Libby Van Cleve, English horn & oboe d'amore. Ingram Marshall, electronics[/img]
Dark Waters, for English horn and tape, was written in 1996 for the oboist Libby Van Cleve. The English horn is amplified and processed through several digital delay devices and mixed live with the tape part. The tape part was created using raw material garnered from sampling fragments of an old 78 rpm recording from the twenties of "The Swan of Tuonela" by Sibelius. The 'low fi' sound and even the surface noise of the old acetate record, clearly heard at the very beginning of the piece, are essential to the dark qualities I tried to produce in this music.
After the satisfying experience of working with Libby Van Cleve on Dark Waters, we both decided another collaborative venture was in store for us. Although I am fond of the oboe itself, my preference for the lower range and darker timbres of its tenor and alto cousins led me to turn to the Oboe d'Amore, an instrument frequently found in Baroque music but rare in the modern repertoire. One of the most famous uses of the Oboe d'Amore in the Bach canon is found in the B Minor Mass, in the Basso aria 'Et in Spiritum Sanctum -- part of the Credo. There two Oboes d'Amore interweave lines with the singer which suggest not so much a rarefied holy spirit but a dancing one; the music has grace, flow and sprightliness. I have taken some snatches of melody from these parts and recreated my own take on the Holy Ghost. As the oboist plays the Bach fragments, digital delay processors echo them back and create spiraling rich textures which build up to create "ghosts" of the original material.
Rave was created for the choreographer Paula Josa-Jones who commissioned it for her solo dance work Raving in Wind. The imagery in the work was primarliy avaian which led me to explore the use of bird calls -- especially those of ravens and loons. The latter create haunting, plaintive cries, heard over northern lakes at night, as well as a kind of pealing laughter! The ravens have a most diverse vocabulary and are capable of an unusually complex array of sounds; I created a kind of gamelan with the few I sampled. In the middle section of the piece, the bird sounds give way to samples of southeast Asian instruments which share with the bird calls an elemental, primal sound; they too seem to emerge from the natural world. In the final section, all the sounds come together.
Trying to get the go together to put that tree up later - it's going to be the first one for our two current cats, and I'm afraid, very afraid. Fortunately we have a whole lot of wooden ornaments we'll start with.
@BigD-Bluez: Tie the ornaments on with twist-ties. The ones you get on a roll in the garden department are green. Also consider running string from the tree to any handy adjacent walls.
new york tropical, from dj/rupture's nyc label. so so good, mixing grime, deep house, bassline, garage, and this tropical vibe apparently going around the ny scene these days.
Bert Kaempfert - Christmas Wonderland.
Best.Christmas.Album.Ever. This is the album to play while you decorate the tree. This is the album to play when the kids hang up the stockings. This is the album to play when you sit in front of the fire and sip eggnog.
This is the album to play while you hang yourself on the tree after stuffing the kids into stockings and throwing them into the fire that you started with eggnog which you mixed with lighter fluid.
Not that I'm recommending that anyone actually do that, of course...
I got this more than a year ago when it was $20 for the whole thing at amazon mp3, and I thought, "I'll listen to one disc a month, and have successfully absorbed it in less than a year." Didn't happen. So now I'm listening to all the as-yet-unlistened parts in one fell swoop. So far gotten through John Surman and working on John Abercrombie. Some good stuff in here.
Have a go. I don't know if you have kids or are at all familiar with Kipper the Dog, but my 3-year-old loves it, and he's taken to asking "mind if I have a go?" when he wants a turn at something, which is a somewhat unusual phrase for us yanks, so now the phrase always makes me smile.
Comments
Ingram Marshall - Dark Waters - (New Albion Records 2001)
Libby Van Cleve, English horn & oboe d'amore. Ingram Marshall, electronics[/img]
- New Albion Records.
low -- live at eindoven. it's a free EP. and it's . . . astonishing.
Single Bullet Theory: SBT: 1977-1980
Listening online.
Trying to get the go together to put that tree up later - it's going to be the first one for our two current cats, and I'm afraid, very afraid. Fortunately we have a whole lot of wooden ornaments we'll start with.
Thanks to Doofy, I got the two major tracks for $2!
a definite favorite for the year.
Free Amazon "club Christmas" sampler. It's freakin' hilarious.
Craig
Hard to find but eMusic still carries it.
Craig
new york tropical, from dj/rupture's nyc label. so so good, mixing grime, deep house, bassline, garage, and this tropical vibe apparently going around the ny scene these days.
Despite the fact that they were still pretty much a cover band I am liking it.
Bert Kaempfert - Christmas Wonderland.
Best.Christmas.Album.Ever. This is the album to play while you decorate the tree. This is the album to play when the kids hang up the stockings. This is the album to play when you sit in front of the fire and sip eggnog.
This is the album to play while you hang yourself on the tree after stuffing the kids into stockings and throwing them into the fire that you started with eggnog which you mixed with lighter fluid.
Not that I'm recommending that anyone actually do that, of course...
Exhibit 1.
Exhibit 2.
Exhibit 3
A John Waters Christmas
I am still struggling to copy images into this thread - I can copy OK from an image but it will not paste onto here. Any suggestions welcome please
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ebQdDpltL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
then copy the url, not the image itself, and place it in the magic formula:
{img}http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ebQdDpltL._SL500_AA300_.jpg{/img}
but use [ and ] instead of { and }
like so:
I got this more than a year ago when it was $20 for the whole thing at amazon mp3, and I thought, "I'll listen to one disc a month, and have successfully absorbed it in less than a year." Didn't happen. So now I'm listening to all the as-yet-unlistened parts in one fell swoop. So far gotten through John Surman and working on John Abercrombie. Some good stuff in here.