MAY CONTAIN:
Electroacoustic, Electroacoustic Improvisation, Experimental Ambient, Electronica, Musique concrète
Specimens - Kind Of Grey
from Power Pain Privelege, First Terrace Records, 2023
Power, Pain, Privilege is Specimens fourth album & most personal work to date, it follows up on his collaboration album ‘Intersections’ with Peter Broderick, Benoît Pioulard, Midori Hirano & Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.
Power, Pain, Privilege is a commissioned piece by London’s Southbank Centre and is an abstract sonic exploration of biracial identity,
in its historicity as well as through the lens of Ives’ own personal experience of being British-Jamaican.
The album is a departure from his largely ambient work and explores haunted and twisted dancehall rhythms, industrial drones, and spoken word pieces that track a course through painful incidents of imposter syndrome, shame, privilege & racism.
The album opens with a computerised robotic voice reading excerpts of the 1930s Fletcher Report:
“an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and other ports” a report which heavily stigmatises children and mixed heritage families of African and European origin.
It could be deemed the official outset in defining Liverpool's ‘half castes’ as a problem and blight to the “British way of life”.
Ives’ states “this track sets the tone to the album, the cold analytical and dehumanising approach to reports like this, whilst over 80 years old set the standard for viewing biracial families and to have used a Human voice to recite these pieces of text would have been to give it too much life”
The album is accompanied by a film directed by the photographer & director Lucie Rox which was live scored at The Southbank Centre in London and in Paris at 3537.
released May 5, 2023
Artist Website: http://specimensmusic.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/specimensmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_specimens_/
Forrest Fang - Throwing Salt
from The Lost Seasons Of Amorphia, Projekt, 2022
The lush ambient space music of veteran Bay Area composer Forrest Fang explores the tactile nature of sound.
On his latest, THE LOST SEASONS OF AMORPHIA, he brings electronically-treated Asian instruments such as gu-zheng, kim and Javanese gamelan to the fore, subtly complementing them with hypnotic processed electronics in a manner that evokes his explorative sensitivities. Over four decades,
Fang developed a distinctive style deeply informed and inspired by his studies of electronic music, minimalism, and Asian traditional musics of Indonesian Gamelan, Chinese classical music, and Japanese Gagaku court music.
The compositions are varied in mood, perhaps reflecting the “seasons” lost when our states of mind change during especially difficult times (such as the current one).
“When I recorded the pieces, I tried to avoid being expressly programmatic,” says Fang. “However, the ups and downs of this past year probably had an indirect effect on what I created, and these pieces were my way of making sense of what have been strange and uncertain times.”
On the opening twenty-minute track, “The Isle of Welcome,” warm ambient textures flow within its four continuous sections with treated electronics and acoustic instruments bridging the transitions between sections.
The sustained orchestral tones of the introduction gradually give way to the percussive interplay between an Asian zither, electric piano, and layered synthesizers.
The synthesizers provide a continuing sonic bed for echoing and gongs and a gamelan at the halfway point, and also complement the electric piano, strings, and sequenced electronic tones in the final section.
"Isle" was composed for a special Thanksgiving show in November 2021 for the celebrated Philadelphia-based space music radio program, “Star's End.”
The album continues with “Throwing Salt,” an evocative amalgam of contrasting timbres that combines the primal sonorities of a gamelan with soft electronic strings lingering in the aural space.
A short interlude for zither and electronic drones, “Inlets,” follows.
A moody and quiet foreboding prevails on “A Shadow on the Shore.” Airy and ephemeral synthesizers and processed field recordings slowly dissolve into a darker droning cloud of horns.
Out of this season of darkness emerges a brighter sonic tableau in “From Post to Palm.” Violins and flutes are accompanied by hypnotic polyrhythms and ostinatos from gongs, hand percussion, metallophones, organ, and processed strings.
The flutes are performed by veteran progressive musician Dave Newhouse, who also guested on Fang's 2018 release, SCENES FROM A GHOST TRAIN.
The ebullient atmosphere of “From Post to Palm” is soon replaced by the mysterious calm of a quiet and hypnotic “Distant Figure.”
This interlude features shifting electronic drones, processed environmental sounds, and a faraway electric piano.
The album concludes with “Urchins,” sequencer-based space music that gently undulates and gradually recedes into the night.
THE LOST SEASONS OF AMORPHIA is a classic Fang release. Its ethereal atmospheres are grounded in primal Asian instruments that seek balance in the sometimes unpredictable darkness and light of our interior seasons.
released November 4, 2022
Foster Neville - Sometimes They Get Into the Machinery
from The Edge of Destruction, Subexotic Records, 23 June 2023
The Edge of Destruction is the debut album from Durham-based artist Foster Neville. 19th century German poetry, the theories of Prince Matila Costiesco Ghyka, and fellow Northerner Basil Bunting’s long poem ‘Briggflatts’, together with the architecture of Le Corbusier (especially the Modulor), are the reference points for the techniques employed on this new release.
Influenced by the early methods of Brian Eno it sounds as if it might be generative but it isn’t. There is a total rejection of the loop; instead the album develops an evocative language of its own, one which attempts to revive some of our earliest pulses as sentient beings but also one that is more suitable for the shifting structures of the dying stages of the second Elizabethan age.
The title is an appreciative nod towards Doctor Who, in particular the third serial broadcast in 1964. The tracks progressively map out a collective narrative of threat and survival in a strange and uncertain world,
with a strong folk horror element running through - as titles like ‘Hookland’ and ‘The Devil’s Arrows’ suggest.
The human voice is absent from all but one of the album’s tracks, appropriately enough the title track, and those enumerations are like a countdown to some unstated and yet imminent disaster and are in Chinese (spoken by Wang Tiao)
as if to demonstrate even further alienation (for English speakers at least) from the information which language would conventionally carry.
Blending analogue, electronic and acoustic sounds, the album’s dark romanticism and gothic qualities are evident in the way familiar sounds are mixed with the more exotic and treated, and primitive elements have been combined with the melodic.
The aim was to present a sonically rich journey and one which it is pleasant to immerse yourself in, rather than the more avant-garde sounds the processes drawn from poetry and architecture might imply.
The album is produced by John Pilgrim, a member of the inner sanctum of the Folk Horror Revival and whose approach to production is shaped by his longstanding interest in dislocated memories and unsettled landscapes.
The Edge Of Destruction will be released on 23rd June via digital platforms and limited edition pressed double vinyl.
Braulio Lam + Simonel - The Seventh Seal
from Endlessness, Static Discos, 2022
Back in November 2021 Casa Del Lago UNAM comisioned Static Discos for a short film.
The short film was curated by Ejival, in it Braulio Lam and Simonel joined ambient forces in a collaboration between atmospheric sounds and natural landscapes.
“Endlessness” is an almost forgotten dream, a vague memory, where objects and analog sounds get transfixed around the Pacific Coastline’s mist.
Tapes in a constant loop, expired film stock, voices and ambient sounds that touch objects closed to extinction and their interaction with the humans that manipulate them in order to create sonic memories.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brauliolamusic
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/braulio_lam
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/brauliolam
Twitter: http://twitter.com/brauliolamusic
Spencer Doran - The Seaside
from SEASON: A letter to the future (Original Soundtrack), RVNG
Artists Website: https://spencerdoran.com/
Oreste - Quivering Whispers (Original Mix)
from Unfull Psalmodian Theory | [जीवन की तलाश] , 2022
Ozbolt - Cango
from Felt Interscape, Woodford Halse Tapes, 2023
Artists Website: http://andyaquarius.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/aquariandreamstate
Instagram: http://instagram.com/aquarianrenegade
Eluvium - The Violet Light
from (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality, Temporary Residence, 2023
Portland, Oregon ambient producer Matthew Robert Cooper returns as Eluvium with '(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality', his first album to feature an entire orchestra.
The album deals with humanity's search for meaning and our relationship with technology, particularly the feedback loop of algorithms. Cooper utilized new compositional methods due to shoulder pain,
embracing automation alongside traditional writing methods. Despite exploring themes of isolation and loneliness, optimism and hope emerge. Gorgeous work, as ever.
Artists Website: https://www.eluvium.net/
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/eluvium
Twitter: https://twitter.com/eluvium
Mixed Bag Murmurs Archives