Hidden Landscapes – Various Artists

Hidden Landscapes is the first full-length compilation from netlabel Audio Gourmet and is a collaboration with Hibernate Recordings and Felt Collective. Across its 14 tracks, it gives an excellent overview of the state of ambient music now, small jewel-like pieces of music that enthrall and beguile. There’s no point in describing individual tracks: the very worthy selection of artists were given the theme of ‘winter’ to work with, and so what we get is a chilly collection of pieces that conjure up a wide range of impressions. I get cracking ice, wind under doors, snow falling behind stained glass, icy bursts of static and the calm beauty of a fresh snowfall. What I don’t get is the sound of cars skidding under lorries, handles falling off doors, old ladies face-planting in the snow… but this is a romantic view of winter and quite right, too.

Notable contributors include Machinefabriek, Offthesky & Pillowgarden, Maps & Diagrams, Ibreathefur, Hessien, The Green Kingdom, M. Ostermeier, Pillowdriver, Damian Valles, Fabio Orsi and more.

Hidden Landscapes is a limited run of 200 CDs available from the Hibernate Recordings shop and is also available digitally via Audio Gourmet’s BandCamp page.
http://www.audiogourmet.co.uk
http://www.hibernate-recs.co.uk

Tim Smith tribute album

As anyone who really likes music knows, Cardiacs have made some of the most beautiful, baffling, frightening pop music ever. That’s an indisputable fact, and it’s a tragedy that the genius behind the band, Tim Smith, suffered a stroke a couple of years ago that has kept him in hospital and incapable of doing much at all, let alone making music.
This excellent tribute album has been put together to raise funds to help with Tim’s care, and that in itself is a reason to buy it. But even more reason is the quality of the music here. Cardiacs’ fiendishly cunning songs have been taken by those who love them and given in some places respectful treatments, in others a new lease of life.
High spots must include William D. Drakes Savour, which kicks the album of very appropriately. Ultrasound’s faithful version of The Big Ship is great, as is The Trudy’s pop-heavy approach to Day Is Gone. There are many glittering gems here, but for me the absolute highlight is Foundling by Stars in Battledress, which is hushed and lovely.
Do yourself a favour, and do Tim a favour – get this immediately.

Sublamp – In Our Hiding Voice

Another excellent new release from Hibernate Recordings. Sublamp is Ryan Connor, a sound and video artist, who’s released some excellent work through Ahora Eterno, SEM, Dragon’s Eye, Friendly Virus, Pehr and Serac. According to Hibernate, ‘In Our Hiding Voice’ is “centered around the kind of listening one might engage in whilst hiding from something or someone, perhaps hiding in empty buildings, underground tunnels or dark rooms in abandoned houses…” That makes sense, because most of the pieces here involve half-heard details wrapped in warm, scuffed drones and crackles that might come from fluffy gramophone needles, faulty air-conditioning, the wind, underground water – you get the idea. At one point I was sharply and uncomfortably reminded of a childhood experience of being under general anaesthetic. It’s an immersive experience, and not an altogether comfortable one at times, but the music demands attention and concentration, and the shortness of the tracks means that none of them outstays its welcome or outlives the usefulness of its primary motif. Recommended.

Shaping the new work

I’m in the process of carving raw musical material into a set of pieces loosely themed around the feelings I get from the landscape of the Penwith area of Cornwall. I’m working with a set of guitar improvisations and field recordings made in the area last December, and collaging, processing and generally interfering with the material in order to create a coherent suite of pieces. All seems to be going well, apart from not knowing where to stop – the raw material seems to be offering far too many possibilities. It’s a case of experimentation leading to a realisation of the music that exists somewhere in my head. I’ll know it when I hear it.

Here’s one of the more successful works-in-progress so far. ‘Zawn’ is a West Cornwall dialect word for ‘sawan’, which means ‘chasm’. It’s a channel into the cliffs where the sea swirls in and out, making booming, roaring sounds. Terrible and beautiful at the same time. All the sounds in this piece come from field recordings and acoustic guitars. Zawn

Lou Harrison’s Gamelan

The first time I heard Lou Harrison’s piece for gamelan and french horn, Main Bersama-Sama I was struck by its beauty and the wonderful melody, but I didn’t find out what it was for many years afterwards. Now I’ve found it again, I’m really interested in exploring more of Lou Harrison’s work.

Hakobune – Away from the Lunar Waters

I listened to this album while painting a rather weathered brick wall white; as I worked I became fascinated with the way obscuring the surface of the wall with paint allowed me to study details of texture and pattern in the old brick. In the same way, the music on this Hakobune release also seems to be about texture and the revealing and obscuring of detail. Behind Hakobune is a man named Takahiro Yorifuji, who lives in Kyoto, and the music was generated by processed guitar improvisations – the result is very guitar-y music, full of swelling reverb and delay, delicate motifs and figures; it’s unashamedly lovely. As I painted my wall, I was struck by how many of the tracks on Away from the Lunar Waters end up being partially or completely obscured by a rising tide of drone and reverb, just as I was obscuring details on the wall with my paint. I was also reminded of Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting In A Room”, where the process of natural reverberation gradually turns speech into music – in places, the guitars cease to sound like guitars and drown in a radiant shimmer. I was also reminded, insistently and unavoidably, of the Cocteau Twins and since the Cocteau Twins aren’t around any more, that will do nicely – it’s more to do with timbre and guitar effects than any specifically melodic or harmonic references. The final track, “Cascading Resonance”, was the standout for me, because there’s a refreshing grittiness and twang to the guitars, but the whole album is an absorbing and worthwhile listen.

This will be released in February by the consistently excellent and intriguing Hibernate label, which you can find at http://www.hibernate-recs.co.uk

Richard Skelton – Landings

Walking on Anglezarke Moor the other day, I was once again reminded of Richard Skelton’s music which, for several years, was informed by, and often recorded in, this wild and beautiful landscape. His album Landings is something of a culmination and definitive document of this period of his life, when he made some beautiful recordings that presented, I believe, a sense of place and feeling unsurpassed in the experimental music genre (yes, more so then Eno’s On Land).
The music itself is very organic, built out of strings that are bowed, scraped, caressed and layered into moving, melancholy and deeply beautiful poems to landscape and memory, grief and love. Field recordings are incorporated, but never in an intrusive way. The textures are pleasingly gritty, and the production is detailed and highly crafted, but never so polished that it overwhelms the music. Where so much ‘ambient’ music seems to be almost a by-product of the techniques used to produce it, this is music first. It’s human, it’s full of feeling, and it’s highly recommended. It’s worth reading Skelton’s ideas about music and landscape, but it’s not necessary to appreciate the music he makes.

What’s all this then?

With the new year, I thought it was about time I started a blog, in which I could reflect on the process of music making and talk about some of the music I’ve been listening to. Hopefully it will be of some interest, somewhere! If not, I will discover hidden depths of solipsism!