Time stretches out, punctuated by melodic sketches, scattered and random, like birdsong in a deep forest… These crystalline notes are woven together as you listen, creating subtle embroideries on the fabric of silence…
Morton Feldman is one of my favorite musicians of the moment…
I'd like to use electronics to approach the purity of these pianistic arabesques, so inventive in their radical minimalism…
On first listen, "Lateral" is a return to the roots: those of "Thursday Afternoon" and the other long ambient pieces accompanying Brian Eno's installations. Eight tracks, each around eight minutes long, to be listened to like a long, continuous suite, without any break. Listened to in shuffle mode, the album lends itself to hours of variations in the same sonic and immersive continuum.
The eight tracks are named “Big Empty Country I, II, III, IV etc.”, like so many movements of the same work, a nod perhaps to the musical genre of the album “Luminal”, which I'll comment on in another post, but also, perhaps, a refusal of any referential instructions, an ironic evocation of the ambient genre, furnishing music for empty rooms, or a sonic tabula rasa that the listener is invited to furnish and decorate as he or she pleases, like a blank screen on which to project inner images. ..
The album title “Lateral” is a kind of riddle, when you look at the cover: two luminous discs integrated into a square (squaring the circle?)...
The minimalist choice of a same sound color, a same instrumental palette throughout the album, enriched by infinite microvariations, also takes us back to the roots of Eno's music and of the ambient genre. Ethereal pads, diaphanous piano outlining possible melodic lines, slow waves of sound surging in loops reminiscent of the Revox magnetic tape experiments of the past...
This is a slow, immersive music, with filtered sounds, that unfolds like a long, luminous, shimmering ribbon, lending itself to a floating, enveloping listening experience. Harmonic layers with a thousand reflections, punctuated by suspended notes...
We are now in a times of profusion of tools for virtual studios, of ad nauseam declensions of sample libraries, and the algorithmic tyranny of playlists favors muzak by the mile when it isn't created by an AI that produces the lowest common denominator of musicality.
Brian Eno, remaining true to his identity and artistic vision, once again stands outside fashion, that is, outside time, with an ambient work that combines simplicity and sophistication, minimalism and harmonic architecture...
Once again, a great lesson in ambient composition, and, for me at least, the promise of a never ending musical pleasure...
The Revenant is one of those films that I never tire of seeing again, and that has had a haunting effect on me.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy star in this 2015 film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
It's a story of survival and revenge, but above all it's an immersion into the lives of American trappers and soldiers, as well as the various tribes of Native Americans, in the early 19th century, and into the immense, desolate landscapes of the plains, forests and mountains of a still untamed America.
Immersion in a world where water, forests, ice and snow, wood and rock are omnipresent, along with wild animal life. A harsh, hostile world for the group of hunters and their scout, exposed to attacks from Indians and wild beasts, and to competition between trappers.
The landscapes, filmed in panoramic widescreen with great depth of field (the director of photography is Emmanuel Lubezki), are characters in their own right in the film, whether they be the waves of the Missouri river, forests streaming with water or covered in snow, immense plains surrounded by mountains or roamed by herds of ghostly bison...
Twilight, endless expanses, walking to the end of exhaustion in an attempt to regain the human world, bloodied and breathless bodies, the survival drive exacerbated by the desire for revenge, omnipresent violence and cruelty, dreamlike escapes into the world of the dead and memories, paternity and betrayal, love and murderous rage...
The magnificent soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) plays an essential role: minimalist, atmospheric, alternating between the dreamlike fluidity of ondes Martenot (or equivalent) and the unleashing of tribal percussion (for the final battle scene), between sounds lost in a reverberation as vast as the immense expanse of the landscape, or slow, pared-down melodic sketches, expressive and melancholy, blending strings and electronics.
The Revenant's music is subtly atmospheric, based on a sound design as sophisticated as it is minimalist, and blends perfectly with the film's desolate, twilight landscapes and its unforgettable plot.
Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto offer a magnificent lesson in musical and sound design, and we can only be grateful that Alejandro G. Iñárritu chose their experimental, minimalist proposal for his film.
A true masterpiece...
I wonder if there's a program that can transform images into music?
There's MetaSynth from UI Software….
Are there any other similar instruments?
I'd like to translate nuances of color into nuances of sound, and the layering of planes and horizons into nuances of spatial depth.
The image could also visually define the shapes of sound waves, their reliefs, their outlines, their extension, between verticality, horizontality, diagonals, geometric shapes and points.
And there would of course be a sonic translation of the image's rhythms, marked or subliminal.
This photograph, which I took on a beach in northern Brittany, could give rise to a beautiful ambient composition, both linear and punctuated by infinitesimal sound elements.
The waves gently breaking on the shore could also be translated into sound waves rolling slowly through stereophonic space...
Is MetaSynth the only tool that would allow me to move in this direction?
I think I first heard Pink Floyd in 1971 or 1972, with Atom Heart Mother and Meddle.
And my first concert was in January 1973, at the Palais des Sports in Paris, where Pink Floyd accompanied Roland Petit's ballets: an unforgettable sensory, visual and aural experience!
The official release of the restored video and remixed album Pink Floyd at Pompeii, - MCMLXXII brings back many memories - I remember seeing the film on French public television when I was young, and I was able to buy a bootleg CD of the soundtrack.
The sound of the double CD remixed by Steven Wilson is flawless, excellent. It perfectly recreates what Pink Floyd sounded like live in the 70s.
I've never stopped listening to and loving this music. I grew up with it. It made me dream and fly in the outer (or inner?) space...
Listening to this soundtrack again, in the near-perfect version of this remix, inspires me to reflect on a few things...
Firstly, the perfect synergy of a band where everyone's talents contributed to an overall sound and feel. This is as true for the vocals - Rick Wright and David Gilmour on Echoes - as it is for the alchemy of the overall instrumental sound, lead guitar, keyboads, bass, drums.
Pink Floyd's music has always had a strong identity in the field of progressive rock... It didn't rely on the virtuosity of its instrumentalists, like Yes, for example. After their debut with Syd Barrett, they broke away from the pop song format. It embraced a certain sonic experimentation not found in Genesis or King Crimson, but rather in Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze (who influenced whom? The subject is still open...).
With relatively classic instrumentation (the VCS 3, if I'm not mistaken, only appeared with The Dark Side of the Moon), but boundless inventiveness, in the use of effects (delays, loops...) as well as in the sequence of climates (A Saucerful of Secrets, Echoes, One of these Days) and dramatic climaxes (Careful with that axe, Eugene), Pink Floyd invites listeners on psychedelic journeys, inspiring multiple images and sensations.
Pink Floyd at Pompeii remains astonishingly innovative and ground breaking, more than fifty years after this recording.
The instrumental sound remains magnificent, between Rick Wright's keyboards and David Gilmour's guitar.
Nick Mason brings a unique percussive swing, enhanced tenfold by his recorded loops.
The whole thing floats in an unlikely, vintage space of time, no doubt... I find that the abstract sound effects on Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun or A saucerful of secrets remain unrivalled today - from the echo on Rick Wrigh's keyboard playing and Gilmour's guitar to the loops of Nick Mason's drums.
Limited technical resources were compensated by boundless inventiveness...
We hear musicians immersed in an unprecedented experimental trip, who have found in concert situations, with or without an audience, a unique space for expression and creative expansion...
I never tire of listening to these vintage musical trips...
Pink Floyd's music, from the 70s, tells stories, explores territories, maps out possible universes, explores the depths of our imaginations... It leads listeners to immerse themselves in sound worlds that hybridize genres - blues, rock, electro-acoustic experimentation - to generate their own images and inscribe their own memories, over the course of live performances that weave multidimensional sound with the sensory bombardment of light shows out of the ordinary since the early days...
