Archive for Ambient

Kyle Bobby Dunn – A Young Person’s Guide To Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point) 2010

Posted in Ambient, Drone, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Music with tags , , , on October 12, 2010 by noisenoisenoise

Once I immersed myself in the concept of noise and drone and I started listening to as much of it as I possibly could, I realised that there a an absolute plethora of subsets within the two genres. I mean, when I started getting in to this sort of stuff the idea that there would  be different sorts of noise and a kaleidoscope of different drone records  would have seemed a nonsense. The fact is that drone travels all of the way from the  minimalist early records of Kevin Drumm, branches off in to near ambient territory and at the extreme end sometimes intersects with noise (Lasse Marhaug) to create an incessant maelveolence. This record by Kyle Bobby Dunn of 12 long tracks over two discs travels in the “almost ambient realm” of drone. It’s like a cross between Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and Birchville Cat Motel with a Stars of the Lid vibe. Kyle Dunn is a composer and sound artist based in New York. He uses conventional instruments before processing him into these quite beautiful, epic pieces. This is the sound of peace and serenity. Ambient may be a dirty word in the noise/drone/experimental community but records like this prove that it shouldn’t be.

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Finneyerkes – Gather and Sing (self released) 2009

Posted in Ambient, Finneyerkes, Music with tags , , on March 15, 2010 by noisenoisenoise

Ahhhhh! Crappily small artwork alert!

One of the bonuses about writing stuff about records is that  people indeed send me their records to listen to. I get sent a fair bit so it takes me some time to sift through the stuff that doesn’t work for me to get to the truly great records. After all this is a blog about the records I like. My standards for what I post on at Ducks Battle Satan are high. So in that spirit, over the next couple of weeks I’ll post on those records you probably have never heard off but which I think you probably need to hear. First up is one I’ve had for a while: Gather and Sing.

Finneyerkes are a a duo of Matt Finney (a 21 year old poet from Alabama) and the  ambient musician Randy Yerkes. Their sound is spoken word, haunting, end of the world ambient soundscapes and media samples. It is a deeply emotional record, one that I doubt I’ll be able to do justice to on this site. I love this sort of sound and the way in which  the spoken word elements are added  makes it seem like transmissions from the past. It’s post apocalyptic hauntology, sadly beautiful and worthy of your time. Gather and Sing and some of their other records are free for download from here.

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Nurse With Wound – Space Music (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2009

Posted in Music, noise, nurse with wound with tags , , , on December 29, 2009 by noisenoisenoise

I saw this at my local indie record store shortly before Christmas. Before I shelled out for it I thought I’d have a bit of a look around the interwebs to get a sense of what it was all about. The interwebs were strangely silent so in a burst of civic duty I thought I’d shell out the cash and try to give some sense of what Space Music sounds like. Space Music is a piece of abstract sound art commissioned for the Melbourne Planetarium’s Science in the Dark series. The piece is based  on the theory that the resonant frequency of the Big Bang was F#. I suppose that if I try to put it in the context of Nurse with Wound it’s fair to say that this is one of the most ambient and minimal pieces of their’s I’ve heard to date. If I was trying to describe this to someone who hasn’t heard Nurse With Wound the piece itself is probably a lot like travelling through space. At times there’s a great deal of “fuck all” going on as you float almost silently through space with just the hum of your flight craft making any aural impact , every now and then you hit a meteor shower and it fucks, to varying degrees, your electronic equipment and sometimes the ship gains consciousness and tries to kill you. An ambient piece which somehow managed to alter my idea of what “ambient” can mean

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Lloyd Barrett – Mise En Scene (Room 40) 2007

Posted in Australian underground, Drone, Lloyd Barrett, Music, noise with tags , , , , on December 12, 2009 by noisenoisenoise

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This  blog has been running for over two years now and finally on post 264 I get around to posting on a home town Brisbane noise/sound artist. My friend M bought me Mise En Scene for my birthday this year. This is the woman who introduced me to Nurse With Wound so her taste in most things is pretty sound but for some reason I hadn’t actually got around to listening to this record until four months later. This is one of those exquisitely put together experimental/ambient/electronic/drone records that every now and then some out of the woodwork. At times it sounds like Peter Rehberg accompanying The Necks (Exhale) but the rest is much harder to describe. It’s certainly ambient in places with interjections of harsh electronics. I think field recordings might be involved because many tracks have a sound that reminds me of insects in the tropics. If you’re  looking for some comparisons then I’d suggest that  there is some Fennesz influence at work and some of it reminds me of KK Null’s Fertile in places. Stunning – you can track it down here and listen to some samples.

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GAS – Nah Und Fern (Kompakt) 2008

Posted in GAS, Music with tags , , , , on June 6, 2009 by noisenoisenoise

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There were some great compilations I managed to track down last year and this, by far, is the best of them. GAS were a german ambient-minimalist techno group doing their thing in the late 1990’s. I first became aware of them as I guess many did when head Kompakt honcho Wolfgang Voight made it on to the cover of The Wire. I dismissed ever listening to GAS at the time because if I’m honest Voight just had one of those dodgy Euro-track haircuts that screamed that his thing probably wasn’t going to be my thing. But fast forward six months and I’ve become a sucker for minimalist techno and I decided to track it down.  I don’t know why it it works for me so well because as music it’s almost barely there but when I turn it off I realise that my whole space has been awash with the most sublime  beats that their absence is as noticeable as turning off Merzbow mid scree. Nah Und fern is a compilation of all four albums they produced but which had iunfortunately gone out of print. The four albums in question are GAS, Zauberberg, Konigsforest and Pop. I don’t have a favourite between them but if you have any desire to hear techno as art then you should get this. 

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Rameses III – Basilica (Important) 2008

Posted in Drone, Music, Rameses III with tags , , on August 24, 2008 by noisenoisenoise

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, another release from Important. Yes I am a label whore. I think we may have already established that. Rameses III excel at some of the most beautiful, moving experimental (oh how fucking corny am I going to get ) dreamscapes  (I hate myself) I’ve heard this year. This is a two disc release of ambient drone, which for lovers of Birchville Cat Motel in his less rock inclined mode, Astral Social Club and Vibracathedral Orchestra is this years essenitial release. The first disc are remixes of Rameses III tracks done by amongst others, Neil Campbell. All the tracks are tremendous and if you’re into this type of thing this is going to blow your socks off. The second disc consists of five live tracks all called Origins. It’s pretty special and although it at times (Origins 1 for instance) approaches new age it manages to pulls itself back from being played in crystal shops the  world over through the absence of whale song. At times some of the stuff on the second disc reminded me of Earth’s recent efforts if they had completely abandoned their bleakness and embraced shimmering transcendence. Good stuff indeed.

Live at Kilburn

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