ancient sounds of Gagaku music, but these echoes are traveling under the treetops through a refreshing morning scent of coniferous giants. the edge between the natural and electronic is blurred here ~ it doesn't matter if that's cicada or an electric circuit, both being merely an expression of life's energy which always takes numerous forms, only to express one simple thing ~ the beauty. while beauty is an expression of harmony. looking for harmony is a common place for japanese culture and new age movement, as well as for enviromentalism (most obviously) and basically any spiritual practice. but harmony between people or their doings is rarely achieved if it wasn't build on a solid foundation, namely in harmony with Earth itself. dedicating this [not too modern, yet not too retro] music to the ancestors, Endurance & Inner Travels seem to establish an important bridge between future and past, a little bottle note which says "learn from the trees", keep your roots well in the ground and reach out to the skies, to sunlight. as simple as it is.  

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bayou version

leslie keffer + nyoka shoje ~ bayou version (shield maiden, 2024)

In usage in the Southern United States, a bayou is a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area. It may refer to an extremely slow-moving stream, river, marshy lake, wetland, or creek. They typically contain brackish water highly conducive to fish life and plankton ~ wikipedia

there are many types of drone music ~ from wall-of-sound type and harsh abrasive textures, to mellow tones sustained in the air, pure sound fields of transparency. and that's natural, in the sense that music is a part of nature as well, (a living) being produced by human creatures, which are part of nature as well, want they or not. while most of what we normally consider music is usually an expression of purely human affairs (thoughts, ideas, emotions), drone music always tends to reflect something way more basic. a pure element, refined to complete transparency in almost alchemical sense ~ to see the essence of it. as Maeror Tri, german drone music pioneers stated: "the purpose of this is to reveal primordial forces, the very foundation of consciousness...". "and nature" i should add, because the foundation is common here. 

for example why we should think of a vinyl record as something artificial when it's no different from a tree bark ~ it ages, it can be scratched, it can be destroyed in fire... but it has a history written on it. the only difference i can think of is that every tree has its own history and no bark is the same. nature is very good at making copies, keeping each and every copy unique, but what for? we can follow "the nature" (as some separate object in our mind) by trying to do the same, or we can just accept the fact that through us nature tries the new ways to copy things, to sustain them. and that's why our uniqueness is important, even if it's unseen to the modern eye wearing the market value glasses.  

this album, the first to jump-start a new Shield Maiden label, doesn't try to impress you from the first seconds. it won't be picked up by social media algorithms, it's not something you can impress a party with, only if that's a sleepover party of some droneheads like myself. but this album is meant just to be there. somewhere in the depths of Bandcamp. and i'm glad it exists. because sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, when the life is slow, i can silently enjoy it. not necessarily thinking all the thoughts i had above. maybe not even thinking at all. just being like a tree by a slowly moving stream. soaking some sunlight. and being grateful to be there.

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monopoly child star searchers / dolphins into the future ~ tour dates

 

neo fourth world age post drone alien psychedelia living legends monopoly child star searchers and dolphins into the future are on tour which just started yesterday! 

25 cities in 12 countries:

23/5 Barcelona 🇪🇸  El Pumarejo
24/5 A Coruña 🇪🇸 Acefala
25/5 Vigo 🇪🇸 Radar Estudios
26/5 Porto 🇵🇹 Hotelier
27/5 Coimbra 🇵🇹
29/5 Parede 🇵🇹 SMUP
30/5 Lisbon 🇵🇹 Sala Lisa
31/5 Paris 🇫🇷 Cmptrmthmtcs
1/6 Ljubjana 🇸🇮 Niansa
2/6 Ravenna 🇮🇹 Magma
3/6 Palermo 🇮🇹 Epyc
4/6 Milano 🇮🇹 Caned Icoda
5/6 Roma 🇮🇹 Teatro Delle Belleze
6/6 Perugia 🇮🇹 Spazio Modu
7/6 Prague 🇨🇿 Punctum
8/6 Vienna 🇦🇹
9/6 Sofia 🇧🇬 Equipage
11/6 Tampere 🇫🇮 Telakka
12/6 Turku 🇫🇮 Himera
13/6 Stockholm 🇸🇪 Larry’s Corner
14/6 Ghotenburg 🇸🇪 Skjulet
15/6 Samsø 🇩🇰 Agerupgard
18/6 Brussels 🇧🇪 Atelier 210
19/6 Roubaix 🇫🇷 Ateliers Jouret
22/6 Antwerp (Monopoly only)🇧🇪 De  

•••

for infos check insta here & here

also, for the occasion Edições CN is producing 4 tour-only editions.
these will only be available at the concerts and Spencer just put 3 new tapes out along the HR Giger's Studiolo vinyl reissue!

gunter herbig / laie

gunter herbig - lux (cosima pitz 2024)

…lux

Is the second chapter of my journey into transcribing Thomas de Hartmann’s piano arrangements of Gurdjieff’s music for the guitar. It also completes the sentence ex oriente lux. The light comes from the east, the first chapter having been released by the Swedish label BIS under the name ex oriente.As is typical for anyone who delves into Gurdjieff's teaching, the realisation that nothing moves in straight lines never takes long to establish itself. Mr. G, as he was often affectionately referred to by his closer followers said himself:  "without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine".

"The recording sessions for lux started with realisation that my amp was broken and produced a distorted sound as soon as you played more than one note at a time. Many weeks of practice and preparation had gone into getting ready for the recording and the frustration to consider to abort was great. The decision to go ahead anyway was made on the spot and, in hindsight, it reveals the inner workings of the path. Nothing ever happens the way you expect and acceptance is one of the greatest lessons we can learn. I decided to go ahead with the distorted sound and let the light shine through the broken prism in its own beauty."

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laie - programmat (cosima pitz 2024) 

 On tender soles, Laie is wandering in between his imaginary machines, programming sound like seeds, which bloom and dance in kosmische ways, day in, day out into new directions...  

Laie aka Phil Struck's long awaited contribution to the Pitzsche Cosmos...

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sound mirrors

miroirs sonores ~ voyage au coeur de la matière (1988)

first time i got familiar with this album was through incomparably amazing Sounds of the Dawn who has been a huge source of inspiration since their blogspot times. SotD has a CD version though and Discogs haven't had an entry for cassette release, so i was sure it was CD only ~ until suddenly stumbled on this tape while digging private announces. so here's the cassette rip as well, for the sake of archiving this unique work. "miroirs sonores" is a name of a specific sound sculpture/instrument made by Bernard & François Baschet ~ french brothers, who were creating some unique sound sculptures their whole life. their own recordings date far back to 1965, when they released a documentation of the experiments with glass and metal sound objects as Structures For Sound 10" vinyl. recently their work got a renewed interest with a double LP release on the parisian Transversales Disques label, probably in the raise of interest to another renown sound sculptures creator Harry Bertoia. 

this specific tape though involves other people playing the Baschet's "sound mirrors" ~ Olivier Milchberg, his father Jorge Milchberg and Rob Yaffe ~ all of them being participants of Los Incas band, who you may know as the ones recording "El Condor Pasa" song with Simon & Garfunkel. so they come from a bit different background, playing mostly folk music through their careers and yet, they managed to create deeply meditative recording for this project ~ it's as serene and slowly paced, as Himalayan Bells of Karma Moffet or numerous Klaus Wiese singing bowls albums ~ vibrational music with a lot of air in between resonating wellsprings of sound.  

listen: cassette rip ~ cd rip

loris s. sarid

loris s. sarid - music for tomato plants (constellation tatsu, 2020)

"Music for Tomato Plants is the first collection of tracks by Glasgow-based artist Loris S. Sarid.

Written between October 2019 and January 2020, music for tomato plants is the result of Loris's growing interest in quiet, asmr-like , hyper-realistic sounds. Recorded as a series of short kalimba and glockenspiel improvisations at first, then broken down and rearranged incorporating more elements and various types of audio manipulation.

 "Music for Tomato Plants was born while taking care of a little tomato plant, grown on the windowsill of his flat during the winter 2020. The album is a homage to the unapparent courage of simplicity, and the beauty and lightness of the most ordinary things." "In the same spirit of Mort Garson, Green-House and others who synthesize the natural and musical worlds, this ambient serenade for tomato plants is a welcome saunter through a humble garden" - Charlie Moonbeam 

único vinilo publicado hasta ahora de nuestro querido sello de cintas de cassette Constellation Tatsu, pero qué vinilo!. Green de Hiroshi Yoshimura, Plantasia de Mort Garson, David Edren, Green-House, Golden Pear... ¿Qué tienen las plantas que atrae a tantos músicos e inspiran los discos más bonitos? Este vinilo rojo y comestible está dedicado a las plantas de tomate. improvisaciones de kalimba y glockenspiel, delicadas texturas y arreglos y ese aroma añejo a disco rescatado de los años 70. afirmar que las plantas escuchan y disfrutan la música que les ponemos tal vez sea dejarse llevar, pero dejarse llevar estoy segura de que es el objetivo de este disco precioso. Placidez pura.

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