New Music from Eluvium, Explosions In The Sky
Posted on | January 27, 2007 | No Comments
I’m really looking forward to the release of a couple records coming in February from Brooklyn’s own Temporary Residence Limited. One from everyone’s favorite Texas post-rock outfit Explosions In The Sky, and another from one of my own personal favorite artists Eluvium. They’ll both be available February 20th, 2007.
The Eluvium record is titled Copia and the Explosions In The Sky record is All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. A track is available from each for download:
Prelude For Time Feelers, Eluvium
Welcome, Ghosts, Explosions In The Sky
You can preorder the records now or get in on the special Danuary Pack offer that gets you All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone and Copia, as well as Rob Crow’s Living Well and Sketchi from Cex for $40.00USD, shipped.
New Stars of the Lid Record coming April 2, 2007
Posted on | January 22, 2007 | No Comments
Speaking of Stars of the Lid, their new record And Their Refinement of the Decline will be released April 2, 2007. If the kranky records website was built a bit better (read: without frames), I could link to things properly. Short of that, you can grab the free download of a track from this new 2 CD set below:
Download: Apreludes (in C Sharp Major) (.mp3)
Stars of the Lid, Brian McBride, The Dead Texan
Posted on | January 22, 2007 | No Comments
When I look through my iTunes library, some of the ambient records that consistently rate the highest are courtesy of the Texas duo of Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride, whether working together as Stars of the Lid, or solo as The Dead Texan and Brian McBride, respectively.
The records all kind of endlessly drone on without sacrificing a consistent melodic theme. Traditional instruments are blended together and back onto each other to create some really, really great tracks that reward deep listening as well as they provide comfortable, inconspicuous background music. All of the below are highly recommended.
Stars of the Lid
The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, 2001
Avec Laudenum, 1999
Gravitational Pull Vs. The Desire For an Aquatic Life, 1997
The Ballasted Orchestra1997
Stars of the Lid/ Jon McCafferty
Per Aspera Ad Astra, 1998
Brian McBride
When the Detail Lost its Freedom, 2005
The Dead Texan
The Dead Texan, 2004
January Downloads
Posted on | January 20, 2007 | No Comments
January downloads are below. A fair amount of post-rock, as well as a few others outside the realm of what would be standard ambient music. Picked up a few records from artists I already know, like Saxon Shore, Eluvium, and Johann Johannsson. The rest is all new to me. The iPod is fired up, the rating has begun, and I’ll check back soon to tell you about the stuff I liked best.
An Accidental Memory In The Case of Death, Eluvium
Cale:drew, Jakob
Contemplations, Mazdak Khamda
Insen, Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto
Piano Solos, Dustin O’Halloran
You Are The Conductor, Caspian
When I Live By The Garden And The Sea, Eluvium
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tan Dun (iTunes Music Store download)
All is Violent, All is Bright, God Is an Astronaut
IBM 1401 A User’s Manual, Johann Johannsson
The Sun’s Gone Dim And The Sky’s Turned Black, Johann Johannsson
Les Fleurs, Marsen Jules
Luck Will Not Save Us From A Jackpot of Nothing, Saxon Shore
The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore, Saxon Shore
Modern, Ogurusu Norihide
Young Mountain, This Will Destroy You
The Sound of Lights When Dim, Slow Dancing Society
Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 II, Jochem Paap
Talk Amongst the Trees, Eluvium
Lambent Material, Eluvium
“As ignorable as it is interesting.”
Posted on | January 20, 2007 | No Comments
There was a time in my life, my teens, when, as is appropriate for a teenage boy living in the American suburbs, rock music was extraordinarily important. I spent a fair amount of time immitating heros on a drumkit in my basement. Later, as an undergrad, I read a lot of philosophy and critical theory trying to figure out if people writing about music in magazines were making any sense.
Of course, as one ages, things come in and out of focus, and the kind of things that previously seemed undeniable are now mostly just kind of the stuff that makes up the history of who you are. Rock music doesn’t do the same things it did for me when I was fifteen, and that’s a relief. Because I’m not fifteen anymore.
I discovered about a year or so ago that the music I was listening to most was the kind of stuff that made the most sense for the environments in which I often found myself: hunched over a computer at home, staring at a different computer at the office, reading a magazine on the subway, drifting off aboard an airplane, or staring out a hotel room window. And this music is what I can only broadly kind of define as “ambient.”
Another thing I discovered over the course of a year, downloading and listening to some two-thousand odd tracks or so, is that I really didn’t have the vocabulary to speak intelligently about what I was listening to. I didn’t even have the basic facts. Who were the artists I was listening to, when was the stuff made, and where did any of it fit in the grand narrative of 21st century music? At best, this makes it difficult to answer the “So what kind of music are you listening to lately?” question, but at worst it makes it nearly impossible to do all the things that makes listening to music so much fun: recommending a record to a friend, discovering connections between artists, or just generally yelling at someone regarding the superiority of record X over record Y in a bar. That’s the kind of stuff I like to do.
And so it seems like the best way I can get over this anonymous download-and-listen pattern is to write about what I’m downloading and listening to. I’ve been writing off and on on the web since before there was anything called blogging, and so the web seems like the natural place for it.
My intention here is not to provide expert commentary. Because I’m not an expert. What I would like to do is simply talk about what I’m listening to. This is mostly a selfish excercise. I want to have a relationship with the music I listen to that is a bit more like that fifteen year old self in the basement. If a reader or two takes a look at some of the stuff here and has an easier time wading through the enormous amount of choice out there, that would be fantastic. Even better, maybe some readers will contribute to the discussion.