Tag: ambient music

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

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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.

Sounds The Songs of Seabirds

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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.

Jerome Faria, 17:14 ep on bandcamp

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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.

Taupo Edge 1973 – new Venus Vulture track on Reverbnation

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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.

Writing a novel – the soundtrack part two

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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 …

Writing a novel – the soundtrack, part one

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

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.

deepspace ambient

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

By quirk of fate, Kim Wilkins’s (see previous post) husband Mirko is a an active creator of one of my other favourite pastimes – ambient music. His output as deepspace is remarkable – guided, abstract and considered. His albums include CDs and some downloadable/last.fm listenable works so there’s a chance to listen before you buy.

It’s kind of cool for me to be a fan of both Kim and Mirko, for different reasons.

Twig and Twine – new ambient album from The Green Kingdom

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Following the wonderful eponymous album on SEM and delicious follow up “Laminae” on The Land Of, The Green Kingdom’s new album “Twig and Twine” is out now on Own Records.

Listeners familiar with Michael Cottone’s work, as The Green Kingdom, from his earlier albums are in for a treat. Twig and Twine is at once a progression from the earlier works but also a compliment to both. Using more complex arrangements and crisper instrumentation this new album highlights Cottone’s skill as a composer with a fine sense of sound and atmosphere. Part of the blurb on the Own Records site describes tracks that “blur the line between soundscape and structure”, and I second that. This is exactly the kind of engaging music that is precise enough to be both background and foreground. I found that listening to it immediately following his previous two albums, it really shines like a kind of capstone. And as a stand alone album, this is one of my highlights from the year.