Peak private press folk. Moody, gorgeous, stripped down acoustic guitar and flute, all written and performed by Javier Somarriba. Plenty of warm room tone and vinyl static if you’re into that sort of thing. The last track of the b-side, “Dos Samurais Continúan Luchando Aún En Las Nubes” (“two Samurai still fighting in the clouds”) reminds me, perhaps very deliberately, of the Kwaidan soundtrack, with its howling wind flute dissonance and metal-edged koto mimicry. Ideal reading indoors music.
Peerless genius. She brought us decades of joy and left us with a mountain of gold. If you didn’t grow up with Aretha (I didn’t) and are aren’t sure where to start with her enormous discography, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You is an easy entry point as it’s among the best ever made, but I might also suggest YouTube, as so many of her most electrifying moments are from her live performances. Here, here, here, here, and here are some ideal inroads. Thank you for everything, Aretha; you won’t be forgotten.
Note that I’ll be removing this download link soon.
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a two hour long late summer ambient special. Long, lazy instrumentals with river sounds, crickets, cicadas, and bees. Ideal for heavy, thick weather, and for mid-day napping in it. If anyone remembers the two hour mix I made for LYL Radio awhile back, this feels like the more summery counterpart to it. You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Time After Time
2. David Casper – Green Anthem
3. Masahiro Sugaya – Straight Line Floating In The Sky
4. Roedelius – Wenn Der Südwind Weht
5. Yutaka Hirose – In The Afternoon
6. Inoyama Land – Glass Chaim
7. Haruomi Hosono – Wakamurasaki
8. Gabriel Yared – Un Coucher De Soleil Acchroche Dans Les Arbres
9. Maurice Ravel – Miroirs: III. Une Barque Sur L’ocean (Paul Crossley)
10. CV & JAB – Hot Tub
11. Virginia Astley – Summer Of Their Dreams
12. Satoshi Ashikawa – Still Park Ensemble (excerpt)
13. Ernest Hood – August Haze
14. Harold Budd & Brian Eno – A Stream With Bright Fish
15. Alice Damon – Waterfall Winds
16. Jansen / Barbieri – The Way The Light Falls
17. Yoshio Ojima – Mensis
18. Toshifumi Hinata – End Of The Summer
19. Carl Stone – Banteay Srey
20. Gervay Briot – Science
I hope that if it’s still torrential downpouring where you are, this gets to you in time to be a helpful addition! Peter Walker is a Boston-born steel string guitar legend who left home at 14 to begin his lifelong project of musical study and research. He traveled, toured, and hitchhiked through America, Mexico, North Africa, Algeria, Morocco, and Spain, but it was seeing Ravi Shankar perform in San Francisco in the early 60s that sparked his fascination with Indian classical–he went on to study under both Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. In the mid-60’s he embedded himself in the Greenwich Village folk scene, becoming close with Sandy Bull, Karen Dalton, Joan Baez, and eventually Timothy Leary, for whom he served as a “musical director.”
This was the first of two full lengths he recorded before a 40 year hiatus, until he was later coaxed out of retirement by Joshua Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records in 2007, at which point he went on to release a slew of new material and tour extensively. Though his interplay with Appalachian (and more generally American) folk, Indian raga, and flamenco was still taking shape upon the release of Rainy Day Raga (his follow-up “Second Poem To Karmela” leans into Indian traditions much more explicitly), I love it for its raucous joy, tumbling lines of masterful fingerpicking building into extended crescendoes before a long cooldown. A very appropriate indoor rainy day soundtrack. For fans of Robbie Băsho, Leo Kottke, and Sandy Bull.
An old–really old–favorite for me. Super bare bones, unadorned post punk pop recorded in a garden shed. Largely just guitar and vocals, with the odd bit of hand percussion, so it’s loose, brusque, and lo-fi. Despite the title, the airiness, and the occasional bird sounds, these are songs of heartbreak and longing, but delivered with a deadpan that somehow manages to be cynically blasé and willfully naive at the same time. Dazed and unassuming in a way that will certainly get under your skin if you give it the chance. Despite (what I assume was) some deliberate irony in titling such an understated and unblinking record Beach Party, I would argue that you could successfully soundtrack a beach party with this, as long as it’s a meandering, low-key kind of party, maybe with a bonfire, but definitely no volleyball or solo cups.
Marine Girls was originally comprised of sixth form school friends Gina Hartman and Tracey Thorn, though by the time they released their debut Beach Party, they had expanded to include Jane Fox on bass and her younger sister Alice on percussion. They went on to release two more records before disbanding to work on separate projects–most notably, Tracey Thorn went on to find more critical success as one half of sophisti-pop darlings Everything But The Girl. For fans of Young Marble Giants, or even Dolly Mixture (friendly reminder how good that record is).
You may remember Piero Milesi from his excellent The Nuclear Observatory of Mr. Nanof (hi Adam, thanks again)–here he’s in collaboration with Daniel Bacalov, another linchpin of Italian minimalism from whom we’ll definitely be hearing more in the future.
The two made La Camera Astratta as a score for a large-scale dance and performance piece, also referred to as a “video opera” by Studio Azzurro and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti (you can see some excerpts here). Though the record was released in 1989, it looks as if the score and the piece itself were both made in 1987.
The score is most memorable for its use of samples, which are often treated as percussion: water splashing, a camera snap, gasps, exhales, shushes, shouts, and sighs. At times it becomes difficult to distinguish between sample and instrument: “Camera 1 Parte” is perforated by what sounds like crickets but (I’m pretty sure) is some kind of percussion; regardless, it blankets the song in a hushed evening pastorality. Elsewhere, the dry, blunt avant-gardism of “Sequenza Ragazze 1 Parte” might appeal to Meredith Monk fans; and personal favorite “Acqua” is deeply playful (despite being used to accompany some pretty anxious moments in the performance piece)–a calypso-esque percussive backbone punctuated by bathtub splashes, camera snaps, a cash register bell, worked up into nine frothy minutes. Though La Camera Astratta might seem deceptively academic upon first listen, it opens up with increasing generosity, revealing something deeply thoughtful, meditative, and even joyful.
From the liner notes:
“When forest and music meet.
Richard Tinti travelled to Borneo and recorded the sound of the forest. When Ariel Kalma listened to it, he could hear his melodies sung by the birds, even sometimes in the very keys he uses… Natural harmony and inspiration seems to flow from the same spring. Thus began the studio work: to tune, record, mix the different element together; to the animals and atmosphere of the jungle, answered generators, flutes, saxophones, bird-calls, synthesizers, organs. Some surprises also occurred, like this fly coming down to the mic at the end of “Planet-Air” …
Mixed at the Groupe of Research in Music (GRM), a department of French National Audiovisual Institute (INA).”
Deep, densely psychedelic synth experiments. At times it’s difficult to distinguish between insects and electronics, and difficult to tell whether the natural cadence of bird song has been looped to sync with synthetic rhythms or vice versa. Big harmonium, reverb-soaked flute, circular breathing saxophone, long delays, drum machines, flanged keyboards, and plenty of synth, alongside birds, forest sounds, and war drums. Mostly voiceless, with the exception of the stark and heavy “Osmose Chant.” Clever play with space and distance, with the music sometimes pulling back into the distance in a way that allows room tone (or even unintended noises, such as the aforementioned fly on the mic, which makes several appearances) to become a kind of third musical actor. The whole thing feels like a very well-executed joke about what “ambient music” is. Try it with good speakers, if you can.
Tracks 1-6 originally comprised Disc A of the 1978 double LP split with Ariel Kalma and Richard Tinti, with the second disc comprised of Tinti’s tracks (if anyone has these and would be willing to share, I’d love to hear them). Disc A was later rereleased in 2006 with two additional unreleased tracks that were recorded at the same time, credited as just to Ariel Kalma. While it’s just these Disc A tracks that I’m sharing today, given that these were made in collaboration with Tinti and with the aid of his field recordings (recorded on a Nagra recorder), I’m using the original credits. (I’m particularly fond of the closing unreleased track, “Orguitar Soir,” which is one of the more mellow moments in the collection: just gentle guitar plucking and a keyboard drone tucked into forest sounds.)
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a mix of some of my favorite disco, funk, soul, boogie, and house. It’s meant for a day at the beach, a barbecue, or attempting to persuade your hydrophobic dog to swim in a creek with you. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Soul II Soul – Back To Life (Acapella)
2. Taana Gardner – Heartbeat (Club Version)
3. Mtume – Love Lock
4. Brenda & The Big Dudes – Weekend Special
5. China Burton – You Don’t Care (About Our Love)
6. Greg Henderson – Dreamin’
7. Double Vision – Clock On The Wall
8. Guardian Angel – Last Funk
9. Band Of Gold – Never Gonna Let You Go
10. Wish & Fonda Rae – Touch Me (All Night Long)
11. Dusty Springfield – Baby Blue
12. Stevie Wonder – Love Light In Flight
13. Pastor T.L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir – Like A Ship (Without A Sail)
Another dear favorite from Penguin Cafe Orchestra, a project spearheaded by UK-born composer and musician Simon Jeffes. Jeffes saw PCO as the ongoing soundtrack to a dream he had had while suffering from food poisoning in the south of France, as well as a vessel through which to explore his interest in “world” folk music, particularly African percussion. The project that didn’t exactly suffer from under-exposure, if their dozens of commercial song placements are any indication. Still, I think the music very much belongs here. Plenty of ink has already been spilled by much more knowledgeable people about the group, so without attempting to poorly explain what makes this music great, I’ll say that what I love about this record, as with much of PCO’s catalogue, is the way it challenges and subverts what background music is and what it can do.
Though the exuberant “Music From A Found Harmonium,” named after the discarded pump organ upon which it was composed that Jeffes found in an alleyway in Japan, is easily the record’s most famous track, I’m a huge sucker for more pared back moments like “Prelude & Yodel,” which milks little more than three string instruments for far more than the sum of their parts; and the heartbreaking “Isle Of View (Music For Helicopter Pilots).” Elsewhere are hints of reggae (“Music by Numbers”); baroque, as per usual (“Sheep Dip”); and the perfect Latin jazz riff “Heartwind,” co-written by none other than Ryuichi Sakamoto. Lofty, nostalgic, and unabashedly sentimental, but with enough warmth and playfulness to keep it precise and never saccharine. Razor sharp and meticulous musicianship from a group of musicians who, by this time, had fully locked into the ethos of what they were doing and how best to play with each other. I hope you have a great time with this.
Super bare bones meditative instrumentals. Ocarina, Tibetan bells and bowls, bamboo flutes, and koto. I haven’t been able to confirm a release year, but my best guess is 1988. It looks as if the pair later released a record with a similar tracklisting in 2010, though the songs that have the same titles as these seem like modified versions. Predictably gorgeous room tone. I love how intimately you can hear the inhales and exhales of the flutist–despite being recorded in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, there are moments where, rather than feeling drowned in cavernous echo, you feel as if you’re sitting a few inches away from the musician. From the liner notes:
We only use the pure sounds of instruments wrought from the earth: clay, wood, bamboo, precious metals. As we performed in the Cathedral, we experienced an interplay between the instruments and the reverberation of the Cathedral itself, as if the Cathedral were a sacred instrument.
The Tibetan bowls have been used in Buddhist meditations for many centuries. The ocarina, also called “huaca” in the Andes, means “breath of spirit.” In the Andean burial grounds, huacas call forth the Divine and assist the passage of souls to the next world.
The Japanese koto, a 13 stringed instrument made of Paulownia wood, came to Japan in the 8th century from China. The four-foot-long side-blown bamboo flute has only four finger holes, and uses the same pentatonic scale as the shakuhachi. We use Eastern as well as Western musical scales.
Edie Hartshorne has lived and studied in Japan, Europe, and South America, and has played Japanese and Western music for over 25 years. She uses music to create group rituals and ceremonies, and sacred spaces for individuals. She works with poets and artists exploring the synthesis of music, image, and words.
Janet Bray has worked with sacred sound for over 30 years in music and healing. She synthesizes disciplines of music, Ashtanga yoga, meditation, dream work and integrative hypnotherapy. Janet’s commitment is to guide those who seek inner growth and harmony.
If you liked this very good singing bowl cassette, you’ll probably like this. Thank you Sounds of the Dawn for the tip!