A magnificent weekend! Beautiful, sunny weather, home repairs completed, and now to spend the evening hours awash in sonic bliss (presently Spacemind’s psybient mix entitled, Distant Worlds) and furiously poring over texts on the history of ambient music, taking note of major works which had previously escaped my radar.
Matt Anniss has just published a breathtaking examination of Ambient House music rich with samples of the works discussed. The write up discusses press documents and mailing list exclusives from the KLF add the dawn of the Chill Out scene, the Land of Oz parties, nights at Trancentral, veterans like Steve Hillage, David Toop, and Manuel Gottsching, the Telepathic Fish and the Spacetime parties, Megatripolis, guest speeches from Terence McKenna, Alan Ginsberg, George Monbiot and Timothy Leary… it is absolutely fantastic.
And Mike Watson (producer of Ultima Thule in Sydney) has done an exquisite job provided a deeper, historical perspective on many of the most significant and influential artists in the field of ambient music on his website, AmbientMusicGuide.com
A relaxing evening at home, inspiring reading, and a hot cup of coffee. What more does a man need?
Today’s playlist is Mentalism: Psybient Dreams, a 400-hour archive of psybient space music.
The list features ~450 psychedelic ambient / psychill artists including Spacemind’s monumental mixes and veteran artists like Carbon Based Lifeforms, Shpongle, Hallucinogen, and Solar Fields.
Now playing the track that initiated me into the genre: Cell’s “Audio Deepest Night.”
This morning saw the conclusion of our latest archival project. The world’s longest-running ambient radio program, Hearts of Space began broadcasting slow music for fast times back in 1973. The original program was a 3-hour set, shortened to its present 1-hour format when the show began public radio syndication in 1983.
Since syndication Heats of Space has aired 1080 hour-long episodes showcasing quality ambient music each week for over 30 years. Innerspace has successfully compiled a complete archive of the show’s broadcasts and will continue to add new episodes as they are aired.
We’ve made sure to uniformly name and tag each program and to include the original broadcast date and a companion track listing with the metadata for each episode.
Beginning next week I’ll be moving into a larger office and wanted to create a downtempo chill-out library as a relaxing ambient soundscape for my work day. The Hearts of Space broadcasts will be added to a rotation along with other complete label archives, such as:
– the six phases from the late Pete Namlook’s ambient FAX +49-69/450464 label
– the intelligent d’n’b sounds of LTJ Bukem’s Good Looking Records and its companion projects
– the first ~150 records on the Ninja Tune label for some jazzy, downtempo electronic music
– a wonderful 330-hour audio archive of psybient albums from Simon Posford and other prominent figures of the scene
– and an additional 72-hour collection of quality psybient mixes by Spacemind
The majority of these selections are not offered by any of the major streaming networks or from current commercial markets, but Innerspace Labs has got it covered.
And you can check out Spacemind’s mixes on Youtube. Here’s Light Reactions (Remastered)
I’ve really been enjoying my copies of Gas’ Nah Und Fern vinyl set and the deluxe edition 9LP set of William Basinki’s epic Disintegration Loops. It seemed long-overdue that I retrace my musical steps to the summer of 2009 when I’d first crossed paths with a fellow music-lover and ambient guru who introduced me to Gas in the first place.
He’d mentioned several similar artists which I briefly sampled but never fully-explored. There’s no better time than the present to remedy that mistake.
This friend had a particular affinity for Nordic-based “arctic-ambient” music – frigid soundscapes of isolation and desolation. Still these recordings had a cerebral and meditative quality that really draws the listener in and that’s something I really need in my life at present.
So I began my re-visiting of 2009 with an artist whose name happened to surface in one of my online vinyl communities. (Call it a sign if you’d like.) Biosphere is Geir Jenssen – a Norwegian musician specializing in ambient electronic music. It was while researching him that I first-encountered the term, “arctic-ambient” and I just had to hear more. In 2001 users of the online rave community, Hyperreal voted his Substrata LP as the best all-time classic ambient album. It was this very album which surfaced in the vinyl community and inspired my rediscovery of the genre, and I was truly impressed by the transportive quality of the record.
Another artist I recalled as having worked with Biosphere was HIA. Higher Intelligence Agency is the music project of Bobby Bird of Birmingham, UK. I was instantly excited to learn that he had released two ambient glitch albums on Pete Namlook’s brilliant FAX +49-69/450464 label of which I make frequent mention.
HIA collaborated with Biosphere on two live recordings, namely the frigid Polar Sequences in 1996…
…and the more temperate Birmingham Frequencies in 1999.
These are wonderfully expansive, atmospheric recordings and make for excellent headphone listening.
But stripping things down to the very shell of ambient music I found the next half-forgotten memory of the summer long-passed. Deathprod is Norwegian artist Helge Sten. (I envision Norway as being absolutely overrun with ambient laptop musicians.) If you only buy one Deathprod album, get the self-titled Deathprod box set. (Not cheating – box sets are okay in my book.) The 4-disc set comprises Morals and Dogma, Treetop Drive (a long-deleted album from 1994), Imaginary Songs From Tristan Da Cunha from 1996, and “Reference Frequencies” (a disc of previously unreleased, rare and deleted tracks). Better-still, Deathprod Collaborated with Biosphere in 1998 on the album, Nordheim Transformed.
Christian Fennesz (performing simply as “Fennesz”) of Vienna, Austria has produced a number of albums in the same stark, ambient-electronic vein. Highlights include his 2004 album Venice,
Endless Summer from 2001
and Black Sea released in 2008.
I also enjoyed his collaborations with ambient veteran, Ryuichi Sakamoto – Cendre (2007)
…and Flumina (2011).
Fennesz creates white-noise washes of modified guitar loops very much in the spirit of the Frippertronic tape works of Fripp and Eno and Sakamoto adds a refined touch of modern-classical solo piano.
Deaf Center is the last major piece of this dark ambient puzzle. Norway’s Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland produce epic and theatrical minimal soundscapes. To steal a beautifully-concise description from RYM user, Son_of_Northern_Darkness – Deaf Center is, “a nice soundtrack to the construction of your own snow-coffin.”
Neon City was an impressive first-outing for the duo, but their first full-length LP released the following year, Pale Ravine stands as their most cohesive work thus far.
Neon City
and the haunting, Pale Ravine
To close with something a bit more lively, Sweden’s own Carbon Based Lifeforms leans more in the direction of psybient music, with their heavy usage of melodic loops, echoes, and steady rhythms. This is ambient music with a vibrant pulse. Check out World of Sleepers
So thank you, my old friend for sharing such wonderful music with me. I’m sorry it’s taken me all these years to really explore it, but better late than never!
Recently, while exploring the early Miles Davis recordings, I discovered the Miles Davis Quintet LPs released on the Prestige label in the years before his signing with Columbia.
For the past several months I’ve been enjoying the 72-disc Complete Columbia Recordings Collection so I picked up a digital archive of the Miles Davis Quintet albums and enjoyed the sessions very much.
Their final four albums released on the Prestige label were Cookin’… (57), Relaxin’… (’58), Workin’… (1959), and Steamin… (’61) …with the Miles Davis Quintet.
A quick scan of discogs.com made it clear that original pressings were out of my budget, but that remasters were pressed throughout the 80s and early 90s and readily available, still sealed, for around $20 apiece. The total with shipping would be $86 for the remasters, so I spent a few extra days investigating a cheaper option.
The following Saturday I found my answer! In 1972 and 1974, Prestige released two double-LPs with matching artwork and typography remastering all four of the albums I was after. Better still, I acquired both sets in VG+ for a total of $21.
Proud additions to my Miles Davis collection!
Next I jumped at the opportunity to order a copy of Moondog’s second self-titled LP from 1969. It was my first exposure to the legendary blind avant-garde classical street performer and Odin-impersonator, and I knew I had to have it for my library. The LP was reissued in 2003 but I secured a clean original pressing for $50, so I was happy.
Later, while discussing early German avant garde-music with a coworker, he mentioned The Second Viennese School, which I investigated as soon as I was home from work. There is a digital Collection available which includes Webern: The Complete Works (a 6-disc set), Schoenberg: The Piano Music, and the 1909-1935 Berg Collector’s Edition, (an 8-disc set). I will be exploring these recordings while reading about the composers more in the coming weeks.
Out of curiosity I searched for the term “avant-garde” in the digital marketplace and found a wonderful set to further my education. The Progressive/Kraut/Avant Garde/Psych Collection contains 753 albums totaling over 517 hours of material, most of which are out of print on vinyl. Resources like these are excellent starting points for those taking their first steps into progressive rock and who learn best by actually listening to these rare recordings before ordering the original pressings.
Also on the subject of volumous box sets, there is a magnificent 8-DVD collection which I can’t recommend enough for listeners looking to explore the psybient genre I featured in my previous post. The discs are expertly organized – the first disc compiling the works of Simon Posford (Celtic Cross, Dub Trees, Hallucinogen, Shpongle, The Infinity Project, etc.)
And DVD #6 is a compilation of fourty official psybient various-artists collections.
In all, the set contains over 329 hours of psychill albums and is an essential collectable for archivists or for anyone in need of some meditative chill-out music to spin while they’re working.
And the final multi-disc set of the week is the limited-edition Klaus Schulze: Ultimate Edition which compiles 50 CDs of previously unreleased or limited-release recordings into one massive set of ambient bliss.
I’ll be playing each of the collections highlighted above at the office for certain.
And to celebrate my new career (and having my own office for the first time in my life), my girlfriend presented me with a 24×36 framed print of a young Miles Davis to hang behind my desk.
I added a framed original pressing of Birth of the Cool to the adjacent wall and picked up a new pair of speakers for my desk.
I had a quiet evening to myself, and I took advantage of the free time and finally sat down to explore Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook’s Dark Side of the Moog 12-disc series.
Each of the track titles play off of classics from Pink Floyd’s catalog, such as “Wish You Were There,” “A Saucerful of Ambience,” “Obscured by Klaus,” and “Careful with the AKS, Peter.”
From Dark Side of the Moog I moved on to Pete Namlook’s solo efforts and quickly discovered that he had founded a record label, Germany’s Fax +49-69/450464 (and yes, that is his fax number.) Nearly 450 releases premiered on the label from 1992 until his death in November of 2012, and additional research revealed that Namlook, himself was performing with the ~40 artists and under various monikers which comprised the label’s catalog. FAX earned a reputation for ahead-of-the-curve, timeless electronic ambient music, which still sounds fresh today unlike many of the 90s fad electronic artists who came and went over the decade.
Unfortunately, Namlook released only 500–1000 copies of the majority of the titles on his label. Then I found a 17 LP retrospective of FAX’s finest work called the Final Vinyl Collector’s Box Set. Sadly, there were only 25 copies produced worldwide. The set was meant to be officially released, but at that time Fax changed to a non-vinyl distributor and so the boxsets have never been officially released. However, Pete Namlook confirmed that this is an original Fax release. The last copy to surface sold for $550 in 2010.
While scouring the web for more information, I cued up what I had of Namlook in my library, beginning with his 4CD set performing as “Air” from 1993-1996, which was released as a box set in ’97, and then on to 2003’s Ten Years of Silence – a 5CD set of his tribal ambient work as Silence.
Most of my experience with 90s electronic music had been limited to the major downtempo releases from the decade, and the Air Collection inspired me to look deeper into the psychedelic ambient genre.
I quickly found two noteworthy compilations on Namlook’s label titled The Ambient Cookbook volumes I and II.
The first was a 4-disc box set from 1995 which highlighted various artists from the FAX archive. The second volume, released in 2002, introduced four more discs demonstrating how the ambient genre had evolved over the decade.
If you’re exploring Fax +49-69/450464 Records for the first time, these collections are an excellent place to begin.
Moving onward, ambient trance music led me to psytrance, which I then narrowed further to the psybient subgenre. This was the 90s incarnation of slowbeat space music, described by a RYM user as “Gas on uppers.”
I entered the term “psybient” into youtube and several 1 – 10 hour playlist results populated. The first track I heard was Russian artist, Cell’s “Audio Deepest Night.”
I loved the minimal beats and sparse, echoey vocal samples. Looking up the artist, I found that the track appeared on disc 4 of a 7-volume series called The Fahrenheit Project on Ultimae Records, released between 2001 and 2011. The series featured various Russian and French deep techno artists and was released simultaneously in both countries.
I am working my way through the series and enjoy everything I’ve heard thus far.
So ended a productive night of exploration. The 36 discs described above will keep me busy for the rest of the weekend. I welcome any recommendations for further listening that you may have to offer.
Additionally, two more rare LPs arrived in the post this week. Stay tuned for details.
The Innerspace Connection 