Abandoned Structures

cover Abandoned structures are what come to mind when listening to this Test Tube release by Russian Philip Croaton, just as Tarkovsky comes to mind.

The abandoned musical structures also come to mind, as is typical of much of this type of music.

Actually, it's not that I dislike ambient. It's enjoyable to listen to. But then I'm always left speechless by the lack of any development. Musically, an atmosphere is established that then never changes. It's as if someone were telling me a story in which nothing happens.

Only in very few cases do you manage to tell a story in an interesting way in which nothing happens, and usually it's because, upon closer reading, you discover that a lot is actually happening. A literary example: White Noise by Don Delillo. A musical example: the first track on Music for Airport, which always proceeds with the same mood, but at least the interplay of overlapping temporally displaced parts is interesting.

Now, I acknowledge that continuity and non-development are precisely the poetics of ambient, but there are many things that leave me perplexed. The most disturbing is that music like this could easily be generated directly by a computer. I would have no problem writing software that automatically produced much of the ambient music I hear around me.

Of course, it wouldn't invent anything. Each track would simply continue like this, in a continuum harmonically defined by the starting data. With a little programming effort, it could even ch

Yet this is the philosophy of ambient. As Eric Satie wrote in "Notebooks of a Mammal":

We should compose interior music that incorporates the sounds of the environment in which it is played, taking them into account. It should be melodious, softening the metallic sound of knives and forks, without overpowering them, without trying to overwhelm them. It would fill the sometimes heavy silences between diners. It would avoid the usual exchange of banalities. At the same time, it would neutralize the sounds of the street that indiscreetly penetrate inside.

Excellent idea. Pleasant, even. But now we've seen how it works. Let's move on, please.

Finally, I'm not mad at Croaton's album (freely downloadable here and from which you can sample excerpts below), which is a pleasant massage with a hint of melancholy. I'm mad at the multitude.

Excerpts:

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