Posts in Music

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Certain Creatures brings back the melodic and detail oriented end of deep techno that I cherish from years back, its that climb in place with smooth waves of swells that keeps you going and wanting more.

Perfecting the control and feeling of distance is a game of subtlety in music especially if your looking for a quality sound as a result. Billow Observatory couldn’t be more experienced sounding, the fullness is there and you feel surrounded by nothing all the way to the horizon, beautifully done.

Tropic Of Cancer and HTRK drag in haunting reworks of Fascinator and More Alone from their coldest recordings, they give soo much musically to make your loneliest moments less tragic and leave you with a sense of worth. So you pretty need this record if you ever feel that way.

Looking for old and new music always becomes leads you down different paths, one of my favorite ways is just seeing how deep in Bandcamp I can get without hitting a dead end. This is probably the most raw way of searching just behind blindly clicking thru Soundcloud via their community.

I urge everyone to buy or even click thru and learn more about each artist, most of them aren’t in retail shops or even iTunes, so if you like something please support.

I did a 34 minute calming mix for Ryan Griffin’s perfect music site AStrangelyIsolatedPlace, I hope you all enjoy.

As with all isolatedmix curators I invite into the series, they have inspired me in one way or another. Jakub Alexander, is probably the only artist that actually started off inspiring me through words; his posts, his ears and links on ISO50 have been the only longstanding articles to remain in my reader for the last three or four years, constantly unearthing new artists and brilliant music – an approach I aspire to today. Recently, it’s Jakub’s music which has took this admiration to another level.

Jakub’s latest masterpiece is set to be released on Ghostly early next month and i’ve been lucky enough to wrap my ears around it several times already. For those familiar with Heathered Pearls earlier work (‘Vaults‘, or ‘Intervene‘ for example) you would have seen the potential Jakub has been cultivating for some time now. And it’s fair to say, that ‘Loyal’ is Heathered Pearls most defining moment so far.

‘Loyal’ came to life after an introduction to ambient music by his mother ten years ago and the album is Jakub’s dedication to that moment. His love for grainy, repetitive, processed textures is a dream approach for many of us and the most simple pictures come to life with subtle looping melodies and beautifully nurtured sounds that are easily visualised, imagined and immersed in. ‘Beach Shelter for example, available as a free download, is the perfect example of Jakub’s vivid imagination coming to life through constantly crashing, looping waves, a hazy blur from a low sunset, and a slow-motion pan across a heavenly vista. There’s hints of many of our favourite artists throughout Jakub’s work, from early Wolfgang Voigt (Gas), to his self proclaimed influence, Markus Guentner, who has provided a stunning bonus remix on the album alongside the equally legendary Loscil.

Until ‘Loyal’ sees the light of day on December 11th, we’re lucky enough to have an isolatedmix from Jakub, taking us through some of his inspirations. But before you indulge, I recommend you preview ‘Loyal’ over at Ghostly, then jump back into the mix to dissect the many forms and textures that have been instrumental in shaping Heathered Pearls most perfected sound to date.

DOWNLOAD THE MIX FOR FREE

Track notes

Tracknotes by Heathered Pearls:

1. Mr. Rogers Speech to Congress
My hero when I was little, I always tried to picture myself being able to deliver a speech like this, impossible.

2. KIDS Soundtrack – Second To Last Scene
This song always stuck with me, its one of those songs on my short list of songs I wish I made

3. Foxes In Fiction – Static Cults
Warren beautifully put together a state of in limbo in music form

4. Steve Hauschildt – The Impossible Flower
One of my favorite releases from last year, glides along with these perfect dips

5. Yagya – Rigning Níu
Yagya and a few others make up the 3% of newer trance that is well done

6. Cuppcave – Circuit Fade
I found this song to be that missing link to what I wish I made, the lo-fi silence with a pulse slowly swelling in and out, I truly wonder if it didn’t end I wonder how long i’d let it play for? 1 day? 1 week? who knows.

7. Pub – Derail
Pub is up there with Wolfgang Voigt, Erik Kowalski and Scott Morgan as my main reason I love to make music, when I first heard Derail I was soo floored by the control of how steady he kept this song, how he never used extremes but the whole song sounds like your standing in 100ft+ tall wind tunnel.

8. C V L T S – Realiser
lo-fi digital meditation zone

9. The Sight Below – Unforetold
The master of giving the ambient of shoegaze a pulse

10. Piano Magic – Halloween Boat
I have a soft spot for arpeggios and water

11. Loscil – Coyote
Scott has a way of making it okay to drop everything you’re doing and calm down, i’m sure if you were at work and your boss saw you stop working and then heard what you were listening to he’d understand and let the song finish, always powerful, heavy and genuine.

12. Heathered Pearls – Raising Our Ashes
The song title always felt a bit morbid after seeing it written down but has grown on me since thats the visual I get when I hear it again. This track was written when I wanted to imagine a song to play out that the whole venue could slowly leave the ground and it would be the last you’d ever hear because you’d just have tinnitus for the rest of your life.

13. Solar Year – Currents
These guys are my latest favorites, such a pleasure to hear vocals slowly swirling, I hope to work with them in the near future.

14. Boards Of Canada – Unknown
I got an email from Marcus once after sending BoC a package of Ghostly vinyl and cds, would it be odd to frame an email?

via ASIP

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The most Proggy of the Disco coming out of Italy is Mushroom Project, everything is a climb in slow waves, these songs could go on forever and I wish it did.

Prins Thomas has this way of always visually simulating me with his music, to me there is this Scandinavian beauty to it that the rest of us don’t know about.

Joakim has a great track record of some of my favorite remixes, he starts with making sure your patient but always delivers a well worked out idea, its always about the unique steps to the meat and potatoes of the song, the yearning for it to never end and not the drop.

End this spaced out Halloween music post on a tropical planet curated by Woolfy Vs. Projections, almost coma inducing in a good way.

One of the more elegantly put together produced albums this year has to be Luxury Problems by Andy Stott. He has been bubbling and raising with every EP and single he’s put out in the UK beat scene but with this release and the help of NPR this could quickly take over as not just filler for a need of more Bjork, Portishead, Massive Attack for the broader audience out there but as a one that will stand among those names for this generation.

Sometimes it makes me smile how big The Xx are and imagining all the fans out there hoping for something dancey or trendy but instead what they get is real music and I can see some of them being bummed out because of that.

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Sabrina Ratte has done it again and this time its for this upcoming Steve Hauschildt upcoming release. The song alone would have been a true pleasure but Sabrina came in created a beautiful world for it, as always perfecting inversion/decay/color.

Courtship’s [Imageless] caught me off guard on his recent EP, it wasn’t asking for my attention, its as almost like you were watching the song happen, it settles in the distance like a slow moving still, the dialog makes it though, it drops you back into reality in seamless way.

4AD signs an unknown Danish man that goes under the name Indians(how was that not taken?), sounds like something Bibio will one day become.

Knxwledge aka Knx. has the loosest sounding beat out there, almost to the point that it almost sounds like your wood block jacob’s ladder is struggling to work again. My favorite part about him is the quickness he gets in and out of a song, he makes me come back and play his songs 7 or 8 times so I can get the full satisfaction out of them, beat makers take note.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MsyOe7xCqg&feature=relmfu

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=919RleFXcNM&feature=relmfu

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or8N2v7pR8I&feature=relmfu

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJHtcWLhrX4&feature=relmfu

Fascinating BBC doc on history of recorded music featuring a whole lot of EMS synths including the Synthi 100 “Delaware” modular system (pictured below). Fun Fact: Years ago I had the opportunity to buy a Synthi 100 system in beautiful condition for a very reasonable price. For reasons I can’t explain now, I passed on it. Honestly, it would have been a nightmare to maintain and very impractical, but look at that thing. I still regret the decision every time I see a picture of a 100. These days my synth acquisition pace has slowed quite a bit, mostly just holding out for a Memorymoog LAMM and a Prophet 5, then I’ll be done.

BBC: The New Sound of Music (1979) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Via Synthtopia

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Up there with Battles I loved seeing PVT build a very complex song in a live setting, its technical but human and after hearing clips from this new LP its even more human.

Chromatics using something that sounds like a 8 bit version of the Airwolf theme song, which might be one of the most adored sounds from my childhood.

Bullion has been coming up with magic, probably the most prolific artist that came from the beat scene and moved onto something bigger and better, soo impressed, Talabot should be soo thankful for this one.

When I started DJing in 1997 I was obsessed with fast deep detroit techno, I wanted every tribal hypnotic record at the time, this Skudge remix is a perfect example of all my old records, i’m sure it might be hard to understand by some especially out of context or ever experiencing a good old Detroit rave but I think it has a lot of appeal to everyone.

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More and more pieces of the new Toro Y Moi album are surfacing, I love his new album cover, it gets better and better the longer I look at the detail. As for the music i’m just content with what kind of fusion of genres Chaz is overlapping, this album couldn’t come any sooner.

Indian Wells reworks Kyson for his upcoming EP Blackstone. Sounds like early Baths material playing in the rain.

When I hear beautiful songs like this one by Session Victim, I can’t imagine session musicians actually being there anymore, I just always think musicians are sampling to make this sound and that is probably the saddest thought i’ve had about music in a while.

New experimental Apparat, the song really opens up at the end, wind tunnels and quartz covered waterfalls.

A gorgeous video by kommak for boerd

Posted by: Seth Hardie
Instagram: @hallwood