Tír Na HiFi

Dermot,
You might have watched this before,if not it’s really interesting,well worth watching...

jadarin wrote:
Dermot,
You might have watched this before,if not it’s really interesting,well worth watching...

Ah that's fantastic John! Looking forward to seeing this over the weekend (between picking a bike!). Thanks a million :)

I'm dreaming (and fuming about this one! Due to Death Waltz's shocking handling of this most desirable of vinyl only release (released last week in a world wide edition of 700 copies) ordinary punters like myself missed out! Oh, of course, you can get if you have a big fat wallet from the likes of Discogs etc. This one reeks of underhandedness and deceit. The mail order companies I deal with on a weekly basis (and who I trust implicitly....not!) never even informed me or the public that they had it in stock. I'm really going mad here. So, yet again, the ordinary faithful customer loses out.....








Says it all really....

Got this one yesterday. Very redolent of 70s soundtracks and a massive Tangerine Dream influence that's more feeling than actual plagiarism. Took me completely by surprise and that's no bad thing at all. Looking forward to hearing it properly in the next couple of days along with classic Tangs film scores : Near Dark, Shy People, Sorcerer, Thief, Flashpoint etc etc :)









http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... s-20120605 - something to remind you of.....

Edit: After listening to the album at length my burning question is: Where have the real BoC gone???? Cannot believe the Tangs influence!!!!!! I'm thoroughly confused :(

Gotta keep this going. God only knows why??? Anyway BoC's new platter has me going all nostalgic for the early synth. stuff of the 70's/80's. Here's the very beginning of Tangerine Dream's venture away from their experimental phase. It was also Peter Baumann's last album with them. DJ Shadow used a sample from Invisible Limits (last track - Side Two) for his Endtroducing album - see yt link below.

My very first Tangerine Dream record. My friends didn't think much of it nor understood it either. And no wonder! As John Peel appropriately once described it : "Music that melts"....








Side Two Track One: Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares

Out with the old and back with the new and exciting vinyl :)







Brainwashed:
A double album celebration featuring contributions by much of the label's current roster. 



The double album celebration of the label, consisting of 18 exclusive pieces from most of the label’s active roster, feels more like a cohesive composition rather than a compilation.  With the vinyl showing no clear delineation between pieces, and the CD version indexed as four songs, it is surely no accident.


Other than the first piece, a field recording by Wozencroft as Touch 33, the remainder of the first side is the only point where who exactly is being heard can be questionable.  Fennesz's "55 Cancri e" retains his understated sense of melody, but buried amidst a low frequency layer that segues almost too well into Bruce Gilbert's sweeping electronic and metallic groans on "Apis."  This too is a bit difficult to discern where it ends and Rosy Parlane's "Awhitu" begins.  It is only through the occasional obvious guitar scrape that Oren Ambarchi's "Merely a Portmanteau" is obvious.

The remaining three sides pair more contrasting artists and pieces together, from the sparse piano tones and low end swells of Eleh's "Overwoven" into BJNilsen's London field recording "The cackle of dogs and laughter of death" and the sequenced white noise of Nana April Jun's "High and Low and Mid Plane Mass".  Ironically, these pairings can also seem to favor one artist over another:  CM von Hausswolff's "Cleansing of the Cruel Tyrant's Chamber" buries a rhythmic pulse under a brittle layer of noise, while Jana Winderen creates a similar ambience with "In a Silent Place" via submerged hydrophones, but knowing the organic nature of her work, as well as the other elements of the environment captured makes her contribution more compelling.

Taken independently, Mika Vainio's "Erstwhile" is quite strong, with sounds generated via electric guitar destroyed and reconstructed digitally to bear almost no resemblance to where they began.  Biosphere's "Gryfici" somehow manages to capture the sounds of his bike's brakes and reshapes them into an appropriately grinding, but also melodically understated composition.

Touch 30 is a lavish gatefold LP, beautifully capturing Wozencroft's photography and understated sense of design.  As a label, Touch has consistently impressed me ever since I heard my first work from them, which I believe was New Order's Video 586 (which remains a favorite).  As I have been following them since, there are always works I favor more than others, and these milestone releases continue that tradition.


 

Some enchanted evening all to myself. Like here....Listening to Roedelius doing his Piano thing.
The first one's live...

Listening to this long lost early computer music classic....Digital, but not as we know it :)







And so we find ourselves once again in the presence of a lost classic with a story to match the best of them. This time it is the turn of Canadian composer Jean Piche and his mesmeric Heliograms, the result of three years of innovation on the System Concepts Digital Synthesiser at Stamford University in the early 80’s and hitherto consigned to the back pages of history through record label bankruptcy.
Sound familiar? In recent years we have been treated to similar archaeological excavations revealing Jurgen Muller, Ursula Bogner, Suzanne Ciani and others – some genuine historical ‘finds’ and others ‘re-imagined’, and all similarly set to remap electronic music history. The story here checks out: this is the work of a pioneer who is now a video artist and professor at l’Université de Montréal.
The influences are immediately attractive: Terry Riley and Steve Reich are on the radar but Harmonia, Cluster and other Krautrock giants radiate through its lush and epic ambiences. This is, if such things mean anything to you, one of the first all digital, computer based albums but it never feels like an academic bleeps and blips exercise. Its steely, oceanic structures are suggestive of contemporary glitch synthesis à la Oneohtrix Point Never and others, the delicately aliasing sounds gently reminding us that this is innovation from the digital rather than analogue sphere. The processed voices add a welcome sense of warmth to the picture, drifting in and out like destabilised radio transmissions, prefiguring contemporary electronic tropes by several decades.
But does it have the credentials to keep the historical romance going strong? The answer is that its softly overlapping layers, despite their digital beginnings, are every bit as warm as our affection for an analogue heyday. Looking forward into an all digital future, Piche’s bright harmonies and bell like oscillations conjure innovative landscapes which warmly reward repeated listening, and like the best multi-layered artworks, reveal new detail at each visit.
-Mark Williams-

Listening to a recent discovery of mine. Two exquisite vinyl examples of his work. His name? Timo Van Luijk - he uses the A F Ursin moniker for his solo work - who also runs the Belgian Metaphon label. A lovely guy to deal with....



«Sound is a fascinating vibration that can take any form. Intangible but you can feel it. Becomes or doesn’t become music. Speaks volumes without words. Speaks for itself.
I’m interested to explore sound and its identity through physical vibration, mainly with cheap or defected acoustic instruments (wind, string, percussion) which I find very charming; they have a strong individual character and they stand completely opposite to the actual technological consumption society.
I’m interested in improvisation, the expression of the moment where playing becomes a method of employing the mind without thinking. Following your intuition without fixed rules or reference, a sense of freedom.
I’m interested in the world of the irrational, tenuous or surreal; creating atmospheres where everything is possible through sound manipulation; modification of instruments or different ways of recording and processing sound.
Live performances happen occasionally and take place in the same spirit; structured improvisations on a small set of miniature acoustic instruments with slight manipulation, partly amplified, on remarkably low volume.»




A F Ursin - Trois Mémories Discrètes




Composition for English horn, flute, percussion, double bass & Hammond organ
performed, recorded and mixed by Timo van Luijk during 2010-2012.