Ambient Music Blog

Photo courtesy 1541

Trailer for upcoming Sigur Ros tour DVD “Heima.”

UPDATED: There’s now an official site for the film with a better quality version of the trailer.

Related
NME: Sigur Ros to release concert movie
eighteen seconds before sunrise - sigur rós news » Blog Archive » “heima” trailer

Occasionally, in the back of my mind, I get the feeling that I’m screwed because it turns out I’ve already listened to all the good ambient music, and I’ve got nothing new to write about here. The feeling is a bit silly, obviously, as is embarrassingly made clear to me as I stumble upon a record or artist I’ve never heard of before and am promptly blown away.

This happened to me a few days ago when I discovered Early Morning Migration, by Ezekiel Honig & Morgan Packard. It’s a collaboration, except they didn’t create the tracks together. Six are by Honig, and 5 are by Packard. The result is a long, slow, beautifully sad record full of subtlety and texture. This is really nice stuff, and I’ve already tracked down other work from both of these artists, about which there will be more here in the near future.

Related
Ezekiel Honig Wikipedia entry
Ezekiel Honig MySpace profile

• eMusic Lists - things my father never told me
  This is a great list of records and a nice starting point for finding ambient music on eMusic that’s not necessarily classified under the eMusic “electronic” or “electronic ambient” categories.
• Lostheron
  Small Swedish record label.

There’s more where this came from at del.icio.us/ambientmusicblog.

• GREG DAVIS Interview
  “We took the opportunity of the release of his superb collaboration with Paris-based Roux to catch up with Davis and talk about his already impressive body of work and his many approaches to music and sound.”
• 12k
  12k label blog.
• Taylor Deupree Interview
  “Busily, happily and quite effectively carving out his own “microscopic” niche in the world of electronic/ambient sounds, Taylor Deupree is keeping busy with his 12k label…”

There’s more where this came from at del.icio.us/ambientmusicblog.

My brief blogging vacation is just about over, and so it seems like a good time to mention an interesting collaboration. Christian Fennesz and Mike Patton are doing a brief European tour together. I’m certainly hoping to hear a recording of some of this at some point.

Related
Official Christian Fennesz Web site

• Pitchfork Feature: Column: Resonant Frequency #12
  “It’s worth noting that “new age = crap” was not always a given.” On the value of “new-age.” Who knew there was any?

There’s more where this came from at del.icio.us/ambientmusicblog.

On the recommendation of a reader, I recently picked up two new records by Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd, Before The Day Breaks and After The Night Falls. I’m familiar with Budd’s work, specifically his collaboration with Brian Eno on Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror. I’ve also got Budd’s The White Arcades. I like both of those records, and had heard good things about Budd’s collaboration with Guthrie in the past, so I figured these would be right up my alley.

These two records have a similarity about them. And by that, I mean they sound like Harold Budd. Big, roomy, reverby sounding keys and guitar, but all muted and flattened a bit to sound like you’re listening to something just off in the distance. Or, maybe, what it would be like to listen to another record under water.

The two records are apparently meant each meant to be a counterpoint to the other, and you can see this in the titles of the tracks, i.e. track 1 on Before The Day Breaks is “How Close Your Soul” while track 1 on After The Night Falls is “How Distant Your Heart.” I created a playlist that positions the corresponding tracks from the two records together and you can hear the kind of call and response going on.

These are two very nice records, and if you have any interest in Budd’s work, or if you like his previous work, which many consider to be prototypically “ambient,” then you’d be wise to have a listen to these records.

Marsen Jules is the alias of Martin Juhls, a German electronic musician. Back in January I downloaded Les Fleurs and found it fairly interesting. It mixes glitchy tech sounds and instrumentation with longer melodies and atmospheric sounds.

So when I came across a copy of the recently released follow up to Les Fleurs, Golden, I figured it would be worth a listen. Turns out I was right. It’s more of the subtle glitchy sounds I liked in Les Fleurs, along with spare acoustic guitar melodies. And it’s a bit more “electronic” sounding than some of the records I’ve been listening to lately, so it’s a refreshing change of pace to all the piano and orchestration. You might call Golden minimal, but it certainly does not lack atmosphere or texture.

Juhls also produces and performs as krill.minima. Checkout the Marsen Jules site for more information and some free mp3 downloads.

Related
Official Marsen Jules site
Marsen Jules MySpace profile