My newest mix for NTS Radio is exactly what I want during the coldest part of the year: cozy, warm-toned folk and blues, with a few leans towards classical, and lots of room tone and vinyl crackle. I hope you like it and that you’re staying warm, wherever you are. You can download an mp3 version here if you’re so inclined.
Tracklist:
1. All In One – In A Long White Room
2. Lee Hazlewood – Your Sweet Love
3. Emitt Rhodes – Somebody Made For Me
4. Arthur Russell – Instrumentals 1974 Volume 1 Part 02
5. Ted Lucas – It Is So Nice To Get Stoned
6. Rosa Ponselle & Carmela Ponselle – Where My Caravan Has Rested
7. Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
8. The Durutti Column – Madeleine
9. John Jacob Niles – Go ‘Way From My Window
10. Nino Rota – Sarabande
11. Fred Neil – Little Bit Of Rain
12. Linda Cohen – The Dust
13. Patti Page – Confess
14. Unknown Artist – IV
15. John Cage – In A Landscape (excerpt)
16. Dan Reeder – Nobody Wants To Be You
17. Washington Philips – Train Your Child
18. The Roches – Runs In the Family
19. Mother Nature – Orange Days And Purple Nights
20. Elizabeth Cotten – Mama, Nobody’s Here But The Baby
21. Mark Fry – Song For Wilde
Another treasure from Sound Process, a Japanese label, book publisher, and sound design consulting firm founded by Satoshi Ashikawa, whose Still Way was included in the label’s short and excellent catalogue (as was Hiroshi Yoshimura‘s cult favorite Music for Nine Postcards). Oscilation Circuit was a four piece outfit, and this was their only release. True to the label’s ethos of sound design not as a means of filling up space, or “decorating,” but instead as a highly-conscientious way of paring sounds down to those that “truly matter,” Série Réflexion 1 is extremely minimal, though it feels uniquely adjacent to minimalism in its more academic Steve Reich-esque sense when compared with many of its Japanese ambient peers (particularly closing track “Circling Air,” which is almost certainly an homage to Terry Riley). There’s no synthesizer. There are no field recordings of birds or running water. No bells. Minimalist minimalism? Ideal winter listening. I started ketamine infusion therapy last year and this has been a favorite soundtrack during my infusions. I hope it brings you some joy too.
My latest mix for NTS Radio is a chilly, moody descent into winter: minimalist avant-garde, icy synths, a David Sylvian sandwich, echoey whistles, and another surprise Bono cameo. I hope you like it–and if you do, you can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. David Sylvian – Preparations For A Journey
2. Dory Previn – Mama Mama Comfort Me
3. Muslimgauze – Sapere Aude
4. Viola Renea – Chariot of Palace
5. Mabe Fratti ft. Claire Rousay – Hacia el Vacío
6. Edson Natale – Nina Maika
7. Lucille Starr – Wooden Heart
8. Larry Chernicoff – Woodstock, New York
9. Svitlana Nianio & Alexander Yurchencko – Prologue
10. Unknown Artist – Siciliana (comp. Ottorino Respighi)
11. Daniel Lentz – Midnight White
12. Uakti – Montanha
13. John Cale – Please
14. Chas Smith – October ’68
15. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Tibi Soli (comp. Gregorio Allegri)
16. Passengers – A Different Kind of Blue / Beach Sequence
17. David Sylvian – Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples
This is a selection of music composed by USSR artists from 1976 to 1995. The cover picture has been taken from the cover of the album Oiseaux Des Plaines Russes by Борис Вепринцев. I prepared this playlist right after my second (Ella) was born and during pandemic times, hope you enjoy it.
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a continuation of the late summer ambient series. It’s also an extra-luxurious two hours long, so I hope it’s helpful in soundtracking a lazy picnic or an afternoon nap. I went slightly off-script this year, incorporating some tracks that aren’t as strictly minimal or classically ambient, and I included more folk, more vocals, and more guitars. Pretty pleased with how it turned out, so I hope you enjoy it. If you do, you can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Brian Eno & Robert Fripp – Wind On Water
2. Yoshio Ojima – Sealed
3. Contraviento – Desencanto
4. Yas-Kaz – The Gate of Breathing
5. Mark Pollard – Quinque II
6. Klaus Wiese – Dunya (Excerpt)
7. lovesliescrushing – Butterfly
8. Oscilation Circuit – Homme
9. Takashi Kokubo – Quiet Inlet
10. Julianna Barwick – Wishing Well
11. Al Gromer Khan – Mumtaz
12. Not Drowning, Waving – Frogs
13. ironomi ft. Coupie – 楓
14. Margaret Gay – Prelude No. 1 in C Major from the Well-Tempered Klavier (Bach)
15. Bobbie Gentry – Courtyard
16. Meitei – Ike
17. Priscilla Ermel – Folia Do Divino
18. William Barklow / Loons – Wail Duet
19. Harold Budd – Afar
20. Bill Douglas – Lake Isle Of Innisfree
21. Nuno Canavarro – Antica/Burun
22. Edson Natale – A Flor
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a harp special, featuring some of my favorite harp moments from across a slew of different genres. I realized while I was putting it together that if I ever do a follow up harp episode it should probably be focused on harp-heavy Russian classical moments, as there are so many exceptional ones, but for now please enjoy this mix featuring Harold Budd, Alice Coltrane, and the melodic origin of one of my favorite songs, “Stranger In Paradise” from the opera Prince Igor. You can download an mp3 version here. Cheers, and happy harping :}
Tracklist:
1. Joel Andrews – Introduction
2. Raul Lovisoni – Hula Om (Excerpt)
3. Philippa Davies & Thelma Owen – Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn (comp. John Thomas)
4. Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy – White Nile (Excerpt)
5. Unknown Artist – In A Landscape (comp. John Cage)
6. Erica Goodman – Nocturne No. 2, Op. 9 in E Flat (comp. Frederic Chopin)
7. Daniel Kobialka – Magnetic Unity (Excerpt)
8. Joanna Newsom – On A Good Day (Live)
9. Erica Goodman – Polovtsian Dance No. 17 (comp. Alexander Borodin)
10. Leya – Flow
11. Unknown Artist – Harp Sonata, Op. 68 III (comp. Alfredo Casella)
12. Alice Coltrane – Turiya
13. Harold Budd – Madrigals of the Rose Angel (Excerpt)
Convenient that I realized that I hadn’t yet posted Virginia Astley’s debut full-length, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, on Easter Sunday, of all days (though I did share her very important Hope in a Darkened Heart a few years back). While From Gardens is a squarely summer record–suggesting from all angles the soporific heat of peak July–it is about as pastoral as music can possibly be, which means it’s a record that I start reaching for at the first signs of spring. Alongside Claire Hamill’s Voices, it paints a picture of a heavily romanticized ideal of the British countryside, refracted through childhood memories and the heavy lethargy of summer. Both the album title and the track title for “Out On The Lawn I Lie in Bed” are taken from W.H. Auden’s 1933 poem “A Summer Night,” and fittingly From Gardens recreates the experience of a summer day in its entirety in chronological sequence, with the A side titled “Morning” and the B side “Afternoon.”
It’s languorous, unhurried, and arguably a true ambient record in how well-suited it is as background music, something which Astley herself pointed out in a radio interview: “Whoever’s listening could lie down and put it on, and not really listen to it that much. Just have it on in the background.” Songs aren’t structured like songs so much as curiosity-driven variations on motifs–it’s easy to imagine Astley arriving at a piano refrain that she found particularly pretty, and playing with it until organically arriving at the next “song”–all of which flow seamlessly into one another uninterrupted, just like the experience of a particularly hot day.
More specifically, in addition to being a true ambient record, it’s a freak outlier in how nakedly beautiful and fully realized it is, especially for its time. As Simon Reynolds details here, there was no culture for music like this in 1983. Britain was in the thralls of post-punk and post-post-punk, with sounds going in thousands of different and gritty directions but certainly not backwards, and it’s easy to imagine detractors calling From Gardens just that–regressive, anti-avant-garde. There was something very brave about structuring an entire record around nostalgia and what is very legibly a deep love for bucolic Britain, referencing romanticism and Auden and a lifestyle that it’s difficult for me to imagine as anything other than aristocratic. Yet while Astley was classically trained, From Gardens was clearly informed by a vision that was very novel and fully her own: her personal field recordings made in the village of Moulsford-on-Thames, spun together with luminous piano, flute, and xylophone melodies, with small and elegant hints of electronic manipulation: church bells that chime forever, glitchy manipulation in “When The Fields Were On Fire,” the looping sound of a creaky swing swing gate* forming a pseudo-percussive backbone in “Out On the Lawn I Lie In Bed.” Astley is honest in her nostalgia for something which no longer exists, and she knowingly depicts it in an overly-perfect, hyperreal way that suggests it may have actually never existed at all. But it’s all hers, from start to finish: Astley wrote, recorded, and co-produced From Gardens herself, but moreover she saw the gardens, remembered them, and reimagined them in a way that no one else could. Happy spring–I hope you enjoy.
*I incorrectly heard that sample as a swing, but since Astley very considerately labeled and time/location-stamped all her samples, I’m happy to report that it’s a gate!
Ok, so: in full disclosure, over the past few years I’ve been feeling increasingly disenchanted with a lot of music that is described as “fourth world”: effectively, music that loosely traffics in the traditions and aesthetics of the global south, but reimagined through the lens of “advanced” or “futuristic” electronics. It’s a fraught category for several glaring reasons, but even without the self-imposed description, the music itself can, at worst, feel like white people playing under-researched dress-up with bits and pieces of other cultures, often because the musicians are too lazy to come up with something of their own. (And yes, I participate in and celebrate this kind of work on a regular basis! I’m obviously not a passive bystander here.)
I’m not resolving to draw clean lines in the sand about engaging in this kind of thing going forward, because: any attempt to do so would be arbitrary and ridiculous, given that music always involves cross-pollination and borrowing, and much of it is done in good faith and with deep artistic reverence. And because this stuff is messy, and there isn’t always a clearly discernible hierarchy of ethical creativity! And because I love too much of it to ever try to impose one, and because I’m obviously not the right gatekeeper to decide what is and isn’t colonialist.
I’d love to be just a passive set of ears, and to be able to say that I love Total purely for its aesthetic value, regardless of its cultural position. But nothing exists in a vacuum. Total was made by four Germans, and it borrows heavily from across continents: steel drums, didgeridoo, sub-Saharan polyrhythms, maybe a guzheng, a kalimba, Calypso, “from Cuba to Mocambique” [sic]. I’m not going to argue that this is good or bad, but I am going to argue that what Om Buschman brings to the conversation–which may be a sloppy conversation, or possibly even more of a weird monologue–has musical value. These musicians employ a post-Krautrock scronkiness, a Western spiritual jazz ethos, and an extremely stoned sense of humor (I’m pretty sure there’s the sound of a toilet flushing hiding in “Prima Kalimba”) to a largely percussive record. The effect is, to me, a synchronicity that exceeds copy and pasting. It’s perfectly stuporific, sprawling, foggy. Luckily we don’t have to choose between listening to Nigerian apala, Cuban jazz, or something like this, because they’re not the same and there’s no comparison. But perhaps for a new listener, one can be an entry point to another.
If I sound defensive, it’s because I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing, and because I have a knee-jerk reaction when music that isn’t made by a literal tribe of people is described as “tribal.” But I like the music! It’s deeply purple, playful, and very trippy. It borrows from, but it becomes something wholly different along the way. So here you go; maybe you’ll love it too.
Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. It’s two hours of late-summer ambient and ambient-adjacent sounds, meant to capture the hazy, humid, golden quality of August and September, featuring field recordings, sunbeams, and bugs. It’s ideal for mid-day napping. (It’s also kind of a sequel to this mix from two Augusts ago, if you’re curious!) A modified one hour version of this was broadcast live on the air last week, so this extended two hour version is a director’s cut of sorts. Thanks as always for listening and being here; I hope this can serve as a moment of quiet in what, to me, feels like a very loud time. You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Richard Burmer – Riverbend
2. Jean C. Roché – Nightingales: In A Waste Ground Beside A Stream In Provence, June
3. CFCF – Lighthouse On Chatham Sound
4. Finis Africæ – Ceremonia Màgica En El Estanque (Magical Ceremony In The Pond)
5. Elicoide – Mitochondria
6. Takashi Kokubo – 満月の木陰
7. Notte & Bush – Wake Up In Baby’s Room
8. Steven Halpern & Daniel Kobialka – Pastorale
9. Toshifumi Hinata – ミッドサマー・ナイト (Midsummer Night)
10. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Green Shower
11. The Durutti Column – Vino Della Casa Bianco
12. Susan Mazer & Dallas Smith – Kalimbo
13. Haruomi Hosono – Wakamurasaki
14. Joanna Brouk – The Space Between (Excerpt)
15. Goddess In The Morning – 14
16. Virginia Astley – It’s Too Hot To Sleep
17. Constance Demby – Om Mani Padme Hum
18. Michael Stearns – As The Earth Kissed The Moon (Excerpt)
19. Ghostwriters – Slow Blue In Horizontal
