Finds I've Found

It's a wonder what you can do when you finally get around to tidying up. After looking over some of my notes and deciding 'This is getting silly, time to trim some of this down' I've spent the last couple of days gettign around to various albums and other media I've had on the list for a while. It's been very varied too - checking out the rest of Sugar Plant's work - a kind of indie shoegazy downtempo that I just adore for starters, to the more upbeat and (probably unintentionally) slightly vaporwave sounds of the later works of Hiroshi Yoshimura.

While neither of those are on official streamers sadly, I have been pleasantly surprised at the availability of some things on there - serving as a reminder to always check out BC even if it seems unlikely. Starting with another compilation find of mine with Calm who makes exactly the kind of tunes you'd expect given the name. Starting with one of the original tracks from 1998's Shadow Of The Earth - a slightly jazzy cut of late 90's downtempo. It feels a little reductive to call it just that, but it's cut from the same cloth as so many other 90's downtempo albums - but that's not intended as a slight against it, as long time readers will know it's a style I've got a lot of time for and can count many albums in my all time favourites that fall into that category. I've been enjoying my time with it, though I feel that this one is perhaps a little long in the tooth at a hefty 7 minutes.



There are a whole load of bonus tracks included on the BC release, including the one that was on the compilation that pointed me towards Calm in the first place - the Bossa Nova Sitting On The Beach. I've actually picked the track that comes before it, the potentially confusingly named Running On The Sand, which I assumed would be a demo version of the above at first glance (It kind of is in parts, but it was actually released as a single before the album!). I think I may like it a little more than the above one - the previous mix could feel a little generic in parts and despite being longer I feel like this one mixes up the variation a lot more too. It's got a slightly techy feel that's refreshing, but still admittedly very late 90's in execution in a way that I personally find really charming but that could just be my bias for this era of sound showing. One last thing before I forget too - there's also a Drum & Bass reworking of it on Calm's follow up album from 2001 too that's pretty great as well.



Another slightly obscure one to round out, a solitary release from an artist called Sora from label called simply Plop. It's another one I was passingly aware of again thanks to compilations, and one of the albums that I had just assumed would be tricky to get legit as mentioned at the top. It isn't the case though, thanks to a re-press from the folks at WRWTFWW Records, who have saved my bacon more than once.

Anyway, onto the album itself - its another one that is supremely up my alley in terms of sound, a real interesting mix of contrasting styles - delicate, almost minimal ambient with glitchy trimmings to highlight and little jazzy touches here and there to boot. It's been a real treat to dive into as it reminds me a whole lot of some of the stuff Mitsuto Suzuki put out for his solo work (who also gets glitchy form time to time, but that track isn't the best demo of that), as well as the the works of Kensuke Ushio, both the soundtrack work he does under his own name but especially the work he's done under the Agraph alias too. The featured track Revans does an excellent job of showing this off, the first couple of minutes are gorgeous and I just love those skippy stop-start vocal samples dropped in.



I need to properly spend a bit more time with this one, but it's a style I can really get into at times - tracks like Etude:Diagonal continue to play with those cut up snippets of vocals in a really fun way, but I don't think it's something I could just have on in the background - it almost demands to be actively listened to in order to pick out the intricacies. The album is at its best I feel when it merges all these styles together as on Traces - the smooth piano of the opening merges really nicely with the more melodic vocal cuts on show here, and the small jazzy flourishes here and there keep it feeling fresh, my favourite being the really bright sounding skips introduced around the 1:20 mark. Certainly one of the more accessible and less experimental tracks on the album along with Revans, so if you go checking out the full thing be prepared for things to get a little more out there. An interesting curio for sure and one I can see myself picking up sometime soon.



That's all for this time, as I mentioned at the start it's been a pretty productive week for clearing stuff off my 'to listen' lists, I just wish more of it were available on legit streamers. Still, I could always knock up another mixtape thing with them sometime soon as a kind of workaround, and I'm content to at least link to unofficial ones in the text like I have done here in the meantime. I'm a little busier this week so things may be a little quieter, but I'll be sure to be back as soon as I can. Until then, as always - Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Inspirations

I'm back on the ambient / downtempo train again surprising no-one, but this time it has a bit more purpose than usual. I'm feeling like I want to make some more of my little ambient works again (the currently existing ones so far you can listen to / get from my Bandcamp), it's been a long time and I've got ideas both from back then and more recently I've been kicking around my head that I want to try out.

As always with my own audio experiments, a lot of that is just down to the sheer amount of new music I've consumed since I last made something of my own. It's a process that's very familiar to me from my art days - there are times when you find something and it sparks something within and immediately resonates with you, and the experience is like nothing else.

Almir Mavignier - Formas

It's something that's happened a whole bunch over the last year as I had the freedom to explore more than usual. From the field recordings of Wendy Carlos' Sonic Seasonings, more dark Ambient from Kenji Kawai and the indie tinged extended cuts of Sugar Plant, I've had plenty of those moments as of late. Granted, they're not all going to be things I can or will incorporate into anything I make, but they're more there as a sort of general collage of influence, a sonic mood board if you will.

And that's really what kicked off this post, I thought I'd share some of the things that are making that list. First of all is some Hiroshi Yoshimura, ambient composer extraordinaire whose reputation is well earned. Enjoying a bit of a revival in the modern era thanks to the internet and being officially licensed for represses in the West - Yoshimura's work is simply put, gorgeous. His delicate touches throughout Music For Nine Post Cards are Ambient in its most distilled form, I've chosen View From My Window to illustrate - the six minutes of runtime pass effortlessly. I'm hoping to introduce more melodic elements this time around and it's tracks like this that only cement that opinion more. But the creative process is never quite as clear cut as that as we well know, still, fragments of this will be on my mind if and when I get around to creation again.



Rei Harakami has been a big influence in that regard too, starting from his third album Red Curb, he settles into a style that is unique and ever so distinct - I've already talked to death about my all time favourites from him - Lust from the album of the same name and a slightly more obscure piece called Pone, between the two they make up the things I like the most about his brand of electronic: Lust with it's catchy yet sparse melodies and playful feel which makes it a joy to listen to, and Pone being essentially two tracks in one as the airy ambience gives way to rhythm.

This time I've picked something from a little earlier, in fact from Red Curb where this style would be defined. I've chosen June this time, one of the tracks that I think typifies this style from the get go and shows off the fabulous use of panning that Harakami does throughout this album as the melodies dance around your ears, something that comes to a peak on the final track Put Off, which is entirely focused around one panning melody. June is one of the tracks I recommend to new listeners, if you like what you hear on this one, you could pretty much go ahead and pick it up and the follow up album Lust and not be disappointed. The way little flourishes of beat are used on this and Pone are just lovely, no more so than the one that introduces a brilliant bit of synth work at around 1:40 - I could live in that section for all of time, the little pitch bends never fail to make me smile.



I can't talk influences without mentioning Oneohtrix Point Never. OPN has been a massive influence on my creative works, responsible for my brief dive into the world of Plunderphonics with the Eccojams Vol. 1 tape, which still informs a lot of my work to this day. It's a little more experimental than the other examples mentioned here so far, but out of them all I think this one bears the most resemblance to my previous ambient releases (OPN is obviously a hell of a lot better at it than me though!). Normally I would choose something from Rifts, a 2009 compilation of his earlier albums - while I still think that is my favourite of all his releases I have pretty much said all I can say about it in the 10+ years since it's release, so I've gone forward to the following album Replica instead.

I wasn't completely sold on it when it first came out in 2011 - there's a lot of the Plunderphonics influence on show on it, but unlike the vaporwave treatment of Eccojams Vol. 1 , the ones on Replica are more in the vein of proper sound collage: tracks like Sleep Dealer being made up of samples from advertisements if I remember right. It's grown on me since and I've come to appreciate it, but my heart still belongs to the flowing analog soundscapes of before, and Replica opens with one of the best OPN has ever done with Andro. It feels a little like a holdover from the Rifts era, especially as it follows that 'gradual increase in noise' formula of the longer ambient pieces of that compilation - though by the end with a section of sample butchery it does set up the overall tone of Replica. The opening is stellar, OPN has a real way with his synths as the haunting intro gives way and his trademark Juno comes in with some lonesome keys, the whole thing is dripping with atmosphere and I just love it.



This one got a little long but I'll wrap it up there, I was going to give an honourable mention to Kensuke Ushio and his solo work under the Agraph alias, but a lot of his stuff isn't quite as accessible as I'd like and I'd really prefer a Bandcamp player where possible. Still I highly recommend checking his work out, especially if you liked the kind of sound Rei Harakami had - Agraph is pretty similar just with a bit more of an IDM edge. I hope you all enjoy in the meantime, I'll be sure to swing by and post anything I do end up making as and when, but until then - as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

A Flip-through

That time of year where I look do a little bit of belated spring cleaning - tidying up the folders and doing the 'when I remember to' backup of everything just in case, I'm not as careless with new stuff as I once was so it's not quite the two-day task that it once was. On my travels I spotted something curious, an overlooked folder with a backup of my then-current collection of music that can't have been from later than 2012 or so, almost quaint in comparison to the beast it is now. But I was curious and decided to have a little look through to see what the state of things was almost a decade ago.

Eyvind Earle - California Memories (1994)

If you've been reading here for as long as I've been writing this will be a real trip down memory lane for you all too, pretty much every post the hyped up teenage me would make is represented in the haphazard loose files (in my defence I didn't think it was big enough at the time to warrant arranging into folders!). But one silver lining here is the smaller scale makes it easier to pick out certain tracks, the more you have the less likely you are to come across single ones after all.

The spur of this post was finding Nightmares On Wax's Emotion / Sweet Harry among the pile - a brilliant piece of turn of the millennium downtempo. It's never been released outside of the soundtrack to 1999's exceedingly British club comedy Kevin & Perry Go Large so it's not the easiest track to pick up, which is a shame - the rest of the soundtrack itself is an absolute who's who of late 90's dance and trance to boot. So instead I went with a track from the NOW album from around the same time Carboot Soul, Emotion could have easily been a B-side from it as the rest of the album shares the same kind of sound. If you're at all into 90's downtempo or trip hop - or interested in getting some in your collection, I can't recommend this album enough. Every single entry in the tracklist is just great, but the one-two punch of the opening track Les Nuits into this one is nigh perfection.



What else was happening in my collection around that time? Well, I'd just discovered that Modeselektor and Apparat were teaming up again as Moderat (get it!?) once more and this time it was going to be an album. Coming back to this one has been interesting too, because even at the time I was of the opinion that the album peaks very early in the tracklist, though there are some standouts later on as well. There are times where it's a little too minimal for me - tracks like A New Error sound great, but do start to wear out their welcome towards the end of their 6-minute runtime. My real favourite from the entire thing was Rusty Nails, Apparat providing vocal accompaniment nicely breaks things up so it doesn't suffer from stagnation, and I will always forever love that very obviously Burial inspired 2-step beat of the opening. In hindsight as well it's more obvious to see this one's ties with the eventual second Moderat album, with a lot of the tracks there following this formula. While I may like the second more than the debut, I still have a place in my heart for tracks like this.



And finally, relics from the days where I spent every day searching for my next electro house hit. At the time I was hyping up Simian Mobile Disco to anyone who would listen, to the point where the first track I ever posted here was one of theirs. In fairness to past me, Attack Decay Sustain Release is a really solid debut, and one of those albums that was definitely right-place-right-time to take advantage of the explosion of great electro that was happening around 2007. ADSR came out in June of that year and promptly made its way onto all my summer playlists, like Carboot Soul it's only short at 10 tracks but there are no duds - each and every one has something to offer.

Sleep Deprivation is perhaps one of my favourite album openers of all time, the buildup to payoff is one of the few from this era that still gives me that same tingly feeling of excitement to this day. The bandcamp version that the Mobile Disco boys have put up is a remaster, it doesn't sound much different aside from swapping out a couple of the tracks and (Sleep Deprivation and Hustler getting 'Club Mixes' whereas Wooden gets an extended cut). Personally I think the originals are better, but I do love the variety they bring, if it were up to me I'd have them as bonus tracks on the end and not swap them out like this but hey ho.

I've gone with I Believe this time, perhaps the poppiest track on here and one I'm surprised didn't manage to worm its way onto the radio like so many electronic tunes of the era did, it Features Simon Lord of the original Simian putting in a super powerful performance as he did on We Are Your Friends. I don't think it sounds too dated at all, not to sound like a broken .mp3 here, but I still have a lot of love for this one - with what is probably admittedly more than a bit of bias on the nostalgia front.



And so ends our trip down memory lane for today, I did briefly have a thought of 'Oh man, I should Retro Review that Nightmares On Wax Album!" only to remember I had already done that many years ago when I first started writing with the 'A Very Warped History' series. Not to say it can't still happen mind you, I'm sure I have more nuanced opinions these days so it wouldn't be a straight re-tread - and I should swap out the spotify players on those old posts with Bandcamp ones where possibtle now Warp has their own one... Regardless, hope you've enjoyed gettin' all nostalgic with me, or just plain enjoyed the selections if its your first time hearing them! Either way, as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

A slow Sunday

Not to be too cliché, but me and Summer don't get on. A big part of that is northern European housing being designed to trap heat which makes the nights stifling. But it's been a lovely stormy couple of days, bringing with them a cool breeze that's much more palatable. So with that in mind I've set my sights on things much more ambient once again.

Elaine de Kooning - Sunday Afternoon (1957)

Starting with another tale from the 'recommended' pile - someone calling themselves 'Survival Spheres' who specialises as the name would suggest in ambient soundscapes inspired by the more ambient pieces from survival horror game soundtracks. It's a style I'm surprised hasn't been co-opted more often actually thinking about it now, look up any 'save room' theme from any game in the genre and you'll find plenty of comments waxing lyrical about how much people love them. If people find out they love ambient through soundtracks like that then all the power to them.

Back to the output of Spheres though. They are decent, but I have some complaints. The first would be the sheer amount of stuff there is on them, there are 3 of these compilations of their ambient work and each clocks in at around 100 tracks each which is perhaps a touch too much. Far be it from me to criticise the amount of work that has gone into each of those 300+ tracks but perhaps some curation (or even better, separating them into the specific games they're mimicking as Spheres does on YouTube) might have helped a touch. Similarly, my other complaint is the length, while they top out at around 10 minutes long I can't help but feel like some of them don't need to be stretched out that much.

Not to be exceedingly negative though, there are moments on here that are great. I've picked Channeling for my first one as I think it does a downright fantastic job of capturing that PS1-era style of sound that its going for. It's one of the Silent Hill inspired ones and it does a decent job at that too, the opening rush is very Yamaoka-esque - though it does stray a little from then on it still does a great job of nailing the overriding atmosphere it's going for. It didn't need to be 10 minutes though, it could have wrapped up in 7 like the Youtube Promo version does and not lost anything.



Moving onto something a little more befitting of stormy weather with another bit from Susumu Yokota's Sakura. It was the first album of his I checked out after finally getting around to listening to a bit of his stuff via compilations - I knew he'd done some ambient work and was interested to see how it'd shake out, especially after being exposed to his House work first. And the answer is given with the first track of Sakura, Saku. It's very different from the kind of ambient I'd normally post, not quite as melodic in the usual sense. 'Heady' would be the way I'd describe it, the contrast between those hazy pads that dominate the runtime and the little sparkling flourishes that shine through every now and then is just lovely.

It's interesting to look at this one and hear the influences come through: the hallmarks of tracks from Eno's cinematic work on Music For Films and Textures are most certainly here, as are touches of the more downtempo parts of Another Green World. Coming back to it though, I'm struck by how much it has in common with some of Daniel Lopatin's work under the Oneohtrix Point Never alias, tracks like this share a lot of structural and sound choices with the kind of stuff he was making between the original release of Rifts and Returnal - albeit more drone in OPN's case, but you can certainly hear similarities between this and Stress Waves for example. But we're straying from the point a bit there - a brilliant opening to a brilliant album.



Finally, Sachi Kobayashi. An artist I found in my little dip into the world of indie ambient on Bandcamp. when I first found the EP that caught my attention Ephemeral Beauty, the discogs page was pretty lacking and I assumed that it was perhaps their first release. It's since been populated a lot more and I have since found out about the other releases that I couldn't find as they were on different labels. I've gone way back to Moon & Sea for this post, one of her first.

Like Kobayashi's other releases there are plenty of lush soundscapes on offer here, but I've chosen one that stood out to me as a little different. There's nothing in the rules that says ambient music can't have a percussive element, rare though it may be, and I'm a firm believer in it being possible to have both. On Construction, Kobayashi does a fantastic job of showing that off - while not a 'beat' in the traditional sense, it certainly goes a way to spice things up a bit beyond your standard ambient fare. Isolated from the rest of the tracklist it sounds a little like a downtempo interstitial from a regular electronic album, but as long time readers will know they were always my favourites. Kobayashi has been consistently been releasing things since both this and her debut album last year and I will most definitely be keeping eyes on what she's releasing, just wonderful.



And so ends our little ambient jaunt for today, I don't go on them often but it's always a pleasure when I do. I didn't talk about the Yokota album as much as I would have liked but I cut it short as it was getting fairly long - it can be a bit daunting given the sheer amount of releases Yokota has available, and to complicate things even more not all of them are readily available either physically or on Bandcamp either. Sakura is a good starting point for his more ambient side though, with a brief dip into his House & Techno background with tracks like Genshi and going almost trip hop in spots for the latter half - I very much recommend checking it out.

And as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF