[ Hypnos Forum ]

There have been some great electronic/ambient scores for films lately. I don't know if this is a new trend but it feels like it. Recently got the soundtrack for the original Tron (1982) by Wendy Carlos, and along with Edgar Rothermich's recent re-recording of the incomparable Blade Runner score by Vangelis, it's got me thinking about electronic beauty and weirdness in more recent films. For some of these films, the music is an inseparable part of the presentation; some may lack traditional narrative storylines in favor of pure visual expression, and sometimes it works...but I'm enjoying to the extreme most of these movies because of my deep love of electronics in music.

A quick short list of recent movies and their soundtrack authors (will use soundtrack and score interchangeably, because I can't help it):

Beyond the Black Rainbow: Sinoia Caves
Under the Skin: Mica Levi
Ex Machina: Ben Salisbury/Geoff Barrow
Kumiko the Treasure Hunter: The Octopus Project
Enemy: Danny Bensi/Saunder Jurriaans
Maniac (2012): Rob
It Follows: Disasterpeace

Not to forget more mainstream work like Daft Punk's for Tron Legacy...which reaches to the heights of soundtrack greatness...

Emeralds are getting me interested in the electro/ambient world again. There is tradition here, and innovation, but overall a solid emotional cohesion and sense of inspiration (purity?) that is so refreshing.

Albums I have so far:
Emeralds (s/t)
What Happened
Does It Look Like I'm Here?

All most excellent, and brimming with power. It's got me wanting to check out others in the same realm, like Oneohtrix Point Never. But I'm so slow and cautious in buying music these days, due to lack of funds and jadedness in general, it may be a while.

Just listened to this program, it is amazing. Music from moth wings. The microsonic worlds of insects. All around excellent audio joy. Check it out here: http://hearingvoices.com/news/2009/06/hv016-bugs-and-birds/?submit=Go

Very excited to see this news from Robert Rich. A new album and tour dates:

- New Solo CD: Ylang

Robert Rich's first solo studio album in almost three years,
Now available directly from us at http://robertrich.com

The title comes from ylang ylang, a flowering tree that grows
in South Asia, with a mysterious fragrance that embodies
elements of shadow and light, eros and gnosis, earth and sky.

Ylang pushes the boundaries of Robert's melodic world-fusion
vocabulary, such as on Seven Veils or Propagation.

Ylang blends Rich's expressive steel guitar, shimmering organic
electronics and yearning flute melodies with influences as
diverse as south Indian Karnatic music, pulsing minimalism
and pensive jazz; while its deconstructed drums and blurry
guitar feedback might feel at home with Sigur Ros or Bark
Psychosis.

Rich enlists help for this undertaking from a circle of trusted
musician friends. The rhythmic scaffolding for the album comes
from two very different drummers. Ricky Carter adds his
intelligent sparse drumming, fluid with syncopation but complex
in meter. These rhythms could be a slow tempo homage to Jaki
Leibzeit from Can. Post-processing transforms them into rubbery
chuffing abstractions. The other rhythmic foundation comes from
the Karnatic mrdungam playing of Sakthivel Muruganandhan, which
also wanders into Rich''s sonic blender, shifting from time-
stretched blurs into organic live duets with bansuri master
Sunilkumar Sankarapillai.

Lilting in and out of this heady atmosphere of South Indian
music and minimalist space jazz, the wordless voice of art-pop
virtuoso Emily Bezar adds a feminine intelligence to several
pieces, and subtle melodic guitar additions from Haroun Serang
augment Rich's soaring lap steel feedback. With acoustic bass
from Paul Olguin and string additions from Forrest Fang and
Hans Christian, the sonic texture warms to a glowing woody
earthiness. Rich's audiophile production and delicate sound
design glue the textures together into a seductive and inviting
mossy nest. From these disparate elements, Ylang forms a sonic
entity unto itself.

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- 2010 North America Tour

A tour is taking shape for late springtime. Below are the dates
so far. These should become more certain in the following weeks.
Check http://robertrich.com for updates.


Sunday April 25
    Toronto, ONT Canada
    St. George the Martyr Church
    197 John Street, Toronto, ONT, M5T 1X6

Saturday, May 1
    Philadelphia, PA
    The Gatherings
    St. Mary's Hamilton Village, 3916 Locust Walk.
    Details at:  http://www.thegatherings.org

Tuesday May 4
    Hartford CT
    University of Hartford, Wilde Auditorium

Friday May 7
    Burlington Vermont
    Flynn Space, 8:00 PM, $28 ($20 students)
    Flynn Center for the Performing Arts
    153 Main Street, Burlington VT 05401
    Box Office: 802-863-5966, www.flynntix.org

Saturday May 8
    Sherbrooke QUE
    Plymouth-Trinity United Church
    380, Dufferin Street
    Info: Erich Langlois <erich_langlois@hotmail.com>

Saturday May 15
    Woodcliff Lake, NJ - One Thousand Pulses house concert
    www.onethousandpulses.com

Tuesday May 18 (awaiting confirmation)
    Chicago Cultural Center
    78 E. Washington St., Chicago IL 60602

Friday May 21 (TBA)
    Louisville KY - University of Louisville

Sunday May 23 (TBA)
    Memphis, TN - University of Memphis?

Friday May 28
    Kansas City MO
    Gottlieb Planetarium at Union Station
    30 West Pershing Rd, Kansas City, MO. 64108

Saturday May 29 (TBA)
    Des Moines IA

Friday June 4 (TBA)
    Santa Fe NM
   
Sunday June 6
    Tucson AZ
    Solar Culture, $10
    31 East Toole Avenue
    Tucson, AZ 85701
    (520) 884-0874

Saturday June 12
    San Jose, CA
    CET Soto Theater
    701 Vine Street
    San Jose, CA 95110

Saturday June 19
    Pomona, CA
    DA Gallery. free admission
    252-D South Main Street, Pomona CA 91766

Thursday June 24
    Portland, OR
    The Clinton Street Theater
    2522 SE Clinton St.
    Portland, OR 97202
    Events Phone: 503.238.8899
    Message/Contact Phone: 503.238.5588

Friday June 25
    Portland, OR
    Sleep Concert - limited audience

Sunday June 27 (TBA)
    Seattle, WA

It must go, need the cash. Thanks for browsing and bidding:

http://shop.ebay.com/madcaplaughs000/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=

Rabih Abou-Khalil is master Oud player who also makes some of the most interesting world music I've heard. His music really does justify the category World, encompassing multiple national traditions and instruments, somehow anchoring it all with master Oud playing.

I've owned the album Tarab for quite awhile; listening to it last night reminded me how awesome Khalil is, and made me want to share my enthusiam with everyone here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabih_Abou-Khalil

http://www.myspace.com/rabihaboukhalil

Tetsu Inoue is an ambient/electronica mastermind, and I feel that his work is near the top of the greats in this field. I first got into Ambiant Otaku, which I found in the early days of my exploration of ambient music. It was an absolute dream to experience this album. Then I discovered the glitchy wondrous madness of his releases for the Tzadik label. I sold those albums at one point, when I got overloaded with that kind of music, but I am thinking it might be fun again to listen to them with my more experienced ears. Now I experience an album like Inland, which combines all his skill into a work that just keeps on giving. I had this one playing for days on end, and I think it is some of the greatest and most vital new ambient works out there. Excellent reissues of World Receiver and Slow and Low in the past couple years have made these classics accessible, and they are, for me, taking this artist up into the heights. He is able to do glitchy experiment and serene ambient in such a unique way, and now seems able to combine these two factors into an inspiring whole.

This is fascinating. Why is the octagon so attractive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octagon_house

Through the intrepid sonic explorers of this forum, and by my own restless searching of late for interesting music, I have found some curious and wondrous labels that are putting out music that rivals the bigger names (in ambient world terms) in my collection. It's very refreshing to open up a bit more and go off the beaten track. I think early on in my ambient/electronica searching I felt a bit burned by some of the obscurer stuff I was picking up, so retreated for a time in filling out my collection with more well known artists that I could rely on much more easily. But my search for more unique packaging, raw vision, and diverse takes on what ambient means has led me to some of the following great labels.

Diophantine Discs: http://discs.diophantine.net/ They use Stumptown Printers for their packaging, and the music in wonderful from what I have checked out so far (excellent works by Brian Lavelle and 'kirchenkampf')

I believe the releases of this label have been mentioned on this forum. I have just begun checking them out and ordered some up for myslef (Mystified and Bones of Seabirds). Very promising, and I am getting into the mini cd experience: http://www.small-doses.com/

Please share if you have any favorites or new discoveries.

Thanks to the Hypnos forum, I've found out about a musician by the name of Takahiro Yorifuji, who under the name Hakobune is rapidly becoming one of my all time favorites. There is a kind of focused purity and stream-lined essence to this music that has so deftly and instantly drawn me in. The first Hakobune album on the U-Cover label is entitled "Sense of Place", and I think this perfectly sums up how I feel about the music. It evokes so strongly a place I have deep in the back of my mind, a place where I have been, or want to go to again; it is undefined however, and could be a dream location. More like a sensation possessed of, or adorned by, the qualities that attach us emotionally to a physical environment. What blows me away about Hakobune is that the music is so emotionally driven, but so detached, distilled to an essence; There is no obvious defining emotion, it seems to hover near joy, nostalgia, melancholy, longing, while not being bound by any of these definitions. The mind floats freely on it. I feel like I am right there, in the place where the musician is making the music, the place he wants me to see and experience, without even having to define that place concretely. Such a strange and wonderful evocation! He is showing us a place that could be right outside his own door, or even the view from his window, but it merges with the magic of places we dream of in our own private hours.

One of the important things about Hakobune that makes it more powerful, I feel, is the "cropping" that is performed by the artist. In the realm of ambient, I am just beginning to realize how crucial this is. The songs of Hakobune are generally either short on the two full albums he has, or if long, comprise part of a relatively short mini cd. So either way, we are given an exacting and shaped expression of sound. The songs seem to end at just the right time, leaving the listener uplifted and dreaming. These songs never seem to overstay their welcome, giving just enough to achieve the full expression, then drawing back.

But listening to the music of Hakobune has really made me examine the nature of ambient. Do I like this music so much because it strikes a special chord with me personally? Does it seem to evoke the country of Japan itself, a place that I find so mysterious and full of wonders, places I want to explore?

Whatever it is, I am feeling extreme enjoyment from these sounds, and have collected all the Hakobune I can find. I think I've found them all: Sense of Place, Wandering Toward What Was Unsaid, Melting Reminiscence, We Left the Window Open Sometimes, and on the way is the artfully packaged double 3" split release with David Tagg on http://eedmusic.squarespace.com/, which appears to have sold out quite rapidly.

So, since my knowledge of the guitar ambient world is limited, I am curious to know how Hakobune might fit into it. How unique is his sound in this realm, and do you feel that he merits the acclaim that I give him?