[ Hypnos Forum ]

[...] Why will people pay $10.000 for a Leica camera.....[...]

I can´t and won´t speak for the vast majority, but in my case, I´d pay that much for a Leica M5 (with a set of lenses) for the same reason I´d pay that much for a Hasselblad, Nagra IV, or a Glashütte watch -- because they are wonderful pieces of engineering and craftmanship.

There are more practical solutions around.

Stephen

Hi all,

as some of you may know, I released a series of limited-edition CDR albums between 2006 and 2010. As I´ve run out of materials, it´s nearly impossible for me to make these anymore, no matter how much some people have begged me to .

There are currently a couple of them for sale on eBay, I´m not affiliated with the sale but I can confirm they are all legit (I know the seller, which is no surprise at 25 copies each). Here´s the auction, just go from there:

http://www.ebay.de/sch/darkshine!/m.html?hash=item460da390fd&item=300876534013&pt=B%C3%BCcher_Unterhaltung_Music_CDs&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks for reading, and good luck. I hope these albums will find a loving new home .

Stephen

Woo-hoo! 

Stephen

I thought I´d share this with you:

"STAR'S END Update - 9 December 2012 
 Stephen Parsick hears the call of the wild, and answers it. His concert CD Astral Disaster (76'28") plays like a souped-up rebuild of Ricochet or Departure From the Northern Wasteland. Answering The Berlin School's challenge Stephen Parsick and his 'ramp project ratchets up the dramatic tension, nearly matching the intensity of his previous Steel and Steam (2011). Sections of this album extend further into sequencer darkness than even Parsick's closest contemporary (Mark Shreeve and his impressive Redshift project). But to prolong the comparison would undermine Parsick's achievement. Surging and dangerously thrilling Astral Disaster holds us in its grip. The first of two ample live pieces begins with strange drones and an amassing density. Here the composer shows his teeth as sets of deep tones build into complex multi-layered sequencer patterns. Running at full-tilt the bass notes nearly blast out of the speakers - burning in a warm distortion. Gentle electric piano melodies and classic Mellotron voices somehow soften this section's expanding motorized pulse. And with so many rhythms being introduced, brightened, altered and then dormanted the piece never wants for much more in the way of melody. The program concludes with an ascent into brighter territory with crystalline notes echoing through cosmic voices. Parsick focuses the concert program's second half on a more gentle gravity - meant to open vast new spaces within the listener. As a sustaining abstract landscape haunts the soundfield, Parsick works his strange and mysterious spell. Well into this floating zone we sense the engine again turning over. Heightening this work's urgency the sequencer lines gradually run bigger, brighter and bolder - yet the closing moments reveal a tenderness that seemed impossible in the earlier thunder. Never less than intriguing Astral Disaster is not like anything else we will hear this year. Delving deeper into his musical obsessions Stephen Parsick has crafted an album that captures the careening, adventurous spirit of the 1970s without ever seeming overly retro. Astral Disaster, and the concert it was taken from, feels fully willed and artfully conceived.
Please tune in to STAR'S END this weekend for new music from 'ramp and the recent release Astral Disaster

For more on Astral Disaster and 'ramp please access: www.parsick.com

Related Content:
Steel and Steam by 'ramp"

Thanks for this review, chuck!

Reminds me of the Sony PCM-F1 machines which used video tape for recording digital audio like this:



We have these at work just for playing back old concerts from the 1980s, I also mixed my first album (Point of Arrival) on the Nakamichi version back in the mid 1980s. State of the art digital recording at the time until DATs took over.

Ouch.

I used an F1 for mastering once in my life. I am so happy there are alternative solutions around .

I still have hundreds of cassette tapes which cover my childhood days (purchased my first cassette player in 1979) until the mid and late 1990s (this is when CDRs took over). Still longing for another Sony WM-DD II... I had one in the early 1990s, and I literally wore it out. Possibly one of the most robust pieces of kit I´ve ever had so wearing it out took quite a while...

Stephen

Hi all,

just to inform you that the new ['ramp] album "astral disaster" will be released on 31st October 2012. The album will feature the live show at Bochum Planetarium of 7th July 2012. There are eight tracks on it (grouped in two sets of roughly 38 minutes each), and if you liked "return" or "steel and steam", I am confident you will most certainly enjoy this one as well. The CD comes with an eight-page booklet with a couple of pictures assembled from studio and live work, plus liner notes written by Archie Patterson of Eurock. Here is some music to listen to:

http://soundcloud.com/doombient-music/ramp-astral-disaster-excerpts

and a bootlegged audience recording ;-) :

http://soundcloud.com/doombient-music/ramp-bochum-bootleg-excerpts

Lots of analogue goodness, and the first proper ['ramp] live album since the release of "oughtibridge".

German KEYBOARDS magazine also published a report on the (technical side of the)show in their current issue which can be ordered here:

http://www1.keyboards.de/magazine/index.html

The CD will be available in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies and can be ordered directly through me. Price for a copy is 15 Euro with shipping and handling included (valid until 31st December 2012). If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with me at stephen at parsick.com.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen.

I for one hate most of my early stuff and I advise everyone not to buy it. I don´t get tired of saying how much I hate some of it. Which is no bad thin IMO because I don´t believe these albums were of any significance, neither to myself, nor to anybody else.

After all, I´m the one who created it and who has every right to value his own work, positively or negatively, because I know exactly what I was striving for -- and where I failed.

What drives me particularly mad is the implication of "your earlier work was much better than what you´re doing now" because I guess I know best what my personal quality standards are and to what extent I´ve evolved since the recording of album XX or XY in 199X.

Record companies influencing the empetus of an album in a way that suits the label would be an entirely different story altogether.

Stephen

When talking about *ambient* music, there are two entirely different *ambient* camps that would define *ambient* by completely different parameters:

a) There is the school of thought that defines *ambient* in the style of Brian Eno´s original works (and those who have followed him). This is the school of *ambient* I would subscribe to as well.

b) There is the type of sedated, Seconal-heavy slo-mo "Techno" that came from the "chill-out" areas of 1990s Techno movement, i. e. 70 instead of 140 bpm when using beats. This would be The Orb, FSOL, Aphex Twin, BOC and countless others that jumped the bandwagon of the Techno hipster movement. As you may have guessed already, this is the type of *ambient* I´m not really interested in because I´ve always found it blatantly boring and uninspired -- and it sounds dated and passé to me. Music that could only have existed in the time bubble of the 1990s.

I thought I´d throw that in.

Stephen (being-clever-mode off)

I think I could make do with that three-panel Serge quite as well .

Stephen

Thanks, Scott . Yes, Markus is a great guy. Probably the only one I take advice from .

BTW, here´s the first review of the album written by Bert Strolenberg / Sonic Immersion (hartstikke bedankt, Bert!):

http://www.sonicimmersion.org/review.php?letter=P&review=72543

Yeah, lots and lots of potential hit singles.

Stephen