MetaFilter posts tagged with Ambient

Sounds from Nine Countries

flatluigi — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:28:54 -0800

9 Countries was recorded on location in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Tibet, India, Egypt and Greece between October 2005 and March 2007 by Tom Compagnoni. What you hear has been entirely assembled from these field recordings, no additional samples used.

A mashup / sound-collage / ambient / documentary album by Wax Audio.

SOUNDWALK

vronsky — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:04:06 -0800

24 Hours: The Starck Mix is a unique 24 hour soundtrack, selected, arranged, composed and mixed by Soundwalk for leading French designer Philippe Starck. Whenever you press play, the mix will start from the exact time it is in his current time zone, no matter where in the world he is that day. More soundwalks here. Examples: India, Chanel.

In Bb 2.0

loquacious — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:00:59 -0800

In Bb 2.0

The sonic experiences of Low Light Mixes

colinmarshall — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:53:20 -0800

Dave of Low Light Mixes spins together all manner of textural musical goodness into solid, themed sonic experiences. Component parts include but are not limited to ambient, jazz, "jazz", noise, field recordings and one hell of a lot of Brian Eno.

Untitled

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:09:54 -0800

Accompanied by Aphex Twin's classic Selected Ambient Works II, we have the rarely-seen experimental video Stakker (Westworld) in nine parts: Z Twig / Radiator | Rhubarb | Hankie | Grass | White Blur | Parallel Stripes | Z Twig / Lichen | Blur | Match Sticks Stakker (Westworld) was an experimental video published by the seminal IDM electronic music label Warp Records and made in the mid-1990s by Stakker, the pairing of video artists Mark McClean and Colin Scott who later collaborated with Brian Dougans of The Future Sound of London and Humanoid on the release Stakker Humanoid.

The veiled sound of a secretive world

ardgedee — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:38:08 -0800

Muslimgauze was the sound of an angry Middle East, a prolific source of music dark, spacious and smothering. Tension was a constant theme not only in the music but in the packaging. (For example, Betrayal shows the hands of Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin, and guns, knives, and news photos of an Arab world at war were a common motif in titles and sleeve art.) However, the music wasn't the usual agitprop fare: Music meant to rile a public to a cause isn't normally pigeonholed as ambient, electronica or musique concrete. But the band, hidden from public view, was rumored to donate proceeds to Palestinian terrorists, and that they were eventually silenced by Mossad. Despite the prodigious output -- issuing almost a hundred EPs and albums between 1983 and 1998, over a hundred more since -- limited distribution and perpetual obscurity ensured the rumors were easier to find than the music. While the facts about Muslimgauze have little in common with the fictions, they are, if anything, stranger... Muslimgauze was the nom de studio of Bryn Jones, who lived from birth to death in the same house in Manchester, England. His reclusiveness was extreme even by the standards of IDM artists, performing barely over a dozen times in sixteen years and never visiting the Middle East that fueled his music: When one of his labels offered to pay for a trip to Palestine, he declined. Obviously pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, Jones insisted he was not antisemitic and, for that matter, identified with the plight of people in many occupied lands. Early tracks (when there was a Soviet empire) contain references to Afghanistan, and skimming the catalog will show mentions of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Balkans, Uzbekistan, and other points of tension between Moslems and non-Moslems, or between Moslems. Interviews indicated a perspective on the human aspects of conflicts which seemed at odds with Muslimgauze's revolutionary posture. Wit leaked around the edges of the hardass persona, such as packaging a CD between two ping-pong paddles or titling a track 'Cairopraktar'. Jones began his recording career in 1982 as E.g. Oblique Graph. Inspired by the punk scene and DIY ethos, he released a couple cassettes of ambience and noise, occasionally with politically-themed titles. It wasn't until Israel's invasion of Lebanon that he found his idée fixe, becoming Muslimgauze in 1983 and channeling his obsession with the Arab world into his music. The intensity of his fascination seemed to fuel the intensity of his output; the official Muslimgauze catalog lists 15 titles in 1996 on vinyl, cassette, CD and even DAT, some in editions of only a couple hundred, or an edition of one. In later years, he began exploring reggae and dub in collaborations with Rootsman, and became more active in the remixing scene. According to interviews, he used tape loops but never samplers. In 1998, the peak of his career with 16 new albums and an unprecedented number of live dates (five concerts in five different countries), he was hospitalized with a blood infection and died early in 1999. The owner of Soleilmoon, one of Muslimgauze's record labels, complained that Jones was shipping new material in such volume that he began stuffing them in a cardboard box to get them out of the way. A decade later, a steady stream of new Muslimgauze recordings help foster the fanbase and broaden interest in Jones and his work. A biography is scheduled for publication in April. Fans stay in touch on the Islamaphonia list, and rarities are appearing on the Arabbox site. His music continues to inspire other artists who use his music to score their documentary footage or create music collages of their own, ensuring that the music, and maybe the message, may wander their own ways and recombine again in new hands.

iSerenity

nickyskye — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:58:00 -0800

Like a little serenity? "Ambient sound environments at your desktop for relaxation, privacy and solitude". Soothe yourself with the sound of purring or some birdsong , rainforest, storm, sounds of the beach to go with your tea and contemplation. You might pretend you're taking a train trip, on a plane, visiting NYC. Or for fun you could mix them up, pencil writing and windchimes. Each soundscape has a visual to accompany it as well.

Ambient

Artw — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:29:02 -0800

Brian Eno brings generative music to the iPhone.

Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000

Christ, what an asshole — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:03:15 -0800

Connecticut's Have a Nice Life is responsible for one of the year's most acclaimed, highly conceptual albums this year, Deathconsciousness. The two discs (entitled The Plow That Broke The Plains and The Future, respectively) feature music spanning over five years of collaboration between the two artists, and are accompanied by a 75-page booklet on medieval Italian heretics in lieu of liner notes. Combining elements of shoegaze, new wave, ambient drone, post-rock, experimental industrial, avant-garde dark metal, and electronic music, and citing references such as My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division to their credit, the original and only pressings sold out within hours. Full stream of all 85 minutes available here. Direct mp3 samples here and here. From their myspace: What is Deathconsciousness? Deathconsciousness refers to three things: It refers to the debut double album from Have A Nice Life, featuring over 4 years and 2 hours worth of recorded material. All songs have been re-recorded, remixed, and remastered, including the songs from our demo release, Powers of Ten. It refers to the short book of the same name that accompanies the record. Over 80 pages in length, written by a University of Massachusetts History professor, this book explores the deep religious symbology we used for inspiration while writing the record. The songs contain elaborate references to 12th century apostasies; the book will help those without a background in religious history to understand their meanings. And, finally, Deathconsciousness is the concept that lies at the heart of the record itself: the overwhelming awareness, at all times, of death and it’s proximity.

Afternoon Thursday

vronsky — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:46:09 -0800

Thursday Afternoon

Four Score and a terabyte ago…

panoptican — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:23:37 -0800

Spartacus Roosevelt Hour Podcast is a weekly hour of obscure noise, glitchy electropop, fake nostalgia, bastardized exotica, tweaky lounge, creepy ambient and musical non-sequiturs. Also, it features an Alabaman with a Skype account named Spartacus Roosevelt.

Friday Flash: Areas

Plutor — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:33:44 -0800

After playing Areas, I now feel the world needs more no-click ambient shmups. [via] I wrote a few sentences on how to play, and then I decided half of the fun of the game is figuring it out. So I deleted them. Jayisgames's review has a little information if you have no clue what's going on.

Radiophonic Workshop - Alchemists of Sound

hama7 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:45:48 -0800

Radio phonic Work shop - Alchemists of Sound .

Lou Reed on Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' performed by Zeitkratzer and himself live in 2002

y2karl — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 10:53:55 -0800

Even if Lou Reed had dropped out of music after the break-up of the Velvet Underground, his name would still be forever etched in the history of rock music. Yet his solo career, filled with eccentric detours and radio-ready rockers in equal measure, remains one of the most fascinating canons in all of rock music. Metal Machine Music, however, is a unique entity in itself, proudly pushing at the very boundaries of what pop music is capable of. Zeitkratzer’s performance not only makes the original album ripe for critical re-evaluation, but it’s a performance that stands on its own ground...

Why Does the Music Have to End?: An Interview with Lou Reed regarding how he came to play Metal Machine Music live in 2002.

Serein v3

hama7 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:18:08 -0800

Serein v3

i:wound

hama7 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:06:56 -0800

i:wound

shortwave music

carter — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:47:09 -0800

shortwavemusic An audio blog of music and noise (and musical noise) found on the shortwave band.

See-Through Synth

Mach5 — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:03:08 -0800

Listening to a machine made entirely of windows.

The hills (and everything else) are alive...

2or3whiskeysodas — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 19:43:09 -0800

The idea of treating everyday, ambient noise as music is not terribly new, but Noah Vawter's device turns ambient sounds into music (in a somewhat more traditional sense of the word):

Ambient Addition is a Walkman with binaural microphones. A tiny Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip analyzes the microphone's sound and superimposes a layer of harmony and rhythm on top of the listener's world.

Two Atriplex albums finally released!

flabdablet — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 03:00:09 -0800

Two Atriplex albums finally released! [via mefi projects] If, like me, you're a Fripp and Eno fanboy - give our very own Jimbob a listen. Lovely work.

Time Lapse Cityscapes

jonson — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 18:08:13 -0800

This video (set to The Album Leaf's "Outer Banks") is an absolutely gorgeous bit of time lapse photography, all shot around a cityscape I couldn't recognize. Watching it made me think of this movie, which is another bit of ethereal time lapse urbanscape beauty, this time shot in a city I did recognize (downtown Los Angeles & LAX initially, San Francisco later). Direct download 480p version of second film here. Of course, watching the second film reminded me of this previously posted third film (Rivers of Light, by the Grass Collective) involving cityscapes(downtown L.A. again - flash based preview here), this time in slow motion, and without audio. All links are quicktime, and HUGE, but highly recommended and very, very pretty.

44 minute singles, working with the KLF, and now a Podcast!

beaucoupkevin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:08:55 -0800

The Orb, known as one of the principal architects of ambient house, have receded into relative obscurity since the popular heyday of the electronic music movement in the US. Despite changes in the lineup - the group now consists of a duo featuring founding member Dr (Duncan Robert) Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann. Paterson's DJ sets are the stuff of legend and I was pleased as punch that they've just put together a podcast (actually a 50.8mb .zip file containing an mp3) that's available through their minimal website.

No, I'm not sure how they get it to not devolve into a wall of feedback... though that'd be pretty rad too.

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:05:19 -0800

A Piano In A Gallery. David Cunningham (the guy behind The Flying Lizards! Wikipedia because the main at-least-quasi-official site's down, but while you wait 16 days for that, why not read this interview with Deborah Lizard for your FL Fix) and his new project... A Piano In A Gallery. No, he's not actually PLAYING the piano -- the visitors are. It's a sort of similar thing to both Brian Eno's gallery work with ambient tape loops on different time cycles, creating an ever-shifting collage of sound and David Byrne's recent Playing The Building. The room is mic'd, and the sound is run through a piano, and amplified, both bringing background noises to the foreground AND creating feedback-style loops, as those sounds are also run into the mics and so forth. So... if you happen to be in London.... [via WFMU]

wright/eno speak

crunchland — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:57:27 -0800

Will Wright & Brian Eno, Playing with Time. (MP3, Vorbis) Will Wright, creator of the video games "Sim City," "The Sims," and the forthcoming "Spore," spoke with Brian Eno on many subjects, including time, and generative programming, on June 26, 2006, in seminar put on by the Long Now Foundation. (Summary).

Window Exchange

nickerbocker — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:37:22 -0800

Window Exchange, Snowflake Series. Ambient techno with nice imargy for your enjoyment.