Loops & Pieces

The weather here still has an autumnal character, which has a direct effect on my mood. You could easily play another Bohren & the Club of Gore album or other candidates from the league, but let's pull ourselves together and remember Jason Kolars' little brother “Liquid Rhythm”. Also on Dauw a year earlier, “Loops & Pieces”, a collection of rather short tracks, was released, only 3 tracks barely crack the 4 minute barrier, which from the album, but even more so from the track name, suggest rather experimental loop games . And in the end, maybe they are. But they are often based on a dreamy basic melody. There are also short happy moments.

„Gentle sun warmed breezes power new age wind chimes, as softly struck percussion & cosmic tones provides vague forms to these fleeting but most pleasant ambient daydreams from Jason Kolar for Dauw Label.“

-slow music movement-

„Jason Kolàr never fails to pave the way to get to that hidden place between science and magic. This beautiful collection of pieces is an invitation to float in imaginary pristine waters or dream away.“

-objectsandsound-

 

Sunset Mission

 

11 degrees, rain, a cloudy sky, a cold, unpleasant wind: 3 days before the start of the European Football Championship in Germany, June appeared as if October/November were its best friend. Definitely not something I would find funny. 

Unprepared, the only thing that comes to mind quickly is Lynch'esqe Twin Peaks Dark Jazz by Bohren & the Club Of Gore to suitably face the day.

“Sunset Mission” is so beautiful that making tea is almost fun.

„Dark gloomy and very atmospheric noir jazz/ambient, played at doom metal pace. The perfect album to play in solitude while walking through a city late at night.

The grimly titled ‘Bohren & der Club of Gore’ was formed in 1992 by members of hardcore bands with names like ‘Chronical Diarrhoea’ and ‘Macabre Farmhouse’. With this background, you may expect Bohren to follow in a similar pattern of playing incredibly fast and vicious punk or metal. 

What the band actually do though is move all the way to the other extreme, playing a slowed down and incredibly sparse mixture of jazz and ambient. There is still a metal influence, but it’s the dark, gloomy and ponderous sound of doom metal, especially Black Sabbath, that Bohren draw from. With their third album, 2000’s Sunset Mission, Bohren move toward perfecting their noir jazz soundscapes, replacing the guitar of the first two albums with a tenor saxophone.

This fusion of jazz and ambient played at a snail-pace works incredibly well, perfectly creating an impressively dark and haunting mood. The music is always tense and edgy despite being so mellow because of it‘s unpredictable melodies, which is what makes it so enjoyable to listen to. Sunset Mission is the perfect album to play in solitude while walking through a city late at night because of the perfect noir atmosphere. It is not music you can listen to at any time, but when in the right mood it works perfectly. The songs, all instrumental, flow into each other perfectly so it is easy to get drawn in to the atmosphere.

The songs, ranging from 5 to nearly 17 minutes in length are centred on seemingly never ending double-bass lines. While this may sound dull, it is actually one of the reason’s the music works so well. The bass-lines are all gripping and totally hypnotic with just enough subtle changes to stop them from becoming stale but not quite enough to break the trance-like feel that is so easy to get totally lost in. The slow pace puts emphasis on every single bass note, making each one sound just as powerful as the last. The drumming is equally as restrained, though while the often simple and sparse drumming is usually played very gently with brushes it is equally as gripping as the bass, creating much of the music’s tension. With the exception of some rising cymbals that add even more to this tension, the drumming is never that loud, staying in the background for most of the music.

The real highlight of Sunset Mission though, is Christoph Clöser’s fantastic saxophone playing, which sadly loses some of it’s importance in Bohren’s later albums. The rich emotional sax fades in at just the right moments before the music starts getting at all boring, playing unpredictable slow-motion melodies that sound totally improvised and always interesting. The piano plays equally unpredictably throughout, sometimes weaving between the slow saxophone at a much faster pace than everything else to add some excitement to the music and sometimes remaining as laid-back as the rest of the music, with each note left echoing for what seems like an eternity before the next.

The problem with Sunset Mission is that it only works if you’re in the right mood to listen to it. The extended song lengths and long running time of 1 hour 13 minutes can quickly get boring if you don’t get drawn in, and while the album flows with barely noticeable gaps between songs this can make the album sound samey as there isn’t a huge variety between each song. However, while it can definitely be a grower, taking several listens to fully appreciate, Sunset Mission is an excellent album that should appeal to any fan of jazz or ambient music and also even doom metal fans due to the uneasy gloomy doom-inspired atmosphere throughout.“

-Sputnik Music-

https://www.discogs.com/master/60848-Bohren-Der-Club-Of-Gore-Sunset-Mission

A Soothing Walk

 

"This record is dedicated to all those humans, animals and elements that flow around me; no matter the distance, no matter the time. They all shape who I am and the way I listen" - Jason Kolàr

Spanish-born electronic musician Jason Kolàr isn't the worst idea to chase away the remnants of the Sunday evening blues on Monday morning. Basically, every day should be accepted as a gift, we all know that without having to read a work life balance guide. But despite a few wounds that everyone probably carries with them and that don't get less the higher the number on the birthday cake gets, everyday life always tries to entangle us in the banalities of life with its nasty little games and tricks.

At least for me, it is always an enormous effort and a major life task to oppose this. Well, there are ways and means. A good social network is probably the silver bullet. Music is just as big a help. 

Again and again.

And so “Liquid Rhythm” is equipped with everything that makes a Monday seem like a Friday. Listen to “Trigger” and you will find happiness in the here and now. But highlighting individual tracks would be unfair. The 40 minutes of life advice are well spent here.

„ With its minimal tracks aimed at a light-hearted listening experience, »Liquid Rhythm« docks straight onto the genre of Japanese environmental music. Even the opener Bells could have taken place at the same time as milestones in the genre like Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green. Magic Random Exotism as the second track dabs even more deliberately in the colour palette of Kankyō Ongaku with its reverberating strokes. Mere referencing, however, doesn’t quite do justice to Jason Kolàr’s third album, which, like its predecessor from last year, Loops and Pieces (2017-2020), is released on the Belgian label Dauw. I Have No Idea, for example, despite being introspective, features a lively rhythm guitar that steals the show from the synthetic timbres omnipresent on pretty much every track. The title track, by contrast, allows the playful strokes to overlap, weaving a new-age hammock into which A Soothing Walk, despite its name, forces itself upon the listener even more decisively. Chimes and synths that appear almost arbitrarily at irregular intervals strive to dissolve any puritanical demands placed on structure and rules. Free drifting is the motto that promises the most for Spain based Jason Kolàr. And the album obeys, clearly becoming more experimental in the second half, but not losing sight of the meditative beauty it seeks over the entire distance. By the way, according to the press release, all the sounds come from Kolàr’s machines, except for Joan Serinyà’s double bass on Trigger and Avoiding The Obvious, which bestows an earthly face on the first of the two tracks in particular.

-HHV Mag-

„ Boutique Belgian imprint Dauw prepare to release ‘Liquid Rhythm‘, a new album from Jason Kolar who released his ‘Modified Perspectives‘ LP via the ever-essential Stroom in 2018.

‘Liquid Rhythm‘ follows a collection of previously unreleased works released on Dauw via cassette in June 2021, but as enjoyable as these pieces were, ‘Liquid Rhythm‘ stands as a more constructed body of work, sonically rendering the title’s poetic nature in cascading bells and soothing sweeps of synth-work across 10 unique but similar tracks.

There’s a very organic and analogue sound present across the album, a familiar touch to those interested in the likes of Midori Takada’s „Through The Looking Glass“ — and who isn’t counted among that number? Importantly, Kolàr spares us Western fetishisation of the so called ‘Japanese Ambient‘, giving us a personal and unique derivation that straddles modern and ancient techniques.

‘Avoiding the Obvious‘ comes towards the close of the album, a point at which the listener is already well-submerged in peacable tones. The pace is unhurried, and the sounds slowly emerge, almost shy. It’s almost as if the listener is caught between two separate performances; harp strings tumble gently in a loose synchronisation to the billowing winds of the synth.

-inverted Audio-

On Sea-Faring Isolation

 

European Election 2024.

& Sunday Service. Today with Lieven Martens Moana.

It's been about 10 years since I discovered Lieven Martens' music.

At a time when the climax of his project Dolphins into the Future had been reached and all the concerts had already been played. The band had packed up and moved on, you could say. Of course this is nonsense for a laptop based project. Afterwards he continued to make music and sounds under the many of his pseudonyms, but without achieving the presence of the dolphins for me.

Hmmm. I can't even properly express what this music meant to me and what it triggered in me and how important it has become to me since then. That was just something completely new. In addition to well-produced music, with crystal-clear sound, with well-balanced highs and lows (albeit more lows), I've always had a soft spot for lo-fi sound ala Lou Barlow's Sentridoh or the early Folk 'Implosion.

This was somehow lo-fi, electronic, and yet completely deep and took me away to far-flung atolls and deep rainforests. Together with the oceanic meditations of Wave Temples, Hybrid Palms, Vladimir Karpow's X.Y.R., Fluorescent Heights, Magnetophonique, Les Halles, Monte, Komodo Haunts and so on, I found myself in a completely new musical world. When you hear the word Lo-Fi, many people will probably wave you off, but perhaps this term doesn't do this music justice, just as many terms tend to lead nowhere. I felt comfortable here, but it was difficult for me to get out of the water or leave the tropical rainforests again.

“…on Sea-Faring Isolation” was released in 2009 by Britt Brown’s Great Not Not Fun & is Lieven Martens masterpiece for me and contains two killer tracks, “Lone Voyager” & “Memory of Self”, which always really get me and which are always played on repeat. Time for a new experience? Let's go!

Dolphins Into The Future 

„... On Sea-Faring Isolation"

On The High Seas (06'43")

Lone Voyager (08'36")

Onset ~ Beyond Clouds (02'34") *

Memory Of Self (07'05) **

Lapse ~ Dream (05'40")

Aftermath ~ Isle Of Self (05'21")

All sounds and music by L.R.J. Martens.

Recorded in isolation by automatic writing at the Cetacean Nation Studios, Nowemapa ~ Kekemapa 2008.

•   Outtake from a radio play, aired Inuali 2008 during the programme Tyfustijd on Radio Centraal.
• * Originally created for Bolderplaats, a theatre play written and performed by Wietske Van Gils.

This long playing record was originally created as a tribute to the Seafaring Isolation writings of Cetacean Nation founder John Cunningham Lilly M.D., in which he describes the case of lone ocean dwellers past - future ~ present. What happens when an isolated mind roams around the oceanic world by itself, only surrounded by this vast system of overwhelming natural elements? Its ego-entity lodged in a non-human framework. Its human biocomputer committed to process all the ones and zeros in the framework of a giant Seven Waves Octave four-dimensional isolation tank.

At Gaia's Pond, the Oceanic Octave is the only comprehendible code-system up in the ether. All reproduced input digits energise through ocean, through sky, through sun, through wind, through clouds, through rain, through various ocean inhabitants. Thus creating myths through these elements. Everything is, coloured by strict human solitude, writing a new script. Your Dreamtime in this realm is one that radiates by a nonhuman current. Pushing your mind to create a whole different story. A creative ego puzzle with its new truth and reality. An ecstatic truth which could be frightening couid be bliss. A hallucination which might be closer to reality than our own waking-sleep visions of the specific "now".

This Dreamtime of solitude, is the myth of the Seven Waves Octave.

This album is a linear story.

Revealing the Dreamtime from its departure.

Materialising the onset ~ lapse ~ aftermath of the actual thought (de)construction.

As being the aural registration of an alien myth conceived by a human source and consciousness, filtered through the Seven Waves Octave.

As being an evocation of the ocean that is your yetzer ha-_ov, your lover, your mother, your god, your center.

AH! AH! AH!

This is a Cetacean Nation Communication, Nowemapa 2010.

Produced by Not Not Fun Records, Los Angeles, USA. This is a second edition of 300 copies.

Vinyl label drawing by Jessie Schietecatte.

„Timely digital reissue of Dolphins Into The Future's sublime 2009 NNF release. The man also known as Cetacean Nation Institute For Environmental Sounds, Wildlife Tapes Portal Jams, or Lieven Martens to his friends, pillow dives into a semi-conscious ocean of improvised New Age loops, field recordings and pitch-refracted, Riley-esque synthline wanderings, webbed-fingers navigating the way across the keys. Like a saltier Monopoly Star Child Searcher or JD Emmanuel shored on a pacific desert island 'On Sea-Faring Isolation' plays through nonstop with a delightful mystery and dawning narrative with a quiet, serene contentment and enough humour to keep it buoyant. Highly recommended." (Boomkat)

"Returning to the shore returns us to the sure, allowing us to fit this Dolphins Into The Future release into a sonic context that includes Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds (and in particular John Elliott’s Imaginary Softwoods project), Brian Eno (connections nautical and ambient), and the nature recordings of Chris Watson. Martens’ work exists in a world that has all these in it, but it sets itself apart with its insistence on the possibility of “cetacean trance” and its commitment to the life aquatic. Well worth a lengthy immersion." (Tiny Mix Tapes)

Spring Update

 

The month of May was more summer than spring, June is so far more spring than summer.

You can take some time for a spring update.

After recent more drone-oriented releases on the wonderful Secret Domain label that you should never lose sight of, the melodies are back on Heavenchord.

Heavenchord is the musician Artur Galstyan with an incredible output of ambient music with occasional Dub excursions ala Chain Reaction and just as many collaborations.

On the “Spring Update EP”, this time with Infinity Dots, the gently rippling water calms our nerves and birds accompany us through the undergrowth. The melodies flow just as gently through our minds. I never stop listening to Heavenchord. When Artur Galstyan sounds like he does on the 50-minute “Spring Update,” I like to listen the most. He's done it many times before, and now he's doing it again. I love it.

Available as pay what you want at the Moment.

File under: Ambient I Nature I Fieldrecordings

Music for Balance and Relaxation Vol.3

 

Today we spread out our yoga mats on an unspecified Mediterranean Ocean and close our eyes and breathe deeply in and out. „Music for Balance and Relaxation Vol3.“ is based on processed sounds from Roland JP-8000, Yamaha DX11 and Moog Grandmother & brings us 30 minutes of Sounds for Vacation and doesn't take our eyes off the sea in the background. Volume 3, of course, suggests two previous albums and continues where volume one & two left off with beautiful Balearic Ambient Meditations. Tomasz Bednarczyk, who lives and produces in Warsaw and Wrocław and has already produced several releases for Room 40 and the New York 12K label, invites us with “Music for Balance & Relaxation” to pause for a moment and press the inner stop button and to sharpen the senses again for the essential things in life. Now what is the most important thing in life? Of course, every person will name it differently. Anyway: get started.

(Ok. Today is Friday. The weekend is just around the corner. You may have a lot of other things to do before you can relax. Ok, you can roll out your mat on other days too. The important thing is that you do it. 🤗).

Personal note: my roots are actually in Estonia (grandmother & father), but I also have deep roots in Wrocław. This is probably the case for many people from my age group. The Second World War and the curse movements caused families to be scattered far and wide. I don't have a current point of contact, but perhaps Bednarczyk's music is a first contact.

File under: Ambient I Balearic I New Age I Meditation

Listening (to Lambchop by myself again)

 

Although Kurt Wagner's voice has always created spaces in which one is only too happy to spend time, the last Lambchop album that I dealt with more intensively was the 2008 release “OH (Ohio)”. The cover and inside cover showed a couple relaxing after making love, while various violent scenarios unfold in the background through the open window. The album came out in 2008, the albums before that that I was somewhat familiar with were the release “It’s a Woman”, “No, you C’mon/Aw, C’mon” & “Damaged”. 

Well, that was a few years ago now. I didn't exactly have the songs in my ear when I encountered Kurt Wagner's voice again yesterday in „Heimathafen Neukölln“ in Berlin. The concert that friends had invited me to was announced as an intimate piano concert with only Andrew Broder on the piano. Andrew Broder had already worked on the albums “The Bible” & “Showtunes”. 

„Together they manage to reduce the classic Lambchop songs to their essence and thereby bring the emotional power to life.”

I'm not exactly a fan of piano music, and after the initial joy at the successful stage setting (there were only two light sources: one was the piano was illuminated, the other light cone was illuminated by Kurt Wagner, as it suited the scene, this time not in the flannel shirt, but in a stylish double-breasted suit, but not without the obligatory cap), after 15 minutes I thought it might get boring. Always just the piano & the voice. But what nonsense! Of course, Kurt Wagner's voice is never boring & you're willing to listen to him for an entire evening or longer. After an encore it was over after 75 minutes. But the two actually managed to create a kind of flow. The two's playing was a little reminiscent of a classic mixtape. Broder sometimes simply played through & Kurt Wagner got in and out of the pieces & with vocal outbursts from his melodious voice, a whoop here, a hey there, it wasn't even necessary, the audience was completely thrilled. An audience that was already very friendly. Kurt tells familiar stories, in a different set-up, but those who have accompanied him to this day shake their heads in enchantment. I didn't recognize any songs, I wasn't loyal enough to Lambchop's side. On the same tour they covered Talking Heads "Once in a Lifetime", even I didn't recognize that and I have to assume they played it. But a highlight was definitely Sun June’s ‘Listening (to Lambchop by myself again). A beautiful evening that I don't want to miss. Thanks!

„Picture this. A stage in almost total darkness. Two spotlights illuminating a microphone and a piano. Two men wander on stage, one of whom has his hands jammed into his trouser pockets (where they remain for almost the entire night), choosing to lurk out of the reach of his spotlight.

The piano player, undoubtedly excellent, embarks on a jazzy run that he doesn’t then cease for almost half an hour. Neither man speaks. Neither says hello. Both take this very seriously.

Broder creates a suite – veering from jazz to lounge to contemporary classical – over which Wagner sings. Each song runs into the last, each sounds relatively similar to the one just gone.“

-Gavin McNamara-