Tag: synth

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 13: Joanna Brouk Tribute

My newest mix for NTS Radio is a two hour tribute to Joanna Brouk, who passed away this month at 68. Considered one of the early founders of New Age, Brouk never referred to herself as a composer, but rather insisted that she was a vessel for the music that flowed through her. Her work sat somewhere in between new age, drone, minimalism, and classically inclined ambient, with a curiosity and a roughness reminiscent of pioneering early electronic music. You can buy her excellent compilation released last year by Numero Group here. There’s also a great interview with her here in which she talks about her early processes and her work in sound healing.

She often said that it was the space between the notes in which interesting things start to happen, and that music has to slow down in order to get there. I put this mix together of things that, to me, are similarly interested in space and silence. Some of these songs were written by her contemporaries; others are just things that I hope she might have liked. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Goodnight, Joanna, and safe journey.

Tracklist:
1. Joanna Brouk – Healing Music (excerpt)
2. Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Alalogo (excerpt)
3. Kudsi Erguner & Xavier Bellenger – Apu-Caylioch / Le Seigneur Des Étoiles
4. Kevin Braheny – Lullaby for the Hearts of Space (excerpt)
5. John Clark – The Abhà Kingdom (excerpt)
6. Masahiro Sugaya – 水-(1)
7. Craig Kupka – Clouds II (excerpt)
8. Iasos – The Winds of Olympus
9. Daniel – Quartz Crystal Bells (Side A) (excerpt)
10. Daniel Kobialka – Planetary Mysteries
11. Ojas – Shiva Dance (excerpt)
12. Jansen / Barbieri – The Way The Light Falls
13. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Water Planet
14. Alice Damon – Waterfall Winds
15. Joanna Brouk – Golden Cloud Layers

Cristina – Cristina, 1980

So good. Cristina was a Harvard drop-out who was working as a writer for The Village Voice when she met (and eventually married) Michael Zilkha, who was in the process of getting the now-legendary ZE Records off the ground. He encouraged her to record a song called “Disco Clone,” written by a former Harvard classmate of hers, which became ZE’s first release in 1978 and featured John Cale production (and, moreover, is really good).

Cristina (later reissued as Doll in the Box) was the first of her two full-lengths. Short and sweet, it was produced by August Darnell of Kid Creole & The Coconuts, and you can hear his signature brassy tropical camp all over it. The heavily textured Latin-jazz percussion brings to mind some of New York no wave’s more polished, dancefloor-ready groups, except it’s fronted by a snarky, jaded Betty Boop. Cristina’s vocals are simultaneously flippant and flirty, often splintering off into multiple personas in dialogue with each other. She leans into that heavy-handed sardonicism even more on her follow-up, Sleep It Off, a grittier piece of electro boasting a proto-Slave to the Rhythm Jean-Paul Goude cover. While Cristina was met with moderate acclaim, Sleep It Off was a commercial flop (so dumb! it’s really good!), leading to Cristina’s musical retirement (though she’s still a writer). Thank you Caroline for putting me onto this!

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 12

My newest mix for NTS Radio is meant for springtime walking around. (Mom, I think you might like this one.) I’ll be posting an mp3 download version in a week from now. I know it’s been a little quiet around here–I’ve been tied up with another project, but am looking forward to sharing more music next week. If you like this, you can download an mp3 version here. Thanks for listening!

Tracklist:
1. Bill Nelson – Wildest Dreams
2. I-Level – In The Sand
3. Isabelle Antena – How Can They Tell
4. Phill & Friends Band – This Man
5. Ayumi Ishida – Bye Bye Jet
6. Gal Costa – Sebastiana
7. Ntombi & Survival – Think More About Me (Edit)
8. Wham! – Blue (Armed With Love)
9. UB40 – Don’t Break My Heart (Edit)
10. Herb Alpert – Rise
11. George McCrae – I Get Lifted
12. Boz Scaggs – Lowdown
13. Yasuko Agawa – L.A. Night
14. Stereolab – Dear Marge

Haruomi Hosono – Mercuric Dance, 1985

A favorite. Not purely an ambient record, as there are a handful of more jittery, percussive tracks in the second half, but a good deal of this is, for me, ideal music to work to. Ringing, jewel-like washes of synth, but with a pronounced weight that similarly intentioned records seem to be lacking. The navy blue cover feels very apt–there’s something angular and a bit severe about this that I love. Recontextualized elements of traditional Japanese drumming throughout. This was commissioned for a contemporary ballet piece released on video in 1984 by Bandai, in collaboration with Tadayoshi Arai; and “each track was inspired by a planet or the moon, except last one.” Enjoy!

Track 1 : 太陽 = The Sun
Track 2 : 水星 = Mercury
Track 3 : 金星 = Venus
Track 4 : 地球 = The Earth
Track 5 : 火星 + 木星 = Mars + Jupiter
Track 6 : 冥王星 = Pluto
Track 7 : 海王星 = Neptune
Track 8 : 月 = The Moon
Track 9 : 真空 = The Void

Jansen/Barbieri – Worlds In A Small Room, 1985

Arguably an apotheosis of the long and fruitful 80s Japanese and British musical cross-pollination. Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri were both founding members of Japan, alongside David Sylvian, and the band toured with Masami Tsuchiya of Ippu-Do and Yukihiro Takahashi of YMO. Jansen and Barbieri both contributed to Ippu-Do’s Night Mirage, and Tsuchiya went on to release his mini-album Alone the same year as Worlds In A Small Room. At this point it becomes unclear who is influencing whom and in what order, as the opening track of Worlds immediately calls to mind the signature staggered synth swells of Alone. Later in the record, “Moving In Circles” is a direct, if gritty nod to the theme from Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, so it’s unsurprising that Japan bandmate David Sylvian worked closely with Sakamoto and the two even riffed on the Mr. Lawrence theme together, with Jansen contributing drums, and Seigen Ono mixing. I suspect Ono might have had some indirect influence on Worlds‘s stark prettiness. Here on the Japanese release of Worlds, “Moving In Circles” gets a bonus reprise, but this time with vocals from Jansen, sounding like a less theatrical Sylvian–a reminder that the two are brothers as well as bandmates. “Mission” sounds for all the world like a murky YMO demo circa BGM (a very good thing). The following year, Jansen and YMO’s Takahashi went on to collaborate on the excellent Stay Close. There are probably dozens more inlets of inspiration and collaboration evidenced on this record–this is just scratching the surface. (*closes out of 25 tabs*)

Perhaps more importantly, this is a stunning record that only opens up with increasing generosity upon further listens. “Breaking The Silence” and the later “The Way The Light Falls” are unrepentantly beautiful but without any wasted gestures. There are still surprises, though–a few rays of koto on “Distance Fires,” a synthetic organ, a sudden swerve towards pop, towards classical. Sparse, mysterious, and nostalgic, this is a movie score waiting for a movie that’s good enough.

As a footnote to all of this, there’s a gorgeous collection of Jansen’s archival photos on his website, including members of Japan, Sakamoto, Tsuchiya, Yukihiro Takahashi, and many others (notably this one of Sakamoto in the studio during an Akiko Yano recording session.)

[Mix for Blowing Up The Workshop] #73

Honored to contribute a mix to Blowing Up The Workshop, which is a very useful archive of mixtapes including many from my own musical and curatorial heroes. I was thinking about escapism, cinematic déjà vu, anime soundtracks, hyper-optimistic fantasy about the experience of tourism, courtyards, commercials, and ruins as I put this together. If you like it, you can download it here. Thanks for listening!

Tracklist:
1. Jun Miyake – Good Morning Yamanashi
2. Giovanni Venosta – Woman In Late
3. Lena D’Água – Tao
4. Nuno Canavarro – Untitled 8
5. Forrest Fang – The Luminous Crowd
6. Einojuhani Rautavaara – Cantus Arcticus I: Melancholy
7. Kurban – Masto A Iran
8. Maria Marquez & Frank Harris – Canto Del Pilon
9. Iury Lech – Barreras
10. Marcel Pérès & Ensemble Organum – Offertoire “Diffusa Est Gratia In Labiis Tuis” (comp. Machaut)
11. Masami Tsuchiya – Never Mind
12. Pale Cocoon – Sora
13. Connie Francis – Siboney
14. Kenji Kawai – Nightstalker
15. Jansen / Barbieri – Breaking The Silence
16. Hiroko Yakushimaru – Tomeina Churippu

Toshifumi Hinata – Sarah’s Crime, 1985

Guest post by Ian Hinton-Smith

Difficult to put into words. How to describe Sarah’s Crime? Smooth, evocative, dreamy, and deeply romantic. Perfect solo listening. Much like Soichiro Suzuki of World Standard on later albums like Canon, I’d dub Toshifumi Hinata a master of thoughtful, gentle composition.

While there’s very little information available about his background, it’s known that Hinata spent time in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Surrey, South of England. Lazy English Sundays have certainly been captured on “Premonition.” You can almost hear his cream tea and plate of buttered scones rattling on the piano as he plays, looking out of a window onto the lawn. “Pavement,” with its pastoral field recordings, rain, thunder, and church bells, might also tell of his time in Surrey. Like those two tracks, so the rest of Sarah’s Crime has a cinematic quality that evokes a feeling, a place, even a storyline.

“Boardwalk” is a jazzy little moocher: sandy toes, seagulls in the South of France, and a sweet melodica/accordian duet. More than a hint of Pink Floyd’s “St. Tropez” but with a winking ballroom grandeur. The remarkable opening title track instantly conjures up a yacht slipping towards the horizon as the credits roll. Swells of violin filling the sails, synth pads rolling in and out like ocean waves, with perfectly prim drum machine drama. Like much of the record, it’s unabashedly romantic, but stops just short of saccharine. Tasteful as ever.

“Memories” feels like a take on the Korgis’ “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime.” Plaintive piano chords, reverb-drenched harmonica, and a touch of Angelo Badalementi mystery transport you to a swaying cornfield. The standout track, however, which is alone worth the price of admission, is “Chaconne.” Vaporous whisps of slow curving chords pinned down by a Philip Glass/John Carpenter style repetitive chiming bell loop. Just as you’re drifting away on it (I often have this on my sleep playlists), it spikes up a notch, almost into drama, but the heartrate remains relaxed and sleep is only moments away. I adore this track. Four years of hearing it nearly every night and I never tire of it.

Something worth mentioning about this album, and Hinata’s style generally, is that his use of melody and phrasing over sublime chord patterns is like having someone reading aloud to you. Chord changes set up a scene while melodies conjure up slow but meaningful narratives. If An Artist Of The Floating World is ever made into a movie, the soundtrack is ready to go.

Finally, I’ll leave this review, as Hinata does, on closing track “Pentimento” with a question mark: does a failed romance amount to nothing? Or does the second half, where happy memories appear to come drifting back in passionate swells mean that it was worth it even if it’s over? Sit by the window, listen, and try to figure it out. I’m still trying. It’s alright not knowing sometimes.

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Claire Hamill – Voices, 1986

This blog started with the intention of sharing records that more people should hear, and I think that’s more the case for this record than any other thus far. It occupies a strange mid-point, both in visibility and in the context of the artist’s body of work. It’s been reprinted a handful of times, and its Discogs recommendations include acts as disparate and big-league as Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Tracy Chapman, and Prefab Sprout (begging the question, who exactly is listening to this record?). Claire Hamill debuted on Island Records, opened for Jethro Tull, and made several very big-budget albums. She dabbled in folk, synth pop, and electro before landing on Voices, which has been (somewhat confusingly) labeled as new age. It’s perhaps owing to that very difficulty in pinning her down or understanding her body of work that her work itself, with its dazzling high points, seems to have slipped through the cracks. We missed the trees for the forest.

But backing up: after an audition for Island founder Chris Blackwell, Hamill released her debut at seventeen, an impressive piece of folk that belied her age. It immediately drew comparisons to Joni Mitchell and was advertised in Time Out with the tagline “When most girls are frantically hunting husbands, starting work in Woolworths or learning to type, Claire has finished her first album.” (Happy International Women’s Day, by the way!) But despite her label’s high hopes for megastardom, her records continued to fall flat of large-scale acclaim. After a few more folk-rock efforts on a new label, Hamill ended up on CODA Records, Beggars Banquet’s “new age” imprint. She released Touchpaper, an ambitious electro-sophisti-pop record about which there are some great notes here, and then, while living in the English countryside married with a new baby–“a sweet time in my life”–decided to make a record using only her voice. Entirely self-written, self-produced, and featuring just a bit of synth and drum machine, Voices feels like a pared-down predecessor to Camille’s Le Fil. She uses her voice not just as a choir but as strings, as as keyboard, and as texture, all the while staying attentive to inclusions of inhales–they’re emphatic, but never oppressive. Songs like “Harvest,” which so clearly evokes a chorus of women reaping wheat, manage to worldlessly distill the bucolic ethos of what Aaron Copland needed an entire opera to do. Despite repetitive motifs and loops, nothing ever slogs. Everything moves.

What’s really shocking about a first listen, though, is how clearly you can hear threads leading directly to and from so many important artists. At the risk of sounding like the token music journalist who compares every female artist to every other female artist, you can explicitly hear the Celtic-tinged multi-tracking that Enya would go on to make a career out of, Kate Bush’s emotional fluency, a Cocteau Twins cavernous goth sensibility, Julia Holter’s polished baroque, Virginia Astley’s loving chronicle of the English countryside. Nothing folky, but totally pastoral. A (mostly) worldless spectrum of feeling. There are jewels to be found throughout Claire Hamill’s career, but Voices is her strongest, and perhaps most unsung, stroke of brilliance.

A note that while I always encourage you to buy records you love whenever possible, Claire has been personally funding her continued independent music-making, so if you love this as much as I do, please consider buying it!

Kenji Kawai – Ghost In The Shell, 1995

A few days ago, poor Steve Aoki revealed his remix of the iconic 攻殻機動隊 (Ghost in the Shell) theme for the forthcoming remake. The remix is the EDM equivalent of trying to embroider lace with a power drill, and incensed anime fans have flooded the comments with rage (as well as with links to the also-iconic theme from the Stand Alone Complex series). Rather than adding further insult to injury, I wanted to share the original soundtrack, as it’s one of the best anime soundtracks (and arguably one of the best soundtracks, period).

To make the aforementioned theme, scoring giant Kenji Kawai combined Bulgarian choral harmonies and traditional Japanese vocal techniques into a wedding song with lyrics in the ancient Japanese language Yamato Kotaba. The theme is repeated in three different variations, all of which should give you goosebumps. The rest of the soundtrack is gorgeous, murky atmospherics: submerged keyboards, sparse taiko, synthetic strings, ominous clanging, a lone (Spanish?) guitar. If you haven’t seen the movie, song titles like “Nightstalker” and “Floating Museum” should be able to paint a sufficient picture. The real curveball is the closer, sometimes listed as a bonus track, which is a bubblegum pop sung in Cantonese. Many reviewers complain about the inclusion of the jarring closer, but I think a slightly psychotic ending makes sense in the context of a movie about fragmented personhood in a cyberpunk dystopia. Bonus round: here’s a very beautiful live performance of the theme.

Seigén Ono – Seigén, 1984

Ouch, so beautiful. Seigén Ono’s debut album was released when he was 26 years old, though he had already worked with David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and went on to become one of Japan’s most sought-after producers and engineers. I feel as if this record has been steadily opening up for me over the past year, finally cracking wide during (surprise surprise) a headphones listen. It might feel a bit austere at first, and there are definitely a few explicit nods to western minimalism, but it’s deceptively generous, even lush. Incisive modern classical, a few bits of very Japanese smooth jazz, and an avant-garde sensibility. Featuring some songwriting from Yasuaki Shimizu and a slew of razor-sharp session musicians. An incredible network of moody textures, all perfectly atmospheric. Part of the perennial favorite Music Interior series, the entirety of which will probably be posted here eventually, realistically. The liner notes call this “a perfect production of beauty,” and the statement doesn’t even feel hyperbolic.

Note that this includes two additional tracks but not the two bonus tracks from the recent reissue, which doesn’t seem to be readily available for sale anymore, though they’re well worth it if you find a copy.