Ambient Music Blog

Mirador, Efterklang at YouTube

Another link to another Sigur Ros story elsewhere:

There’s no place like home: The strangest band in the world just got stranger… In Iceland, Craig McLean chews the whale sushi with the extraordinary Sigur Ros

Via Kottke.org, here’s a video of a hilariously awful NPR interview with Sigur Ros. Most common answer given: “I don’t know.” Also, silence.

Related
The Bryant Park Project

Room40 has recently released a 3″ CD single from San Francisco based drone-ist Christopher Willits titled Plants and Hearts. It’s a single track of 21 minutes and 30 seconds of droning guitars and etc. Really nice stuff and great value as an eMusic download, if you’re the kind of person who uses eMusic.

From the Room40 site:

Incorporating 4hz isochronic pulses and panning at the same frequency, this work encourages the formation of 4hz brainwave patterns associated with states of meditation, deep relaxation, enhanced creativity, light sleep and lucid dreaming.

Science! I don’t know about any of that, but I’m listening to it while writing this blog post and I feel pretty ok.

Related
Christopher Willits Profile at 12k records

• Infraction Recollection
  Infraction Records
• Beautiful Lunar Landscape - “Alone in this Dark Romantic Night”
  “Beautiful Lunar Landscape?s music is constructed with a cartographer?s sense of detail and direction.”
• SAVVAS YSATIS + TAYLOR DEUPREE ?THE SLEEPING MORNING? NOW AVAILABLE « 12k
  “Their new EP, The Sleeping Morning, was created during a week-long visit from Greece to the US. Ysatis and Deupree wanted to freely create and see what came naturally after a 10-year hiatus from working together in the studio.”

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

I’ve written about 12k records and Taylor Deupree previously, and this week in the mail arrived a another record from the New York label, this time Australian three-piece Seaworthy’s Map in Hand. Straight from the 12k Web site:

Seaworthy, a three piece collective that revolves around core member Cameron Webb as well as Sam Shinazzi and Greg Bird, was formed in early 2000 to explore melodic and experimental approaches to the construction (and unravelling) of minimalist sound scapes from looped guitar, warm drones, piano, electronics and field recordings.

It’s a set of 12 tracks of really high quality guitar drones and loops. This is top-notch stuff. Subtle and sophisticated, which is sometimes what you don’t get when it comes to guitar based ambient music these days. I’ll admit I’m really no longer a fan of having to actually pay for a disc to be produced and shipped to me, but the disc is packaged rather tastefully and was accompanied by a nice postcard promoting label-mate Pjusk’s sart, a record I like as well.

Related
Seaworthy Profile at 12k Records
Official Seaworthy Web site

If you work on the Web, as I do, then you’re no doubt familiar with Dan Hill’s work. He recently wrote a post on his outstanding City of Sound site discussing the importance of sound in landscape and architectural design. It’s definitely interesting stuff for anyone interested in design, architecture, or the kind of music I talk about on this site.

Related
Postive Soundscapes Project

One of the things that’s nice about having a site like this is that someone who knows a whole lot more than you about things will find your site, and when you finally find out about the fact that they found your site, you get to take advantage of all the knowledge they’ve dumped onto the web over the years.

This happened this past week, via the excellent Asphalt Eden. The result is that I found out about One River, a 2006 release by Scott Solter.

Solter is a San Francisco based artist and studio engineer, and One River is an outstanding piece of ambient music. It stands up against any of the best drones from Stars of the Lid, Loscil, Eluvium, and etc. If you like only half of the stuff I talk about on this site, then you need to get yourself a copy of One River promptly.

Related
Alphalt Eden Blog
One River at Tell-All Records
Scott Solter Bio at Tell-All Records

Via the official Hauschka Web site, here are a few free MP3 downloads for your Friday listening pleasure:

red pencil
No Wind Today
Lipstick Race

• How Brian Eno Helped Travelers Check Their Emotional Baggage - washingtonpost.com
  I listen to 1/1 everytime I’m in an airport or airplane.

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