Categories
Music Videos

Great Music Videos: September 2024

A monthly post dedicated to (what I think are) great music videos. When I was a kid, music videos were important, or at least they seemed to be a more sacred thread in the cultural fabric. Whole TV networks were dedicated to music videos, and even the TV networks that weren’t seemed have at least one weekly show dedicated them. It’s odd that in this day and age where videos with music in them are all the rage and are creating scrolling zombies out of our mobile phone-equipped selves, traditional music videos don’t really get mentioned too often.

This month’s theme is artist names featuring abbreviations.

FKA twigs – Eusexua

It kind of made me think that almost every movie in the late 80’s/early 90’s featured folks in some job in a big corporate office that made them miserable. Great concept, great execution, great choreography, and an interesting future prog R&B meets Eurodance with a dash of Björk.

A$AP Rocky – Tailor Swif

This video is bonkers. There’s so much happening, and all those things happening are from some surrealist fever dream. It was also filmed in Ukraine!

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: September 6, 2024

Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom – Rafael Anton Irisarri

I really like this new track by Irisarri. It goes real low, real crunchy, and real wide. It’s the first track off of his upcoming LP, FAÇADISMS, releasing November 8th, 2024. It features Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals.

IV – Alessandro Cortini

‘IV’ is the penultimate movement from Cortini’s Nati Infiniti, a 40-minute piece based on an immersive audio installation that he created for the Sónar Lisboa festival in 2022 presented at the Museu de Lisboa’s Moagem.

th1 [evnslower] – Aphex Twin

New Aphex Twin! Well, not really, but this is the first time it is officially on streaming. Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edtion) will be out October 4th in various formats via Warp.

Migratory – Masayoshi Fujita

The Japanese vibraphonist and marimba player was inspired to create this new solo album by his return to his native Japan with his family in 2020, after 13 years of living in Berlin, fulfilling his dream of living and composing music in the midst of nature. 

Temporary Stored II – KMRU

KMRU created the original Temporary Stored as a response to gaining access to the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and reckoned with the collective inheritance of colonial (sound) archives. Temporary Stored II extends the original album by inviting other artists (Aho Ssan, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jessica Ekomane) to draw upon their listening experiences of museum archives holding recordings of African songs, traditions and practices.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: August 30, 2024

Gems III – Celer

Will Long, AKA Celer, has released an excerpt from his upcoming October 18, 2024 release.

September 23rd (Excerpt 1) – William Basinski

William Basinski has announced a tour, a new archival album and has shared the song above from the album. The Fall ’24 tour dates are in the USA and one in Canada (Vancouver BC). The upcoming LP is named September 23rd and will arrive on September 27. It is the first record in a new series Basinski is calling Arcadia Archive, an ongoing archival collection dedicated to the discovery and recovery of his work.

Everything Squared – Seefeel

A 6-track mini-album mainly composed and performed by Seefeel’s core duo of Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock. Their last EP, Reduct, dates from 2021.

Black Bile – Umberto

Inspired by the ancient Greek theory of the “four humors,” LA composer Matt Hill’s Black Bile is the perfect album to fully adopt your end-of-summer melancholy.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: August 16, 2024

Op. 448, Adagio (Hallucination archive) – Benoît Pioulard

Thomas Meluch, aka Benoît Pioulard, was inspired by British playwright Sarah Kane’s last work ‘4.48 Psychosis’ to create this intertwisting of ambient and lo-fi guitar lines.

ShellType – Lawrence English

Lawrence English’s latest album comes from the artist’s life-long questioning of humankind’s relationship with technology, and how what was once thought of unreachable or distant often becomes reality, especially in this new AI era.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: August 2, 2024

Kontrapunkt – Markus Guentner

A Strangely Isolated Place artist Markus Guentner’s Kontrapunkt is an 8-track collaborative album that includes some of the best contemporary ambient artists such as Abul Mogard, Benoît Pioulard and Arovane.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: July 26, 2024

Sky Hooks – Seefeel

Seefeel returns with their first new music since 2011. Sky Hooks is a 6-minute ambient IDM piece that is the first track off of the upcoming one-off 6-track mini-album ‘Everything Squared’ that will be released August 30th.

Surfacing – ASC & Sam KDC

Following Decayed Society in 2012 and A Restless Mind 2020, Surfacing is the the third collaborative album between ASC & Sam KDC. It is six tracks of dark and melancholic yet relaxing drones and hypnotic melodies.

Aura (Laraaji Rework) – Hatis Noit

Laughter meditation practitioner and ambient godfather Laraaji reworks Hatis Noit’s debut album title track ‘Aura’ as part of the Japanese voice artist’s Aura Reworks series.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: July 19, 2024

Collected EPs [2015​-​2023] – Benoît Pioulard

This is a collection of various Pioulard’s EPs spanning 2015 to 2023, and includes several tracks that were previously subscriber-only.

Natur – KMRU

A staple of KMRU’s live show, this piece was inspired by Berlin’s relative silence compared to Nairobi’s constant sounds of birds, animals, chatter and electrical buzzes.

Possente Spirto – Sarah Davachi

Possente Spirto is the first track released off of Davachi’s upcoming album, The Head As Form​’​d In The Crier​’​s Choir.

Total Blue – Total Blue

The Los Angeles-based trio Total Blue combine synths, fretless bass, and guitar to create an album that traverses jazz, ambient, and dream-pop.

The Man From Nowhere – Throbbing Gristle

‘The Man From Nowhere’ is the first single off of the reissue of The Third Mind Movements by English music and visual arts group Throbbing Gristle. Having only been available as an exclusive release during the band’s last ever American tour in 2009, The Third Mind Movements will be released commercially for the first time on CD and vinyl on August 23rd.

An hour of sleep – Michiru Aoyama

Japanese ambient artist Michiru Aoyama, who gained renown for releasing an album a week, has released a collection of 1-hour albums that–if I’m interpreting the titles correctly–are to help you fall asleep. I’ve included volume 1 above, but the rest can be accessed via his Bandcamp discography.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: June 21, 2024

#19 – Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin has announced an expanded edition of his 1994 LP Selected Ambient Works Volume II will be released in all formats for the first time October 4th. The expanded edition includes vinyl-only track “#19“ (AKA ‘Stone In Focus’), that is not the “#19” you’ll hear on streaming services like Spotify at the time of writing. It will also include “Th1 [Evnslower]” and “Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev.”

In uno spazio immenso – Grand River and Abul Mogard

Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, and veteran Italian producer Guido Zen, alias Abul Mogard, release their first collaborative album, via Caterina Barbieri’s light-years label.

Salt And Sugar Look The Same – Tim Koh / Sun An

This collaboration of 18 short tracks combines soft guitar, electronics and warped samples to send you in a dream-like state.

b_b – Yetsuby

The opener on South Korean artist Yejin Jang‘s lastest solo EP combines ‘Love on a Train’-like arpeggios with indistinguishable vocal samples and fragments of sound that cut the otherwise calm nature of the track.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: June 14, 2024

Gems II – Celer

Everyone’s favorite Tokyo-based Ambient artist, Will Long returns with circa 58 minutes of ambient goodness that bobs and weaves between soothing and quasi-ominous sounds.

Disconnect – KRM & KMRU

Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug) and Joseph Kamaru (KMRU) collaborated on Disconnect, a combination of Martin’s deep dub and Kamaru’s voice, and ambient sensibilities.

Backo – Michiru Aoyama

A window into a serene Japanese valley.

Categories
Ambient

Ambient Music Releases of the Week: June 7, 2024

Ambient Curation Compilation vol. 2 – various

This is the second charity compilation of ambient music by Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Ambient Curation. This time all proceeds (ex. Bandcamp fees) go to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (www.pcrf.net). The compilations features the likes of Sam Prekop, M. Sage, and Oora.

Other, Like Me – The Black Dog

Although there are many ambient tracks on The Black Dog’s latest album, it doesn’t stick to that genre but rather explores the various styles that have influenced or have been produced by the British electronic music group.

Kakno – Michiru Aoyama

Quiet Logic – Mixmaster Morris, Jonah Sharp, Haruomi Hosono

Originally released in 1998, this reissue of a little-known gem unites three giants in ambient music and was supposedly built from jams between Morris and Sharp in Hosono’s studio.