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Dutch label tonefloat and the prolific Flemish musician Dirk Serries have been working together closely for years now, but this month, they are taking their collaboration to a new level. A New Wave of Jazz is the title of a new sublabel of tonefloat and its description suggests that it will be home to music with a dedicated improvisational approach, inspired by the free jazz and DIY philosophy of Sun Ra and the El Saturn label. In this case, that means albums curated by Serries, released on limited edition LPs in custom sleeves. [...read more...]
“Weird Evening Lament” is a result of my collaboration with fellow mixer WeirdwithBeard. We’ve been following each other’s mixes for quite a while and decide to knock some shit together. The result is very eclectic, as you might expect. Hopefully it’ll make as much sense to you as it did to us. [...read more...]
For the Returning Sun by Evening Of Light on Mixcloud
A special long mix, without presentation, for the people who are in need of a bit of Sun in their lives. I hope this will give you warmth and hope.
Thanks to Michael Tanner for inspiration, and to Jack de Quidt for allowing me to use his music. De Quidt’s song is the soundtrack to a short videogame by Cameron Kunzelman, which you can play here: http://heylookatmygames.com/ship/.
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It’s been a few years since I got to know Canadian duo AUN (Julie Leblanc, Martin Dumais) from their album Black Pyramid on Cyclic Law. Compared to that album, Alpha Heaven feels a bit less dense, with less focus on heavy drones, and more on open spaces, although both are still present. The main chunk of this album is extremely pleasant and mostly calm. More so than previous works, Alpha Heaven seems to have something of an outer space setting for me, which is of course stimulated by some of the titles, which suggest celestial bodies and exploration. [...read more...]
Cloudscape #42: November 2013 by Evening Of Light on Mixcloud
Art: The Veil by Claudio Bravo.
Tracklist:
00:00 | Sabled Sun | Through the Gates | 2146 | 2013 03:06 | Postdrome | This Ship Creaks | Where the Kind Will Land | 2013 04:23 | Brethren of the Free Spirit | Аποκαλνψις, The Lifting of the Veil | All Things Are from Him, through Him and in Him | 2008 11:48 | Jessica Curry | From [...read more...]
The Floating World is the main artistic project of Amanda Votta, specialising in flute-based ambient music with dark and mysterious undertones. Starting as a solo flute project with its first releases eight years ago, it has since attracted numerous collaborators on various instruments and, occasionally, spoken word. Recent albums The Apparition and We Hunted have appeared on Cyclic Law and Reverb Worship, respectively, and this label attention will hopefully propel Votta’s music into a wider audience. Her latest album, The Wood Beyond the World, is just out on Eclipse, the subsidiary label of Cyclic Law. [...] The interview below is the result of an email conversation I had with Amanda. My intention was not just to give her the opportunity to tell us a bit about the history of The Floating World, but also to get her to delve a bit deeper into literary and art history, a topic I know she enjoys. As you’ll see, those promises were fulfilled, as Amanda has a lot to say on the subject. [...read more...]
Songs are sometimes immortal travellers, and if you follow their tracks, you end up in all kinds of places. Regular readers will know I have a weak spot for folk ballads, and their history and various interpretations are fascinating to track. Bushes and Briars came onto my path from different directions, but I’ll get to that later. The oldest mentions of the ballad that I could find are from nineteenth century broadsides such as this one. It’s a classic love ballad, in the sense that it explores some of the troubles and uncertainties of love and relationships. The woman in the song doesn’t trust men, and the last line suggests she’s driven to suicide because of it. Within the context of British ballads as a whole, that is understandable, as many of them are about men preying on (and murdering) women. In 1904, the song was collected and rearranged by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and from there on it entered into the repertoire of many choir and solo singers. [...read more...]
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s piece Tierkreis (composed in 1974/75) is a zodiacal work that leaves a lot of freedom to the performer. This series of twelve melodies, one for each sign, was originally written for music boxes, but can basically be played on any instrument, and there have been many different versions: for piano, voice, lute, orchestra, etc. A search on YouTube will yield several examples to satisfy your curiosity. Interpreted like this, the music often maintains much of its original airiness, but you could just as well jazzify the thing, which is what Bruno Heinen did with his sextet (Heinen: piano; Sigurta: trumpet; Allsopp: bass clarinet; Challenger: tenor sax; Di Biase: bass; Scott: drums). [...read more...]
Rereleases long overdue is primarily a relevant category when you don’t own the original album. Apparently, I got the absolute last copy of the original The Glinting Spade CD when I bought it from Bluesanct some seven years back, or at least that’s what the label told me. It’s been sold out since then, and while the surrounding albums The Twin Trees and Hazel Steps Through a Weathered Home had been given new editions by Shayo at around the same time, The Glinting Spade had to wait to this year to be overhauled by German label Merlin’s Nose. The groundbreaking début album Love Charms has been wallowing in obscurity since 1994, but hey, what can you do. Maybe something to consider for its 20th anniversary next year? For those who for whatever reason didn’t snag a copy of the original release, here are some reasons why the new issue should get your attention. [...read more...]
I’m just going to keep on pushing Martyn Bates until you’re sick of it, and then continue doing it. Although he’s surely not the only one deserving this unenviable status, he’s the first person I think of when I consider artists with severely underrated careers. Bates had been making music since the late seventies, most famously as half of Eyeless in Gaza, spanning genres from noise to pop, rock to ambient, and his staple influence: folk. His latest album Unsung is in the latter category, though all of these except “Wait and See” are original songs by Bates. If anything, this album is stripped: the lion’s share of it is just Martyn and his guitar. It’s powerful singer/songwriter stuff from one of the most recognisable voices around, and there is a freshness in a lot of these songs that is remarkable given the ubiquity of the genre, as well as the fact that Bates has been making music for so long. That said, the strongest parallel is between this album and Bates’ solo albums around the year 1990, particularly the superb Letters to a Scattered Family. This new one is less bombastic, more subdued, and doesn’t immediately stand out when considered in the context of Bates’ œuvre. [...read more...]
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