Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1022 - Groundless in the ambient geoscape - Musical Monday

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1022 - Groundless in the ambient geoscape - Musical Monday


Hi Mom,

This all started Safir Nòu and the track "Land-escape" from the Groundless album. The whole album is a gorgeous thing to listen to, though beware that "Puppets' Waltz" is a bit outside of the style of the other tracks.

I started this mix way back in July of 2017, and then it became buried due to the move west.

Christina Vantzou is a recent addition as of Warren Ellis' Orbital Operations newsletter yesterday 1804.22, so I vaulted it to the first selection.

The last two selections also were recent additions via Warren's Twitter feed. I shared Michiru Aoyama in last week's Musical Monday dedicated to what Warren calls Spektrmodule, his infrequent music podcast. Not all of these tracks come from Warren, so this one is not named for the podcast. The same day Warren shared another Michiru Aoyama track, he also shared Leila Abdul-Rauf's beautiful and haunting album Diminution, which is the last offering on today's blog. This piece of music alone makes me so happy for the Internet and what it means for great artists to share their work and have it listened to and purchased. This is fantastic stuff.

By writing a few comments, I am attempting to curate the list. Vantzou's music is much like Abdul-Rauf's with a strong melancholy bent. I dig the melancholia. Christina Vantzou, whose web site is at that link, has a Bandcamp presence plus all the other major outlets. She describes herself as "a Missouri native of Greek descent who resides in Brussels, Belgium.  She has explored sound for over a decade and also conducts ongoing visual research, mostly in animation, film, and highspeed photography.  Her musical releases are largely associated with the American label Kranky and her performances are characterzied by a loosening of time."

I like the characterization as "loosening of time," which may not be melancholic, though it could be. I am eager to explore her other pieces. Associated by my recent purchase but also by the sounds involved, Abdul-Rauf describes herself  in the following and mentions melancholy specifically: "Multi-instrumentalist and composer Leila Abdul-Rauf enters a world all of her own weaving brass, piano and various other textures into filmic soundscapes that echo the sounds of memories faded through time. Songs are not so much composed as captured from dreams. Time and space are distilled down to the remains of distant memories and hidden emotions, melded into a symphony of ethereal melancholy."

The The next track by Xerxes featuring Aleah proves a good follow up to the others with an ethereal, loopy lilting susurrus.  It's beautiful and melodic yet haunting in a good way that invites repetitive listens.

Unlike the other tracks and the melancholy tones, Safir Nòu is pretty and hopeful. There's gratitude and the sounds of joy. See the liner notes I pasted below.

I am not sure if the Xerxes of the Bandcamp link is the same as the one from the You Tube video, but the music shares some similarity.

Hannah Peel shares this with her music:

"We have a hundred billion neurons in our brains, as many as there are stars in a galaxy" Theoretical physicist and author, Carlo Rovelli.


INFO ON HANNAH PEEL:
With only a year following on from the release of her second album ‘Awake But Always Dreaming’ to widespread acclaim (Voted No.1 Album Of the Year – Electronic Sound Magazine), ‘Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia’, explores one person's journey to outer space, by recounting the story of an unknown, elderly, pioneering, electronic musical stargazer and her lifelong dream to leave her terraced home in the mining town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, to see Cassiopeia for herself. With artwork by Grammy award winning designer Jonathan Barnbrook (David Bowie collaborator on albums ‘Blackstar’ and ‘The Next Day’ ) and the complete brass band and rhythm section recorded live on location in The Barnsley Civic Theatre with Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio team, this exclusive album combines Peel’s detailed, analogue synth layered production and her expressive flair for performance with ‘Tubular Brass’, featuring the top UK championship brass band players. It’s a wholly unique, collaborative sound and seemingly, a first of it’s kind both live and on record.

At the close of the album’s final song ‘The Planet of Passed Souls’, tutti brass jostle with the hiss and crackle of a 78rpm record. An emotionally charged, scratchy sample taken from a 1928 recording of Peel’s own choirboy grandfather in Manchester Cathedral leaves the listener questioning the reality of Mary’s connection with the stars… Did she ever make it to Cassiopeia? Is this all a daydream as she sits in a back garden shed tinkering with electronics and her telescope? Or maybe this is her final breath as her mind and body pass into another realm of life? Is this science or fantasy? And how much is there really a division between the two?

ALBUM TRACKS:
1. Goodbye Earth
2. Sunrise Through The Dusty Nebula
3. Deep Space Cluster
4. Andromeda M31
5. Life Is On The Horizon
6. Archid Orange Dwarf
7. The Planet Of Passed Souls

"Ruination, the New Dawn Cometh" is a synth piece of sword battle power chords and rangers in the Mirkwood battling evil. It's an interesting eight minute change of pace that fits somewhat with the other music despite its difference. It's not too caustic and maintains an austere and somber quality.

Konrad Sprenger is a music experimenter using a Euclidean algorithm to make music. Read more at Sprenger's Bandcamp page. Like the track before, neither of these may fit well with the rest in this collection, but I am not inclined to move them now.

Lastly before the Michiru Aoyama track I previously mentioned, Jeffrey Koepper's Tangerine Dream influenced electronica rushing like a rapid stream came to my attention because of track #8 "Equinox" played in episode 234 of the Hypnagogue podcast, and yet this may not be the track I wanted after all as the one I found, I thought, had some ethereal vocals and this does not. It's still good.

The final Michiru Aoyama track brings the sound flow back to things more in line with Safir Nòu and some of the first mentioned music.

I hope you find these collections enjoyable.

I am continuing my posts to Linked In as last week's post had over two dozen views, which I feel is a good sign.

Thanks for listening.

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 1024 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1804.23 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.