May 30 2007
Listening to: Alio Die, Apsaras
My friend Paul came over and supplied some Bodhran (pronounced Bao-ron, so he tells me), which is a really cool celtic drum that you hold with one hand and whack with the other. We spent a few hours recording him in the living room while his little girl, and my little girl crawled around the floor. You can hear them squealing in the background during the bodhran parts if you listen very careful to "The endless repeat of waves" which will be on the new as yet untitled album.
May 14 2007 Listening to: Quiet Music, Steve Roach.
I should probably slow down with new songs, but I've decided not to. I've already got 5 new songs for the next one, so I figure it'll be out in a few months. I love working fast with writing, always have. And after years of looking back on songs that I've written, the ones that I've written in the most frienzied burst have been the best ones. Peter Namlook wrote 300 albums over the course of like, 15 years. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is prolific. I'm just enthusiastic.
I added a new page to the site today. Reviews and Articles. I've only really got one or two at this stage, but hopefully the page will grow. There's an error, and I can't edit the page in the html editor. I have no idea how to fix that. Maybe it will magically fix itself. Here's hoping.
I have this amazing dream occasionaly where I'm in this dark underground watery labyrinth. It's made up of chambers with what look like old gold brick walls, and winding stairs and passages, but you have to swim through some of them to get through, as the place is pretty submerged. It's completely amazing and mysterious, and I'm determined to write an album about it. Maybe the one after this next one. I know there something very important about this place, because everytime I have the dream, which has been about four times in my life, in my sleep I think "oh my god!! This is it! This is the place!" What place it is, I'm not sure. And it makes me feel very emotional, actually. Maybe it's inside my heart, or conscience or something. It has a kind of amusement park feel about it too, so, that would make sense. My conscience feels a bit like an amusement park at times. Dreamscapes are very interesting places- and somewhere I think I'd like to get more material for ambient music.
May 29 2007
Listening to: Deepspace, New rough mixes
Ambient Visions, a long running heavyweight of the Ambient scene has kindly put a photo and link of "The Barometric Sea" on their front page! Yay! You can see it here. There's a good Steve Roach article on there too.
My friend Paul came over and supplied some Bodhran (pronounced Bao-ron, so he tells me), which is a really cool celtic drum that you hold with one hand and whack with the other. We spent a few hours recording him in the living room while his little girl, and my little girl crawled around the floor. You can hear them squealing in the background during the bodhran parts if you listen very careful to "The endless repeat of waves" which will be on the new as yet untitled album.
May 28 2007
Listening to: Alio Die, Apsaras
The above album is sublime. It's usual Alio Die. Landscapes of drones and natural sounds, from rivers to sticks, pots and pans to soft breezes. Combine this with the heavenly vocals of Amelia Cuni, who is a North Indian singer, and you have an amazing record. Anyone would love this on first listen, it's so attractive to the ear. She has the most beautiful, sensual voice. I ordered it from Projekt. It's sad to know that a label as great as projekt are having trouble getting their stuff into stores these days, due to space. If that's the case, which it is, then I truly think the days of walk-in record stores are numbered. If an online music store can hold Alio Die albums, but a real-life one can't, then I know where I'd rather shop.
I created the first little Deepspace Newsletter yesterday and sent it out to anyone who's e-mail I could get off the guestbook, plus other sites. It's contents (all one paragraph!) were about yesterday's big news, so it's not exactly a newsletter, more a notice. I also sent of a bunch of cds today to various internet ambient stations, such as soma fm, star's end and ambient radio-online.
May 27 2007
"The Barometric Sea" has been selected by Calmscape as a "must have" and one of the top 3 ambient albums of the year! I don't think I need to tell you how excited I am about this. Here's a snippet:
"...this is a must-have for 2007. The Barometric Sea - which is the debut
album title from Deepspace - was on loop for a several hours when I
finally got the time to give it a shoot.
In fact, this album has climbed right up in Top 3 of the best ambient albums 2007."
In fact, this album has climbed right up in Top 3 of the best ambient albums 2007."
If you want to buy it, you'll have to sit tight for a bit. There have been some delays, and it won't be available for a few weeks yet. I'm a bit frustrated at this, as some people have requested the desire to buy it. It will be for sale soon though, in the meantime, keep on streaming. Or capture it, or something. There, I said it (but you have to promise to buy it when it comes out if you do this!)
May 26 2007
Listening to: Thom Brennan, Secret Faiths of Salamanders
I have three new pieces already in the sorting bag for the new album: "Crysanthenum Planet", "The Endless Repeating of Waves" and "In Amniotic Orbit." The pieces seem to share a common link: They have this blissed out, very simple childlike feeling, similar to "Euphandemonium" from "The Barometric Sea". They don't feel quite as serious as stuff like "Energy Failure on the Sibelius". There's more light, and less dark in these songs. They're on the planet, not in space, I would say. And they came out very easily.
When I first started writing, years ago, I would worry when songs came out to easily, and would think that maybe it was a sign that the ideas weren't good enough, that more effort must be involved in order for something to be "worthy". These days, I know the opposite to be true. When you feel inspired, things often come out of you more easily, sometimes in entirety. The flow of creativity can become like a river, flowing out of you, with almost no effort at all. I know that this isn't the case with everyone, but I have heard a lot of people referring to it, and can feel it personally.
Now these songs are only the beginning, and by the time I feel that I'm ready to finish the project, they may no longer be suitable. Creating an album, for me, is like doing a Mr. Squiggle. If you have no idea who Mr. Squiggle is, he is an old Australian children's character. Mr Squiggle's friend, Miss Jane, would give him a big sheet of paper with only a few squiggles or shapes on it, and he would create an entire picture starting with these lines. There's probably another name for doing this in different parts of the world, but in Australia, this process is called "doing a Mr. Squiggle." So, back to the album- I start with one or two pieces, then create something based on that. It might lead me in a completely different direction to where I thought I was going. However, if I'm not happy with the first few pieces, I'll get a new sheet of paper, so to speak, and start a new series of squiggles. I like the first squiggles I've done this time. :)
May 25 2007
Listening to: vidnaObmana, River of Appearance
Ok. I'm going to harp on about vidna's "River of Appearance" again. There is something magical about this album. It just takes me away, and that gets harder and harder these days, but after all of the ambient stuff I listen to, this is the big bang- the watershed moment: I guess my reaction is probably a bit of the 'gosling' effect, in that this was the first true ambient record I ever heard (even though vidna prefers the term atmospheric to ambient), but I still find it hard to not marvel at the wonders of sound that wash out of this creation. The new stuff I'm working on has a bit of a River feel: the cyclic piano, against the dreamy shifting drone- I was frustrated that vidna never revisited that place, but I guess if you perfect something, then why would you go back and try it again. It would just end up being less than perfect. I think I may fulfill that role for vidna. :)
I will be sending off some cd packages to several internet ambient radio stations, such as Dronezone and SEB, this coming Monday. Then I can sit back a bit.. Hang on, no I can't. I have to work on the new album. I want to have it out by November, so I can give you folks something new to stream. The site is really starting to get its own life now. You may yourself recognise that point when you feel that something has gathered it's own energy, and you can sit back and watch it for a while.
A friend of mine, Davin, has noted that the stream of "The Barometric Sea" is corrupted when using Mac's Safari operating system. The whole thing sounds corrupted and horrid- let me know if you are experiencing any harshness in the sound- I've checked it on other systems, and PC browsers such as Firefox and Explorer seem to have no such problems. The photographer who snapped the wonderful front cover shot of the album has gotten in contact with me. Go and have a look at these fabulous images. There will be a link on the links page too.
May 24 2007
Listening to: Ulrich Schnauss, A Strangely Isolated Place
HOORAY!! Today is a day of celebration. This tiny little site has been up for 14 days, and got it's 1000th hit last night! It's not exactly Youtube numbers, but I am feeling very gratified by this event. The site didn't exist the day before it was launched, if you know what I mean, and I had no idea that people would be at all into this. So thanks for logging in, and thanks for listening. Also thanks to those who took the time to leave a comment. I just got back from my friend Paul's place, where he printed up the cd artwork on his printer. It's looking really good for a 'no budget' album. Well....it cost me $60 to print up the 15 copies that will start the revolution. :) Whoa, that's Hollywood budget. Five of these will go to cdbaby, and then you can order as many as you want from them. I can personally order say, a hundred of them, and then sell them in shops here if I want, and they will print them up and send them out.
Have I mentioned Ulrich Schnauss? He is a little electro god from Berlin. He is, as far as I'm concerned, an Ambient artist (my qualification for being an Ambient artist is priviledging atmosphere and impressionism over themes, narratives and sound production), but he mixes into this, big beats and more interestingly, shoegaze influences. If you're not sure what shoegaze is, go here and have a read, then and listen to "Loveless", the ultimate shoegaze album, even though I think maybe it was, until Schnauss's "A Strangely Isolated Place" came out. Schnauss has an astoundingly unique voice, even though he sounded similar to Jon Hopkins at the start (when I say voice, I'm talking about authorial 'voice', not singing voice!), and the thing I'm most amazed at, is that with each passing album, the sound develops in an amazingly consistent way. It's like he knows exactly how he's going to sound in ten years time, and is slowly working towards this goal with each album. That's rare, I feel. The muse follows him, not the other way around. Good German engineering. :)
May 23 2007
Listening to: Biosphere, Substrata
The "Barometric Sea" should be available for download from cdbaby in about a week, or so the folks there tell me. But they're a busy bunch, so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer. I'll let you know the minute it is out. If you left a message in the guestbook with your email on it, I'll be sending you a fancy deepspace newsletter when the news arrives. On to the less mundane, I've been working on a few more new pieces for the next album. I find that things tend to come out best when I treat the session as an experiment, and don't try to write a new song. I like to follow the song, as opposed to the other way around. I'm finding that this time, I'm not naming them- I will save that for a time closer to releasing the album.
Early days yet though.
I got another surprise today: An e-mail from Alio Die. Ambient folks will know this man as one of the true greats of ambient music today. He is one of the most unique voices out there as well, being an Italian Ambient artist, who tend to have a really sensual approach to this type of music. He uses a lot of field sounds, which, if you don't know, means that he uses sounds found in nature, such as water, sticks, and pots, and incorporates them into his music. He's extremely prolific, likes collaboration, and is very experimental. He is one of the only ambient artists, in my mind, who uses vocals effectively. My introduction to him was "Echo Passage" a duet with vidnaObmana, which I listen to almost every day. I should explain, I actually put that on when I go to sleep, it's that perfect. Another record of his I love is Meyju. It's the aural equivalent of lying down in a field of flowers. Go and look at his site: you'll be stunned by the beauty of his album covers, and even more stunned by the music on them. His stuff is hard to come by though. It's weird you know: you love a style of music, then you write some music in that style, create a website, and next thing, some of the people who you have been listening to, and have worshipped from afar, suddenly turn up and say hello. Apart from blowing your mind, it makes you realise that the internet is one amazing new fangled uber phone.
I took a photo of the moon today, during the day time. My little boy alerted me to it. You know when you see it sitting there in the blue sky, looking almost embarrased that you've seen it: it's not meant to be there, but it's just sort of hanging around going, "Um....yes, I'm still here. Very funny ha ha" in it's sarcastic moon voice. I realised that it would make a great album cover. So, you might see that one turning up as the next album, if it works out. Maybe it could be called "The insomnia moon" or "blue side of the moon" or something. Hmm...that last one just might stick. It's mine!
May 22 2007
Listening to: The site stream
A couple of things tonight: first, a few more deepspace appearances on the web: Calmscape, a really great online ambient and chillout magazine are going to review "The Barometric Sea" next week. I'm very excited, they already seem very positive- Unless that's what they do before they pull the hatchet out. Sean Williams (who is going to think I'm stalking him, I mention him so much) wrote a message in his blog about Deepspace here
The site is up on Google now too. Only on page three, but I'll work out a way to get it higher. If anyone can tell me how to do this, please let me know. I'm happy with how this little site is progressing. It feels a bit like the Tardis. Small and shabby on the outside, but a whole lot bigger on the inside. :) Oh, if anyone wants to do a deepspace wikipedia entry, be my guest. I tried to make one myself and got a slap on the wrist.
The site is up on Google now too. Only on page three, but I'll work out a way to get it higher. If anyone can tell me how to do this, please let me know. I'm happy with how this little site is progressing. It feels a bit like the Tardis. Small and shabby on the outside, but a whole lot bigger on the inside. :) Oh, if anyone wants to do a deepspace wikipedia entry, be my guest. I tried to make one myself and got a slap on the wrist.
I went and did my own print run of the album yesterday. Walked into a photocopying store in Toowong, and did colour photocopies of my .tiff artwork, which was pasted together on the fly. No need for fancy artwork, or print presses. It's pure DIY. And I'm really quite happy with how it looks. I'm going to use a friends cd printer this week too, in order to make the discs look spiffy too. Then, I've got a few places that I have to send the finished disc. Cdbaby first, who will then be able to print as many copies as they like from my cd, and then I have a list of online ambient radio stations to send it too as well, such as Dronezone and SEB. I'm sending my little baby out into the world. If you see it hurtling past your head one day, it will be because I'm throwing it at your head, in a bid to get your attention.
Some bad news: The streaming player that would have enable me to sell the album right here, is not going ahead. There was some php conflict (I don't know what that means, do you?) with this host, which made using this player impossible. The old streamer is still there, so you can still stream away with the site's blessings.
May 21 2007
Listening to: The Stars of the Lid: The Tired Sounds of
Stars of the Lid: What a beautiful band. What beautiful music. The head of 4AD records called them the most important band of the twenty-first century. I think I may agree with him. Disgustingly beautiful sounds, transformed acoustic instruments, sounding like never before. This band makes me so excited about Ambient music. SOTL are taking Ambient elsewhere, to a place everyone should be able to go. The music is so emotional, and goes right into you. Most people who I have played this music to, listen and go: "what the....?" and then become quiet, listening. A day later they return, saying "give me more...now!"
This is new music. I feel like we're at the start of something here, not at the end of something old. This sort of music (and I include SOTL as an Ambient act) does not follow the traditions of music- well, it follows some of them, but others are thrown out the window. Form (the way a song is structured, for example verse, chorus, verse, chorus is A,B,A,B form) is thrown out the window. The pieces lapse into nothingness, transform into other songs, or sometimes they do follow form. In terms of harmony (the type of chords and notes used), it is traditional. In terms of sound itself, they are revolutionary. Brass instruments are used for example, but sound more like a person moaning, rather than what you might expect. Guitars are used, some vocals, violin, lapsteel but these all become something else. They don't sound like normal instruments anymore. They sound human. Start your journey here.
Also, Deepspace makes another internet appearance here at the Ambient Collective.
May 20 2007
Listening to: Brannan Lane, Sextant
The first album "The Barometric Sea" is barely out, and I'm already starting work on the next one. I have to strike while the iron is hot, as that's how I work. I can't go, "well, i'll wait until the holidays or the weekend and then I'll begin recording." I tend to work from external events: by that I mean that if something exciting happens to me, especially anything to do with music, then I tend to start writing a lot. As I've said before, If I get down, I just stop writing altogether. Not good. That's a bit of a problem for someone living, let's call it an artistic life. Having said that, I don't like the idea of only writing when you feel inspired. Last night, I didn't feel particularly inspired, but I forced myself to get into the 'zone'. The place where you stare into the middle distance when you're playing, and where the light around the peripheral part of your eyes goes dark, taking you into that place where almost any creative thing is possible. That's where you make your best decisions, and your best art. Should I add this instrument? Should I play that note there? Go into the zone and find out.
And I got some good stuff doing this last night. After a few hours of getting frustrated, I found myself relaxing and starting to go into this dream state. I'm very happy with what came out, and I've asked my friend Paul to come over and play some bodhran on it, ala Steve Roach's "Mantram". Ah...I wish I'd written that. Speaking of zones, that guy lives in the zone. His studio, called the Timeroom (I think he's relocated and built a new one now) is a manifestion of what I've been talking about. it's literally a 'zone', where he plays the current piece he's working on continually. He says this keeps the circuitry hot, and he can just walk in and tweak here, and there. That would be pretty amazing to do.
Speaking about all things related to art, I've noticed that a lot of artists have been leaving messages in my guestbook. As just a couple of examples that I noticed: Russell Story, the space music composer from New Zealand just left a message. I was suprised to find this out after following his link back to his site. The same action lead to me discovering Doomsberg, a computer company creating an mmo called Forgotten Legends, who had left a kind message. vidnaObmana of course, ambient god, left one. Sean Williams and Paul Brandon (granted, I know both of these guys) are both brilliant Australian SF writers (and musicians), and they both left messages, bless their supportive souls. So, why do artists dig Ambient? I personally think it may tell us that this sort of music is a bit of an aid in the creative process. It is something that engages a certain part of our brain (I hate saying that sort of stuff), and because of the transparent nature of Ambient, it doesn't keep it overly busy, it just keeps it 'on' and maybe that has 'flow on' effects for our imagination. I know that both Sean and Paul both use Ambient music in order to write, and an interesting side point is that they both write SF... So my question is, does the ambient music feed their writing? Would their writing be different without it. Who really knows. I know that when I am doing any kind of writing, I'm affected tremendously by Ambient music. It puts me in a very serious reverie and I can focus for what seems like ages. Anyway, going back a bit, I have a bit of an online Ambient music club going with Sean and Paul. At any given time, one of us will send an excited e-mail to the other two, usually about some obscure electronic act, or in Paul's case, some bizarre Harmonica/Ud player from Namibia. At a SF Con a while back, we were toying with the idea of creating an ambient band called Manky Fart Generator.
May 19 2007
Listening to: Telomere, Zoetosis
I have to say that I'm pretty exci....no, I won't use the E word again. I use it far too much in these blogs. I'm very surprised by the success of this site. I never expected I would get five hundred hits within nine days of coming online. I know this isn't very much in comparison with say, the World of Warcraft site, or other big sites, but dagnabit, for an unknown Ambient act, I'm frankly exci...pleasantly surprised, and proud of this semi-big number. And a hundred of those hits were in the last forty-eight hours too. I also had no intention of blogging on all things Ambient every night, but it's all turned into a bit of an obsession, methinks. There, I said it. I'm obsessed. Hang on, I'm always obsessed about things.
I'm still having problems with the installation of the mp3 player that will allow me to sell stuff. The installation company have been sending mails to the host (where this site sits), and haven't been able to set things up. Don't worry though, the old streaming player is still there, and functioning perfectly. Stream away.
I finished off the final artwork for "The Barometric Sea" today. I made up a 12x24 cm size template in Photoshop, and placed then stretched my images on top of that. I thought about paying a company money to do it for me, but then I thought....why should I get someone that I don't even know, who has probably never heard Ambient music before, to do it for me. This way, it's exactly like I want it. Apart from the fact that I can't add fancy little bits that the experts know how to do, such as transparency in the font etc. But maybe all of those bells and whistles just get in the way anyway. It's great to just do it all yourself. I am a control freak when it comes to music. I'll get back to you, and reserve the right to revise my opinion when I print the artwork out.
May 18 2007
Listening to: Telomere, Zoetosis
I've given the site a bit of a facelift. Added some simple space backdrops, and put all of the text into a slightly more narrow window. I think it's a bit easier on the eyes, and will be better to read on computers with lower resolution. I hope. I also think it gives the site better continuity. One day it'll look like a real site....but then again, maybe I don't want it to look normal. I like the slightly 'pov' look. When I say pov, I mean povertous.
The new player should be up tomorrow. There have been a couple of hitches, as my host did not have the correct php installed, whatever that may mean. The guy from the webplayer that I'm using just seems like a really nice dude. He is from Canada, so that kind of makes sense. Australians and Canadians feel like they are in a similar space in the world I think. Not that I necessarily feel Australian. I still feel pretty German, and also French, as my father and mother come from those places, respectively.
I have to point out the album I'm listening to: Zoetosis by Telomere. It's an ambient band/act/thing I've never heard of before. I have to say that I'm really, really enjoying it. The only problem is that it's too short- it clocks in at around 45 minutes. Far too short for an ambient album. Evidently, the whole thing was composed on a Serge modular synth, with nothing else used. It's actually better than a lot of ambient out there, and it's completely unknown. There you go.
A lovely electronic site, called ElectronicMall, has kindly put not only my link, but a banner on their site. They seemed like really nice people. Visit their site here to check out my cool little banner. I got a flush of excitement when I saw it. They also put me on to their link map, which you can see on the link page on this site.
I find it quite funny to think of this album as being a 'low budget' album, when in fact, it's a 'no budget' album. It technically didn't cost anything to record. Unless you count time. But the whole thing was recorded on my home computer, on Protools, with my mbox mini, and a bunch of other stuff. Back in the day, recordings were either high, mid or low budget. No budget didn't exist. I find that kind of cool. That puts me in the same place as, say, an author of books. They only need a computer and a copy of word, or something similar. They don't need massive budgets. Neither do I now. Ha.
The modern electronic musician has been liberated by this, I feel. There's so much good stuff (and so much crap, I must add) out there now, because people who want to create music have been enabled to do this, and are now able to record it....almost for nothing. If you have a PC, mac or a decent laptop, all you need is something like an mbox mini, for $500AU (that's about $350 US or 250 pounds). A cheap midi keyboard for $150AU, a bunch of free plug ins off the cover of Computer Music magazine, some free cut-down versions of bigger, expensive programs, and you're off.
A bit more money, and you start getting programs like Absynth 4, for $500 or so. If you're sneaky....well, then you've already figured out how to, shall we say, procure these programs without me telling you how. So the most basic setup for recording something electronic would cost you about $650AU.....that's not impossible for most people. And then, when you get this basic set up, you can build on it for a while. The most important thing is....if you desperately want to record music well, you can. It's not some impossible dream anymore.
May 17 2007
Listening to: Steve Roach, Dreamtime Return
Last night I did a big mail out to a host of
different Ambient sites, in order to get the presence of this site up a
notch. Lots of the sites have already responded and kindly adding my
link on their site. I have also put up their links in return. There
are some very supportive people in the Ambient scene. I also
discovered a brilliant Ambient forum, full of both listeners and other
Ambient composers. It's called EM Portal.
Go and have a look: the Ambient/Space forum is particularly good. You
may notice my overly-excited entries there. You may notice how excited
I become about music, at times.
After my mail out, I became very aware of the
importance of Ambient artists and supporters working together. I think
Ambient music has massive potential and hasn't even been tapped yet.
To quote Bill Gates: By the year <insert here> every home will
have at least one Ambient album. Most people are completely unaware of
the style. Our day in the sun is yet to come.
I'm upgrading the site music player to a better
version, one in which you stream the album, but can also buy the music
directly. It should be up in a few days. You will still be able to
stream the full album. I believe in free music- I'm happy to do it for
free- the idea of people browsing or studying while listening to "The
Barometric Sea" makes me happy no end. But as a small financial aid to
me, if you want to take the album away from the computer, and listen to
it in your car etc. you can now do so, by buying it. Anyway, it'll
also be available on cdbaby soonish.
May 16 2007
Listening to: Harold Budd, Agua
I'm still smiling from yesterday's events. My
friends have all congratulated me, for being such a geek. They're all
jealous I know.... I went to bed with a smile on my face last night,
and woke up smiling. My wife also had some great news last night,
regarding a university job, so we've opened a bottle of champagne.
It's all good.
May 15 2007
Listening to: My heart beating really fast
I can't believe it. Well, maybe I can believe
it, but I can't believe it happened just like in my little fantasy. I
wrote an e-mail to VidnaObmana, who any ambient fan will know
as one of the most respected and influential ambient artists of the
past 15 years plus, and who i've been harping on about constanly in
this newsblog.....and he replied to my e-mail. Not only did he reply,
he listened to "The Barometric Sea", and left a lovely message in my
guestbook. Non-ambient fans (and i don't know why you would be reading
this) this is the equivalent of a guitarist getting an e-mail from
Yngwie Malmsteen, or an opera singer getting a thumbs up from Roberto
Alagna. I'm in shock, and have been reduced to a quivering fanboi. I
should really be far more composed, serious, disdainful and slightly
disrespectful of my influences. right? Maybe be feigning
disinterest? and taking it in my stride?.....sorry. can't do it.
Woohooo!! I'm so happy! (breathes in slowly). I'm sorry I had to do
this in public. :) I should say the reason I first e-mailed Vidna
(his real name is Dirk Serries) was to tell him that both of my
children were born to his album "River of Appearance."
Here's a link. Go and buy the album and be done with it. It's that good.
May 14 2007 Listening to: Quiet Music, Steve Roach.
The average ambient artist site is a mysterious
thing....Often shrouded in mystery, the artist is usually not seen on
photos etc. The visual tone of the sites is usually arty and very
minimal, with plain fonts, dark colours, maybe reflecting the music
somewhat. My opinion is that Ambient music is a response to our over
crowded, information filled world (at least in the first world), and
not just the music, but the sites reflect that. Self-imposed
abandonment, I think it could be seen as. I can see that I adopted
some of that tone by osmosis in this site. I realised as I was
building my site that it did come across in that way. I guess I wanted
it to deep down, even though I was repelled by it, in some way. But in
terms of this newsblog, I certainly don't want to adopt that sort of
tone: I 'd rather demystify it, than perpetrate it. I'm so over
artist image, in any genre. You've all seen the rock band interview:
The band slouches in, looking unkempt, and purposefully acts in this
playful, rock-star way. Their job is to be cool, detached, to not have
to try. They operate outside the rules. Or so they want us
to think, and mabye even think themselves, but they're just as much
suckers as the rest of us are. I'm a bit bored with that frankly. I
love it when I see a band being interviewed without artifice. They're
just normal, not bizarre, not rude, not too cool. They talk like people
who have a craft, not people who are visited by a divine muse.
May 13 2007
Listening to: VidnaObmana: Memories Compiled 2: Refined on Gentle Clouds.
First of all, let me tell you how much I love
the song 'Over Clouds' from the above album by Vidna. It's just too
short. I could listen to it all day. He probably doesn't even
remember it, that's how much good stuff he's written since the days of
Refined on Gentle Clouds. Anyway, what was I going to write about?
That's right. I am a space nerd, so I've been told. I guess it's
true. I've always been fascinated by the vastness and possibility of
space and found it impossible to remain calm and detached when talking
about it.
When I recently heard about the new discovery of Earth 2,
which is a planet very similar to ours, with similar temperatures, and
similar distance from its sun, an incredible feeling came over me.
First, it was the "ah, so it's all true. All of the science
fictions writers were on the right track...." feeling, but also an
immense feeling of tranquility and calmness washed over me: My sense
felt expanded, as if to encompass this other Earth. I immediately
wrote to Sean Williams, a very well regarded Australian Science Fiction
writer, and he responded by telling me that he had a similar experience
that day when he first heard about Earth 2. He said he was
being interviewed by a radio station that day, and came feeling like a
complete geek when he enthusiastically tried to explain the importance
of this find to some one who just didn't seem to 'get' the significance
of it. I certainly understood what he meant.
Yes, some folks do get the significance
of this find, not only for the future (which may never actually
transpire, as it may just be too far away), but for writers, composers
and artists, who now have extra material to work with. A real
planet...waiting for us. The promise of intergalactical travel doesn't
seem quite so pointless now. Earth 2 is like the promise of an
inheritance, waiting for all of us, some time in the future. I feel a
bit sad that I personally, will never see it.
May 11 2007
Listening to: Jon Hopkins, Contact Note
Because Ambient music moves slowly and is
usually quite sparse, I've noticed that some musicians tend to assume
that its practicioners are musically less developed than conventional
musicians. I would like to provide some thoughts to mabye dispel or at
least explain this point of view. I've read that VidnaObmana,
for example, considers himself to be a musical intuit, and that he does
not consider himself to be versed in music theory/technique to the same
extent as, say a classical musician. I think this position may
encapsulate a lot of ambient artists (and a lot of popular music
artists), as I think that not just musicians are drawn to ambient music
composition, but people who are fascinated by sound and mood, and
people who are intrigued by technology. People who are sound
painters. I am a musician, who is both an intuit (I taught myself
music in my bedroom as a kid, and grew up learning by ear in
rock bands) and am also classically trained (I later went to uni,
studied music theory/technique and history there, and performed as an
operatic tenor for seven years). I find that at times I have to
fight my inner musician, which keeps nagging me with comments like, "Is
this way too easy?", "Shouldn't it have more bits?", "Shouldn't it be
harmonically more advanced?" Luckily, my intuit side can tell this
voice to shut the hell up, or to temper it to some extent. So I feel
both blessed and cursed. Great!
Ambient music does suffer at times from the
'guy holding down a key on his midi controller for 20 minutes, then
releasing it on myspace' stigma, but this is an imperceptive comment.
If a piece is indeed so simple that it requires only a couple of
fingers and doesn't take huge amounts of effort to write, that does not mean it shouldn't be written.
If a piece is written in a marketplace that is
completely oversaturated with original compositions, and indeed,
similar original compositions, it does not mean it should not be
written, or be made more complex. The fact that it is written that way
says something very interesting. It is written despite it's
simplicity. It is written despite the oversaturated music market
surrounds, it is written despite its unoriginality and it is written
despite the slim chances it has of falling upon the ears of other
listeners. It is written because it sounds beautiful. Because it
takes the composer and listener on a journey. Because it expresses
something in the composer that is hard to express in other ways, and
that the listener may want to express or experience as well.
It's suitable that i'm listening to Jon Hopkins
right now. He is a slight anomaly in the ambient/electronic world, in
that he is an extremely accomplished musician in the institutionalised
sense, and every reviewer who reviews his quite wonderful albums always
pulls out the Royal College of London bit, as if that is meant to imbue
his music with something extra: to give it something the rest of the
field doesn't. I certainly don't think it does. In fact, I think
Hopkins has fantastic sensibilities in order to keep his musical ego in
check, and his ability to use very simple material is a sign of this
ability. I feel sorry for the musician who sneers at simplicity.
Their superego has way too much control, and they are cursed in a way.
May 10 2007
Listening to: Tetsu Inoue, Organic Cloud
I felt nervous today. I'm quite nervy for a
person who listens to a lot of ambient music. You'd think it would
relax me. I think I was nervous because I was sending my album away.
I did the last bits of tweaking on the album tracks, and burned them to
a final master cd, to send off to cdbaby. It was a bit of a nightmare,
as the pieces were all slightly different volumes. So there I was
running from the little stereo upstairs, to the computer, to the car
stereo, trying to get some sort of consistency, only to have to re-burn
many times, until it was ok. I also had to save the CD cover image,
and send that as well. The album will be available via digital
distribution only, so you won't be able to buy a hard copy, only mp3s
of it. But don't fret, I'm going to eventually get this album printed
and pressed, and I spoke with POMO design in the Valley about getting
some legit artwork done, and then getting a small print run
established, so as to send it to Amazon.co and the other big online
stores who still sell music in the hard copy sense.
It's all very daunting I tell you- there's so
much stuff out there....so many musicians trying to be noticed.
Cdbaby, which is the international distributor I'm using, has 160,000
artists....that's mind boggling. It's very depressing if I think about
it too much. The good thing about doing this is that this website
gives me a reason to keep writing music. I've always written music,
since I was about eight years old. My son has beaten me in that
regard, he's been making up songs since he was three! He's extremely
musical. More than me, I suspect. Anyway, I tend to stop writing if I
have no audience, so this is a good incentive for me to keep going.
The music just pours out if I'm excited- if i'm not, it's not like pulling teeth, because I just stop doing it.
May 9 2007
Listening to: Peter Namlook, Air 2: Travelling without Moving
Ok. I am now a master of html and all things
weblike. I wish. But at least I understand things a bit better now. I
can upload and edit stuff, install scripts and edit bits here and there
now. I'm still a complete noob in the scheme of things, but I feel
slightly better about my basic webdesign abilities. My proudest moment
was when I uploaded the mp3 player, and then streamed my first piece
via the little player. So cool. I'm sending "The Barometric Sea" off
to cdbaby tomorrow, so it should turn up in all of the digital shops
over the next few months. It's going to be released as digital
distribution only at first. I recorded two new pieces "Euphandemonium"
and "No Life Detected" and decided to add them to the site and the
first one to the album. I really breaks it up with a bit of a Stars of the Lid feel.
May 3 2007
Listening to: Steve Roach, Desert Solitaire
Working on creating the
website. I tell you, I am having a great deal of trouble. I have no
idea where to start. My brother recommented that I buy a host and a
domain name, and work from there. He recommended this host (Webhostingbuzz).
It seems good, and gives me 3GB of space, which is perfect for what I
plan to do, which is to slowly fill it up to the brim with my ambient
pieces. I think bought a really good
issue of Computer
Music, which was completely dedicated to
creating websites and the in's
and out's
of the online music business. Worth it's weight in gold methinks.
This was the final clincher in my decision to bring this music online
and begin my
online
ambient presence. Since
my presence in
any situation is usually ambient (ie. quiet and not very noticeable),
it seemed fitting that my
first
online incarnation should via an ambient project. After initially
trying out Composer, by
Mozilla, which is supposed to be idiot proof, I went to Nvu, which I
found
easier to use for some reason. I
bought
the domain name deepspacehome.com, as deepspace.com was taken by
someone else. The biggest nightmare was
logging into my host site, and seeing a million folders sitting
there....with a completely puzzled expression on my face. It's hard to
see the computer screen when your face is all squished up and puzzled.
Some really basic step by step instructions would have helped me, but I
couldn't find a thing. I didn't know to upload my files from
the host!...and I spent a whole lot of time downloading different htp
programs, all claiming to be easier than the last, and all being
completely horrendously difficult to use. Oh well, I shall
persevere....
April 2007
Listening to: Stars of the Lid, And their Refinement of the Decline
After a few months of recording, a
complete album track
listing came to me. I
thought
"Energy Failure on the Sibelius" should open the album as it sets a
dark, fat yet consonant feel, seeing as it came out kind of influenced
by Peter
Namlook, yet also a bit of Steve Roach-
so it contains both rave
culture
influence but also the more traditional (whatever that may mean)
eno-esque
ambient style. I used Absynth, Reason, my Strat, various plug-ins, and
a mixture of acoustic instruments, such as my old Beale piano. I'm not
some keyboard tech dude. I don't rave on about Moogs and Space Echo
boxes, and have Wurlitzers in my garage. I use whatever I can get my
hands on that gets the sounds I need.
Christmas 2006
Getting to grips with Protools, after
not having any
recording software on my PC for a long, long time. The idea for "The Barometric Sea" starts to form after
going
on a short holiday and staying in a big tall resort in the Sunshine Coast- watching the ocean for a long time listening
to ambient music on my neeon. A
lot of
Global Communications, Peter Namlook's "Dreamfish", Steve Roach,
and VidnaObmana and Alio Die's
"Echo Passage", which I love to bits. The music mixed with the sublime
view of the ocean just spoke to me. I spent a lot of time staring out
at the sea, watching the surfers far below (I began to see them as seal
pups) surfing, searching and then surfing again. It was a very
buddhist thing to do. They would search for a wave, and then when they
found it, they would attempt to get on it. Sometimes they would fail,
sometimes they would succeed. Life.
When I got back, I found some
of my older ambient pieces
which had been hiding
on my hard drive in unknown sectors. Some of them are going to go on
the album. Some didn't make it as they don't fit with
the general feel of "The Barometric Sea". I spent a lot of time
recording both ambient songs, and also my pop stuff, which I've been
doing forever, but hadn't done since around 2000. I realised by their
dates, that most of the music I had written had been during December,
going back through all of my archived music. Hmmm....So December was
the month in which my creative juices were at a high, when everything I
had been planning musically on whatever year was recorded. It was
December.