Category: music

Igneous Flame – Intox – gorgeous ambient

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I have a couple of Igneous Flame albums – Intox and Oxana. Both are wonderful drifty drone-ambient pieces. Intox is a little over an hour long – so it suits me for a writing spell. It’s good music to be more concentrated to, there’s nothing too invasive or requiring too much attention (unless you want to to really give it attention). Oxana has some shipping forcasts later in the album which adds a little edge.

I still like CDs for variety and some of Igneous Flame disks are still available at Shopsonic, but you can stream music from the Igneous Flame MySpace page. There are also some neat videos at the NME site.

Gustavius’s “am-bee-yent” photo set

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment
Gustavius's Thumbnails

Gustavius added one of my little flickr photos (the distorted car) as a favourite, which was flattering (since my flickr page is singularly unvisited – most visits seem to come from people clicking on the picture in the sidebar here, and the blog is relatively unvisited). Anyway, having a look at his flickr site I discovered his am-bee-yent set of photos (see ultra-mini thumbnails there) which are pretty cool and would look great as the covers of some ambient albums. I’m guessing this is the same Gustavius I remember from the 12k Forum online forum for discussing minimal and ambient music. Anyway, there are nearly 200 images and they’re fabulous – try running them as a slideshow with some music playing. Very Zen.

[The Core] by I Awake

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I Awake – [The Core] is a 60 minute-plus album (it has a “hidden” track at the end) that’s probably more chill than strictly ambient. There are a lot of beats compared to some of what I listen to. Nothing too fast or imposing and much of the record is made up of atmospheres and gentle drifty melodies, supported by some deep bass, choir sounds and a little singing. [The Core] is made up of shorter tracks – mostly between four and five minutes, unlike many ambient albums around which often have tracks which clock in at 15 minutes and upwards. I like to write to this album when I’m wanting to be fast and punchy – the music is an hour with energy and drive, ebbs and flows and this gets reflected, I think, in slightly more upbeat writing.

Like other releases on the exquisite Ultimae label, this comes with a gorgeous 16 page booklet of photographs.

Pecha Kucha consumes weekend

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I put my hand up, perhaps foolishly, to participate in a local Pecha Kucha event. Pecha Kucha nights are presentations of 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, while the presenter talks for the 6 minutes and 40 seconds. It sounded straightforward when I agreed to do it, but coming up with a theme (music, writing, graphics?), then an engaging talk, then trying to match slides to it all has left me drained. I’m perhaps halfway there, but I’ve got to have my slides delivered by Thursday, and the event is being held on March 25th. Had I realised how much work I was getting myself in for, especially when I have other stuff on too. At least it has been good for my right-brain/left-brain stuff – thinking in different modes has got to be good.

phantomshadows available again

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

The Venus Vulture album phantomshadows, which was originally released on the Resting Bell netlabel, is available again. It can be streamed or downloaded (for free) on the Venus Vulture Bandcamp page. phantomshadows is a minimal ambient drone album of four tracks, each around 14 minutes. The release was combined with a set of images, which are available on the Flickr page.

The funny details:
The release went out of print because I, silly me, had joined APRA – the New Zealand branch of the Australian Performing Rights Association. I think they do good work, but they’re not really compatible with creative commons licences. Christian, who does an extraordinary job at Resting Bell, was faced with paying GEMA (the German equivalent of APRA) fees for releasing my music – even though it was never my intent to generate money from this release. My bad. I’m no longer a member of APRA, though GEMA’s rules are different, it appears possible that I will never be able to release music through Resting Bell or any other German netlabel.

New Venus Vulture track – “Doubtful Sound 3 March 1963” – available now

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I’ve uploaded a new three minute track to my Reverbnation page. This is another short drifty piece, a little very slow melody/chord progression with some distant voices speaking quietly. The title comes out of the story I’ve just submitted (see this post), and in keeping with my other Reverbnation tracks, is dated (arbitrarily, perhaps, but that’s all part of it). The track, as with the others there, is available for streaming or free download.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m having less focus on Venus Vulture music this year as I work on writing more – but I will keep shooting for a track a month.

Matthew Florianz

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Dutch ambient artist Matthew Florianz has a great catalogue of minimal ambient music to drift off to. His work is deep and subtle and very moody, and has been well reviewed in the ambient community. I have most of the releases on CD, and have been lucky enough to get some limited edition releases too. Niemandsland from 2006 was originally released with two disks of extra material and the three make a great developing soundtrack for a day of creativity. It’s nice to listen to CDs, rather than just streaming or listening to downloads through Winamp – in part because I can have the computer off and just edit or handwrite.

Florianz’s CDs are available through Shopsonic, and you can check out his MySpace page for updates, happenings and samples and songs to listen to while online. There is an album’s worth of tracks to listen to on the MySpace page.

Creativity

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Well, it was a busy week – I finally got my story ready and submitted for the Southern Horror Writer’s Horror Club on Flashes In The Dark. This was a story that took a lot of false starts. First it was about a Blight hitting Slope Point (Slope Point is the Southernmost place on New Zealand’s South Island), then a different version of the same premise (Blight rewrite), then a new story with the same characters (House at Bluff), then, finally, Doubtful Sound:

First started back in January, several runs at the story didn’t cut it. Not every file there is a totally new story – ultimately there are variations on each of the four. Finally, with Doubtful Sound I got something that I was happy with. You can see here, too, how I organise my files as I write – date each new version with the day I start it so that I can backtrack, give it a title that makes sense to me. I keep the old versions as I work through edits and redate the file as I make the changes on the screen.

Sounds The Songs of Seabirds

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Sounds The Songs of Seabirds is prolific Vancouver artist Bob Singley. With an extensive catalogue of ambient and experimental music available to stream and download on his Bandcamp site, Sounds The Songs of Seabirds has hours of exquisite background sounds to tickle your ears as you work, rest and play. Some of the releases are long – over 100 minutes – one, the archive, stands at over 340 (like, six hours) and is growing. Suffice to say I haven’t listened my way through everything yet, but a couple of albums in I’m liking it so far. Most of the music is free to download, but with some nice self-deprecating humour there one album is billed as a fundraiser: “Hello. This album is a fundraiser for myself. I am trying to raise up money to pay my rent. And buy some eggs …” It’s $1 (or more, if you want). Cool that if you buy it, there’s a 25 minute bonus track which takes the running time up to an hour twenty (ie – burn a CD of it). The next album, Soorya Namaskaram, is a crisp work, droney with enough whiskers of melody and strum to keep it interesting – you can listen from the embed below, but do check out his download site, or his myspace page. While much of this is improvisational and live and doesn’t quite have the polish of many professional releases, it’s still very cool, with a freshness and immediacy that’s inspirational. Great stuff.

What is this blog about?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been watching my posts over recent times and realise that I’m all over the place. So, I’m going to try a little structure for a while. In general the blog has always been about creativity, whether that be writing, music or art. When I started it was pretty much all music (hence the blog name), then as my publication list began growing, the blog shifted to more of a focus on writing and, over time, has become very broad (perhaps some would say scattered). Anyway, here’s my plan for the next little while, assuming I keep blogging on weekdays**

Monday – weekend musings: how my projects have gone over the previous seven days
Tuesday – music to write to: a short review of music I’ve been listening to as I write
Wednesday – random notes on what’s up
Thursday – reading for writing: a short review of the book I’m reading*
Friday – music to write to or random

I will also, as they occur, post notes about current publications, music releases, general news, etc.

*I try to read a book a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. During marking blocks, heavy writing times and so on, sometimes I slip so I might write about something I read a last year, or the year before, or 1989 or whenever.

**Being to the left of the international dateline, if I post at, say, 9am on a Wednesday, that’s around midday on Tuesday in LA, 3pm Tuesday EST, so if my posts seem early …