The Chopin Project is a fantastic album where a selection of Chopin’s work are mixed together with new instrumentation to provide a flowing, evolving whole which culminates in his most famous work and my track of the week, Prelude in D Flat Major (“Raindrop”).
Chopin is one of my favourite composers because his music often communicates with me emotionally as well as intellectually. His pieces manage to convey a bitter sweetness that epitomise the romantic movement with Prelude in D Flat Major (“raindrop”) being a perfect example.
Alice Sara Ott performs this solo piece for piano beautifully, taking us on an emotional rollercoaster. The piece starts with an uplifting melody that slowly becomes more mournful until the darker bass elements bring a sense of dread before they turn even more aggressive. Over six minutes these melodies are interwoven to portray a wide variety of feelings for the listener. The Piece is wonderful in any version but Olafur Arnalds production and Alice Sara Otts performance elevate it even further. The album is fantastic and its finale is the icing on the cake a truly wonderful piece of work:
Frederic Chopin, Olafur Arnalds, Alice Sara Ott_Prelude in D Flat Major (“Raindrop”):
Borland have put out a large collection fo music on Bandcamp over the years and i have enjoyed hearing their evolution, taking a traditional IDM sound and twisting it into darker more gothic styles. On their latest and final record from their OMAR series, Borland have brought back allot more of the elements heard in their early works.
Dead Air is a perfect example of this, a slow building piece that mixes the Ambient and Shoegaze genre. A delicate synth chord progression loops on every six bars as elements are added to create a build until the tracks halfway mark where randomisation starts to affect the synth before the whole track falls into a dark sub bass.
This is my favourite side to borlands work and it’s nice to hear these elements come into the foreground again. Now the OMAR series is finished it will be interesting to see where they take their sound next. For now there’s a collection of really good albums on Bandcamp to go back to:
The idea behind track of the week is to shed light on some of my favourite tracks old and new. I was surprised to see that I have never added a track from Love especially “Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark and Hilldale” because it’s one of my all time favourite pieces of music.
I haven’t added this track partly because I assumed that it was a mainstream piece from an essential record but in talking to more people outside of a small subset of musos about this record I realised it wasn’t quite so well-known as I originally envisaged. So It’s time to use this forum to remind or introduce people to this wonderful track.
On the album Forever Changes we are treated to psychedelic rock with very strong folk influences. Released in the heyday of this sound it wasn’t a commercial success but the quality and complexity of composition in the record have given it timeless attributes, allowing its success to grow over the last sixty years.
The two standout tracks for me are the opening cut “Alone Again Or” and my TOTW “Maybe The People Would Be the Times Or Between Clark and Hilldale”. Throughout the record the traditional instruments surrounding a rock band are accompanied by beautiful melodies from string and brass sections which excel on these two tracks.
On “Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark and Hilldale” the brass creates a positive edge to the darker more distorted bass sound which combine to create bitter-sweet feelings that perfectly match the vocals from Arther Lee. His vague lyrics with cryptic delivery, drift between verses offering conclusion only when we get to the instrumental sections of the track.
Its one of the few tracks that I have never got bored with. I have heard it hundreds of times and it still feels as fresh now as it did on first listen. Even on an instant repeat it has never lost its qualities and for that I can’t recommend it highly enough:
It’s been one of those weeks, one of those weeks where you need a band like Swans in your life.
Dystopian, relentless grooves that pound into your very soul. Words that vary from passive aggression, downright hedonism to cosmic horror. Since their reforming in 1997 they have built up and developed this sound to it’s pinical on the last 3 albums which finishes with The Glowing Man their final work in the current bands formation.
Swans aren’t an easy listen and took me many repeat attempts to get into. Their sound doesn’t try to pander to public consensus instead it’s an outspoken unique voice of creativity and vision. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira has cut his own way through the music industry. For years his small but dedicated fan base have crowd funded his creative endeavours before the likes of Kickstarer existed.
Because of this Swans have developed a sound that is rather unique, although I could relate it to the likes of acts like Godspeed You! Black Emperor textually but with the repetitive live looping sound from album Remain In Light by Talking Heads. To recommend one track is hard because the albums very much feel like they should be played as a whole or at least on sides of a vinyl. But this is the Track of the week segment so I guess I should stick to convention.
So with much thought I decided to pick “The World looks Red/The World Looks Black” and for a few reasons. It’s from the latest album “the glowing man” and I think promoting the newer work is important. It also manages to convey the Swans sound which needs time to get going as the loops repeat and build into an uproar of electric guitar and heavy bass and the track does this quite concisely for their works at just under fifteen minutes long. Finally it sonically has a lot of the textures from the previous two albums on this work. Through listening to the Swans back catalogue you get a real feeling of progression as they develop some ideas and remove others. This creates albums that although based round the same gene of ideas are varied in sound. Different people will prefer different albums depending on the paths they have chosen to go down but the albums also work as a collection. Something I love as someone who listens to entire back catalogues of artists works.
Swans have been a unique voice in alternative music for decades now and will continue to in the future as the formation of the band change. Whatever happens next I will look forward to it with exited anticipation:
Well this is an interesting one. Looking through my history of this series I realised I haven’t had any work by William Basinski which is both surprising (because I listen to his music a lot) and understandable (because the music is reserved and illusive).
Although considered an avant-garde composer. I would say most of his work epitomises the ambient genre. Creating an atmosphere and mood instead of a rhythm and melody. His tracks don’t grab you by the ears but linger in the background hinting at things like long forgotten memories.
The Disintegration Loops are the collection of music he’s best known for and are highlighted here. In this series William Basinski takes samples from old tape recordings and stitches them together into a short loop of around 10 seconds. He then lets them run through a tape machine and records the results. As the old tape moves through the head or the machine hundreds to thousands of times it starts to warp and disintegrate, creating new variations and textures which reminds me of the generative ideas used in Ambient music.
The loops themselves are often quite cryptic; they sound both organic and electronic and seem to hint at classical instrumentation. However as the tape destroys itself those elements become even harder to distinguish as the electronics of the tape machine distort it towards something more electronic.
Although I am a huge fan of all the Disintegration Loops series dlp1 and dlp3 are my favourites. I decided to go with dlp3 because the percussive elements of what sounds like a snare drum in the loop mix with the tapes destruction to create interesting rhythmic patterns that are more noticeable to the less trained ear.
Finally I want to say this music isn’t for everyone. Come to it with an open mind and don’t expect it to grab you straight away, Instead play it in the background whilst doing something else. I think this is when the track really shines. Your concentration will drift away from the music itself after a few minutes and it will just become part of the scenery. Occasionally the tape will change drastically and your attention is drawn back to the music briefly before you get used to the new development in the loop, accept it and let the music drift itself into the background.
As the track continues and the destruction of the tape becomes more rapid, the piece will also become more prominent within your environment. As your mind try’s to process the changes of a soundscape that it has become accustomed to over the past several minutes. When it finally comes to an end it leaves a hole in the surroundings. It has become part of your environment and that makes it an interesting piece of music that deserves to be heard.
If this style of music is new to you and your’e interested by the piece please leave a comment below or send me an email and I will give a larger collection of works for your consideration.
On his latest album “Traditional Synthesizer Music” Venetian Snares uses a modular synth with no editing or overdubbing to create every track. Although an incredible feat in itself what’s most surprising is how close it is to his other albums.
The complexity of the percussive parts on his music is always astonishing even when he has a sampler and DAW to handle most of the grunt work. If you take those pieces of equipment out of the equation and work within the modular setting it becomes a mind boggling achievement that he achieves flawlessly.
I’m not sure if it’s the modular or the one take nature but this form of production has added a warmth to the sound of the album that is lacking from the harsher sounds heard on his other works. Creating music that’s easier on the ear without losing the structures and complexity’s of his music.
The whole album is worth a listen but You And Shayna v1 stood out as a highlight for me so I’ve made it my Track of the week:
Disasterpeace made one of my favourite game soundtracks when he composed the music for FEZ. Since then he has been busy working on other varied soundtracks for film and game. Showing his wealth of skills as a composer.
The Hyper Light Drifter soundtrack goes back to the sound design used in FEZ but adds a little organic instrumentation to the mix. Exemplified in this solo piano piece entitled Panacea.
The piece revolves around an incomplete motif that the track continues to return to without ever concluding. Leaving the listener with a sense of anticipation and longing, a desire that is never fully resolved. The arrangement is then perfectly supplemented with its production as the piano resonates within a space that manages portray both an intimacy and a distance:
Datassette have a sonic aesthetic that I love and it’s exemplified on this track.
Cagney XOR Lacey Pt.1 has some lovely textures that weave in and out of the track, driven with a down tempo drumbeat. The complexity of the track is derived by the lead and bass parts which take it in turn to bounce their way into the foreground whilst large wide pads fill the background with glorious lush textures that spread across the stereo field, warping between instrumentation and reverb tails.
This all works because the production of the track perfectly accentuates the most important elements of the mix throughout its play time whilst giving the kick drum plenty of room to really drive the piece forward:
“An Oriental Tale” is my favourite work from Takuya Matsumotos “Assembly” EP.
Weaving lighter more traditional organic elements into house music such as piano and violins, he crates a piece which focuses on melodic structure for it’s complexity over heavy instrumentation. This has made the track a bit of a chameleon, fitting into many different playlists and personal moods.
On first listen I didn’t expect the track to still be on regular rotation in my music library months later but its interesting chord structures and melodic content have kept it there:
The New album “Singing Saw” by Kevin Morby really surprised me. He wasn’t on my radar so when I put it on I had little preconceptions and by its second track I was hooked.
“I Have Been To The Mountain” is a Steady crescendo. As more instrumentation builds to create a sound that has elements of several genres rich in Americana. By the halfway mark when the gospel backing singers arrive it cements its place as one of my favourite tracks this year:
Youtube:
Spotify:
Spotify TOTW Playlist:
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