Experimental Work of the Month - Vote Here

Scubadevils

cornbb wrote: »

Regarding whether or not IDM is experimental, I think it is not inherently experimental but tends to produce more experimental music than most genres. If you know what I mean. I think the advent of IDM in itself was a great leap for music, it threw a whole load of new techniques and ideas out there. These drew inspiration from both mainstream electronic music and from an impressive stable of 20th century "art" music - from minimalism to musique concréte and everything in between. So IDM certainly has roots in bone-fide avant garde music. But new techniques and ideas are only experimental for as long as they are new. So while IDM still produces great new experimental ideas, it is not necessarily all experimental.

As for the idea of starting threads on certain genres and using them as a springboard for finding new music, I'm all for it. Its important to remember that all of the content on these forums is user-driven, however, so the forum will only continue to thrive for as long as people contribute. I started these "Work of the Month" threads to nudge things along, I think that they have helped to a certain extent but things will only continue to move along while people contribute new and diverse ideas. The bottom line is, if you want to see a discussion on any aspect of experimental music, start one! I have a feeling there are a good few regular lurkers on the forum, so that message is especially directed towards you guys :pac:

Listening to some of Echospace's stuff on their MySpace* page and I'm liking it, reminds me of Basic Channel...

*Someone put MySpace out of its misery please, I hate that goddamn website so much...

Yeah that's true regarding IDM I suppose and it's place in experimental, it still remains quite a niche music genre too.

I will start something for an IDM thread soon, will get working on it I would nearly write a book on The Black Dog at the moment, I am totally obsessed with their music at present, absolutely amazing... and any other links from members be it Plaid or Balil. I have had the Plaid 'Trainer' CD on repeat in the car for the last week, it really is brilliant.

Regarding that Echospace/Deepchord album, ideally it needs to be heard as a complete piece without interruption, get it and you will know what I mean But anything right now by Deepchord or on the Modern Love label is well worth a listen... the new wave of Dub Techno right now is simply amazing. Also check out the Styrax label. Lots more but these are good starting points if you like dub techno.

http://www.discogs.com/label/Modern+Love

http://www.discogs.com/label/Styrax+Leaves

http://www.discogs.com/label/Styrax+Records

CeluiDuDehors

Hi there, i'm new here, i wanted to vote for "La legende d'Eer" by Iannis Xenakis...do you like great composition? Do you like noise? That's a noise symphony, ENJOY!

jiltloop

no posts at all in june on this thread?? can't let that happen in july so i'm gonna suggest the album "tango'n'vective" by mu-ziq one of my fav artists alongside aphex twin and squarepusher oh and luke vibert.
that album really got me into electronic music and it still sounds very different from anything i've heard since (except for mu-ziq's later albums of course). it sounds really well conceived, almost as if the some of the songs were composed in a classic form rather than built from deviating loops

Scubadevils

Yeah it's a great album, must dig it out for a revisit. I only got the reissue a couple of years ago with the 2nd disc which is really excellent. Stand out track on the original album probably Phi*1700 (U/V). For anyone not familiar with the track -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPgFHHzQ86c

Love that tune!

http://www.discogs.com/release/32074

jiltloop

Felixdhc wrote: »

Yeah it's a great album, must dig it out for a revisit. I only got the reissue a couple of years ago with the 2nd disc which is really excellent. Stand out track on the original album probably Phi*1700 (U/V). For anyone not familiar with the track -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPgFHHzQ86c

Love that tune!

http://www.discogs.com/release/32074

Yes! thats my fav track on the album, got the 2 cd reissue too and that track is actually extended in the reissue and is much better, the lovely warm xlyophone type sample goes on a kinda solo trip for the last few minutes, hmmm sublime

cavedave

"Forget about this," she says, "it's for interest only."

Anyone know where to get this Delia Derbyshire dance track from 1969?

John

No, the streaming wouldn't work for me earlier

Hopefully these items will be given a release in a nice tasty box. Delia.

Setun

Pity the work of the month threads haven't been busier (but I suppose I'm partly to blame for that, having not posted in them alot :rolleyes: But if they do get going again I'd like to recommend I Am Sitting In a Room by Alvin Lucier.

Anyone else familiar with the work?

Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room (1969) is an electroacoustic classic. The work, which questions the distinctions between speech and music, is conceptually rich, sonically beautiful, and is achieved with an extraordinary economy of means. The score begins: "choose a room the musical qualities of which you would like to evoke." A text is then read and recorded in that room; the recording is played back through a loudspeaker, and the playback itself recorded; and the cycle of playback and recording is continued through a variable number of generations.

As the text is repeated over and over into the room, the acoustic properties of the room assert themselves. Echoes elongate and smear the speech, and the resonances of the room enhance some of the frequencies present, while others are eliminated. Gradually, the speech is transformed into music: the text becomes a complex weave of pitches, based upon the intersections of the recorded voice and the resonant frequencies of the room.

link

John

That's actually one of my favourite pieces of the 20th century. Such a simple but mindblowing idea, it gets my vote (and hopefully gets the work of the month back).

cornbb

My apologies for not updating work of the "month" for a very long time, I've been away for a while and I've been pretty busy. "I am sitting in a room" will get my vote too, I'll start a new thread ASAP.

If I fail to provide updates for a while again, you guys feel free to start new Work of the Month threads yourselves and myself or John will provide the stickyness.

Edit: Work #6, "I Am Sitting In A Room"

John

cornbb wrote: »

My apologies for not updating work of the "month" for a very long time, I've been away for a while and I've been pretty busy. "I am sitting in a room" will get my vote too, I'll start a new thread ASAP.

If I fail to provide updates for a while again, you guys feel free to start new Work of the Month threads yourselves and myself or John will provide the stickyness.

Edit: Work #6, "I Am Sitting In A Room"

I like to let you do the work because you do it with more flair

le_tigre

Have you lot seen Bernard Parmegiani's L'Oeuvre Musicale, a twelve-CD boxed set compiling most of his acousmatic and electro-acoustic catalogue? It's the release of the year, IMHO.

John

No I haven't, I only know his De Natura Sonorum (and even then only part of it). Strangely I was looking for more info on him but couldn't really find much. What label has released that box and any links?

le_tigre

O, man, you are in for a treat. Here's a taste of the Boomkat hype machine:

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=118588

I already owned about half of this and still consider it a great deal. You can buy it from INA-GRM and probably elsewhere cheaper, though.

http://www.ina.fr/actualites/boutique/disques.html?pdt=1585

John

le_tigre wrote: »

can buy it from INA-GRM and probably elsewhere cheaper, though.

€40 for 12 CDs is still pretty amazing though! I'll be buying this for sure once my wages come through.

le_tigre

You'll thank me, boss.

John

I'm going to thank you in advance!

c_o_ck p_i_ss chillage

My nomination for work of the month is BIOSPHERE & Higher Intelligence Agency: "POLAR SEQUENCES".
Having played many excerpts from it on the show (The Chillage Idiots, Xfm) over the years and its one of my personal favourites and has been quite sought after hence its re-release. It was also cool to hear two of my favourite artists collaborate on quite a unique idea.


Some samples here:

Snapshot survey: http://www.ambient-music.com/mp3s/biospherepolar2.mp3

Corona: http://www.ambient-music.com/mp3s/biospherepolar5.mp3

Thanks,
P

You can purchase from link below:

http://www.biosphere.no/headphone.html

BIOSPHERE & HIA: POLAR SEQUENCES
Headphone Records (UK) is pleased to announce the long awaited re-release of the first HIA/Biosphere live collaboration Polar Sequences, first released in 1996 as a limited edition on Beyond Records it rapidly sold out and has been unavailable for many years. Critically acclaimed and voted as one of the best all time ambient releases by fans at Hyperreal.org, Polar Sequences stands out from other releases in this genre in being taken from one unedited live performance.
Kieran Wyatt, Muzik Magazine:"Recorded live at the 1995 Polar Music Festival up in the wilds of Norway, Polar Sequences is the sound of what must have been one hell of a gig. At a mountain site accessible only by cable cars and caught in a violent snowstorm in darkest midwinter, Biosphere´s Geir Jenssen and Higher Intelligence Agency´s Bobby Bird sampled glacial streams and snowfalls to use in a hyper-intense electronic jam. Jenssen´s arctic moods and Bird´s keen ear for understated melodies are to the fore. A dark and minimalist composition, it will no doubt prompt comparisons with the baroque dronescapes of Dr. Atmo and Fax boss Pete Namlook, but drawing a parallel with guitar-wielding isolationists like Main, Loop and Seefeel is probably even closer to the mark. There are plenty of brooding industrial undertones, partly as a result of sampling the clink and clank of the cable cars which transported the audience to the show. If you could record God´s brainwaves, the result would sound not unlike Polar Sequences. Chilling to the (ice)core."

cornbb

I'm going to nominate John Cage's "Imaginary Landscapes" for next month.

Scubadevils

c_o_ck p_i_ss chillage wrote: »

My nomination for work of the month is BIOSPHERE & Higher Intelligence Agency: "POLAR SEQUENCES".
"

Yeah I would definitely second this nomination, spectacular album. Only got this a few weeks ago on Amazon and it really is amazing... as you would expect from a collaboration like that.

cornbb

Time to update work of the month I think, looks like it'll be Biosphere & HIA this time.

Would Felixdhc or Mr. Chillage like to do a quick writeup? I don't mind doing it myself but it might be more interesting coming from someone who's familiar with the music. Just follow the same format as before (a quick review/description and a legal link to the music e.g. a YouTube clip). If not I'll get around to it over the weekend.

Scubadevils

cornbb wrote: »

Time to update work of the month I think, looks like it'll be Biosphere & HIA this time.

Would Felixdhc or Mr. Chillage like to do a quick writeup? I don't mind doing it myself but it might be more interesting coming from someone who's familiar with the music. Just follow the same format as before (a quick review/description and a legal link to the music e.g. a YouTube clip). If not I'll get around to it over the weekend.

Sorry, only saw this now.

A suggestion for the next work of the month. I have yet to hear this but it sounds very interesting.

Anyone got this?

Brian Eno - Discreet Music

DISCREET MUSIC is Brian Eno's first break with pop music infavour of a quieter, more meditative form, and it came about by accident. When Eno was confined to bed after an auto accident, a visitor brought him an album of classical music, which he mistakenly put on the stereo at a very low volume. Unable to get up to raise the volume, Eno heard the quiet music blend with the natural sounds of his environment, and conceived a music designed for that purpose. The several lengthy pieces on DISCREET MUSIC are named after quotes from the liner notes of a recording of Pachebel's Canon in D, which also provides the structure of the pieces themselves. Built onsubtle tape loops, the pieces retain just enough of those structures to avoid the deliberate formlessness of Eno's later ambient experiments. The very beginnings of ambient music are on this disc.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Discreet-Music-Brian-Eno/dp/B0002PZVGQ/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1222118380&sr=1-8

buck65

Colleen - Everybody alive wants answers

le_tigre

buck65 wrote: »

Colleen - Everybody alive wants answers

Great record. Talented artist. Stone fox.

le_tigre

I suggest Music with Sound or The Grand Delusion, by Tape-Beatles. Both albums are in the public domain and freely available for download.

More information here.

Anyone with a broadband connection can listen to {and sample} these albums, so there's no excuse, bar dialup, for not listening and talking about whatever album we pick.

[SIZE=-2]"By grabbing infonoise from everyday living and presenting it in a new format, sounds take on new meaning. Listen to this one time and you will become a Tape-beatle whether you want to be one or not."[/SIZE]

Setun

buck65 wrote: »

Colleen - Everybody alive wants answers

Yep, an interesting record. Very grainy and ethereal, maybe that's how the world would sound through a dream filter?

c_o_ck p_i_ss chillage

cornbb wrote: »

Time to update work of the month I think, looks like it'll be Biosphere & HIA this time.

Would Felixdhc or Mr. Chillage like to do a quick writeup? I don't mind doing it myself but it might be more interesting coming from someone who's familiar with the music. Just follow the same format as before (a quick review/description and a legal link to the music e.g. a YouTube clip). If not I'll get around to it over the weekend.

Balls to monty. Only seeing this now!!!
Apologies guys.
P

jiltloop

buck65 wrote: »

Colleen - Everybody alive wants answers

Don't have this one but Colleen's music is brilliant, really interesting, original and engaging so i'll give it my vote with the intention of getting the album soon.

cornbb

buck65 wrote: »

Colleen - Everybody alive wants answers

I think this will be our next WOTM (3 votes?). Unless anyone wants to cast votes for something else I'll do the writeup on Monday. Again I don't know this album so if anyone who knows it and loves it wants to start the thread, please feel free

cornbb

#8 - "Everyone Alive Wants Answers" by Colleen