Relistening VIII - Death Ambient, Drunken Forest

One of the best albums I heard in this re-listening experience is the album of this collaboration of some amazing artists under the name 'Death Ambient'. I was very impressed by the first time I bought it more than 10 years ago, but since then I was able to listen more of Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, and Kato Hideki, who are the main members of the Drunken Forest orchestra. 

This album was released in Tzadik in 2007. It was the year I finished my military service and I was opening my ears to more experimental and electroacoustic music, such as Annie Gosfield, Sylvie Courvoisier, and also spending a lot of time listening to some of the great musicians of electronic music, such as PanSonic, Aphex Twin, Autechre and releases from Raster Noton. Also, it was time that I was trying to understand better the term of ambient music, and this was supposed to be an ambient music release, which made me even more confused about its definition. 

Listening again this album I'm not sure if it is a release or actually thinking of a performance or a collection of sounds and the techniques around them. 'Lake Chad' is a great intro, giving space to the musicians to show and identify their role in the album. Without much interaction between them, it feels like an opening for the artists to introduce what type of instruments and sounds they'll play during the album. 'Greenhouse' starts with Ikue Mori' sound effects and then peaks up gradually with Frith's string playing and electronics until it becomes less tense.

'Cocktail of Chemicals' is my favourite track of the album. Starts with a violin and Frith's guitar slow playing, and preparing the listener for something great. And this is again some electronic sounds, much more powerful and covering Frith's playing that is more like listening to the background. Sounding like a sudden injection going inside you, blurring the brain and the neurons, making you feel muted and giving body spasms. Even the sound in the ears at the end of the track is kind of echoic and muted.

'Thermocaline', is another example of the great sound explorations and the interchange between sound recordings, strings and natural sounds that reaches its graduals peak as the composition reaches to the end of the track. 'Dead Zone' is a bit different leaving a lot of space to the electronics and less on the musical instruments. To the listener, it feels like exploring an unknown and unfamiliar place that can imagine only by freeing the auditory senses. Like walking in a strange and abandoned land.

The remaining of the album is based a lot on the sound effects creating an airy space and what is missing is the outburst and the presence of string instruments, that are now moved to more like percussions, accompanying the mixes and sound recordings. The titles of the tracks and of course the name of the band have a strong influence by the elements of nature, but close to its destruction or at best its gradual deterioration. The second half of the album could be said that sounds more like to this degradation and the slow pace, less intense and presence of cello make a strong statement to this. As the album gets close to the end although it sounds like there more improvisation and percussion instruments, the 'Drunken Forest' track of the album is possibly the only track that follows a more particular melodic pattern, and not so much experimenting or improvising.

Inside the leaflet of the cd case, it refers to 'Opening your ears in a striking new world', and it is a very good description of this release. This album is definitely something that everyone should listen to. Whether as a study on sound effects and experimental composition or just using it as a score in a video, movie etc. It is definitely a masterpiece and the artists that are part of the Death Ambient leave their creative mark.

Relistening VII - Richard Skelton, Crow Autumn Bonus Disc

Starting with the name of the artist and the album release, I'm thinking that it might be a bit misleading. And this is for many reasons. First of all, Richard Skelton, all these years has been releasing his music under different names, such as Carousel or A Broken Consort, being the other two main names he has been using. Or to put it differently, he was using more extensively during his career. For the particular release, The Crow Autumn Bonus Disc is an album that followed after the 'A Broken Consort - Crow Autumn' with a very limited number of 100 CDRs that had a personal dedication for those very few people that bought it. And luckily, I was one of them! 

A lot of things have changed for Skelton in his personal life and also as an artist. As far as I know, he still lives in Cumbria and is inspired by the natural elements and hides his instruments in the ground and then performs with the instruments after being buried so that he uses these elements to his compositions. I also had the great pleasure to talk to him personally in one of the 'Small Publishers Fair' taking place in Holborn where he was presenting to the visitors his publications in his personal Corbel Stone company. It was also a few months later that I saw him performing for the first time on Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and later again on St. Lukes in Old Street with a small orchestra.

The first track of the album is from the A Broken Consort and is called 'Severance'. There is drone-like prolonged sound from string instruments and its duration is around 5 minutes. The way I hear it is like a good introduction for the next tracks of the album and what is about to follow. And the next track is from Saddleback and called 'Gerroa Thursday'. Compared to the first track, this one starts with a slow piano and on the background is the familiar string instruments are heard. The tune doesn't change much and is like a repetition of two instruments for most of the composition.

The third track is Heidika 'Limn'. It opens with an acoustic guitar and it kind of sounds like using fingerpicking. It is quite surprising because, from all the Skelton discography that I have, I have no recollection of listening to so much guitar playing in his compositions. In comparison to the first two tracks of the album, the pattern is similar to a repetition of two instruments only. And then is the 'Shape Leaves' track that is released as Richard Skelton, which is also the big highlight of the album, and also my favourite track. It reminds me a lot of these frozen and sudden dronish sound playing behind the track that becomes more prominent at the end and is hugely emotionally powerful. It's easy for the listener to create images of sadness, solitude, grief, or hope. It's definitely a composition that enables the listener to create their own stories or revive personal experiences.

The fifth track is called again Heidika 'Limn' and is a reworked version of the third track. It sounds more interesting than the previous version as it includes more instruments and the acoustic layers are richer and more complicated. And the last track, 'Daas', is a collaboration with the Dutch artist Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek. Someone would expect that this track would have more electronic or sound art elements compared to the rest of the album, and it isn't very far from reality. The experimentation is greater and there is more freedom in the way that the track is composed. The most interesting is the collaboration of those two, but for Machinefabriek it isn't the first name as he has collaborated in the past with Aaron Martin and many other artists in his latest release 'With Voices'.

One of the main reasons I chose this album to re-listen is because the last years I've been a bit behind on Skelton's career and his various projects. I wouldn't say that my perception of listening to Skelton's music has changed differently, as I always felt this internal need to hear some modern compositions and I was never disappointed. The most interesting in this re-listening experience is to look at his expanding and changing projects and his interests around the modern composition.

Bonus: A video of Richard Skelton with the Elysian Quartet from the Vimeo account of The Wire music magazine.

Single of the Year - Tim Hecker vs Yves Tumor

As usual, there are plenty of lists with the best releases, re-releases, singles, videos and of all the things that people and music journalists enjoyed in 2019. In general, I noticed in myself a change in the type of music that I mostly attracted. This shift is mainly from the general abstract axis of ambient and electronic music, into more free and improvised jazz. It is a change that has started a couple of years ago, but in 2019 it became more prominent in the records that I bought. 

However, there are two tracks that I liked the most in 2019. As a big fan of Tim Hecker for many years, I enjoyed his latest release, 'Anoyo' in Kranky. Hecker after a small break-in 4AD he returned to Kranky and before 'Anoyo' he released 'Konoyo' as a full album release. In previous posts, I've talked about how innovative Hecker is and how he kind of redefined the whole landscape of ambient music. And still, after so many years, he keeps on offering something different, new and good, and in relation to ambient music, it isn't always easy to differentiate from the limits of noise and silence. 

In an interview that I read of Tim Hecker he refers that 'Konoyo' has a lot to do with the destruction and the end of the world. The cover of the album definitely offers these interpretations about the content of the album, in the limits of ambient and instrumental music. So, about 'Anoyo' my favorite track is called 'That World', and even the sticker of the vinyl has a picture of the globe that kind of prepares the listener about the content of the album. In this track Hecker uses Japanese instruments and sounds, as he did for 'Konoyo'. Also he uses different sound layers, but this time based more on  the instruments. The sounds from the track are like music coming from the chaos and creates a contradiction between a dark sense and more melodic sounds from the instruments. This contradiction feels like a competition of this darkness of the world and its gradual destruction, to a more peaceful melody of the great place we live in. How these two things are combined? This is something that Tim Hecker can do, and as I usually say I don't know how he does it, but he is doing in a captivating way that can absorb the feelings of the listener.

On the other hand, Yves Tumor moved from Pan Records to the Wrap label. Firstly, to mention that the album 'Safe in the Hands of Love' was released in 2018, but I heard it in 2019, and this is why I'm writing this review. This blog is mainly dedicated to experimental forms of art with the main focus on experimental music. Yves Tumor, for some listeners it could be labelled as modern, contemporary, or even experimental, but is a bit far what we've tried to cover here, as it could be easily listened to a bar, or a club.

The track I loved most from this album is called 'Hope in Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness)'. And is the winner for 2019 as the best track I listened to in 2019. I have been looking for words about how powerful, dark and dominating this track is. The vocals and lyrics from Oxhy, are so strong that you can't discern if it is like reading poetry, expressing anger, giving orders in an assertive manner, but mostly the feeling I get is about emergency, fear, and despair. Of course, the lyrics itself isn't enough. The track starts with a repetitive tune from a cello and continues like that for the rest of the track. But the most amazing part of this track is the contribution of Puce Mary. Her industrial, metallic, electronic sounds, seems like that it is coming out of the factory, or a futuristic scene from a movie. The way that Puce Mary composes this sound and her production, along with the voice of Oxhy, is so expressive and I felt that I've been trying to focus on the different sounds and how they are used together in the track. Moreover, from a sound experience point of view and living in a city like London, I felt that using the underground every day is the perfect companion to the images and sounds I sense every day. That was the soundtrack of my everyday life and Yves Tumor definitely deserves it.

Relistening VI - Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill...and a few words on Nivhek

Definitely one of the essentials re-listening adventures should include one of my favourite artists, Liz Harris aka Grouper and until recently under the name Nivhek. The first well-known releases of Grouper were in Type records and Kranky, and also her latest release as Alien Observer, 'Dream Loss' is also at this label.

About her latest project, compared to her releases under the Grouper name, the cover of the album has a lot of similarities, but with a difference that the 2LP the one is black and the other is white. The title of the album is 'After its own death/ Walking in a spiral' and it was initially a collaboration with visual artist Marcel Weber for an installation. My initial thoughts are related to ambient music, and since the advent of ambient music and the ambiguity of defining a musical composition as ambient music I've thought that there are many artists who have offered great works around ambient, such as Tim Hecker, Sarah Davachi, and Saaad to name a few. The release of the Nivhek project is definitely a different ambient release. Liz Harris is using her voice and her vocals more as an instrument and rather as a particular meaning that is attempted to be conveyed. Apart from the bell sounds echoing in the second composition, following the first part of the album, there are other instruments, which can be imagined as recorded sounds in a type of a frozen setting. In general, initially, I was a bit sceptical about this album whether I like it or not, but listening to it again and listening more carefully it is a great release and it definitely requires some deep listening and perhaps we need to forget a lot of the things we know about ambient music. Moreover, the instruments are also different, and she isn't using only her guitar, piano, and her airy vocals, but there are sounds, such as bell chimes, gongs echoing, and drones menacing somewhere in the space with different vibrations disrupting the silence just before it is about to settle.

After all these years of being a very big fan of Liz Harris and buying almost every release, it was until recently that I watched a performance of hers, and according to the schedule it was under Nivhek. This was part of the 'Deep Minimalism' festival at Southbank Centre, and as the advertisement mentions, it was a weekend dedicated to meditative listening and it was funded by the Arts Council. The main reason I went to the festival was to see Liz Harris, but there were some very good performances from Laura Cannell and the London Contemporary Orchestra with Malibu...however, I didn't feel anything meditative, and most of the artists were playing their latest releases. I'd say, especially in the case of Liz Harris I felt that her performance was using a lot of drone noises and her vocals, without any use of instruments, and the general feeling was far from meditative. 

Now for the re-listening experience of 'Dragging Up a Dead Deer Up A Hill', some info that it was released on Type records in 2008, which is label focusing a lot on experimental and contemporary releases but compared to a big part of its catalogue, this release is comparatively different.

This re-listening experience doesn't change much my initial impression, which was very positive and very hard again to think of a genre for Grouper, except for the general dream pop, ambient that many journalists use. The most important are the feelings that were created by listening to her music. As most of Grouper's songs with lyrics, it is always hard to understand or make any meaning from her murmuring voice. However, the insights and projections differ, although this is more likely to happen in an instrumental track or composition. In the opening track, 'Disengaged', her voice is more prominent and clear, but as the track goes on a recorded drone sound is more intense. 

The next track, 'Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping' is more melodic with her guitar and her voice giving more rhythm compared to the frosty and breathtaking opening. What is common in the tracks and sometimes hard to put into words is that all her compositions sound like they are coming from the background, and this is not due to the record production. Some times it feels like mourning, some others like narrating, and in many cases a great companion to her music, as a background sound whose purpose isn't to say something or make meaning but allows the listener to create its own interpretations. 

If I could make a comparison with her latest project and her first releases, there is definitely much more use of the voice as Grouper, and also there are fewer music effects and her guitar or piano, which is the only instrument that she was trained at. Also, in the earlier years, there is more melody and the duration of the tracks is not very long and well distributed in the whole album. I'm happily surprised that the times I was enthusiastic about her work are far more than the very few disappointments, and will be always looking forward to her next release, which makes me happy to follow such a prolific artist.

Relistening V - 3/4 Had Been Eliminated, A Year of Aural Gauge Operation

In comparison to the other albums that I have been re-listening, this album from the ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ isn’t only an attempt to observe if my understanding of listening has changed, but also to enjoy once more this album. And at the end of this album, although my initial thoughts are that it is an album based on electro-acoustic music a lot, there seem to be more melodic parts. 

The first time I listened to a track of the ‘A Year of the Aural Gauge Operation, it was in 2005, which exceeds once more the 10 year limit I had set on my re-listening experiences. It was also the year that the album was released from the Finnish music label, Häpna. This particular label seems to be quite friendly to Italian artists, since other releases include Andrea Belfi’s ‘Between Necks and Stomach’ a year later after this release, with member of ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ featuring on this release.

I remember that I was in Stoke-on-Trent on the university campus and listening to one of the most influential radio shows on Resonance FM, Frequenzen presented by Alexander Wendt, which it stopped broadcasting many years ago. I had a Siemens laptop with quite bad speakers, and listened to the show several times so that I could keep track of the name of the band and this track.

So, ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ is an Italian band, featuring some of the most well-known artists in the Italian experimental scene, such as Stefano Pilia and Valerio Triccoli. The other two members are Tony Arrabito and Claudio Rochetti. There are many Italian experimentalists, such as Andrea Belfi, and it was also an era that the post-rock movement had influenced and gave rise to many post-rock bands.

The album has a lo-fi aesthetic, and inside the inner sleeve it is mentioned that the album was recorded in their flat in Bologna. The listener can found a lot of field recordings, voices humming and whispering in the background, and various instruments, such as electric guitar, double bass, and drums. The opening track of the album is the ‘Widower’, which starts very slowly with long guitars, drums, tape loops, which resembles to an opening track, although a bit longer in duration. The ‘Monkey Talk’ is the closest to a track with lyrics, compared to other tracks that contain voices as part of the recording experience. In general, it sounds more like a rhythmic track and the dark atmosphere mostly comes from the quality of the recording. The presence of guitars and drums is much more prevalent to the rest of the album, and perhaps the fastest track of the album.

The 6^th track of the album, ‘Loop Recorder in the Patient with Heart Disease’ is a type of preparation for my favorite track and the one I was introduced in their music is the ‘In Every Tree a Heartache’. There is a background noise, possibly coming from a turntable, while a guitar is stretching with low-tempo drums. The recorded voices are hard to discern what are the words that are being used in repetition. Possibly it isn’t a member of the band, since this is a female voice, and most likely comes from another recording or sample.

I’m not sure in what genre the music ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ mainly belong to. Putting things in to the hugely broader genre of experimental music would be a huge simplification. Their titles are very long and so being the duration of their tracks, and for some people would put it into a post-rock band, especially with the presence of guitars and drums. Maybe in a more free, slow, and quite post-rock listening. However, the presence of Triccoli and Pilia makes it hard to make them a post-rock band. So, for once more let’s just say that they are a band expanding and challenging various music genres.

Re-listening IV - The Necks, Mindset

When I started these series of re-listening albums that I had bought a long time ago I had set a time period of more than 10 years. However, I wouldn't leave the amazing Necks out of this section of my blog. And that is because The Necks is one of my favourite bands and I couldn't miss this opportunity to write more about them.

I bought the 'Mindset' in June 2012, which was a year later than the official release date of the album. Back in the old days where many music fans would chase for an album in the record shops, there is also an interesting story for this album. I had decided that I wanted to visit the record shop of Sound323 in Archway in London, as it is a record store that I used to order on-line, but always had the curiosity to see how it looks like. And when I arrived this album got my attention immediately, and when I took to the till to pay for it the person who was there told me: 'Very good taste. I have been trying to sell this record for months!'.

I wasn't sure if his comment was supposed to be a good thing or not. Further to our discussion he also said that the record store would be closed, apart from the online store. So, luckily enough I was able to visit the store before it was closed down and also keep this experience in my memory.

The Necks is an Australian band who have been together I think for more than 30 years and consisted of some excellent musicians, in particular, Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck and Lloyd Swanton. Apart from this band, the members work on sidelines of other projects or solo releases. Chris Abrahams has released albums in the Australian label Room40, while Tony Buck has various collaborations with Fennesz and live performances with Magda Mayas. 

The album is consisted of two tracks, as most of their releases, except for their latest release the 'Body' that was released on cd format only, since there is only one track on the album of around one hour duration. Compared to other more recent Necks previous releases, 'Mindset' starts a bit more powerful. Other releases reach their peak after a few minutes and the experimentation gets greater through their tracks. The first track is called 'Rum Jungle', and in the beginning, what is the most prevalent is Chris Abrahams' piano. Abrahams starts very rapidly in his playing and in the background, the listener can hear Buck's drums playing like a repetitive loop. The track is around 22 min. long and its power its quite the same with few alterations and the human ear needs to pay a lot of attention to understand these changes. During the last minutes the tempo is slowing down and Buck's piano is less prevalent on the track while Swanton's and Buck's playing is getting more dominant. Especially Swanton's bass produces a very nice drone sound. What I can't tell is whether there are other instruments, because I can listen to some guitar playing and a type of electronic sound at the end of the track.

The second track of the album, although it is much slower compared to the first track, again it seems a bit different for many tracks from The Necks. Abrahams piano is also dominant, but what is again surprising is the existence of other instruments, such as a drone background guitar playing. The track is called 'Daylights' and is almost the same length to the first track. After a while, Buck's drums and percussion take a bigger role on the track, while Swanton's bass follows the tunes in the background of the other members of the band. At the last minutes of the track, you can tell that this is a usual Necks track with the melodic outburst, Abrahams' piano is less present and the dronish sound on the background is much easier to discern.

Going back to The Necks discography that I have in my record collection, and having listened very carefully the other collaborations of their members, I can definitely say that this album is quite different. The presence of other instruments or the way that they produce these different sounds like they are different instruments is one strong element of the album. The other highlight of this release is the energy on the first track is more intense to what I've heard at home or by seeing them perform live.

Sonic Experiences - On the Airport

It is Thursday, July 18, 2019 and I’m at Gatwick Airport. There are two different routes for the passengers to get on the plane. Those passengers with seat number greater than 20 need to go down the stairs and pass under the plane to get in. I have ticket number 16D, but for some reason I went down the stairs, although I shouldn’t.

I’m on the airport aisle walking under the wings of the plane and I sense a sonic experience that it is very different to what many people would compare to the Eno-squeue ‘Music for Airports’. A different way of sensing the space with all the sounds muted from the airplanes. Thinking about it again why this listening experience is so intense. It seems like the time is much slower. An esoteric word expression struggles to express something similar to a Terrence Mallick movie. The space is vast and the objects are dominating. Using a good pair of headphones helps so much to isolate the other sounds and focus on what I see.

These rare coincidences happened this morning. What I have been listening is a track called – Session III (Angelige Noaten) from Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek in the ‘Mort Aux Vaches’ album. The track starts with slow piano, possibly from Peter Broderick and a background continuous electronic sound. Quite rare to categorize into an electronic noise or minimalistic sound.

The music instruments while listening to the track change. Broderick plays the violin and Machinefabriek uses a more noisy background sound with voices that are like they are transmitted from radio, which are hard to discern what they are saying.

Voices make their appearance in the track. Broderick possibly records them and they repeatedly being heard in this composition. Piano appears again, and Machinefabriek use a low frequency more pitched electronic sound to accompany the peak of the track.

Listening the track I feel the vast space of the airport overwhelming. The presence of the airplane is huge, but listening again feels like an ambient and live composition coming from everywhere. I don’t know exactly where to look. The huge space of the airport or the airplane. I need to get up to the stairs. I want to stay longer and use all my senses to feel the moment…but I can’t stand still.