Coconut Dealers

 

The Coconut Dealers, if we want to believe the release info, and why shouldn't we? -

only steered their ship through tropical waters for 1 - 2 years. That was more than 10 years ago. 

The crew probably only consisted of Konstantin Shkolnikov. Shkolnikov, as captain, boatsmate and cook all rolled into one, followed the same route that Dolphins into the Future, Wave Temples and other adventurers had already taken.

Afterwards, his trail is lost in the vastness of the sea, in the jungle of an unspecified island or just a faceless satellite city of the Russian Federation.

Whatever he left behind, and however it ended up in Not Not Fun's Britt Brown's hands, here comes almost 2 hours of oceanic bliss, 2 hours of support to bring back the memories of your last seaside vacation to refresh.

„Exquisitely woozy ambient wow and flutter from Russian Federation rogue naturalist Konstantin Shkolnikov, landing square between the distant gazes of Spencer Clark, Huerco S. and 1991.

Hard to resist, the pull of warmer climes and better days is most beautifully at the core of Coconut Dealers’ gently hallucinatory recordings here. Made sometime around 2011, and issued at the time as digital releases which totally escaped most radars, you can trust the ever reliable NNF to bide their time perfectly with this comprehensive survey and reminder of the project, spanning nearly 2 hours of breezy tropical transportation that will surely do in lieu of holidays for us.

There’s no shortage of this style in circulation, but the amount that’s worth your time is small. ‘Coconut Dealers’ is most certainly worth the dive though, turning an array of found research recordings gifted to the artists by an oceanographer friend, into a lush sort of ethnographic collage where rolling surf laps sloshing keys, waterfall sounds, and flanging tape hiss resembling far away jet planes.

Perhaps unavoidably comparisons should be made with Spencer Clark’s myriad “ethnographic” aliases, but also 1991 cult ‘High-Tech High-Life’ album, which shares much of the Coconut Dealers’ melodic wistfulness and washed out tape textures, just like Huerco S. when he vapourises the beats. Treat your ears to a few hours in the sun, no factor 50 needed.“

Boomkat 

„Russian Federation rogue naturalist Konstantin Shkolnikov launched Coconut Dealers in 2011 after being gifted an extensive vault of research recordings by an oceanographer friend. Inspired by their beauty and blankness, he began shaping them into ethnographic collages of rolling surf, sundazed keys, hand drums, tropical waterfalls, and tape hiss, “like notes in the diary of some traveler,” compelled by a compositional muse he describes as “pure visionary.” 

After three self-released digital collections the project ceased activities in 2012. Totaling nearly two hours, this remastered box set presents the entirety of the Coconut Dealers soundsphere, spanning all manner of aquatic and equatorial hallucination: “sunny archipelagos, woeful lagoons in the night, sleepy sand bays of restless waters with no horizon.” This is music of the mind's eye, adrift and ascendent, divined from and for the infinite seas within.“

NNF Release Info on Bandcamp

Isle Enchanted

 A really long, wonderful summer, despite many personal lows this year, was followed by a very nice autumn with temperatures sometimes reaching up to 20 degrees. 

They are days that I would like to spend just in nature, with my face turned to the sun, with big eyes for the colors of the leaves on the trees and always with a little melancholy in my heart. In the reality of everyday life, this often comes to nothing and hours in the forest turn into minutes on the streets between things to do.

A favorite companion on my walks in nature is Fantasy island ethnographer Wave Temples. For over 10 years, my heart beats faster whenever a new release is announced.

2022/2023 was a fantastic Wave Temples year, “Panama Shift” was the first release on vinyl, and there were also a few cassette releases on Possible Motive, among others (later in this program). Before that, things had been quiet around Wave Temples for a long time, partly due to some turbulence in his life.

See also the Interview with Inverted Audio:

 

https://inverted-audio.com/mix/wave-temples/

“Isle Enchanted” was released on Britt Brown’s great Not Not Fun label at the end of 2016.

My brother had just passed away a month before & we were out of ours at the end of the year 

Apartment canceled due to personal use. So it will always be the soundtrack of those days. Someone (presumably Britt Brown himself) decided to put "Masterpiece" on the cover. For me it is, but it could also be on most other Wave Temples releases. The album was released on December 16, 2016 and one of my last actions with the old WiFi was to download this album (the tape only came to me later). The next day we put down new roots in a new place.

The album has some wonderful reviews and descriptions that I couldn't describe any better and, as usual, I'm happy to let them speak for themselves.

„The Florida musician who records as Wave Temples—whoever they are—has chosen an apt name for their project. The first thing you hear on Isle Enchanted is the sound of foaming waves, closely followed by a keyboard line that mimics the sound of a tropical pan flute. Enchanted follows a string of similarly coastal LPs—Sleeping Tortugas, In the Shade of the Island—and its primary concern is not having any primary concerns. The two 15-minute compositions that make up the album drift by dreamlike, consisting of little more than ocean sounds and synths that ripple like the aurora borealis. Where his labelmates on the LA-based Not Not Fun bend and distend synths to create distinctly unsettling worlds, Wave Temples is more serene than surreal.

But what makes Isle Enchanted so engrossing is the way Wave Temples uses repeated patterns to hypnotizing effect. Nine minutes into “Part I,” the landscape suddenly shifts from a simple, two-note lullabye to what sounds like digital windchimes caught in a strong breeze. The tight cluster of notes repeats over and over, ocean roaring behind them, neither gaining nor losing strength. The net effect is weirdly calming, the twinkling keyboards becoming as regular and expected as the next heartbeat. “Part II” is even more translucent; the ocean keeps going, but the synth lines sound like they’re being played in a grotto far below. There are no sharp edges to the sounds on Enchanted; everything is low and flutelike. The album ends with a simple, five-note melody plunked out on what sounds like a computerized kettle drum, the space between each note big enough to contain a whole other song. Isle Enchanted doesn’t command attention or dazzle with complexity. It simply invites you to disappear inside of it for a while.“

J. Edward Keyes - Bandcamp/Album of the Day/04.01.17

„Floridian fantasy island ethnographer Wave Temples is responsible for a unique flow of opaque tropical hallucinations since 2013, issued via a variety of noted tape boutiques. His latest, Isle Enchanted, maps a mirage coastline of salt haze, cerulean water, and smeared, siren keys. Both sides were tracked across three summer days, inspired by notions of Polynesian paradise and the Māori underworld. Blank blue waves swell and ebb, tones float and fade, textures phase and decay – Isolation Exotica, for castaways abandoned on utopian shores. As personal and poetic an encapsulation of palm tree minimalism as any we’ve heard since …On Sea-Faring Isolation (2009). The more hidden the temple the more sacred the space: “This place to me is what it must have been like to discover the island of Capri or Malta uninhabited since beyond ancient days.” 

Recorded live at Hawaiki, June 20-22, 2016. 

Images sourced by WT. 

Design by Britt Brown.  

Mastered by Alter Echo.

ABANDONED PARADISE

OCEAN AT LOW TIDE

CAVES OF THE GROTTO AQUATICA

SAND LAIN BARE, SHIMMERING NAKED IN THE SUN PAST THE WATCHFUL GUARDIANS

DEEP INSIDE WITH POOLS OF RADIANCE

THIS IS WHERE THE SLEEPING GIANT SLEEPS AND HIS ONE-THOUSAND DREAMS

OF LAPIS SCIMMIA AT THE IVORY RUIN

BENEATH THE SACRED CENOTE AND THE LOST SHRINE OF THE MANY SHELLED TRITONS IN THE SACRED WATER GARDEN OF PRIAPUS AND APHRODITE

A WIND QUIXOTIC

Inverted Land

 

Since “Secret Earth” (2019), Wolfgang Moistl’s Aka Wolf Lehmann 

First Album as Voyage Futur, the project is a solid one Greatness 

in my ambient / new age cosmos.

A Voyage Futur album rarely sounds like its predecessor.

And yet it quickly becomes clear what can be heard here.

You can almost always find a place in the apartment 

Find where you can stretch your legs far away from you.

Hands like to be folded behind the neck. The view from the window.

On the recently released “Inverted Land” by vill4in, the marimba plays 

on the majority of the tracks Big role. The fantastic pre-single 

“Ancient Ruins Of The World” also names frame drum, tongue drum, 

bamboo flute, strings & synths.

This defines the sound of the whole album quite well.

The marimba is already known from the previous album “Wellen”

No stranger. But while on “Wellen/Waves” the tracks keep coming back

turn towards Dub and Kraut – as attested in the accompanying text – 

“to bathe in Fourth World lagoons”,  (Thx The Gap!) everything flows slowly here. 

Nobody is in a hurry here.

„Night Falls” also works wonderfully in the morning, with the first one

Cup of coffee in hand. Or tea if you prefer.

And that goes for every other track on the album. 

Here and there crickets chirp or a few birds add their mustard. 

You actually want to hear it all again and again,

and right after that “Secret Earth”, “Inner Sphere”, “Virtuell Moonlight” & “Wellen”.

“Inverted Land” is released on beautifully colored vinyl, with a

beautifully designed Cover again.

Currently only available directly from Vill4in and due to the high shipping costs

not an option for me.

It's possible that there will be a tape release later. The last two releases

Released like “Inverted Land” on vinyl on Vill4in, and later there was

Tape releases on Britt Brown's Not Not Fun.

Put your Heart in my Hand

 

„Every day can't be like a visit to the circus,

Sensations, orchestra, magic.“    -  Felix Meyer / Kaffee ans Bett

2024.

Twenty years of Echo and Rauschen. Actually. 20 years.

And no party, no compilation, no “best of” in sight.

And not a single mix so far in 2024. Is this the big break now?

2024 contrasts with the highly dramatic years of 2019 and 2021,

Still like a very distant relative. A third cousin, perhaps.

Nevertheless, it is a year with many obstacles.

Bicycle falls. Operations. Deaths and final farewells to people and animals.

And finally, a first Corona illness that rages within me, like bad-tempered 

football fans after a lost home game.

And still a lot of gratitude for the little moments in between.

An everyday life that demands a lot, but can be celebrated more and more by me.

And so it was a wonderful summer because of the many plasters on the soul 

not exactly to be expected this year. But we actually had a lot of good moments

by our sea. Many weeks in a row with a lot of sun, as well as in the period before and after. 

Somehow the sun followed us wherever we went. Otherwise it's more of the opposite.

The time at the sea is always characterized by reading a countless number of books, 

good food, lots of nature, good conversations and sometimes not so successful 

conversations, and actually from year to year, also by less and less music.

This year the former country road musician, singer and songwriter Felix Meyer 

played two wonderful concerts on our beloved island.

Both concerts in a rather small setting. So the first concert took place in a wonderful, 

enchanted garden, with what felt like only a few handfuls of enthusiastic listeners.

I had never heard the name Felix Meyer until then. 

Not surprising if you know my musical preferences. But of course this type of music 

is not entirely new to me. As a big fan of the German band “Element of Crime”, I am 

very familiar with this melancholic type of music. Friends of ours who knew about it 

made us promise not to miss it.

We arrived at the last minute on the wonderful summer evening, literally threw our 

bikes into the grass and rushed into the garden, occupying 2 garden chairs, which 

we would soon no longer need.

We had such a fantastic evening, always in close proximity to the wonderful musicians. 

After a drinking break, we went into the danceable second part and at the end they 

played the incredible “Kaffee ans Bett”. As I later found out, it is a ritual of the band 

to come down from the stage or whatever for this last song, to mingle with the audience 

and sing this beautiful song together with everyone present. I think it's the music 

we needed right now. Joy, pain and melancholy, hand in hand.

„Kaffee ans Bett“

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhnAEuJyMnM

We saw Felix Meyer again in September on a much larger scale in Berlin and, 

just like in the summer, spoke to each other a little.

An approachable person who speaks to you at eye level, with wonderful fellow 

musicians who have accompanied him on his journeys across Europe for years.

The soundtrack of our summer is the music of Felix Meyer. A new love of a 

completely different kind & which will last for a long time, probably forever.

All the other wonderful music that reaches my heart never disappeared, 

just a little quieter in the background. I think this music is coming back stronger 

and stronger now, without repressing anything. One does not exclude the other.

I think because of all these things (& I'm not even talking about what's happening in the world),

I've had a hard time posting anything over the last few months.

I hope it comes back slowly.

There is so much fantastic music to discover, share & make known.

Cherio.

Felix Meyer is on Bandcamp too.