Category: music

Kora! Kora! Kora! – The Cabaret Voltaire Versions

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve listened to Cabaret Voltaire since I was a teen – something about their slightly techno/slightly industrial feel really works for me. Their music is at once dark and uplifting. The main protagonists, Mallinder, Watson and Kirk have gone their own way, still making music in their own right, but Cabaret Voltaire continued, with some ambient music, and club disks and odds and ends.

Under the Cabaret Voltaire moniker, Richard Kirk has remixed the album by New Zealand band Kora with very distinctive results.

Kora is a New Zealand roots/reggae act. Four of the five members are the Kora brothers. Their self-titled album was pretty popular in New Zealand and around the world.

The remix album Kora! Kora! Kora! (steamable and available for purchase at the link) is less roots and more techno, with clear elements from the original. To all accounts it’s more popular with Cabaret Voltaire fans than with Kora fans (who probably want that reggae feel, more than is present here).

I love the energy and drive of the pieces, it’s great for rarking up my writing pace, kicking me out of slumber, and at the same time taking me back to the eighties, but keeping me current. Whew.

Sand under my toes, Dust in my hair – new 8min Venus Vulture track available on Reverbnation

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

My latest ambient excursion, and longest for a while, is now available for free download or streaming on theVenus Vulture page at Reverbnation. “Sand under my toes, Dust in my hair” goes through a number of changes. Really it’s an attempt at narrative through sound. The track begins with a walk along a beach at sunset, then the wind cools and picks up and we hurry along almost lost until finally descending into a cave in the cliff, just lit by the sliver of crescent moon. Well, that was the mood I was looking for. Perhaps you’ll hear something different.

Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree – The Sleeping Morning

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I listened to The Sleeping Morning, a 21 minute ep, last night while I edited a new story. Two of the four tracks include vocals, which is a bit different to the usual stuff from 12k, and different to what I’d normally write to, but it works. The tracks are quite distinct, minimal and controlled. Ysatis and Deupree have worked together a lot over the last decade or so, with some long gaps – this came out after quite a long gap (many years), and they have worked again more recently on another piece – hourglass – which is available on vinyl, but also (as with Sleeping Morning) as a download through itunes. Definitely worth checking out.

Michael Tanner – Selection

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Fluid Radio is hosting a four track, forty-five minute mix of some of Michael Tanner’s fairly unreleased tracks. I didn’t really know Tanner’s work before this – there’s plenty of information about his bands and musical history at the Fluid Radio site there. What I enjoy about the selection is how unhurried it is, slow delicate builds of guitar and piano over some lovely soundscape washes – absolutely fantastic to write too: so moody and haunting.

Each of the tracks is already a mix of other tracks, so it’s intriguing:
1. A Pelagic Recital – Dawn reflects in the East
2. Bridegroom of Snow – Solicitude
3. Summerhouse – The rest I leave to the poor
4. Gloaming – Sirens

S.E.T.I. – The Geometry of Night

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

There are two ambient acts called S.E.T.I. – both, as I understand it, take their name from the original S.E.T.I. Institute, as in Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Websites such as Wikipedia or allmusic seem to confuse the two and lump their releases/activities together.

One S.E.T.I. is made up of Taylor Deupree and Savas Ysatas, and they released several albums. While the two artists still collaborate, they no longer use the S.E.T.I. moniker.

The other S.E.T.I. is Andrew Lagowski, who uses other names (his own, Legion) as well as S.E.T.I., and still does perform/record as S.E.T.I. – he’s performing on May 24th at a festival in Germany.

The Geometry of Night by the Lagowski S.E.T.I. has had a lot written about it – just search the web, far more than I can do justice to or need to duplicate here. It has been around for a while – first released in 1996, but still available. The music is complex and often quite rhythm driven, though never really danceable. The rhythms drive the mood. The bass lines, the melodies, the choirs, the strings: it all swells together into something dark and brooding, though somehow uplifting. While I only listen to the album as a whole – it builds and swirls and demands this kind of extended listening – my favourite track is Mare Crisium: five minutes of sound development before any beat kicks in. This is precise and finely crafted music. Writing to this is energising and vital and gives a real vibrancy to my words.

You can stream the music from last.fm, or better yet, stream or purchase the download from bandcamp

Clarity Moss 1862 – new Venus Vulture track on ReverbNation

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’m gradually in the process of releasing new ambient tracks during the year, while I focus on writing. The new track Clarity Moss 1862 is a quiet seven minute excursion with some occasional drum patterns and low-key melodies. Hopefully interesting enough to be engaging, discrete enough to be ignored.

Clarity Moss is a fictional character, of Slovenian and Irish ancestry. As a child she came to Canada via the US in the early 1800s and went on to become a bookseller and keen amateur natural historian. She did a lot of work cataloguing of fish species in Canadian rivers, some believe the most comprehensive work of the time. The notes were never published, but found amongst her letters and documents by her children after her death in 1862.

The track, as with the others on the ReverbNation page, is available to stream or download for free.

(Thursday is usually my “reading for writing” day, but really I’ve been reading two things lately: student portfolios, and a review book which is kind of embargoed until the review comes out, so next week then. I’m going to take a little break from the blog over Easter – back on Tuesday)

Mikronesia – Tissue Paper Ghosts

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

The Gears of Sand label has an eclectic mix of recordings. Mikronesia’s album Tissue Paper Ghosts is one that straddles the lines – at times a bit glitchy, at other times quite drone based. The last track “Remember / Home” is both the longest (around 10 minutes) and quietest, and probably my favourite, and a great way to close out the album. Wonderful to write to – edgy enough to keep me alert and busy.

Music from Alien Cities by Venus Vulture used on book trailer

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

James Kay Publishing has used some music from the Venus Vulture ep Alien Cities in a cool book trailer. The trailer promotes Derek Bullard’s book Mayan Moon which I hope to read soon.

The Alien Cities glitchy space-music feel seems to suit the trailer, especially since it’s tied in with some music by Thomas Andersson which is more uptempo and melodic (you can tell easily which music is mine and which is Thomas’s).

It’s cool to be part of this kind of thing – Venus Vulture music being linked back to science fiction writing. Alien Cities remains a reasonably popular download, especially considering it’s early work and I haven’t really put much promotion behind it. Bizarrely the ep cover is by far the most popular image on my flickr site – it has been viewed 10x as often as my next most popular image.

Hol Baumann – [Human]

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

On high rotation over the last couple of weeks has been Hol Baumann’s [Human] from ultimae records. As I’ve written before, ultimae’s catalog is a little more beat-driven than I would usually listen to, and [Human] is probably at the upper end of beats in my collection. That said, why I’m enjoying it, and enjoying writing to it, is that the album is still very atmospheric – the beats fade off into the background and quiet melodies shuffle forwards. At times it’s edging into world music – a woman singing in a language I don’t recognise (on the song called “Radio Bombay”, so perhaps it is Hindi). I guess that part of writing to music is avoiding music with lyrics I can understand – those words would distract from the words I want to put on the page: I’m seeking atmosphere, and the human voice can create haunting senses … this is an album filled with atmosphere and drive.

I plugged the album in at work for a while and a colleague thought for a moment that it was Massive Attack – so perhaps that’s an indication of the style and tone of Baumann’s album. Again, as with other ultimae releases, this is in a beautiful package – a three-fold digipack, with a 16 page booklet filled with stunning photographs. And a mini “hidden track” too, after a few minutes of silence in the final track.

If you want to sample Baumann’s music, this is his last.fm stream.

Silver Lines – music by Anna Rose Carter

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Silver Lines is a laid-back EP (around 20 minutes) of solo piano works. All the information about the who and what is on the Schedios Records Bandcamp download site. I’m not often a fan on pure piano – though I do enjoy manipulated works, so it was a surprise to enjoy this so much. Silver Lines is a wonderful engaging background piece to stream or download. The download costs four pounds (GBP), but of course the neat thing with bandcamp is the full streaming so you can listen right through before you decide to buy. There is a CD available too – direct from Schedios.

Schedios Records is fairly new outfit – this is just the second release and the first – Clem Leek has sold out, but is still available digitally (stream and download).