Tag: ambient

Carl Matthews – Call For World Saviours, 1984

Weightless, shimmering ambient; sometimes dark and sometimes cosmic. A Steve Roach-esque floatiness, but stringier and more pastoral. This was re-released by Sandpiper Records in 2003, but the label seems to no longer be active and has put all its releases up for free download on archive.org — there are a few other Carl Matthews releases available there if you’re interested.

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Guest Mix – Où est allé le temps, 1ère Partie

Guest mix by DBGO (Soundcloud / YouTube / Playmoss)

Editor’s note: I’m thrilled to share this gorgeous mix from Barcelona-based DBGO, whose YouTube channel is a treasure trove of rarities, and who makes an equally transportive series of mixes, many of which focus on a time-and-location specific musical subgenres and can send you down months-long rabbit holes. This is a selection of French folk avant-garde with a little spice from 1980 to 1991.

Tracklist: 1. Bernard Xolotl  – Venusian Aurora, 1981
2. Noco Music – Eclipse, 1989
3. Compagnie chez Bousca  – Song For Nyama: Pluie, Départ Arreté – Song For Nyama, 1991
4. La Fondation – Dérive, 1983
5. Costin Miereanu – Piano – Miroir, 1984
6. Philippe Cauvin – Chanson Facile D’Amour, 1984
7. Brigitte Jardin & Claude Marbehant – Poids-Plume, 1980
8. Ginni Gallan – L’Amour Ça Rend Fou, 1982
9. Steve Waring  – Cailloux Bambou, 1989
10. Cyrille Verdeaux & Bernard Xolotl – Star Gulls, 1981
11. Didier Bonin – Ecumes, 1982
12. Philippe Cauvin – Lolita, 1981
13. Jean-Pierre Boistel / Tony Kenneybrew – Vas Y Peter, 1989
14. Jacques Roman – Melodie Boreale, 1986
15. Daniel Goyone – Danse Des Lamantins, 1986
16. Henry Torgue / Serge Houppin – New Barocco, 1990

Andreolina – An Island In The Moon, 1990

Sublime collaboration between Silvio Linardi (who’s collaborated with David Sylvian, Hector Zazou, Roger Eno, and others) and Pier Luigi Andreoni (whom you may know from The Doubling Riders). Ricardo Sinigaglia makes a few appearances too, first on piano and then on an Akai S 900. This was their only release as Andreolina. Sprawling, weightless instrumentals that never stay soporific for too long. You can hear Andreoni’s classical training in much of this, and not just because of how much oboe there is, but structurally too. The name of the album comes from an unfinished piece of William Blake prose, and some of the song titles are Blake references as well–so while it might be power of suggestion, there seem to be tinges of romanticism dotted throughout, whereas other moments veer off into jazz. Lots to love here for Elicoide fans. As an aside, this was released on ADN, the same label responsible for Tasaday’s L’Eterna Risata and the aforementioned Sinigaglia record. Depending on who you ask, ADN can stand for A Dull Note, L’amore del Nipote, or Agnostic Dumplings Nursery.

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Yumiko Morioka – Resonance, 1986

Guest post by Matt Nida (London)

Sometimes the music tells its own story. I bought Yumiko Morioka’s Resonance last year in Tokyo (on the recommendation of someone who knew I’d been devouring records by the likes of Hiroshi Yoshimura, Toshifumi Hinata, Haruomi Hosono and many other names who’ll be familiar to readers of this blog) knowing nothing more than what my ears were telling me – that this was a very beautiful slow-burning piano album; Satie-esque ripples through a tranquil sea of crystalline digital reverb, equal parts Sakamoto, Budd, and the Eno brothers. I fell in love with this album on its own terms, with no real sense of how it fits into the wider story of 1980s Japanese ambient music.

As someone who can neither speak nor read Japanese, piecing together the background of this album is its own adventure, relying a lot on shaky auto-translate services and reasonably intelligent guesswork. Yumiko Morioka was born in 1956, and studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She spent much of the last three decades in the United States; Resonance is her only solo release, although she later released a collaborative album with Bill Nelson called Culturemix in 1995. Under the pen name of Satoshi Miyashita, she wrote a number of hit songs for idol acts throughout the 80’s including Toshihiko Tahara and other performers from the notorious Johnny & Associates stable.

Dig further into Resonance’s credits and associates and some familiar names start to appear. The album was produced by new age keyboardist Akira Ito, formerly of the Far East Family Band, and was the only LP released on Ito’s Green & Water label that wasn’t one of his own efforts. Morioka herself occasionally played piano for Miharu Koshi, and receives a “special thanks” credit in the liner notes to Hosono’s Omni Sight Seeing.

So it’s tempting to view Resonance primarily as another link in the dense latticework of interconnecting artists and albums from 70s and 80s Japan that enthusiastic Western listeners are only now starting to piece together through blog posts, YouTube algorithms and curatorial mixes. Another piece in the puzzle. But you really don’t need to know any of this stuff. Resonance really is nothing more than a very beautiful slow-burning piano album, one whose exploratory pieces gently unfold in a way that slows time and, in the best Eno tradition, pleasantly colour any environment in which they’re heard. It’s an honest, open record, and one that I hope you will love as much as I do.

Priscilla Ermel – Campo De Sonhos, 1982

A stunner. Priscilla Ermel is a Brazilian anthropoligist, video artist, and musician based at the Laboratório de Imagem e Som em Entropologia in University of Sao Paulo. If you’ve heard Music From Memory’s extraordinary Outro Tempo compilation, you’ve heard two of her songs, one of which is included on this record. You can watch some of her video work on Vimeo. Also–a cool fact that I was unaware of until just now courtesy of 20 Jazz Funk Greats:

In her ethno-musicological researches, she has studied the indigenous Tupi Mondé people of Brazil, as well as the Dogon in Mali- yes, the same Dogon who, as myth has hit, descended from the Sirians, and were soundtracked by Craig Leon in his Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music.

Campo de Sonhos (“field of dreams”) is a collection of cinematic instrumental textures that lean alternately towards jazz and classical. There are a few gorgeous, guitar-centric tracks that employ both acoustic (viola caipira) and electric, but the electric moments are more sparse, moody, and textural; almost Durutti Column-esque. Elsewhere, a laundry list of instruments: kalimba, berimbau, viola-de-cocho, chirimia, ocarina, nepalese flute, Jew’s harp, piano, saxophone, cello, violin, synth, and a slew of drums including congas, surdo, bombo, gongs, cultrun, and cajón. And while there are moments of uninhibited percussive joy and spiritual jazz, these songs feel focused, elegant, even stripped back at times. Thank you Kosta for the reminder to share an old favorite!

Also, if things look a bit rough around here, it’s because I’ve just switched to WordPress and am still finding my way around–am hoping to have more user-friendly navigation and archive up soon. Please bear with me in the meantime! (I’d also like to thank a very nice reader named Kenji who spent a solid hour and a half writing and tweaking code and holding my hand through learning about plug-ins to fix a few hundred broken links. Thanks Kenji!)

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Vangelis Katsoulis – The Slipping Beauty, 1988

Vangelis Katsoulis was born in Athens in 1949 and since then has been prolific, dabbling in minimalism, jazz, choral, and symphonic work. As his second full-length, The Slipping Beauty is a startlingly polished collection of 16 short pieces, many of which feel more like impressions than songs. I would guess that Katsoulis was influenced by the pulsing, layered structures of gamelan (“Overcast”), as well as by traditional Japanese drumming (“The Sound Of The Stone”). Despite some of these more historical reference points, this music is highly futuristic, with tracks like “The Slipping Beauty” feeling like a synthetic cyborgian homage to Steve Reich. From the liner notes: “The title of this record is a paraphrase of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. It points at the idea of beauty which comes to the artist as an inspiration and suddenly vanishes. In addition it’s a reference to the fleeting nature of physical beauty.”

As an aside, three of these tracks have been remixed and released together as The Sleeping Beauties, including this very good Telephone rework of the title track, though confusingly the record itself has yet to be reissued.

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 14

Listen to my newest mix for NTS Radio below. Moody slow-burners, futuristic textures, and a few anachronisms. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Enjoy!
Tracklist:
1. Владимир Леви & Ким Брейтбург – Не Уходи, Дарящий (thanks David!)
2. Susumu Yokota – King Dragonfly
3. Roberto Musci & Giovanni Venosta – Water Music
4. Ichiko Hashimoto – La, La Maladie Du Sommeil
5. Penguin Café Orchestra – Numbers 1-4
6. John Martyn – Please Fall In Love With Me
7. Yumi Murata – Face To Face
8. Unknown Artists (Burundi) – Akazehe Par Deux Jeunes Filles
9. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Put Your Hands Up (Opening) (TBS News 23 1997)
10. Wilson Tanner – Pilot
11. Françoise Hardy – Ce N’est Pas Un Rêve
12. Sean McCann – Video Singing Score No.3
13. Alice Coltrane – Yamuna Tira Vihari
14. Nuno Canavarro – Antica/Burun
15. Dolly Parton – Gonna Hurry (As Slow As I Can)

Masahiro Sugaya – Music From Alejo, 1987

Really sparse and beautiful ambient minimalism made to score the dance theatre piece Alejo performed by the Pappa Tarahumara dance company (which is still active today, and apparently once performed at Reed College). Ebbs and flows of activity, with busier synthetic tracks like “Straight Line Floating In The Sky” and “Mistral,” gauzy pastoral moments suggestive of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green (“Theme of Alejo”), and piano meandering that reminds me of Toshifumi Hinata’s jazzier piano moments–but all done a little bit more roughly, this being a self-released cassette. Prismatic and ringing. Perfect picnic soundtrack.
(download link removed as reissue is forthcoming!)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 13: Joanna Brouk Tribute


My newest mix for NTS Radio is a two hour tribute to Joanna Brouk, who passed away this month at 68. Considered one of the early founders of New Age, Brouk never referred to herself as a composer, but rather insisted that she was a vessel for the music that flowed through her. Her work sat somewhere in between new age, drone, minimalism, and classically inclined ambient, with a curiosity and a roughness reminiscent of pioneering early electronic music. You can buy her excellent compilation released last year by Numero Group here. There’s also a great interview with her here in which she talks about her early processes and her work in sound healing.

She often said that it was the space between the notes in which interesting things start to happen, and that music has to slow down in order to get there. I put this mix together of things that, to me, are similarly interested in space and silence. Some of these songs were written by her contemporaries; others are just things that I hope she might have liked. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Goodnight, Joanna, and safe journey.

Tracklist:
1. Joanna Brouk – Healing Music (excerpt)
2. Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Alalogo (excerpt)
3. Kudsi Erguner & Xavier Bellenger – Apu-Caylioch / Le Seigneur Des Étoiles
4. Kevin Braheny – Lullaby for the Hearts of Space (excerpt)
5. John Clark – The Abhà Kingdom (excerpt)
6. Masahiro Sugaya – 水-(1)
7. Craig Kupka – Clouds II (excerpt)
8. Iasos – The Winds of Olympus
9. Daniel – Quartz Crystal Bells (Side A) (excerpt)
10. Daniel Kobialka – Planetary Mysteries
11. Ojas – Shiva Dance (excerpt)
12. Jansen / Barbieri – The Way The Light Falls
13. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Water Planet
14. Alice Damon – Waterfall Winds
15. Joanna Brouk – Golden Cloud Layers

Daniel – Quartz Crystal Bells, 1988

Pristine crystal overtones. Most of this moves at glacial speeds, with a few stretches of more active composition. While singing bowls go back hundreds of years, crystal singing bowls (made from silica quartz) weren’t manufactured until the mid-80s when they were used to grow silicon computer chips. They weren’t marketed as healing instruments until the early 90s, meaning Quartz Crystal Bells is one of the pioneering recordings of crystal singing bowls. Recorded live on a set of twelve bowls between 8″ and 18″ in diameter, with Daniel Lauter as well as Donna Soszynski and Kim Atkinson on the bowls, and recorded by Bernard Xolotl (reminder to post some Bernard Xolotl).

This is a decent quality tape rip with some room tone, but if you like it I’d highly recommend buying a re-mastered version directly from Daniel, which is divided up into five tracks rather than two sides.