Ambient Recommendations

nice, thanks!

In the beginnings of my hunt for more info of the music featured on (at the moment) "Sound of Coral - A" I stumbled on your posts, OneSecondBefore, on selectbutton! Small internet!

There is some stuff on St.GIGA in Toop's Ocean of Sound. I clipped this last time I read it.

“Sounds and music which match the wave patterns of this guiding line will be selected and transmitted to harmonize with each cycle. By matching the wave patterns of nature and the melodic patterns of music in this way, a powerful and deep world of sound will be realised. This world of sound, filled with the vibrations of nature, will draw people into an unusual mental space where they can experience the sweet beginnings of life itself, reminiscent of the start of existence as an embryo within amniotic fluids …”

Hiroshi Yokoi - St.GIGA station handbook (1990)

i loved Ocean of Sound, devoured it, and yet have no recollection of it talking about St Giga. but there it is, in Ch 6:

amniotic fluids

Devised in 1990 by Hiroshi Yokoi, a pioneer of twenty-four hour FM radio transmission in Japan, St GIGA was the first Japanese satellite station. The concept was inspired by a Kurt Vonnegut story called “The Sirens of Titan”, in which cave-dwelling creatures called Harmoniums eat beautiful sounds and shine with light. The only words they know are “I’m here” and “I’m glad you’re there”, the perfect distillation of radio’s most basic principle. Programmed according to tidal patterns, sunrise and sunset and the changing phases of the moon, rather than Greenwich standard time, the station works upon principles which would be regarded in the UK as symptoms of delusional mania.

“The cyclical patterns created by these various natural forces are combined to form a single line which is used as the guiding line for programme scheduling”, writes Mr Yokoi in the radio station handbook. “The movements of this ‘guiding line’ are irregular and, rather than conforming to the Greenwich time line, form a cyclical pattern based on the natural rhythms that synchronise with human behaviour and emotions. Sounds and music which match the wave patterns of this guiding line will be selected and transmitted to harmonize with each cycle. By matching the wave patterns of nature and the melodic patterns of music in this way, a powerful and deep world of sound will be realised. This world of sound, filled with the vibrations of nature, will draw people into an unusual mental space where they can experience the sweet beginnings of life itself, reminiscent of the start of existence as an embryo within amniotic fluids … We are about to enter a period of major historical change not often witnessed in the long history of mankind. I believe that people involved in media have an important obligation to fulfil. This is to truly grasp the spirit of the period. And at the same time to use their imaginative powers and practical skills to create a ‘dream tide’.” Those who understand the St GIGA programme best, and thus its main target audience, Hiroshi Yokoi claims, are “unborn babies sleeping quietly in amniotic fluids”.

i have to admit, when i finally found the passage (skimming through pages) and found the rest of the text, i kind of felt like man in the high castle when coming across the part after the ellipses:

"... We are about to enter a period of major historical change not often witnessed in the long history of mankind. I believe that people involved in media have an important obligation to fulfil. This is to truly grasp the spirit of the period. And at the same time to use their imaginative powers and practical skills to create a ‘dream tide’.”

that is an amazing belief

He was right - though not in perhaps the way he envisaged.

To go back to the OT, all of my ambient recommendations generally come in radio show form.

No Place Like Drone

Occasionally some of them are good.

Anyone able to identify the artist on the second half of "Dreamt Water-A"?

the extended twinkly synth part?

Some synth but also prominent glockenspiel & guitar, about 40 minutes into it.

can't stop listening to st giga, thank you

has someone packaged up all the st giga files into one download/torrent yet

i think the ultimate object in the world would be a textfile with all the tracks and timestamps. but i think that would take some sort of miracle god of ambient music to figure out

if you look at the archive.org page posted upthread (https://archive.org/details/stgigaarchive/St.GIGA+001) there's a link to the torrent of all files on the lower right-hand side.

xxp If you click "Show All" on the bottom right there is a torrent file. It's being seeded. 6.7GB. I guess this would be the same (but faster than) clicking the download button for "170 files"?

I am just catching up here. like what what now

oh yes there's also that "TORRENT" link :)

Good a place as any I guess to mention that Philip Jeck has died. RIP.

That tune at 40 mins in Dreamt Water-A has a distinctly early 90s chill out vibe. Reminds me a bit of System 7's water album.

Shazam has been very helpful for some of these tracks. Jam and Spoon's Secret Kind Of Love has become a nice edition to my collection ( think it is at the end of dreamt water-b).

Could do without this Peter Gabriel track on easy-wind A tbh.

Love that J&S track. Slight echoes of Moments in Love

I don't remember which recordings they were on, but some of my top tracks I've pulled out at:
D*Note - The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hector Zazou - The Long Voyage
Saeko Suzuki - Real
Andrew Poppy - The Object is a Hungry Wolf

Sadly, shazam doesn't always recognize the music. I think half the reason is the field recordings they often layer under them, and the other half is just that some of these tracks are very obscure at this point.

agreed, the Shazam results are often hilariously wrong

Loving "I Only Have Eyes For You- Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy" at end of ebb-tide A. So classic

Andrew Poppy - The Object is a Hungry Wolf

same

there was a track that played right before ‘mario’s cafe’ by st etienne that i couldn’t find on shazam and also google couldn’t find the lyrics which were something like “out of the blue our universal heartbeat”

Non GIGA related, but I think this was my favourite track of last year. Quietly radiant lowercase ambient.

https://homenormal.bandcamp.com/track/textural

Hi there droid.

Noel! Long time no see. How are you doing?

I'm obsessed with st giga. there's a moment around 36 mins into "ambient of forest - A" where some music starts coming in, after ~10 mins of running water/birdsong and it's beautiful

Listening to Mario's Cafe and realising, almost 30 years late, that Sarah's not singing 'Tuesday morning tennis' 😳 xps

Is it worth a dedicated thread for St Giga to stop derailing this one?

As like others, I think I'll be listening to these for a long time to come. Currently loving Angel Stream with its mix of Moodswings, Irresistible Force and *checks Shazam* Saeko Suzuki

Sure, as the one who delivered this derail, I can make a new thread.

Donezo: St. GIGA - Tide of Sound Archive (90's Japanese ambient/new-age/house radio)

I've stood dumbfounded at the gates of the great choppy maze that is Chihei Hatakeyama's discography too many times but I somehow stumbled into his Heavy Snow record from 2015 and yep, that was the most profound afternoon's snooze I've had in way too long. If you like yer ambient to transport you in the safety of some warm amniotic balloon, this is just the thing.

https://chiheihatakeyama.bandcamp.com/album/heavy-snow

ooh thanks, the only one I know is Minima Moralia but I love it

I’ve tried to keep up with Chihei but gave up a couple years ago. He definitely does have moments of profundity hidden in the avalanche of releases, if you have the patience to look.

I like his album mirror

His collaborations with Federico Durand ‎- Magical Imaginary Child and Sora are both excellent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/arts/music/ambient-music.html?

wow. beautiful article.
the end is like an excerpt of my life with the Laraaji clip and account off the women's collective
just a day in the life! lol

Sora - re.sort

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mPJ2xnhqPM

I remember when this came out it was considered such an underappreciated classic. I tried searching for reviews and it appears most of them are just not on the internet anymore (its not the easiest album to search for). This is appropriate because the album itself feels like an artifact from a future that never happened - it blends glitch, ambient, and jazz (probably in that order) to create a very "ahead of its time" sound which actually seems quite dated now, because Daft Punk won instead of Four Tet. Regardless the music is beautiful and often capital-S Stunning, especially the final track

Ooh, I was not familiar with that Sora record, and it is right up my alley. Love this kind of playful, pretty glitch music.

also fascinating because the person who made it does not appear to have done anything else, in fact I can find virtually no information about him whatsoever. I guess he did a few remixes here and there.

Sora is new to me too. This is some of the prettiest, warmest glitch I've ever heard; thanks for the rec, frogbs! The cut-up sampling of acoustic instruments and vocals reminds me of the Books. It sounds less dated to me than a lot of "folktronica" of the era. Also caught a brief sample of Debussy's String Quartet in the first track--whoever made this had a great ear

mmm, yeah, nice one. looks like I hoarded this record at some point but don't recall ever listening to it... not uncommon haha

one guy in the style who's still carrying the torch (in a mellow, under the radar way) that I go back to here-and-there is miyauchi yuri:
https://miyauchiyuri.bandcamp.com/

and this remix in particular, which I love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7aGpp8zH1k

That Sora album is absolutely My Shit, thank you frogbs

+1 to Sora being great

it's kind of an odd recommendation, but the "Games of the XXI Olympiad" footage of the 1976 montreal olympics on hbomax.com is an excellent soundtrack to life

yeah thank you for this Sora rec. hopefully this is the start of re.sort getting the recognition it deserves. this is wild and beautiful

if you like re.sort, you'd like the following. my personal 2000s glitch/maxMSP sound picks:

pia by takagi masakatsu
frequencylib by stephan mathieu
matters by michael santos
open silence by hosomi
stdio by snd