can a noise dude recommend some AMBIENT

i've listened to quite a few of these in record shop listening stations, but i only own the second in the series (the first side on it, 'tintinnabulation', is one of my go-to recordings for just about any situation around the house).

loving the brief "liner notes" for each recording, which include little review snippets

on environments 1:

"It soaks the mind... cheaper than booze, safer than pot", Albert Goldman, LIFE, 5/5/1970

been wanting these since i read this piece

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-man-who-recorded-tamed-and-then-sold-nature-sounds-to-america

but iOS onlu is no good to me

Just emailed them and they said they're working on a version for android.

I wonder who the fourth vote was from?

_I wonder who the fourth vote was from?_


t’was I. I think..

This is cool. I wonder if it would be worth using an old iPad just for this app.

https://telepathtelepath.bandcamp.com/album/--32

15 hours of bliss

the whole 154 album is sublime.. needs to be repressed

― a but (brimstead)

https://www.discogs.com/154-Strike/release/10513742

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJ7SRsSZf4

https://telepathtelepath.bandcamp.com/album/--32

15 hours of bliss

― calstars

i jumped in halfway through and i have to say, it is veerrrry nice and i am going to be ambienenanaaanaway in it for a while

Enjoy bro

/the whole 154 album is sublime.. needs to be repressed

― a but (brimstead) /

https://www.discogs.com/154-Strike/release/10513742🕸

>http://www.numerogroup.com/products/environments

god this is so perfect. I hope it doesn't preclude a higher quality reissue program at some point; Teibel had so many unreleased Environments projects in the can I've been hoping could see the light as bonus material, but this app is just the perfectly functional way to present this material. Tintinnabulation & Intonation forever.

a lot of my sleep listening is increasingly handled by the phone via a digital dock with optical out, in the past either extended playlists or 10 hour youtubes, but looking forward to more people experimenting with generative apps like Eno's Reflection or this - https://longplayer.org/listen/longplayer-ios-app/

lovin these:

http://houseoftheleg.bandcamp.com/album/saved-data
http://houseoftheleg.bandcamp.com/album/saved-data-pt-ii

good stuff

i highly recommend peter davison's "Glide V", from his 191 album Glide. i first heard it last week, by way of ryuichi sakamoto's dinner BGM playlist (search "The Kajitsu Playlist" on spotify), which is also really good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWAYIlPZ0u0

just a head's up that the new Light in the Attic comp is out:

https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4088-kankyo-ongaku-japanese-ambient-environmental-new-age-music-1980-1990
Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990

it's kind of misleading because it's up on spotify and bandcamp, but only 10 songs. the physical release has 25 songs. i feel like the bandcamp page should mention this - it's a really good incentive to purchase the physical version!

i'm happy to see that it leads off with a track by Satoshi Ashikawa, whose Still Way I have been obsessively listening to for the last month or two (or longer? how long has it been?). Still Way was his only released album, but he has tracks on other comps of the era that i have never heard, including the song included on Kankyo Ongaku, "Still Space". similar to the first Light in the Attic ambient comp (I am the Center), it's a mix of well known names and obscure. in this case, you can find familiar names like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Takashi Toyoda, YMO, Haruomi Hosono and Sakamoto solo tracks, as well as a bunch of people i've never heard of.

light in the attic's shipping center is down until March 1, but i'm excited to get it in the mail soon! i also picked up the second ambient comp (The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986) while i was at it

whoa I hadnt heard about microcosm, thanks

i feel like it wasn't quite as positively reviewed as the other two? but i dunno, looks right up my alley so i'm excited to hear it too.

https://open.spotify.com/user/lightintheatticrecords?si=EH_hjnpAQdOOGQNdyb1hHg

Ex, by kj. released september 2018

uh, this is AMAZING

https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/ex

Like that kj

Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990

my 2CD version should arrive today, I'm excited. The 3LP has two more tracks but I'm pretty much over any new vinyl pressing that doesn't have multiple positive comments re: pressing quality on Discogs or Hoffman.

Karl have you spent much time with yours? So far this is the only ILX mention I see.

Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/63x6MwkzIVtoH6lbHIYEtr?si=cuwU2WvQTuKoZ9OTGTH_XQ

is that the same truncated 10-track version that Bandcamp has? can't open the link right now

Yes

Karl have you spent much time with yours? So far this is the only ILX mention I see.

i've listened a few times, but i wasn't following along in the booklet/tracklist so i can't remember the standout tracks offhand. i mentioned it upthread, but the lead track is by Satoshi Ashikawa, whose Still Ways album I'm completely obsessed with.

in general, though, i'm less taken by this new comp than the last two (I am the Center and Microcosm). i think it's because environmental music tracks on the latest one really reach their full potential when heard in the context of the full album by the respective artist, rather than on a comp with other artists. environmental music like this thrives when it's allowed to settle in a particular mood for long stretches of time, for hours, maybe even on repeat. just when i start to settle into the Ashikawa track that leads the comp off, it switches to the next thing, and the process repeats itself.

Head's up! Satoshi Ashikawa's 'Still Way' is being reissued!

yessssssssssssss!

thank you! i was hoping that it would reissued sometime soon!

Exciting! I'll have to see if my favorite shop for this type of stuff gets it in.

Thought you'd like that lill nugget ZS! :) You too, Evan.

Perhaps it's time for a Japanese ambient/environmental thread? There is just so much out there, and on here it's mostly scattered across a multitude of threads all over the board. #JapaneseAmbientAssemble!

Speaking of, either this is ironic or there is a marketplace specifically for Japan that they should be using to order it?

*** TERRITORY RESTRICTION - NO SALES TO JAPAN ***

Ha, I was going to ask the exact same thing! I have *no idea* why that is. I see it more often, especially w/ Japan(-related) stuff. I honestly don't know.

Japan usually markets a domestic version with bonus material to make up for not allowing the import, basically protectionist policy applied to LP/CD releases

this explains why so many Japanese releases have bonus stuff

pretty sure I learned this from sic somewhere on ILM

Isn't that a bit old-fashioned in this day and age? I can see why majors did this back in the day. But it's not like this reissue will also be done by a Japanese label (to my knowledge). It's a reissue by an indie label, an indie label called We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want! :)

Thought you'd like that lill nugget ZS! :) You too, Evan.

Perhaps it's time for a Japanese ambient/environmental thread? There is just so much out there, and on here it's mostly scattered across a multitude of threads all over the board. #JapaneseAmbientAssemble!

i would be totally into that thread but i would be 99% in learning mode, not contributing new stuff so much. i know very little of this stuff, but i'm super into the handful of things that i do have. :)

Bless you guys <3

It's official: I am going to start that thread. Not tonight, but in the next week. But I *will* do it. Japanese ambient is, by far, the 'genre' I feel most at home and at peace with myself with. I'm obsessed with it, even though I get frustrated by the more I know about it, the less I know about it. I'm just as much, if not more, in learning mode than you are Z! But we'll make it work. We'll make it a listening club thing. I'll try and woo and charm ilx user and connoisseur supreme MaresNest for expert guidance. It will be tranquil and beautiful. FP me if I haven't started the thread by next week!

(Calstars: extremely (though not that extremely off topic, but you need to know this): It was you who put me onto C4tSyst3mC0rp's "P4lm M4ll", over on some vaporwave thread, last year. Through a truly *bizarre* and wholly random chain of events (I cannot stress this enough) I recently learned that dude lives within 7 miles of me! He keeps his guard up - and rightly so - but I'm pitching a story about him, interviewing him for a big publication, next week. Googleproofed him because he doesn't it yet ;) But I had to tell you this <3 ).

*guard down

dude is on Insta and just posted photos of his trip to Scandinavia or some sh1t so not sure how much he keeps his guard up. But yeah palm mall. Pretty cool

Guard down meant more in a "wow this nu-vaporwave-legernd has quite the pedestrian job outside of his music" kind of way, but good for him and I'm on it iirc

Will definitely bookmark a Japanese ambient/new age thread. I hadn't read this yet when last night I got a bug to seek some out on Spotify and subscribed to a couple of pretty good huge playlists and listened for hours.

cat system has a new one coming out next Fri with vwave capo di capi telepath

just a head's up that the new Light in the Attic comp is out:

https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4088-kankyo-ongaku-japanese-ambient-environmental-new-age-music-1980-1990
Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990

just finished listening to this (the full version) and it's really nice. love comps like this where there's a lot of variety but you don't exactly feel like you're listening to a different artist on each track.

probably doesn't mean anything to you lot but it's currently bolded on RYM and has over 1,000 ratings, that's pretty significant for something that I imagine would've gathered zero attention five years ago

daniel schmidt and the berkeley gamelan - In My Arms, Many Flowers

this is the ambient gamelan you have been craving

also, aki takahashi playing feldman's for bunita marcus

Daniel Schmidt In My Arms, Many Flowers Recital DL/LP While deeply learned and eminently serious, the American gamelan music documented on In My Arms, Many Flowers is somehow quintessentially Californian. A student of Javanese gamelan at California Institute of the Arts, Daniel Schmidt and some of his fellow travellers wanted to begin composing for the instrument in the early 1970s. As there was no authentic gamelan accessible, Schmidt determined to make his own, forging from aluminium instead of bronze, and putting together a group of players who had to be trained to play the new instruments as they were being developed. It was an experimental process, and the result was the Berkeley gamelan – the name referring to both the instrument and its attendant players – with which the four tracks presented here were recorded between 1978–92. Of building the first instruments, Schmidt simply said that they sought not perfection but “the general sound of gamelan”. “Our instrument designs and our compositions evolved hand in hand, and our products became increasingly idiosyncratic,” he writes in the sleevenotes. “I suppose American Gamelan was much like the rest of our country. Everyone did things their own way.” He did not compose in the traditional Javanese style, looking instead to the contemporary music that excited him, especially minimalism; and although he says that the music he created “is outside our Western experience for the most part”, it certainly seems of a piece not only with much 20th century avant garde composition, but perhaps even more so with the new age sounds that formed a background hum in the Golden State at the time. “And The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn” opens with a cycling string samples, before the gamelan enters with a slow melody at first, then with phosphorescent bursts of ornamentation; on the percussive title track, the ringing of the gamelan is joined by the plaintive sound of a rebab, intended by Schmidt to signify a bird that “calls from far away”. “Ghosts” employs traditional gamelan techniques to produce rapid passages of interplay, too fast for a single player to execute; the final track “Faint Impressions” is a hypnotic study in layered overtones and decay. All four compositions are annotated extensively and rather esoterically by Schmidt, and unusual looking sheet music is also available: wayward scholarly trappings for a beautifully pure-spun product of the West Coast dreamtime. – Francis Gooding

/thewire