Genre fiction
I’ve been listening to the 30 minute improvised radio session by Peter Broderick and Machinefabriek:
stream it on Last.fm
download (free) from Rapidshare – 28Mb.
This piece has an almost classical feel to it – lots of strings – but is still very spare and soothing. Upbeat enough to be engaging.
I’ve just listened to Jerome’s new ambient/glitch ep 17:14 (yes, that’s the duration and the title) – here on his Bandcamp site. It’s a moody, drifty piece, with little hints of melody, tiny quiet jabs of subtle static and some delicious drones. Jerome usually releases music as NNY, and has a pretty full catalogue of downloads and media. Some of his work is a bit edgy and too glitchy for my taste, but this new ep tags it just right – enough drone and melody to balance the strong frequencies and clicks. Great music to write to – available both as a stream and free download.
Thanks to those who’ve given me feedback on the updated venusvulture.com website – I have made a couple of minor changes. I am certainly a fan of minimal and streamlined and tired of sparkly ads, flash player required, complex links and pages stuffed to bursting or that scroll forever. The index page is 1kb of html and 31kb of images. I’ve avoided Dreamweaver, etc. and just hand-coded the html (yes, typed it as a text file). Too old school? Probably. Anyway, this is the code for the index page, for those who are interested.
Ah, no metadata, no java. That’ll probably cost me hits too. Oh well. I do have a favicon, but I still can’t figure out why it’s not working – something missing in the code?
Whew. It’s been a while in the making, but the new Venus Vulture/Sean Monaghan website is running. It’s tidier and more streamlined. The homepage probably goes against conventions, but I like the look – going for minimal. There are still some bits to update, but it’s always a work in progress.
I promised this a while ago – there’s a screenshot in this post from late last year of how the site used to look.
By chance I’ve discovered Tanner’s new release You Had Not Changed But Your Cameras Were No Longer Identical on the High Line Music netlabel. Following Tanner’s work with concerts for sleep and all around support for ambient artists, it’s great to see some new material from him. Mastered by the sublime Ian Hawgood.
I have just put a new Venus Vulture track Taupo Edge 1973 on my Reverbnation page. The three minute track is just a quiet varied drone, with some voice and field recordings. Hopefully a little haunting. I hope you enjoy this – you can stream or download for free from the site. There’s also an earlier three minute piece there “Tolela Visiting the Ghost July 1913”, which is one of my personal favourites.
I’m focusing this year on writing a little more than music so releases might be a bit light for a while. I have tracks submitted elsewhere for compilations, and a couple of concept pieces – an album and an ep – which I will tinker with, but without deadlines. I guess part of the vague plan too is to make a three to five minute track each month – then by the end of the year that’s about album length. It’s good, I think, to make a little music from time to time to use a different part of my creativity.
There are loads of streaming mixes available on the internet. Currently I’m listening to Jimmy Behan’s Vol. 3 mix on Fluid Radio – a great range of edgy and ambient, very cool to listen to while working. Jimmy has been around the electronic music scene for a while with some cool original releases, including “In the Sudden Distance” on the Zymogen netlabel.
My last post listed some of the ambient music I had going while I worked on the first draft of my current novel. There were loads of others ambient artists on the list too – Adham Shaikh, International People’s Gang, Ryonkt, Coelacanth, Sawako, Minus Pilots, d’incise, Mollusc, Johnathan Hughes, etc. Too many for big write-ups and links in a post like this, I’ll do individual posts over coming weeks, as the next draft progresses.
I did, however, listen to other kinds of music too, though probably a little more well known and not needing their own links and plugs. Some of these show my age I guess, but I do try to stay somewhat current … somewhat.
Depeche Mode – Songs of Faith and Devotion (I’d always kind of liked them, but this one really captured me. I like them better being more bleak), Ultra, Playing the Angel, Sounds of the Universe
Limp Bizket – Results may vary. Don’t know why, but this is the only album of theirs I really like. Seems like not many other people did though.
Fort Minor, The Rising Tied – I like this more than Mike’s other project, Linken Park.
Genesis – lots of their stuff, but have mostly been listening to the Live in Europe 2007 double disk set, which covers material from most of their history.
Duran Duran – Astronaut, Red Carpet Massacre, Pop Trash, Both eponymous albums.
Blancmange – all three eighties albums got re-released on CD last year, so I’ve had them on high rotation. I wore my old cassette tapes out.
Plus others, a little U2, some Peter Gabriel, The Fixx, Talk Talk, Eagles, Jay-Z(!), Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Daniel Lanois, Joseph Arthur …
Some writers write with children and dogs clambering and slobbering over them while the television blares and the elevated train blasts by the window every eight minutes and the neighbours down below argue about fishing trips and meter money. Others write in silence. I’m closer to the latter, but I do have music on pretty much always as I write. Sometimes it’s very mellow, other times a little more edgy. Here’s a selection of music which has sustained me through the task of drafting my novel.
Woob 1194 – a seminal ambient album that I’m lucky enough to actually own a copy of. Paul Frankland, the artist, has recently made the album, and some other tracks available again through bandcamp. Also listened to other em:t releases like Woob 4495, Gas 0095 and Undark 3396, as well some of the compilations.
S.E.T.I. – The Geometry of Night. This extraordinary album is somewhere between ambient and dance and science fiction. Some of the most startling rhythm patterns I’ve ever enjoyed. This is hard to find on CD, but it looks like he’s made it available on bandcamptoo.
Taylor Deupree – Northern. Taylor was part of the other S.E.T.I., not to be confused with the above (even though some sites do). Northern is minimal music, but as rich and full as can be, almost ambient but not quite. The original pressing (which I have) sold out, but Taylor did a re-issue which was a kind of re-visioning – reloading the original files with missing plug-ins so the sound is different, though I haven’t heard the new version.
Pitch Boys – O.S.T.. One of many remarkable releases on the Test Tube Netlabel (full disclosure, the Venus Vulture album Stick With Me Giselle, Things Can Only Get Better was released on Test Tube last year). O.S.T. is an hour-plus excursion into new realms.
Next post – rock.
My website venusvulture.com has been a little neglected, I must admit, probably in favour of this blog.
I do my own coding and uploading, which takes time and effort and I’ve been slack – there are some broken links (the Resting Bell netlabel releases are out of print now, and Bookhabit sold to Smashwords, so my eBook Habitat is also unavailable*), and my publications list is out of date, so there’s lots of clean-up to do.
I’ll be launching the new site in early January with a new look (which I’ve already designed and laid out) with active links.
*I did have the option to move Habitat to Smashwords, but the process is complex and given how little response I got through Bookhabit, I’m not convinced it’s worth it. I also think that Habitat is dated now, in terms of my writing, so it’s probably good to be out of print too.
Triple V Publishing 