Here's a whole new can of worms for your delectation. At the request of Fran I've decided to open up a new thread where music that would normally end under the Electronica umbrella will be found here. I've decided to call it Alternative Editions of Contemporary Music or AECM for short as a kind of nod to the iconic ECM label. So.....the Techno stuff and all it's various permutations stays in the Electronica section and everything else goes here. Everything else should include the old and new boys. This leaves the way open to the likes the pioneers like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Can, Popol Vuh, Eliane Radigue, Pierre Henry etc. You get the picture..... All this came to light when people kept saying to me:
"This doesn't sound like Electronica at all!" "This is amazing stuff!" "Why is all this fabulous music in the Electronica section??????" "How can I get my hands on this music????"
Great idea... will be following. I'm one of those that thinks of electronic music as just that - "contemporary music". Great to chill out to usually but some bits are ... stimulating I suppose
When SUNN O))) guitarist and all-round drone/metal/experimental bigwig Stephen O'Malley was handed a curatorial role by Editions Mego to provide the albums for their new Ideologic Organ imprint, it would appear (at least at first glance) that he didn't scout about too far to land his first release, as vocalist Jessika Kenney and violist Eyvind Kang both appeared on SUNN O)))'s monstrous 2009 opus Monoliths & Dimensions, the former directing the choir on 'Big Church', the latter providing string and acoustic arrangements on the same track and on 'Alice'.
But as Ideologic Organ is dedicated to exploring "acoustic" music, in all its varied forms, you'd be wrong to be the expecting saturated guitars, cavernous vocals and doom-laden lyrics that one tends to associate with O'Malley's own musical output. Aestuarium is a work of delicate beauty, as pristine as the surface of a lake at dawn on a summer's morning.
Much of this is down to Kenney's remarkable voice. It glides out of the speakers on opener 'Orcus Pellicano' like a quiet brook sliding down a mountainside. It's clear and immediate, yet steeped in history, seeming to stretch towards the listener from across an ocean of time. Kenney sings in Latin, yet her phraseology seems to come from even further back, echoing traditional music from the pre-Roman Celtic civilisations of Ireland and Britain, steeping Aestuarium in a sense of occult paganism, as if Kenney had, prior to recording, uncovered a grimoire of ancient rites and was using them to channel the spirits of her pre-colonial ancestors. Adapting the musical styles of lost civilisations for the modern times is a particularly treacherous exercise.
It's one thing to cover folk tunes that have been handed down from generation to generation, à la Pentangle or Fairport Convention, but to try and recapture music that has mostly been forgotten, whilst all the while making it palatable for modern sensitivities, is another kettle of fish altogether. Just listen to the bile-inducing fluff of Enya or the Titanic soundtrack for particularly bad examples. On first reading about Aestuarium, I was worried it would sound like a dodgy Dark Ages film soundtrack. Instead, it may just be one of the best modern examples of a minimalist tradition that evidently stretches back into the mists of time, but came to a head from the early-60s-onward with the popularity of Indian masters like Pran Nath and Ravi Shankar, and the emergence of modern composers such as LaMonte Young, Marian Zazeela and Charlemagne Palestine; not so much in the actual style (the pieces on Aestuarium tend to be rather short and airy, as opposed to the lengthy deep drones of Young or Nath), but in the way Kenney and Kang stretch into the past and across borders to create arresting “new” drone and vocal music.
How's this for pure craziness and self belief : a digital download that goes on for exactly 24 hours!!!!! All yours for a measly 24 sterling!! I'd normally be lost for words but, being familiar with his solo/remix work plus stints with Nurse With Wound, the quality of the music is stunning.....and I'm still on the midnight hour :)
INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES (СУМЕРЕЧНОЕ СОСТОЯНИЕ СОЗНАНИЯ)
'Incommensurable Magnitudes' is composed of 26 tracks totalling 24 hours in length. Ideally this album would have consisted of 24 tracks each an hour long but due to the limitations of the amount of data that can be uploaded to this download site, each track is 59 minutes long. To complete the full 24 hour cycle 2 shorter tracks of 12 minutes in length ('Tea Break' and 'Up the Wooden Hill') have been added.
The reason for 'Incommensurable Magnitudes' coming into being is a further extension of my musical research and philosophical musings on concepts of time, already supported and theorised with my '...Through Time' quartet of releases. These notions are my own and are NOT based on any intellectual 'reason', academic discipline or mathematical 'truth'. They are personal experiments with sound, sonic structures and clichés that (for me) represent ideas about time travel, memory, illusions of time, astral travel, oblivion, OOBE, nostalgia, death, space travel, science fiction, science fact, marine biology, delirium, human anatomy, non-existence, sleep, hallucinations, suspended animation, hibernation, black holes, dark matter, vacuums, anti-matter, eternity, infinity and.... beyond.
Releasing the recording in this digital form is the perfect format for the piece to be listened to, utilised, experimented with and enjoyed. 'Incommensurable Magnitudes' can be streamed from your digital player in its entirety from beginning to end with no breaks! It can be played as a purely functional piece of music, to while away the hours as you go about your daily routine... a faint drone in the background or a suffocating, all encompassing sonic assault. Equally it can be utilised as an aid to spend your evenings 'researching' a field of your choosing. The tracks can be played randomly or in order, none of the titles relate to any given time of day. Use, abuse and enjoy the music in any way you see fit and hopefully some of you will take on the marathon challenge of listening to it all in one day, a non-stop cycle of 24 hours.
DESCEND AND DISINTEGRATE
credits
released 07 August 2013
All words and music written, performed, mixed and mastered by Andrew Liles at the Bear Den, West Yorkshire, 2013.
Last edited by cybot on Fri Aug 30, 2013 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ulaan Passerine by Ulaan Passerine.
