If you're in or maybe even anywhere near Holland (Amsterdam) between february 25 and 28, you definitely should not miss Sonic Acts XII - "Spatial Explorations in Art, Science, Music and Technology.
This bi-annual festival must be one of Holland's most important event in experimental electronic music. But not 'just' music: the multimedia event also presents expositions, installations, conferences, sound walks, and of course a lot of other immersive aural experiences.
It's not ambient, and it's only remotely electronic.
Still, when I discovered this album last week (it was released in march this year), it left me completely speechless and utterly fascinated.
The Happiness Project is a concept created by Charles Spearin from Toronto, known by some for his contributions to Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene.
For this project he has been interviewing some of his neighbours in downtown Toronto, and used their recorded voice to create the musical track.
In these sample-laden times that in itself does not sound very spectacular, but Spearin focussed on the melody of the voice and doubled it with a musical instrument fitting the voice. The pitch of the voice is never changed, but rhythmic and melodic patterns are created by repeating some of the phrases. Thus resulting in a sparkling and engaging kind of experimental jazz music.
I'm very proud to present this ambientblog.net flyer, designed by Ingmar Hugen (Planet KL / Dub Infusions):
flyer front
In december 2008, dutch musicians Frans Friederich and Michel Banabila met each other performing on the 'RadioLines' performance, organised by the (now almost deceased) radio programs Folio and Supplement.
Three musicians performing simultaneously, while live-mixed by one of the radio-makers. The musicians had no influence on the resulting mix in any way (there even was a possibility they were playing their parts without it being heard at all).
(The musicians brave enough to take this risk were Michel Banabila, Frans Friederich and Floris van Bergeijk - the resulting music can be found and downloaded [here].)
For edition "P" of Frans Friederich's Recyclopedia, a series of 26 multi-styled CD's (one for every single letter of the alphabet), Michel Banabila created a beautiful remix, inviting dutch trumpet player Eric Vloeimans to play the additional trumpet part.
This track is unclassifiable: it's jazz, pop, electronic, fourth world and maybe even more.
It is also a perfect example of what can happen when open-minded musicians work together for the sake of music, not caring about whatever expectations there may be!
If you're lucky enough to have a internet-enabled mobile device with unlimited data access, you can listen to the Ambientblog podcast mixes directly.
The weblog pages are stripped down for mobile use, so you can now easily listen to the mixes as a soundtrack of your journey!
No need to be anywhere near a computer!!
NOTE:
The files have been moved to a different server on july, 17.
As far as I can see the issues mentioned below have disappeared.
Please let me know if you experience any more trouble when streaming or downloading.
If you're experiencing irregular issues when downloading or streaming the mixes from the podcast server, please read on:
While looking for a podcast server to host the mixes/podcasts, I chose podbean.com.
After uploading the first mixes, I started to notice that sometimes, at irregular intervals, the mixes fail to play or download.
As far as I can tell now, this is only the case when you are contacting the server from Europe, possibly due to a faulty configured DNS server somewhere along the way.
Visitors from outside Europe probably (hopefully) do not encounter this problem.
From my experience, it sometimes helps to restart the computer or just wait a while, because the next visit another route may be chosen to contact the server.
Of course I contacted podbean tech support (not to say I stalked them about this issue), and they are looking into it. I have asked them to put the ambientblog files on another one of their servers.
(Lowlightmixes also uses podbean, and I never experienced this problem downloading those files...in fact that's the main reason I chose podbean...)
I really hope this issue will be solved soon, and - if not - I will transfer all files to another server a.s.a.p. (suggestions for good podcast service are welcome).
Please be patient for a while, and keep checking back regularly...
BTW:
I'd like to know if you ever experience these issues or not, and which location you're visiting from. This may help investigate the issue.
Today, Lowlightmixes posted a kind recommendation to Ambientblog.
Thanks, Dave, for these kind words.
I'm especially honoured, since I'm a regular visitor of Lowlightmixes myself.
I believe we share a vision in our approach to creating our mixes of ambient music.
Lowlightmixes has a vast collection of mixes to listen and download: at this time, you'll find over 40 different titles, with a wealth of interesting music to discover!!
So, if you're not a regular visitor yet: be sure to check out the mixes on Lowlightmixes too. It's definitely worth your time!!
You may have noticed the name of this weblog has changed from 'DreamScenes' to 'AmbientBlog.Net'.
Nothing else has changed, all other links/locations/entries remain as they were.
The new name is, of course, the same as the starting URL: http://www.ambientblog.net.
You may want to bookmark that link if you're interested.
Why this change?
When you listen to this album you hear quiet (Indian) Music - tambur, oud, violin, slide guitar, flute - with an occasionally added non-indian touch (like the trumpet of Nils Petter Molvaer, or (REM's) Bill Rieflin's percussion).
But when you listen closely you will hear all kinds of things are happening behind this music.
Fragments and splinters bounce around like light in a house of mirrors (hence the title, of course).
Folio, a dutch Radio 6 program focussing on new electronic music, is one of the few "experimental" radio programs left in Holland.
Three of these programs from Radio 6 - Folio, Supplement (Avant-Garde) and Café Sonore (sound art) - have compiled a webstream called Outer Limits.
Outer Limits deals with music "Beyond": electronic, ambient, experimental, avant-garde and sound-art. It is compiled from music that was presented in earlier radio shows, but also contains music that could have been on one of these shows.
This webstream may be of interest to anyone that can handle more (and sometimes less) experimental music/sounds. And since it's available 24/7, broadcasting music uninterrupted and without spoken introductions, it's also especially interesting for international audiences that cannot understand the dutch language of the original radio-shows.
