Links, discussion, commentary, and reviews of Ambient music.
To get you excited about the upcoming release of Slow Dancing Society’s album Priest Lake Circa ’88, Hidden Shoal Recordings is offering a track from the album as a free download.
Download A Warm Glow (.zip)
Paris, Texas musician Allan Hubbard has a nice set of guitar-based instrumental work available for free download on his site through June. Well worth looking into.
The site is frames-based, so I’ll link straight through to the mp3’s right here.
Mist
Twilight
Moon
Fog
Startled
Slumber
Zeke
And, if you like what you hear, Allan says he’s got some new work coming out this month.
I mentioned Paztech Records yesterday in the mailbox post, and now Robert Paztech has a free 1hr mixed set available for download. Free music is always nice, so have a listen.
Speaking of Taylor Deupree, Term is an interesting “Sublabel” from 12k featuring an “online series of MP3 releases made available for free downloads.”
Artists include Sawako, Off the Sky, Sogar, and many more. I’ve had this bookmarked for quite some time and just hadn’t gotten around to listening to any of it. Really nice stuff, and: Free!
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.
Via the official Hauschka Web site, here are a few free MP3 downloads for your Friday listening pleasure:
Matthew Cooper, better known around here as Eluvium, has just released a set of tracks for free download. I don’t know much about it other than what the site says, which is that they’re “unedited improvised basement minidisc records.” Sounds good to me!
Go have a listen: www.concertsilence.net.
In the growing downloads section of their Web site, Danish band Efterklang has just released a free mp3 download of “Cutting Ice to Snow” (.mp3) from their upcoming album Parades, set for release this October 15th. Have a listen, everyone likes free!
I’m usually not a big fan of glitchy type stuff. I find it a bit distracting, and for me a big part of good ambient music is that I sometimes don’t even know it’s playing. Mark Templeton’s Standing on a Hummingbird has a fair amount of glitch in it, but strangely I find it to be comfortable. There are melodies and textures weaving around, and just as one is fragmented, the tension is relieved with something altogether different, like found sounds or new instrumentation. It’s nice stuff, so please have a listen.
Here’s a few mp3 downloads from previous work:
Continue Later, Frail as Breath
Drama Section, Frail as Breath
More available at fieldsawake.com/media.html
Related
Mark Templeton MySpace Profile
Mark Templeton Official Site
A very nice recent acquisition via emusic.com is Somewhere Someone Else, by Wes Willenbring. The record has a really nice pace, and has a nice variety of instrumental sounds, from piano to guitar and on to more traditionally “ambient” sounding stuff.
The record sounds maybe a bit “cold,” but I mean that mostly in the way I meant when I was talking about the Angels of the Universe soundtrack. This means it might get pushed out of rotation for a while as spring and summer come along, but it’s certainly something I see getting a lot of plays towards the end of the year. It’s definitely something I recommend you have a listen to. Wes Willenbring’s web site offers some tracks via streaming if you’re not an emusic user.
