elephantear ext
I love elephantear from the album Rain Poems and created a longer version of the piece:
DMT 44
I discovered this album, which was released in 2015, while I was touring last month, and listened to it several times. The leader is Andy Sheppard – LINK to Wikipedia Entry. Born in 1957, he picked up the saxophone at the age of 19 and started gigging only three weeks later, which sounds crazy. Sheppard has a wonderful tone and I love his playing.
From the Wikipedia entry for this album – LINK:
The AllMusic review by Thom Jurek notes “Surrounded by Sea invites the listener into an intimate, mysterious sound world. Sheppard’s band plays with discipline and restraint. Through extremely close listening, the players explore the mystery of melody — both plainly stated and implied — and its various thematic trails in inspired if laid-back dialogue”.
I think that’s a good description.
DMT 42
This song has been stuck in my head for days:
Here is the great version by Ry Cooder and Manuel Gaban:
Here is a solo guitar version:
If you don’t have Apple Music you should be able to find these recordings on any other service.
Quiet Sounds
When the war came along, I decided to use only quiet sounds. There seemed to be no truth, no good, in anything big in society. But quiet sounds were like loneliness, or love, or friendship.
— John Cage
This quote resonates with me. When times are loud and big we need to create soft and small.
These days a ton of ambient and drone music is released. That’s great but some of it sounds like the sound of a refrigerator put through a granular synth, with lots of delay added. I think there is room for a melodic sort of ambient sound, by which I mean slow and contemplative music, which I think what happened with the one guitar two – Big Cave Versions. (LINK to one of the pieces)
Now I would like to pare that down even more… Either the next album will be very quiet or upbeat or perhaps a surprise mix of the two that resembles a journey.
Telephone
Kraftwerk’s legendary Kling Klang studio was famous for containing many weird and wonderful electronic instruments, but one of the strangest was also one of the most mundane: the telephone. In order to avoid any irritating disturbances when the band were at work, it didn’t have a ringer. Occasionally, the story goes, a journalist with the rare opportunity of interviewing the band over the phone would be given a precise time to call, and at that moment one of the band, usually co-founder Ralf Hütter, would pick up the receiver. If there was no one there, he put it down again. That was it. You’d missed your chance. You could try calling as many times as you’d like, but no one would hear you.
