Ambient Music Blog
Connecting interested listeners worldwide to handcrafted & experimental ambient music.
Christopher Willits, whose Plants and Hearts single we recommended a while back, is playing along with Scott Pagano at Monkey Town HQ in Williamsburg Saturday, January 26th. Follow the links below for more info! CHRISTOPHER WILLITS + SCOTT PAGANO LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY Christopher Willits + Scott Pagano Official Christopher Willits Web site Christopher Willits at 12k
Some exciting news for those of you in and around New York City:
Stay tuned for announcements regarding a number of Wordless Music events in 2008 with the Kranky Records institution Stars of the Lid, including their first New York Cityconcert appearance in seven years, and the expansion of the Wordless Music series into our third city nationwide. Also in the works: a series of free Wordless Music concerts at the historic Whitney Museum uptown.
I attended one of these shows back in the fall, and it was interesting and well done. Looking forward to what they put together for 2008.
See Wordlessmusic.org for more info.
Taylor Deupree from 12k records has written a nice little track to say goodbye to 2007 and hello to 2008.
the piece, “untitled_1231″ was created with a small wooden xylophone, given to me as a christmas present from Keiichi Sugimoto (Fourcolor) and Sanae Yamasaki (Moskitoo), a small tone bell, and a single synthesizer patch. it was created and recorded live in about 15 minutes and i spent another 40 minutes or so on the mixing and production.
2007 is drawing to a close, and I'd like to just drop a quick note to say thanks to everyone who has stopped by over the course of the year to read, leave a comment, or write an email. I started this site just under a year ago as a way to learn more about the music I was listening to, to find new music I had never heard of, and to hopefully point a few people looking for the same in the right direction. Looking at the numbers, the site has had visitors from over 80 different countries in 2007. I kind of like that.
And while I'd much rather write about music here than write about writing, it has been a bit quiet on the site lately, and I should tell you that while the reasons are many (finishing up a graduate program, a bit of travel, starting a new job, etc.), I'd like to thank you for your patience and let you know that I intend to pick up the pace here in early 2008.
So, here's to a good new year, and thanks again for reading.
There's more where this came from at del.icio.us/ambientmusicblog.
There's more where this came from at del.icio.us/ambientmusicblog.
From the fine folks in Australia at Hidden Shoal Recordings comes the latest release from Ambient Music Blog favorite Slow Dancing Society titled The Slow and Steady Winter.
It's quite nice stuff. Long, stretched out tracks with a lot of breathing room. Some towards the beginning of the record are rather dark, in a nice way. The tracks are generally atmospheric electric guitar ramblings with nice texture added throughout.
It's not a huge departure from 2006's The Sound of Lights When Dim, but if you liked that record, this one is definitely worth your time.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSKIl-NeZeE] 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.
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
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