Secondo studi non ben identificati (sembrano essere della British Academy of Sound Therapy) Weightless, della band Marconi Union. sarebbe il brano più rilassante mai realizzato, in grado di ridurre l’ansia e i battiti cardiaci.

All’ascolto è un incrocio fra il primo Eno e i Pink Floyd vecchio stile. Sembra comunque che la band di Manchester abbia lavorato con dei terapisti per produrlo. i particolari in questo articolo del Daily Mail.

Intanto ascoltatelo (ma vi consiglio di procurarvelo in originale, piuttosto che basarvi sull’audio compresso di YouTube)

Related posts

• Campi armonici
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone
• Symphonies of the Planets 1
• Eno for wine
• Commute
• bewilderment

Pierre Sauvageot distribuisce un migliaio di strumenti eolici su una grande superficie. La fruizione avviene muovendosi all’interno del sito. Si può passare, così, da un’area lunga quasi 400 metri in cui sono sparse più di 300 campane balinesi a uno slalom fra canne di bamboo forate e intonate, per poi finire in uno spazio cosparso di glockenspiel pentatonici azionati da turbine.

Il tutto mosso solo dal vento. Il video si riferisce all’installazione del 2010 a Martigues, nei pressi di Marsiglia.

Related posts

• Weightless
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone
• Symphonies of the Planets 1
• Eno for wine
• Commute
• bewilderment

Questa scultura sonora, progettata dagli architetti Anna Liu e Mike Tonkin (Tonkin Liu Ltd), si trova in un luogo remoto non lontano dalla città di Burnley, nell’Inghilterra del nord ed è chiamata The Singing Ringing Tree.

Completata nel 2006, è alta circa 3 metri e formata da canne di acciaio galvanizzato che, grazie al vento, possono produrre una sonorità corale che si estende su varie ottave. Il suono, leggermente dissonante, non è casuale. Alcune delle canne, infatti, sono state forate per accordarle.

Non tutte le canne, inoltre, suonano. Parecchie hanno solo una funzione strutturale o estetica.

Ecco un video in cui potete anche ascoltarla.

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone
• Symphonies of the Planets 1
• Eno for wine
• Commute
• bewilderment

Strutture abbandonate sono quelle che vengono alla mente ascoltando questa release per Test Tube di Philip Croaton, russo, così come viene in mente Tarkovsky.

Vengono anche in mente le strutture musicali abbandonate, come è tipico di molta musica di questo tipo.

In effetti, non è che l’ambient mi dispiaccia. All’ascolto è godibile. Ma poi rimango sempre a bocca asciutta per l’assenza di qualsiasi sviluppo. Musicalmente viene stabilita un’atmosfera che poi non cambia mai. È come se uno mi raccontasse una storia in cui non succede nulla.

Solo in pochissimi casi si riesce a raccontare in modo interessante una storia in cui non accade nulla e di solito è perché, ad una lettura più attenta, si scopre che in realtà accadono molte cose. Un esempio letterario: Rumore Bianco di Don Delillo. Un esempio musicale: il primo brano di Music for Airport che procede sempre con lo stesso mood, ma almeno il gioco della sovrapposizione delle parti temporalmente sfasate è motivo di interesse.

Ora, prendo atto che quella della continuità e del non sviluppo è proprio la poetica dell’ambient, però ci sono molte cose che mi lasciano perplesso. La più inquietante è che una musica come questa potrebbe benissimo essere generata direttamente da un computer. Non avrei problemi a scrivere un software che produca automaticamente gran parte dell’ambient che sento in giro, tipo questo.

Naturalmente poi non inventerebbe niente. Semplicemente ogni brano continuerebbe così, in un continuum armonicamente definito dai dati di partenza. Con un piccolo sforzo di programmazione, potrebbe anche cambiare e introdurre altri eventi, secondo regole che, dopo un po’, diventerebbero alquanto prevedibili per un ascoltatore attento, ma è questo quello che vogliamo?

Eppure questa è la filosofia dell’ambient. Come scrisse Eric Satie nei “Quaderni di un mammifero“:

Bisognerebbe comporre una musica d’arredamento, che conglobasse i rumori dell’ambiente in cui viene diffusa, che ne tenesse conto. Dovrebbe essere melodiosa, in maniera da addolcire il suono metallico di coltelli e forchette, senza troppo imporsi, senza volervisi sovrapporre. Riempirebbe i silenzi, a volte pesanti, fra i commensali. Risparmierebbe il solito scambio di banalità. Neutralizzerebbe, nello stesso tempo, i suoni della strada che penetrano, indiscreti, all’interno.

Ottima idea. Perfino piacevole. Ma adesso abbiamo visto come funziona. Passiamo ad altro, per favore.

Per finire, non ce l’ho con il disco di Croaton (liberamente scaricabile qui), che è un gradevole massaggio con un fondo di malinconia. Ce l’ho con la moltitudine.

Estratti:

• Abandoned
• Silence
• Easy Close

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Minimal States
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone
• Symphonies of the Planets 1
• Eno for wine
• Commute
• bewilderment

Thomas Carter has yet another musical project called Minimal States, where he explores ambient soundscapes based on collected samples and field recordings.
‘Like A Photograph‘ is the first set of a trilogy that Thomas intends to release on test tube.

This first work is heavily based on samples taken from the well known Fm3 Buddha Machine and CC field recordings taken from the Quiet American website. With 15 minutes spent with each piece - ‘Circadian Rhythms’ and ‘Stereopsis’ - Minimal States embraces the full spectrum of landscape generative ambient in its true form.

The second album in the trilogy is ‘Liberty Hoax’. Firmly based in the urban, developed and political world, far from the timelessness of the forest and natural world of the first album, it examines the vast, densely populated spaces of the inner-city and the physical and cultural wastelands that surround it.

Moreover, the album is concerned with the place of the individual amongst the masses, and with the concept of identity itself in a world where companies and the State have ever-increasing powers to access and regulate personal data. The album questions whether personal freedom is still a priority for governments and legislators, or if it is now merely a glass wall, a façade, or a mirage that will vanish when approached

Download the first part here and the second here.

Excerpts:

• from Like A Photograph
  • Circadian Rhythms

• from Liberty Hoax
  • Memory Bank
  • Ruins

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Denoising Field Recordings
• Save Our Sounds
• Ice sounds
• PALAOA
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone

The sound of Akashic Crow’s Nest begins with the use of an image synthesizer which turns very long photographic images into audio output, in the manner of a piano roll. The initial part of composing this music is thus designing the picture. For this latest project, the first audio output is converted to midi and run through a different softsynth, before being subjected to a battery of effects to get to the sounds you hear on this album.

Download from Webbed Hand Records

Excerpt:

• Distill

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Generative Music for iPhone
• Symphonies of the Planets 1
• Eno for wine
• Jliat
• We will become insects, someday

Bloom, Trope and Air are three applications developed by Brian Eno and the musician / software designer Peter Chilvers that brings to the iPhone the concept of generative music popularized by Eno.

Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.

Darker in tone, Trope immerses users in endlessly evolving soundscapes created by tracing abstract shapes onto the screen, varying the tone with each movement.

Air is described as “An endless Music for Airports”. It assembles vocal and piano samples into a beautiful, still and ever changing composition, which is always familiar, but never the same.
Air features four ‘Conduct’ modes, which let the user control the composition by tapping different areas on the display, and three ‘Listen’ modes, which provide a choice of arrangement. For those fortunate enough to have access to multiple iPhones and speakers, an option has been provided to spread the composition over several players.

Buy here.

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Come al solito ci spiano
• The Microsoft Sound
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Gelie
• Hitler about iPad

In the August and September 1977, two Voyager spacecraft were launched to fly by and explore the great gaseous planets of Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager I, after successful encounters with the two, was sent out of the plane of the ecliptic to investigate interstellar space.
Voyager II’s charter later came to include not only encounters with Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1981), but also appointments with Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989).
The Voyagers are controlled and their data returned through the Deep Space Network, a global spacecraft tracking and communications system operated by the JPL for NASA.

Although space is a virtual vacuum, this does not mean there is no sound in space. Sound does exist as electronic vibrations. The especially designed instruments on board of the Voyagers performed special experiments to pick up and record these vibrations, all within the range of human hearing.

These recordings come from a variety of different sound environments, e.g. the interaction of the solar wind with the planet’s magnetosphere; electromagnetic field noise; radio waves bouncing between the planet and the inner surface of the atmosphere, etc.

In 1993 NASA published excerpts from these recordings in a set of 5 CD (30 minutes each) called Symphonies of the Planets (now out of print).

This is the CD 1.

• Voyager recordings - Symphonies of the Planets 1

Related posts

• Douglas Trumbull
• Weightless
• Golden Record
• Campi armonici
• Cassini
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• First Orbit
• Strutture Abbandonate
• La lenta fine di una stella
• Rendezvous with Rama

“Long Now (aka Pelissero Wine)” is a rare, limited edition promotional CD by Brian Eno, produced in 2002 to celebrate an Italian wine and offered to wine sellers. The wine is the Pelissero’s Long Now, so named in honour of the Long Now Foundation.

It features five unreleased tracks, in the same mood as his 2003 album, “January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now“: these compositions experiment possible melodies and atmospheres for bell towers.

Relying on digital bell sounds (from FM synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7), processed through various reverbs and delays, these compositions create strange and hypnotic soundscapes, between ambient and experimentation, with cycles of repetition ruled by mathematical laws.

The Azienda Agricola Pelissero is a family-run vine-growing estate located in the district of Treiso, in the heart of the zone of production of Barbaresco [in Piemonte, Italy].

Here we can hear excerpts from tracks 1 and 3.

• Study 16 (x5, x3, series ratios)
• If a bell became a drone

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• The Microsoft Sound
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Imaginary Landscapes
• An audience with Brian Eno
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone

Description by Off Land (aka Tim Dwyer, the author):

Let’s go back to 2006.
I used to hate my job, the dead-end brainless work.
Even more, I used to hate my commute.
An hour by subway what would take 20 minutes by car if I had owned one.
Everyday I walked to the subway, switching lines in town and took a 2nd line to the end.
I dreamed that one day the subway would take me past the last stop, just keep going.
Or maybe I would end up somewhere else, somewhere new.
Music was my salvation, my soundtrack, those two hours each day.
With or without music the commute was a score I listened to countless times.
On two occasions, for posterity, I recorded the commute.
Now it’s 2009 and my life has changed so much.
I look back into the dust of times and accompany a soundtrack to those days of travel.
This was my commute.

The Process: Commute is an experimental concept album about commuting. The album is the length of my commute in 2006. I recorded my commute four times (2 out and 2 back), overlapping all four audio recordings into one 68 minute sound collage. This soundscape became the foundation of the composition and the subtle ambiance heard throughout Commute. Tones were designated to various sounds; watery piano for people & chimes, dulcimer drones for cars, drums for rain & subway tracks, low drones for subway cars, and synths for general ambient noise. The structure was entirely in the hands of the field recording collage. It was my conscious decision however to break Commute up into three sections. Each section represents a different leg of the commute (1 - The walk to the subway / 2 - The ride downtown / 3 - The 2nd line outbound).

Published by Resting Bell netlabel. Download from here.

1. Commute Part 1
2. Commute Part 2
3. Commute Part 3

Related posts

• Weightless
• Campi armonici
• The Singing Ringing Tree
• Strutture Abbandonate
• Minimal States
• Torment of the Metals
• Generative Music for iPhone
• Symphonies of the Planets 1
• Eno for wine
• bewilderment