Category: music

Pylon Suite – Venus Vulture soundscape on Zenapolae

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

A new Venus Vulture soundscape release doesn’t come along that often – the last were “Heavy Skies” on TurkbyTone Rekkids and “Stick With Me Giselle, Things Can Only Get Better” on Testtube, both in the first quarter of 2009. So after a year and a half of near-silence I’m excited to have a new extended piece released.

Released on the Zenapolae netlabel, Pylon Suite is a set of four tracks, making up a continuous thirty-eight minute movement. The set is deep and brooding, based on a long field recording (which wafts in and out through the album), together with long ambient drones. The tracks share elements, but progress, gradually becoming more complex – track four is the busiest (well, as busy as ambient drone music might be). Probably good to listen to at low volume while taking a bath or reading a horror novel.

The fabulous cover art was created by Arnd Klotz, based on photos I’d taken around the time I was composing the music.

Moss Wall Collection – ambient music by Sounds The Songs Of Seabirds

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Sounds The Songs of Seabirds is the moniker used by Bob Singley, a prolific ambient/improvisational folk artist from the Pacific Northwest. With numerous releases available through Bandcamp there’s a huge array of music available.

Moss Wall is a series of releases – seven long albums in a variety of low key styles. Bob allowed me to curate a collection of tracks for Zenapolae as a kind of overview of the series. Nine tracks, at least one from each release:

1. one rain drop
2. freezing rain
3. green leaves hanging on a limb
4. spores
5. as the high winds carry the birds
6. love (four)
7. frozen fog
8. marmot
9. purple nettle at trail 8

You can stream or download the compilation from Zenapolae here.

Zencast 012 – mix by Venus Vulture

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment


Zenapolae is a netlabel that releases a range of ambient and experimental music. They also have regular ‘Zencasts’ of hour-long mixes of tracks from the label and from other netlabels.

Recently I completed a mix exclusively made up from Zenapolae releases and it’s available from Zenapolae as Zencast 012 – you can download it here. The mix is a very blended piece, using long sections of various tracks overlaid with long sections of others.

Tracklist
1. Todd Christopher – aurumplateau
2. Saffron Slumber – Of Ice, Water, and Steam
3. Petal – Meridian
4. Ingredient – Striations
5. zenasprime – esion2 (edit)
6. Maszyna 01 – kosmos
7. d/form – 00:11:59::00:21:15
8. Petal – Occlusion
9. lolpix – Ephialtes
10. Weird Fields – Carousel
11. Raumwerk – Mitte (edit)
12. AmgSphont – zatpacu
13. Instruction Shuttle – Further Adrift
14. d/form – 00:51:09::00:60:00
15. Saffron Slumber – Of Ice, Water, and Steam

enjoy

Danny Norbury – Fluid Radio Mix

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I usually enjoy the mixes on Fluid Radio so Danny Norbury’s new mix was almost anticipated. A wonderful low-key blend of quiet melodies and sounds and vocals, this is a delicious album-length (41 minutes) outing.

Track List:
00:00 The Humble Bee – A Century Of Sea Stories (Xmas 1936)
03:20 Cornelius – Omstart
07:46 Sunwrae – Autumn Never Fall
13:36 John Fahey – Night Train Of Valhalla
15:48 Dick Annegarn – Coutances
18:38 Moondog – Fujiyama 2
23:03 Hope Sandoval – Baby Let Me
24:23 The Boats – The Arrow Home
29:52 The Medium Necks – My Mane
31:56 Vincent Gallo – Yes I’m Lonely
35:38 Squarepusher – Goodnight Jade
38:19 Gabriel Fauré – In Paradisum

Listen to the mix here.

Andy Taylor, Wild Boy: My life in Duran Duran

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I’m a confessed Duran Duran fan and though I probably prefer their output while Andy Taylor wasn’t in the band, it’s still intriguing to see behind some of the machinations and tribulations within the band, and understand the history. Taylor is generous about his former bandmates, acknowledging their work without him, acknowledging that some frustrations were at least partly due to his own interests or behaviour. I’m not sure if this was ghost written, but it is surprisingly well constructed, even if there are a few too many exclamation points.

Misound – Stanze di te

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I’ve been listening to a few CDs from Ryonkt’s Slow Flow Records lately. On high rotation has been Stanze di te by Misound. This is a deep and delicious immersion: a great way to relax through an hour of writing. Some wonderful sound patterns, deep, moody, at times a little glitchy, at times quite melodic, sometimes with some distant and almost recognisable field recordings to it.

You can stream a track here through Soundcloud – well worth a listen.

12k – a perfect introduction

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I am an unabashed fan of Taylor Deupree’s 12k label – an imprint that focuses on minimal music, but has evolved over the years. I frequently listen to Shuttle358, Sawako, Steinbruchel and others from the roster as I write. Taylor has made an hour-long mix of tracks For all the things we did in May which has just come out as a stream on Fluid Radio (of which I’m also a fan). The mix is wonderfully low-key, beginning with one of my favourite pieces, Shuttle358’s “Gone”, then progressing fairly organically through tracks I’m familiar with, and some I’d never heard.

A wonderful introduction to 12k’s roster and style.

NNTS – Stroll compilation

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Mark from NTNS radio – a show on Still Stream an internet ambient radio station, has made numerous compilations of creative commons recordings, available for streaming and download. Stroll is an eclectic mix of sometimes busy, sometimes very quiet pieces, that runs the length of a decent CD – full disclosure: Stroll includes a Venus Vulture track from Heavy Skies. Certainly for me that is part of the appeal – to hear my own track in a different context, next to pieces by different people.

Stroll is one of four sets making up the best of NTNS radio from April, May and June 2009 – the others, Meander, Trip and Cruise, are all similar in length and tone, all easily available and very listenable.

I’ve burned Stroll to CD and fire it in to write to – after all the reason I first began making ambient music was because I couldn’t find enough readily available to listen to as I wrote (the Internet has really changed that – there’s more than enough now). It was great over the weekend to listen to an hour and a quarter while I worked hard on a longer, pacey dieselpunk story – it was just the right kind of laid back but still edgy kind of music to really help keep the words flowing.

Ghosts in the trees, ghosts in the hall – new Venus Vulture track on Reverbnation

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I’ve just uploaded a new track to the Venus Vulture Reverbnation page. This is a quirky thing, with a slight beat, an odd melody. I think I like echo too much, but perhaps that suits the ideas of ghosts.

I had a couple of tracks – Ghosts in the Trees, and Ghosts in the Hall – with a similar feel and similar sound, but neither seemed to really work. So I made this track by taking elements of each and creating a new mix.