For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001

945 Replies, 862557 Views

Oh, Yoko - Seashore

[Image: Oh-Yoko.jpg]

Muttley on Fluid Radio Wrote:Picture the scene: time is suspended. You kiss the air like a jewel without. Knives round the corner. People are frozen, standing motionless before you. Their actions are as well, driven into the core of Earth like reversal of all that is infinite and known as infinite. This is a depressing situation – how do we rectify it? Mario Martinez might say each wound carried creationally has a healing field, an empowering component that honours its original organism to create the best outcome.

Look at where you’re manifesting the wound – you can get angry with shame, but what you feel then is humiliation? Look and think “What is the honourable thing to do?” Honourable consciousness is to respond to a shaming consciousness, and this kills the language of shame. Commitment, honour and loyalty through setting clear limits. and people generally don’t like joy; it’s a dangerous emotion. Inflammation of joy is caused by the shame brought from it, of another – knowing pro-flammatory products causes health to improve. Immunologically, people still sometimes die to protect the flag. But the reality is they’re only dead for a short time. And like the sea shore, the tide comes back in to thrive.

The “covenant of safety” is the thematic composite of Oh, Yoko’s “Seashore”, a 26 minute three-tracker released on Normal Cookie. The cover art depicts a small Japanese female reaching outside a car door, seemingly motionless besides arm-movement. Definitely, this is a good metaphor for Rie Mitsutake and Will Long’s music, seeing as these lull-isms have a reasoned resonance Sawako might aim towards, a cot-to-and-fro, “Seashore” unfurling its guitar with plink/plonk, casual indeterminancy that recalls Charles Hayward’s percussive rhythm dynamism, set to harmonic prop-petting beyond mast-iculation. Or: overarched grandeur of the emotional heft and transmogrified settings, which even on “Sprinkles Ambient Ballroom”, the duo don’t cut their slack too loose on what they’ve offered up. Which is bliss.

Normal Cookie as a label is new, a self-publishing music and art emporium, based in Tokyo, Japan, where Fluid regulars Will Long and Bvdub have visited in recent times. The final mix of “Seashore” here is fundamental to the child’s look – “Right just now you feel lost and confused”; “How do you know that?”; “I just do” the conversation passes on. With a solid shimmering 4/4 and choral tones backing the brigadeering, there’s a certain early noughties feel of electronic Plaid and Pilote that runs through these compostions. Quietly soaring and purposeful, Oh, Yoko show us where manifesting the wound is as much an exercise in condemning the absolute, as it is about ‘sound baggage handling’. In other words, we avoid the new at times because the old has more of an astute blend of influences; it doesn’t meek.

“I learned… that to condemn others is a grave mistake, since hatred, and even the wrong kind of criticism, is an evil which recoils upon its author and poisons every human relationship.

That does not mean we should be blind to the weaknesses or wickedness of others, any more than to our own, but that we should learn to look at them as the limitations of birth and circumstance, limitations which it is our duty to help them rise above. In this I have found that example and service are more helpful than advice or preaching.” ~ Margaret Bondfield, What Life Has Taught Me.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/oh-yoko-seashore/

Various - Outliers Vol.1

For my 60th article on Fluid Radio, I’m provided the film and soundtrack to “Outliers Vol.1″. A film about composing a film, on one hand, of inter-disciplinary travel – in this case to Iceland; otherwise a soundtrack – no film re: Iceland would be complete without a raft of accompanying musicians – documented through modern classical, electronic and divergent adventures into combinatory sonic structures.

I first heard the OST on my Gumy headphones, and while not blown away by the quality, this is endemic on first listen to a writer who’s normally reviewing idiosyncratic sequences, over collections of tracks. As time went on, my appetite was whetted, and once I had seen the film to see where the music fitted in, the spectograph was complete…

October 2011 is a cold time, especially for photographers accompanying expediants to Iceland’s countryside. The landscape, traditions and people are references. In these cosmic vignettes lies a propulsion-purpose, worldly phenomena metamorphosed with homeliness to the jurisdictions, and limitations, of travel time. Thirteen composers posit soundtrack; I want to approach this dualistically with filmic events.

Sounds open with a fitting throb of OST bass: Asure’s “A Word For Warmth” activating that ‘propulsion purpose’. The beats are bear-huggingly motored; the timbres resemble Metanoia’s IDM excursions and a hardened pace outlook; the tempo opens a cool vista. A selection of the artists greet each other at the airport chosen, and Patrick Feaster might say, in his “paleospectrophony” concept, whereby annotating visual arts as interconnected to visual records, educing each other from art and science – the shorthand concept for resonations of imagery in cross-contextual artforms; this is inked into mastery reels here.

It certainly doesn’t sound fully Westernised as a soundtrack. There’s magical times in the drums, piano and strings fullsome, curated by Deru, of the wonderful “Straight Speak” on “Idol Tryouts” compilation some years back. Great beauty and irrevocable iciness swells with Iceland’s geographic peninsula, introducing you suitably. Personally I feel the soundtrack is minimized by its sequencing alone – it needs isolatory approach, singular tracks, or additive synthesis to commingle the stereo sound to the headphones sound, so it forms a coherent whole. This is the only “real” downfall of an otherwise excellent aural dichotomy.

There’s a “refractive assuaging” of psychedelic elements for compilations that feature a score of tracks and under, a future-looking idea that permeates much of my thinking for why concept albums mostly work better than releases made up of silence / cadence / silence and back. Think about it: the light gets shined through a prism, or through from the soul, the plates turn over each other, but where does the paleospectrophony end? It ultimately has to end in a specific timeframe, for without sound conceptions of aural phenomena are nothing at all, and 90 minutes is seemingly the maximum one can take of this development. The audio detective’s toolkit also remains a stimulating thing to emote.

The film itself is great, just great: an abundance of narratives, well shot, depicting much of the traditions of the Icelandic lifestyle as it rises to prominence, in the various cadences of the spectacle. The black and white intro fades and the cast credits perk up your attention, as well as emphasise the brittle colour coding of ice and its visuality – is it any wonder, I remember, why there is a higher suicide rate in Siberia? It’s an illustrious yet limited palette that tips totals, and names: the lovely Heathered Pearls; the esteemed Ryuichi Sakamoto; the magnificent Goldmund, Keith Keniff’s solo piano alias; the ocean deep Loscil – the visuals are strikingly at ennui with the films’ infrastructure – as an exploration of the banally fragile, and this metaphor runs, rings and rallies true for the majority of scenes in the Outliers Vol.1 ouevre.

The exploration begins in Rejyavik in Martin’s house, where a group of the photographically minded among the team are staying. “Mentally, we’ve been on this trip for 6 months already” / “It’s a strange feeling setting out from the same place, trying to get together as a crew” states Kim Holterland in the first car scene. Thin shoots fray in the wind; sun beats across a mountain; water splays over a bed of rocks. It’s all beautiful stuff to see, and not in the least bit hackneyed with the knowing the sounds have been brought to life in great synchrony. “This landscape is unlike anything any of us have ever seen”.

“It feels as if our creative ambition and collective spirit act as some kind of emotional glue” Kim says of the webcam / photos on web state of affairs these two photographers share before starting a real life friendship. Certainly, one can draw parallels with how the music and formatting relationship benefits from outside involvement, as much as real life doings benefits from real life interactions from what was originally virtual reality. The internalised dogma to counter-realities as a result of seeing little of what’s outside the base sphere is also touched upon; Tim Navis explains how his Dad was a pilot but would never fly anywhere, “he’d always drive. When you fly you’re just going from point A to point B” – you don’t get to see what light of the refractive assuaging prism arises out of experience that would otherwise be killed by anxiety.

“As long as I’m using my hands in creation and whether it’s for profit or not profit, I’m a pretty happy guy” Navis says. This really puts in perspective the fundamentals of the whole project and its projections. You’re getting to hear about, while an array of stock ideas on the creative life, in a context where you can make use of them for repeated watches. They are delivered with wit, with humility, with care. Not to mention this is the first time I’ve really been able to traduce paleospectrophony – or just music as images extensions – normally I listen to sound as purely sound, and imagine the rest. Ocean waves crash in one image / sound combination, for instance, and give me an opening into synaesthesia.

“Outliers Vol.1″ is a special film, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it besides affection, except to quote Holterland once more. “…Something too beautiful and magical to exist without having been created.” This is the best epoch gleaned. You have to act to react, and without reaction, there is no action.[/quote]

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/var...ers-vol-1/

White Blush - White Blush

[Image: WB.jpg]

Muttley on Fluid Radio Wrote:“True love never dies”, so it begins. Sonically, socking it to Eurythmics splatter-graphed with Zola Jesus, miking it up with Liz Harris esque vocals. You’ll know I love Liz for her music, while my love for Goth pomp is less known, and White Blush is ascertained to please those venturing into her sound from here, and that of White Blush’s necessarily from the Indie market.

These beats are rife with overweight flea infestation so that they scuttle along with a het-up in link to the glamorous get-up of the cherry mascara vocals and synthesizers. “Jolene” is especially gloopy, an ode to the summer spitting splendour of artists like : papercutz and their “Heart Shaped Rock” antithesis to sorbet softness. “Wait”, comparatively, douses the flames of Techno-discolour with a wall of tender female vox counter-played against gained male snippets.

It’s not all harmonic reverie, though: “808 Myst” goes discord-tastic with a stepper rhythm, later giving way to Tangerine Dream-like chords that sit on top then get reshuffled into the tonality deck. The effects are mesmerizing, like a Murman rising from depths of murky marsh water. It starts to get a bit Students Of Decay-ish by 2 minutes in, while “Juice Of My Heart” sucks at ventricles with a leech-hungry abandon, playing a paradox on itself in the heat.

I’ve been really impressed by this release, and best of all it’s in time for Xmas, and it’s “Name your price” on Bandcamp. Go get some, tame your inner vampire, and let the ghosts of halloween come out at night so you can fixate on what pumps the blood to the mind. Utterly non-forgettable, White Blush turns in a corker here – “heaven is a place on Earth with you”.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/white-blush-st/

Messages In This Thread
For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001 - by Muttley - 9th January 2013, 22:49

Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  For The Closcrete Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001 Muttley 43 53,195 1st September 2021, 13:21
Last Post: Muttley
  For The Electronica Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001 Muttley 81 93,338 19th September 2020, 10:30
Last Post: Muttley
  Soundscape lovers - AGN / Hibernate collaboration CD Muttley 11 19,452 7th June 2019, 12:09
Last Post: Muttley
  Toronto Rave Mixtape Archive firefinga 2 6,431 12th September 2017, 11:35
Last Post: EdwardSullivan63
  For Lovers of AMEN! NoodeL 9 13,297 17th January 2017, 18:22
Last Post: MetaLX