Just took the car to be fixed and walked the three miles or so home. Frost on the ground but a clear blue sky and a little early spring warmth in the sun, the aftermath of yesterday's freezing rain sparkling on the trees. Listened to loscil's Submers.
This appears to count as irrational behavior in this part of the world, a sign of incipient mental instability or dire poverty. (Why use legs if you can afford gasoline?) Shortly after I moved to Michigan from the UK I did this same thing, dropped off the car, walked home, walked back later to fetch it. That evening I remarked to some local friends that something had seemed odd to me - I had walked for two hours through mostly residential areas and had seen no other pedestrians. Not one. They looked at me in puzzlement, and said: "You did what?"
I think of this as loscil's last early work - not as great as what follows, but on tracks 7, 8, and a stretch of track 2 he is hitting what with hindsight I think of as his signature sound.
@germanprof; I walk to and from the garage sometimes too, although it's not quite so far. I can hardly step out of the house without seeing other pedestrians.
Good to know the species still exists :-). Grand Rapids seems particularly pedestrian-averse. There are, for instance, major shopping streets where there are no sidewalks or crosswalks and it is effectively impossible to navigate on foot.
I would walk more, but we effectively live on a mountain. Just going to the Whole Foods that's less than half a mile from our house can be a real pain in the ass. After buying a really nice bike to get back into the habit, it's been shelved because the streets are just too steep.
Living in a rural area I tend to walk fairly regularly, even though we do have to use our cars a lot to get anywhere else. Consequently we are thinking of soon moving back to an urban area to be nearer places we want to go to often. All our village has is a school, church and pub - so no shop unless you walk a mile or so each way. Great on a day like today, but you don't get such nice days in England too often most of the year!
Walked to the office listening to:
Train noises, check. Guy narrating in Russian, check. Bird sounds, check. In the Biosphere ballpark. I like it. (Cheap way to trigger my nostalgia: add field recordings of trains to ambient music).
Putting some effort into fixing the genre tags in my collection. This has forced me to go through a number of Amie Street purchases that were nearly forgotten about. That's a good thing - lots of good music like this sweet and sultry electropop.
"It's been five years since the last Belong long player, as the duo works slowly to organize their sound works. Both the time invested, and the wait, have been well rewarded with this return.
Common Era shows extraordinary progression from that first album of dense, scorched earth instrumentals, hints of a new direction having been revealed on the Colorloss Record EP from 2008 which contained covers of four should-have-been classics from the original psychedelic era. The new material has such common pop elements as "songs," vocals and drum machines, but the results could hardly be called conventional and are like little else happening on the current "scene."
The songs themselves are akin to radio transmissions received from another time and place, just as likely to be the future as the past, or even from a contemporary alternate universe. They are both passionate and dispassionate, grey yet technicolor, ghostly and palpable, distant yet immediate, grainy and focused. Upon listening these conceptual contradictions are dismissed with ease, as the recordings reveal that they fit all of these descriptors simultaneously, an extraordinary balancing act."
- Kranky, 2011
Putting some effort into fixing the genre tags in my collection.
Did that recently, and I now have 114 genres. I thought at first it would be unwieldy, but I actually love it. Feel like synth pop? Here's the options. In a jazz mood? Here you go. How about ambient? Viola.
I've been thinking about genre tags again for a couple of days. "Ambient" is such a useless tag. Covers everything from drone to mellow forms of techno. (And as used on bandcamp it includes indie rock and progressive metal). Started doing some digging - found one guy with a list of I think 14 subgenres of ambient, of varying degrees of usefulness (death ambient? medieval ambient?); the lists on the standard sites like all music guide or wikipedia don't strike me as all that insightful. But I have way too much music capable of being called ambient for ambient to continue to be a useful placeholder. (If anyone's interested in discussing this at length on a thread let me know, I'd be up for it).
Ambient.
(Monastic ambient?)
I have ambient and drone, but as those aren't my usual genres they're sufficient for me. Start getting into rock/pop/"alternative" stuff though and I have a metric crap load of subgenres.
- As the other Sparkling Wide Pressure releases I've posted over the past week or so, this is brilliant and very VERY moving !
- (Considering a SWP guide).
Comments
@doofy - yes great so far, about half way through it now, thanks
Now playing a range of Chuck Berry tracks from various albums
One of the earliest CDs I bought - haven't played it in a long time. Reminds me of a number of Van Morrison concerts I went to around the same time...
This appears to count as irrational behavior in this part of the world, a sign of incipient mental instability or dire poverty. (Why use legs if you can afford gasoline?) Shortly after I moved to Michigan from the UK I did this same thing, dropped off the car, walked home, walked back later to fetch it. That evening I remarked to some local friends that something had seemed odd to me - I had walked for two hours through mostly residential areas and had seen no other pedestrians. Not one. They looked at me in puzzlement, and said: "You did what?"
I think of this as loscil's last early work - not as great as what follows, but on tracks 7, 8, and a stretch of track 2 he is hitting what with hindsight I think of as his signature sound.
I forget I have this one.
Pre-dubstep.
Just finished this - I must admit whilst liking this, I prefer his Septet's Narratives
Living in a rural area I tend to walk fairly regularly, even though we do have to use our cars a lot to get anywhere else. Consequently we are thinking of soon moving back to an urban area to be nearer places we want to go to often. All our village has is a school, church and pub - so no shop unless you walk a mile or so each way. Great on a day like today, but you don't get such nice days in England too often most of the year!
Train noises, check. Guy narrating in Russian, check. Bird sounds, check. In the Biosphere ballpark. I like it. (Cheap way to trigger my nostalgia: add field recordings of trains to ambient music).
Moved on to this without realising!
Belong - Common Era - 1 track @ Soundcloud.
ETA: 1 more track.
Craig
JAMC is ambient viola music.
Craig
Ambient.
(Monastic ambient?)
Craig
Ron Carter (bass); Hubert Laws (flute); Herbie Hancock (piano); Billy Cobham, Grady Tate (drums)
Sparkling Wide Pressure - Insider Gazing - Free @ Bandcamp (Excite Bike Tapes 2009)
- Found on Bhob Rainey's A Selective Collection of Ether page (kindly provided by Kargatron).
- As the other Sparkling Wide Pressure releases I've posted over the past week or so, this is brilliant and very VERY moving !
- (Considering a SWP guide).