Brian Eno - Music for Prague (2001)

This music was conceived for a 1998 installation of Brian Eno, collaborting with Jiri Prihoda in Prague. The CD was donated to an auction in aid of South London Arts in January 2001 and raised £ 400. 

As Thursday Afternoon, Music for Prague is a long ambient track, where piano notes and melodic lines evolve very slowly. It is another perfect realization of Eno's concept of generative music, where different tracks are blended together in a randomly way, and one should listen to the installation at least 10.000 years to hear the entire possibilities of a single piece. 

Quiet music for our hectic times, Music for Prague is the perfect soundtrack for a winter evening... To be played and listened to in infinite repeat mode !

link: mp3

Be.MfP.zip

password: olduvai

Harold Budd - By the Dawn's Early Light (1991)

This is a splendid album, perhaps the most personal album of Harold Budd. Mixing together the reading of some of his beautiful poems and ambient musical soundscapes, Budd creates unique atmospheres, between day and night, between light and darkness, between sleep and awakening. Playing piano, Hammond B3 and synthesizer, Harold Budd is surrounded by B.J. Cole (pedal steel guitar), Bill Nelson (acoustic and electric guitars), Mabel Wong (viola) and Susan Allen (harp).

The result is magical and moving, deep and ambient, and a subtle and aerial chamber music surrounds Harold Budd's texts: his voice, the rythm and pauses of his reading are parts of the music.

Imagination meets memory, silence found its voice, words and sounds are just colours painting a beautiful, quiet, serene and ambient atmosphere...

link: mp3 / 320

HB.BtDEL.zip

password: olduvai

Bernard Parmegiani - La Création du Monde (1986)

Bernard Parmegiani is a French composer (born in 1927) who belonged to the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM) founded in Paris by Pierre Schaeffer. Among many compositions, La Création du Monde is probably the best introduction to his musical universe and to his unique way to blend together sounds from different origins, concrete, acoustic, electronic. Parmegiani creates unique soundscapes suggesting ephemeral events, various material surfaces and shapes, the motions of air, the transparancy or non transparancy of space, the plays and illusions of sonic mirrors surrounding the listener.

La Création du Monde reminds me early Tangerine Dream albums such as Zeit or Atem: this music is abstract but generates so many inner visions, it plays with sounds and spaces in a very visual way, it is ambient and quiet while exploring all the dimensions of the "objets sonores" that are the trademark of Pierre Schaeffer and his followers at the the GRM. 

This music should be listened to late at night, at a low level: you will be surrounded by unknown flying sonic objects and through your closed eyes, you will see the creation of the universe...

link: mp3 / 320

password: olduvai

part1

part2

Stuart Dempster - Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel (1985)

Art would be so boring if there was not a part of crazyness in it. The recording industry would be just a routine if there were only studio sessions, without risks and imagination... Life becomes more interesting when one is going to the very end of his (her ?) dreams, concepts, abilities..

Most of New Albion records, this innovative company based in San Francisco, shared such features. They are extreme, exciting, experimental, innovative, and never, never they take into account commercial, economic, market data, to frame creativity within borders and limits.

Stuart Dempster is a veteran composer and performer in the American new music scene.

This Cistern Chapel project  is crazy, incredible, bold, on the edge... 

Stuart Dempster and his trombone class went inside a giant water tank close to Seattle. In this place, there is a natural reverberation of 45 seconds...  Conches,  Dijderidu, Tibetan cymbals and nine trombones create these unique soundscapes, atmospheric drones, ambient climates, multi-dimensional acoustic spaces...

Meditation ? Exploring the borders of consciousness ? Mapping new audio territories ?

These Underground Overlays do not allow simple definitions. They are an invitation to share a unique acoustic and ambient experience.

If you think that true musical creation should open new spaces and break all the existing borders, then you should definitely explore the superb ambient world of Stuart Dempster and his students...

Enjoy ! 

link: mp3 / 320

StD.UndOv.zip

password: olduvai

Tangerine Dream - Live in Shefield (1974)

This is the second volume of the Tangerine Tree series. Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Baumann played at the City Hall in Sheffield, on October 29th, 1974.  This is a pretty good recording (soundboard ? radio broadcast ?), remastered by Jabberwock. The design is by Maff & Gustavo Jobim

In this 44 minutes long track, Tangerine Dream's music is serene, floating and meditative: it is a long improvisation, where mellotron, organs, EMS Synthy and treated piano create beautiful soundscapes: it is true electronic chamber music, creating slowly evolving climates, with a kind of special German romantic touch... 

Enjoy !

mp3

link

password: olduvai

Ketil Bjørnstad - Floating (2005)

This is not a ECM release, but it looks and sounds  like... Palle Danielsson (double-bass) and Marilyn Mazur (drums, percussions) add a subtle rythmic and sonic touch to Ketil Bjornstad lyrical and inspired piano playing, and the three of them built up beautiful climates, where melody, swing and atmosphere are mixed in a very creative way... Is it jazz ? ambient music ? chamber music ? As often, with ECM artists (and the three of them are ECM artists), labels and definitions are useless and disappointing...

Let say it is a kind of ambient chamber music whose strong identity and originality results from the unique way Ketil Bjornstad plays piano (delicate, introspective, melodic and melancholic)  and from the way the two other musicians listen to him...

Floating is a perfect title for this album: it is floating music, a quiet melodic soundscape that will surround you at the heart of the night...

link / mp3

password: olduvai

part1

part2

Brannan Lane - Hypnotic Drift (2002)

Brannan Lane is a very creative composer in the US ambient scene: his discography is impressive (26 ambient albums recorded so far...), as a solo artist or in collaboration projects (for example with Vidna Obmana, Zero Ohms, Amir Baghiri, Robert Carty, Tom Larson, Ashera....). 

As an introduction to his discography, I chose a very meditative and ambient album, Hypnotic Drift. You are invited to explore eleven "zones" in a 63 minutes sonic journey, with deep and space out atmospheres, slowly evolving electronic polyphonies, beautiful sounds and climates that could be compared to Steve Roach's most floating works (without ethnic drums).

Very remote from the new age musak, the music of Brannan Lane follows its own path and it built up its own style and beauty...

This is a quiet, deep and spacy music to be listened to after midnight or when you need just to chill out or to slow down from our hectic and crazy world.

Most of Brannan Lane's recordings can be bought online at Itunes and emusic, and they are highly recommanded !

link: mp3 :

download

password: olduvai

Roger Eno - Voices (1985)

Slow, deep, meditative, sensitive, playing with silence, impressionist... Such key-words usually help us to define ambient music at his best. And Voices is ambient music at his best... One should try however to find what makes this album so special and moving, so beautiful and so unique... Perhaps it is this melodic turn so obvious in the way Roger Eno plays piano. Perhaps also it is the unique art of Daniel Lanois, who is behind the mixing board and produces this album. Or should we consider the specific way of Brian Eno to treat anything, sound, light, time, space, even the music of his brother ? Brian is credited for the treatments on this beautiful album: deep reverbs, unexpected harmonizations, creative ways to open unexpected listening spaces... Let's add that Michael Brook was actively involved into the remastering of this album for the CD re-release (in 1990).

However, don't be mislead. Voices invites you to listen to an original voice, Roger Eno's voice, playing in a creative way with the rules and the principles of a new musical genre, ambient music.

Since 1985, this music did not loose its magic, its power, its originality...

Close your eyes, and enjoy the trip !

link: mp3 / 320 

RE.V.zip

password: olduvai

Gavin Bryars, Arturs Maskats, Valentin Silvestrov - On Photography (2005)

Gavin Bryars is one of my all time favorite composers, and I would take at least one of his records if I was to live in a desert island.. He followed a unique path through the most interesting territories of the new musics map, through the most creative record companies (ECM, Point Music, Obscure and EG, Sub Rosa...), among the most interesting musicians of our time (Brian Eno, Balanescu Quartet, Hilliard Ensemble, Tom Waits, Bill Frisell, Julian Lloyd Weber, Charlie Haden, Tony Oxley, Derek Bailey...). One of the starting points of this unique journey is the famous instrumental suite The Sinking of the Titanic, whose first version was released in 1975, as the first release on Obscure, the label founded by Brian Eno.

On Photography is a splendid album of vocal music, performed by the Latvian Radio Choir. Gavin Bryars' compositions were written in 1983 for Robert Wilson's operatic project, The CIVIL WarS. Unfortunately, this endeavour collapsed, and Bryars' parts remained unreleased until he built up a new artistic project in 1994, On Photography, blending various inspiration sources such as American writer Susan Sontag, Pope Leo XIII (who wrote a poem Ars Photographica) and Jules Verne (who met Leo XIII in 1884). 

While preparing live performances of these pieces with the Latvian Radio Choir in Riga, Gavin Bryars attended by chance rehearsal sessions, while the Choir was working on pieces by Latvian composer Arturs Maskats and by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. He was so moved by what he heard that he decided to include their pieces in this splendid CD, released on his own label, GB Direct.

On Photography is a pure gem of choral music, with rich harmonic climates, a deep sound and a serene and meditative atmosphere. 

It is a true masterpiece that could be compared to the best productions of ECM New Musics (Arvo Pärt, or Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs, Bagatellen und Serenaden, Leggiero & Pesante, Requiem for Larissa, Symphony for Larissa and Metamusik & Postludium albums).

If you like this CD, please buy Gavin Bryars and the Latvian Radio Choir's most recent work: Glorious Hill, Cadman Requiem (2008).

link: mp3 / 320

GBOP1.zip

GBOP2.zip

password: olduvai

Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling - The River (1997)

This is a splendid ECM album recorded as a side project, during the sessions of The Sea, the quartet album of Ketil Bjornstad (with Terje Rypdal, Jon Christensen and David Darling).

In the 12 tracks of this album, we can listen to a very inspired dialogue of Bjornstad's piano and Darling's unique cello sound. One of the starting point of these sessions was William Byrd's and Orlando's Gibbon's melodic invention, translated into a modern idiom. Improvisation and unexpected creative moments offered the materials for the other tracks.

Chamber music, experiments in harmonic ambient music, exploration of all the creative possibilities between two gifted musicians, research in the blending of sounds and climates...

The River is an emblematic recording (among hundred of others) of what ECM is about... Intimate, deep, conceptual and emotional at the same time, crossing all the borders, creating its own place, its own identity at the crossroads of so many roads...

Ambient music at its best, music to swim through, if you love to dive into deep sound...

Link / mp3 320

KBDD.zip

password: olduvai

Russell Mills & Undark - Pearl & Umbra (1999)

Russell Mills should be a familiar name to all the ambient music fans, since he designed the artwork of many Brian Eno's and David Sylvian's recordings, among many other artists. Russell Mills also created many installations and designed stage set up for Harold Budd and David Sylvian's concerts, among others.  His paintings and his sound installations are displayed in art galleries all around the world.

Russell Mills is also a musician and a sound sculptor, and he released several beautiful CDs, mixing ambient soundscapes and post-rock climates in a very creative way.

Pearl & Umbra is a rare and impressive recording, involving 34 musicians. The gotha of the new musics scene is contributing to this album: Eraldo Bernocchi, Michael Brook, Harold Budd, Sussan Deyhim, Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Peter Gabriel, Robin Guthrie, Bill Laswell, Paul Schutze, David Sylvian, Ian Walton and Hector Zazou, to name but a few...

Enjoy...

link / mp3

RM.PaU.zip

password: olduvai

Iasos - Angelic Music (1978)

Iasos is born in 1947 in Greece, but his family moved to the USA in 1951. He is one of the most intriguing and innovative composers linked with the developement of the new age musical trend in California. Actually, he is one of its forerunners, since from 1967, he started to imagine a new kind of music, "paradise music". He was then a student at Cornell University, and he graduated in anthropology in 1968.

Angelic Music was released in 1978 as a tape. I bought it in the early 80's and it was at the top of my personal playlist for a long time. One can be interested or not in Iasos spiritual and new age discourse and concepts. I was not... But the music was really innovative and inventive, there was such a unique way to manipulate acoustic and electronic sounds, to play with tape recorders speed, with reverse playing of tapes, with various reverb and echoes treatment... 

Iasos' music is very floating and ethereal, it is wide and deep as the sky... Listening to it is a unique experience...

Angelic Music offers two long tracks, "The Angels of Comfort" and "Angel Play". 

The CD release added a new dimension to this already multi-dimensional music...

If you like this music, you should support Iasos and buy Elixir (number 2 in my Iasos playlist).

Realms of Light and Essence of Spring could be your next steps to reach the new dimensions explored by this unique musician... 

Relax, forget anything else, and enjoy the music !

link / mp3

IaAnMu.zip

password: olduvai

Brian Eno - Lightness. Music for the Marble Palace. The State Russian Museum (1997)

"The music of this CD is a 1 hour section of a hypothetically endless piece composed and recorded by Brian Eno for his installation at the marbe palace, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, in November 1997".

The two tracks of this album, "Atmospheric Lightness" (32:00) and "Chamber Lightness" (25:00) are made with slowly evolving electronic layers, using the generative capabilities of the Koan Pro software.  The result is a very quiet and minimal music, with beautiful harmonics created by the randomly driven polyphony. In the large room where this installation was displayed, computer-programmed projectors created randomized and colourful patterns on a series of screens, while another part of the room was dark.

This is a quiet music for a quiet times in a quiet place... 

link : mp3 / 320

BELight.zip

password: olduvai

Alexander Knaifel - Svete Tikhiy (2002)

This is a splendid album released on ECM New Series: where else could one find such an ethereal music, slow and minimalist, ambient and lightly experimental at the same time ? "Svete Tikhiy" means in Russian "O Gladsome Light": it is one of the three oldest Christian hymns included in the Russian Orthodox Vespers. It provides the album with its title but defines also its general mood, spiritual, introspective, contemplative.

A first piece, "In Air Clear and Unseen" is played he Keller Quartett and Oleg Malov (piano).

Then, the Russian soprano Tatiana Melentieva sings "the Song of the Most Holy Theotokos" (Svete Tikhiy) and her voice is treated by a digital  sampler (Andrei Siegle) in order to create beautiful choral patterns.

This beautiful album is a masterpiece, and it is very difficult to compare it with anything else.

One could say, as a rough definition, that it might be located at the crossroad of Brian Eno and Arvo Pärt...

link: mp3 / 320

AK-ST.zip

password: olduvai

Dan Hartman - New Green Clear Blue (1989)

"The subsconscious mind is a powerful world possessing experiences and feelings we do not necessarily recognize in our daily movements: but nonetheless they influence our entire lives. The tones and shades in this collection were performed live and intuitively for the purpose of opening channels by which the listener may visit their own subsconscious".

Dan Hartman provides his listeners with a fair description of what this ambient CD is about. Released by Private Music, the Peter Baumann's company, New Green Clear Blue is a beautiful and minimalist album, and Hartman acknowledges the musical inspiration of Vangelis and Harold Budd. Lyrical and intimate, most of the tracks are compositions for digital synthesizers: melody and harmonies are at the forefront, beautiful treatments create a far open space around the electronic sounds.

Dan Hartman is probably best known for his work as a songwriter and a musical producer. In the late seventies, he reached number-one in the Dance Charts with his singles,  "Instant replay" and "Relight my fire". In the eighties and until 1994, he worked as a producer with artists such as Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Paul Young, James Brown, Nona Hendrix and Steve Windwood, to name but a few...

He died in 1994.

Private Music was used to offer to main stream artists a private creative space for more intimate and experimental projects. This 1989 album allows us to discover an unexpected side of Dan Hartman's talent, his interest in ambient music, his admiration for Harold Budd.

New Green Clear Blue is a beautiful CD to be listened to after midnight...

link: MP3 / 320

DH-NGCB.zip

password: olduvai

Harmonia Ensemble & Roger Eno - In a Room (1993)

"The rich subtle music of Roger Eno has forever remained dreamily suspended between an electronic appeal and high brow tendency. This record proposes him as a composer of pure chamber music, featuring acoustic melodies for piano, cello and clarinet. The CD also includes tracks for piano solo".  

The liner notes of this CD, released on the Italian label "Materiali Sonori", are a good introduction to Roger Eno's music. Roger is Brian's brother, and he shares with him the same interest in ambient musics (he was involved into the Apollo album, with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois). Pianist and singer,  Roger Eno is also a composer of chamber music, subtle and elegant, with a unique style. Orio Odori (clarinet, bass clarinet), Damiano Puliti (cello), Alessandra Garosi (piano) create an intimate and beautiful mood, while playing these 16 compositions. Listening to this record will take you from track one "Classical Music for those with no memory ( 4th Movement)" to track 16: "A Dance with no people (Aromatic Tango)".

This is a beautiful musical journey....

link: mp3 / 320

HERE.zip

password: olduvai

Propeller Island - Hermeneutic Music (1988)

Lars Stroschen is a multimedia artist living in Berlin, working in many different fields, such as photography, architecture, design of furnitures, drawing and music. As a musician, he started in the late eighties a solo project called Propeller Island (after the name of a Jules Vernes novel). He collected original sounds recorded during his travels and built up a electronic music studio. He composed various pieces for dance performance at the Berliner Schaubühne and in 1988, got a contract with the German Erdenklang label. During the following years, he creates his own label and will release many other records with music and sound sculptures, or unusual sounds libraries on CD-Roms. He was also involved into TONART, a composer community featuring, among others, Conrad Schnitzler: they released five records of extreme and fascinating avant-garde music.

Hermeutic Music is Propeller Island's first CD. Relying on various synthesizers, audio computers and samplers, on grand piano and gongs, on goblin voices and gamelan chorus, the 18 tracks of this album provide us with a very original electronic music, ambient and experimental at the same time, focussing on the sound design and cultures, on the painting of climates with electronic layers and soundscapes recorded in various locations. It is strange, lightly surrealist, very remote from the music of the so-called Berlin school (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze), although it shares with its great forerunners a kind of quest for originality, for new sounds and new composition patterns.

This Hermeneutic music is not hermetic. Let's say it provides the listener with a creative part: it is up to you to make sense of it, and you should not miss the trip  ;-)

link: mp3 / 320

PIHM.zip

password: olduvai

PS) Lars Stroschen created a unique "art hotel" in Berlin: he conceived all the design and furnitures. This post is illustrated with a few views of this hotel rooms...

Chris Hughes - Shift From the music of Steve Reich (1994)

Point Music was a record label that was started in 1992 as a joint-venture between Philips Classics and Michael Riesman and Philip Glass. It specialized in cutting-edge contemporary Western music. It was shut down in 2002.

Chris Hughes was fascinated by Steve Reich's music since his childhood, when his father took him to see the European premiere of Steve Reich's Drumming at the Hayward Gallery in London. 

The Shift project started as Chris Hughes pushed forwards his exploration of Steve Reich's musical universe. He met Steve Reich in the mid-80's and decided to work on a series of variations on Reich's early works.

Shift is strongly inspired by Drumming, Violin Phase, Piano Phase and adds something special to the original Steve Reich's works. 

The Synclavier provide Steve Reich's music with a new geometry, a new temporality, new patterns of repetition and variation. 

Shift is a deep exploration of the world of rythms and patterns, of loops and phrases, of electronic gamelan and sequences. Mathematics and time-codes create a unique hypnotic and ambient climate, where space and time are manipulated through computer programming.

By the way, Chris Hughes became one of the most famous British producers and drummers and he worked with Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, Enya, Tears for Fears, Paul Mc Cartney and Wang Chung, to name but a few....

Here is the user's guide to this Shift album: "Melt in the sofa, close your eyes, relax and listen". Do it !

link / mp3 320

Shift.zip

password: olduvai

Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia, Daniel Lentz - Music for 3 Pianos (1992)

Music for three Pianos is the result of a long-standing friendship between Harold Budd, Daniel Lentz and Ruben Garcia. Inspired by Morton Feldman's multi-piano pieces, this album explores the border between silence and music and invites the listener to navigate along dreams and memories. Minimalist and ambient, this music is stripped to the essential, and could remind Erik Satie's atmospheres. Simplicity, depth, sensitivity, this is a beautiful dialogue between three outstanding musicians who are more interested in the essence than in the surface, this Music for 3 Pianos is a true melodic and ambient gem. This album should be listened late at night, when the surrounding silence will create its own harmonics with the music and your own feelings...

Link / mp3 320

M43p.zip

password: olduvai

Hellen Merrill & Ron Carter - Duets (1989)

Music to be listened to after midnight, at home, when quiet sounds and voices are the colors of darkness..

This is a splendid album by two giants of jazz music, who chose the format of a duo instead of the big bands, quartets and trios they are accustomed to play with.

Hellen Merill's voice is unique, sensual and deep, evocative and nostalgic. Ron Carter's acoustic bass is the perfect accentuation of Hellen's a capella songs...

The two of them revisit standards such as "A child is born", "Autumn leaves", "My funny Valentine", and they chose a minimalist and intimate approach, where silence plays its own music  between the words...

I rediscovered this album yesterday and I love its unique atmosphere, its poetry, its delicate swing and mood.

Hellen Merrill is one of my favorite jazz singers...

Link: mp3 / 320

HM_RC.zip

pass: olduvai