Peter Broderick - Music For Falling From Trees

Genre: Neo Classical, Ambient

Label: Erased Tapes

"In late 2008, Adrienne Hart contacted me about scoring her new work, FALLING FROM TREES. In Adrienne's words, "The piece is set in a psychiatric hospital and centered around one man's struggle to retain his identity in the most extreme of circumstances." There are four dancers in the piece. One male playing the patient, and three female hospital workers. I had been making music for a variety of film projects, but the thought of scoring a dance was very exciting to me. I was on tour at the time, so I wasn't able to start writing the music until I had a break in early January. The dance premiered on January 21st, so I had about three weeks to create the score. I camped out up in the top of my father's barn with some minimal recording equipment, my violin and viola, and an old broken piano. Given the time constraints, I approached the music in a very open way. Rather than sit down and try to compose something, I just set up a microphone and started playing. After coming up with a couple of themes on the piano, I started recording, using those small themes and improvising around them. Most of the sections have a small core that is composed, and then the rest is improvised. Luckily for me this method seemed to work. I would work all day and then send a sketch over to Adrienne, and every time her response was positive. So in this way we worked very well together. I give my hugest thanks to Adrienne for trusting me to create the music for her wonderful work. Adrienne told me from the beginning she was looking for a score of piano and strings. So I decided to take this literally and make a rule not to use any other instruments. In the script it called for the sound of a ticking clock. I made this sound by tapping on the body of the violin with my fingernails. The sound of an electric shock given to the patient is depicted by a quick, distorted piano chord. And all other droning and bass tones were made by extending and processing violin and/or piano tones, etc."

1. An Introduction to the Patient
2. Patient Observation
3. Pill Induced Slumber
4. The Dream
5. Awaken / Panic / Restraint
6. Electroconvulsive Shock
7. The Path to Recovery

Zelienople - Hollywood (double 3")

Genre: Ambient
Label: Under The Spire

My Space

“Hollywood was recorded live in 2009 using drums, saxophone, flute and synthesizers. “Misty” is a tribute to the big orchestrated scores by MGM, Disney and the like, while “Drug Legs” is influenced by film noir. John Carpenter was also involved.”

Zelienople is Matt Christensen, Brian Harding, and Mike Weis.

Kiila - Tuota Tuota

Genre: Folk, Psychedelic, Experimental
Label: Fonal

My Space

Tuota tuota is the third full-length album by Kiila. Its songs were born of peaceful, focused work and intense rehearsals with friends, interspersed with sleep and mealtimes. The album features an eight-strong core line-up but, as always, the composition of the group varies effortlessly according to need. At this table, there is room for everyone.

As musical form, songs have always been important to Kiila, and consequently Tuota tuota develops around its songs. On the other hand, the album consists of many details: the sound is full, the web of instruments more varied and carefully orchestrated than before. It is unnecessary to separate the electronic from the non-electronic components. Different traditions of folk and pop music intermingle with electronic music and improvisation, tones and sound itself. This way, the album also poses questions about songs and songwriting.

The motifs in the songs are not easy to render in English, but one can at least attempt to translate some of them: master of the house, elk antlers, tree bark, sound of rapids, fog, letters, calves, fingers. The list, however, doesn’t make the songs easier to understand in a foreign language. The words sound archaic, anachronistic or timeless, the language of the myth. But can they be something else, too? And how transparent do we want the myth to be? At the risk of sounding dull, I suggest that the songs do speak to their age, our age, the nature of knowledge and work, the fluctuations of inspiration and threat. Unfortunately, it is mostly only the Finnish-speaking listeners who will be able to assess the validity of this idea.

The name of the album, Tuota tuota, translates roughly as “well, well” and signifies a thinking pause, a moment of contemplation. The language alone is likely to give pause to an English-speaking listener, but I hope the idea will convey itself in more ways than just that. And a pause for thinking is, of course, never a waste of time.

Hildur Guðnadóttir - Iridescence

Genre: Ambient, Drone, Neo Classical

Label: Touch

Web

An addendum to her exquisite Without Sinking album, 'Iridescence' is a wonderful eleven minute blast of Hildur Gudnadottir's uniquely emotive music for cello and electronics. The piece gradually creeps further and further into the electronic domain, beginning in a haze of minor-key, multitracked strings, only to dissolve into the air as a bitcrushing algorithm takes hold. By the piece's conclusion, the overwhelming, gushing melancholy of it all is displaced by a strangely mechanical network of overtones and harmonic spillage, making 'Iridescence' all the more elegiac. Brilliant.

Es - Kesämaan Lapset

Genre: Psichedelic, Drone, Electronic, Ambient
Label: Fonal

My Space

Four years on from the release of his monumental Sateenkaarisuudelma double-album, Fonal boss Sami Sanpakkila returns with a new collection of songs and soundscapes, covering an incredible range of instruments and compositional approaches. Before delving into lengthier, more involved pieces, 'Ennen Oli Huonommin' opens the set with a flourish of flamboyant analog designs. The piece is assembled from heavily modulated tones that gleam with a dazzling irridescence oveer a four minute period. It's all ver bright and major key, far away from the lo-fi forest folk preconceptions that people tend to approach Fonal material with. Next comes a cheery pop ditty: 'Kesa Ja Hymyilevat' introduces vocals and free-roaming electronics, and it's from here on that Sanpakkila really starts to stretch his legs; 'Sateet Sun Sielusta' begins with some floating, fragmented piano phrases only to ascend into a glorious cascade of drone that combines the disciplined classical minimalism of Terry Riley with the psychedelic synthesizer worship of kosmische musik. The title track takes this euphoric long-form approach even further, weaving a symphony of ambient textures from a miscellany of keyboard instruments, ghostly voices and environmental recordings, all building up to a towering crescendo. It's a hard act to follow, but Sanpakkila maintains the joyous tone for a final, pop-tinged bulletin in the shape of 'Haamut Sun Sydamesta'. It's a ear-singeing parting shot from a highly memorable album, one that merrily perforates boundaries between pop and drone music. Highly recommended.

VA - Music Pour Statues Menhirs

Genre: Ambient, Psychedelic, Electronic, Neo Classical
Label: Arbouse Recordings

Musique Pour Statues Menhirs is a 2 disc featuring exclusive tracks by Fennesz, Rafael Anton Irisarri, parlous, Serafine Steer, Benoit Pioulard, Astrid, Zelionople, Sylvain Chauveau, Jefre Cantu ledesma, Greg Davis, Schneider TM, Orla wren, Map-station, Mria Calix, Melodium, Jasper TX and loads more. 21 tracks spread over 2 discs and it's one of the most stellar line up's I've seen on a CD so far. I'm not entirely sure what the premise of the CD is as it's all in French and I rather untraditionally did Latin (in between being bummed at school ) but I suspect it's something to do with stones and outdoorsy ness. Actually I've just read that artists were invited to create a musical universe in 2008 around the collection of statues-menhirs of the Archaeological Museum of Rodez. Its a big proper delightful album though... both discs are crammed with neo classical and electronic pieces of music which are pure and simply melty on the ole ears.

Tracklist:

CD1:
01-Fennesz - Sundial
02-Rafael Anton Isarri - Still
03-Parlour - A permanent might
04-David Daniell - Pillar
05-ww.lowman - Excerpt 2/3
06-Serafina Steer - I guess this is yours that you
havent picked up
07-Benoit Pioulard - Je resterai ici tandis que vous
changerez
08-John Hugues - BC drone
09-Astrid - High blues
10-Zelienople - The light no one knows

CD2:
01-Sylvain Chauveau - La chanson des pierres
02-Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - The iron age
03-Greg Davis - All things change
04-Schneider TM - Statues menhirs TM
05-Orla Wren - The climbing rope
06-Mapstation - Les tailleurs de pierres
07-Melodium - Filitosa
08-Mira Calix - In a stony place
09-Nathan Bell - Portait of an Ice Age
10-vs_price - Arenite
11-Jasper TX - Open field

oRLA wREN - The One Two Bird And The Half Horse

Genre: Ambient, Electronic, Glitch
Label: FLAU

My Space

'The One Two Bird And The Half Horse' is the second album from Orla Wren. Recorded over the last two years in the environs of an isolated cold water cottage in the Scottish hills, it develops Tui’s happy obsession with rendering the minutiae of nature into sonic form, combining the oldest, wonkiest most organic of possible sound sources, instrumental or otherwise, fashioned into textures of pinprick detail.

A wide array of stylistically disparate musical and vocal collaborators, from places as varied as Japan, the Georgian Republic and 'down-home' U.K., lend their weight to the process, alternately spooking and soothing the music, filtered through Tui’s “wires” into an intensely colorful democratic weave. Orla Wren is a dream child. It’s surfaces may be brilliantly modern,but it’s soul is ancient and gently unfolds itself in a ontemplative manner, revealing the antiquated isolation of the environments that have inspired it. It distils sublime wood smoke folk atmosphere and pointallist digitalis to the subatomic level, until it becomes effectively the same stuff that makes brooks babble and winds whisper.

It’s the music that Fennesz and Lau Nau might make after a night laying beneath the glittering constellations.
Guests were: Keiron Phelan (state river widening, phelan/sheppard), Russudan Meipariani, Jessica Constable, Clare Whyte, Moomlooo (smile down upon us), Simon Scott (ex Slowdive, Televise) and more.