ABOUT THE POWER OF MUSIC

 

“Popular Music 1” (selections) Dieter Roth - 1966

Is music a neutral art form?

Is it simply a tapestry of sounds that calls for discreet listening as we go about our daily lives?

I don't believe in transparency, nor in the harmlessness of music.

Music is an active principle.

It conveys visions of the world, modes of thought, mental maps and introspective surveys.

For me, music is inseparable from cosmology.

This is obvious in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which evokes the rhythmic mechanics and harmonic geometry of a post-Copernican world.

It's also evident in the Berlin School and its cosmic tropism, with its sound spaces deepened by reverberations and multiplied by delays, its harmonic wakes mingling with the propulsion of sequences.

I think all music is a cosmology. It builds a world.

At the same time, it is a vehicle for abstraction and questioning. There's a philosophical, existential, metaphysical quest dimension to music, which doesn't proceed through words and rational thought, but through the language of sounds, harmonics, space, time and silence.

All music is an exploration, an experiment on the frontiers of thought, imagination, vision and, quite simply, existence.

This does not contradict the festive, recreational dimension of music.

It can address the body or the mind, most often both.

In the course of my musical work, in my search for new sounds and compositional forms, I feel as if I'm moving forward on this initiatory quest...

MY CREATIVE WORK IS A JOURNEY....

(“Music for Electric Metronome” Toshi Ichiyanagi - 1960)

Any creative work is a trajectory, a journey.

We never stand still. We move forward. We step sideways. We skip a step. Sometimes we go back. But we never stand still.

Creating music can be a mercenary, mercantile task, and sometimes you can't do otherwise when you make a living from your music, at least you can do it with integrity.

Creating music can also be an intimate, personal process, the vector of an existential quest, driven by the desire for new horizons, for surpassing oneself, for deepening oneself...

For me, the extraordinary power of sound is that it can express what words cannot...

And thus to initiate an intimate, profound, instinctive and necessary form of expression.

My compositions, my albums and the succession of my albums trace a path of life, sometimes fragile, sometimes determined...

For me, music is the fine tuning of a soul, a life, a sensitivity, an ear: mine.

It's a tool for self-understanding, a reflective mirror, a vital driving force.

Creating music, however, is not an egocentric, even autistic process.

To create music is to propose wavelengths, harmonics, that can vibrate the ear, the sensitivity, the soul of the listener.

I create music for this small listening community that has followed and supported me for years, all over the world, from Chile to Kazakhstan, from Canada to Australia and in all the worlds crossed by these diagonals...

And the existence of this listening community, of this fraternity of sensitivity and imagination, of this immense, collective, off-center virtual musical instrument that can vibrate to the same sounds and understand what I'm trying to express through sounds, all this is obviously what drives me to continue, to create, to share, in spite of and against the standards, compromises and diktats of the new dominant ecosystems of musical distribution...

Basically, today, I'm embarking on the next stages of my journey of life and creation without any second thoughts. The destination doesn't matter, it's the dynamics of creation that matter...

WHAT IS COMPOSING MUSIC?

 

It can be intellectual, planned, calculated, written down and fully mastered.

My approach is more intuitive, less controlled...

 

I see my DAW (Ableton Live) as a kind of playground, an abacus, a chessboard.

After recording the basic tracks and listening to each other, it's time to edit.

I approach this stage in visual terms, and sculpt the music by shifting, erasing, superimposing patterns, playing with colors and silence, playing with superimpositions, alignments, phase shifts...

 

Often, it's visual intuition rather than sound or harmony that guides me through this stage.

I erase, shift, copy and paste patterns, from one track and color to another.

The tracks on my DAW are like a checkerboard where I move sounds and patterns around.

I don't calculate. I obey intuitions, and interact with my listening to the piece, in real time.

I have the impression of composing with a form of floating attention, of free listening, which suggests to me in the moment this or that act of editing.

 

I don't know how to qualify or define this process.

 

It's a particular level of consciousness, where choices and decisions impose themselves on me, without my thinking about them in a reasoned way.

 

I very rarely "undo" these editing gestures.

 

When I listen to them again and again, they impose themselves by their relevance.

The grids and tracks of my DAW are like an African divination table, where displacements, deletions and manipulations obey secret necessities, beyond the randomness of appearances...

 

And what is written, in this form of musical writing interacting with the visual structure of the tracks, is music that is unthought of, but felt, that imposes itself by its necessity and its obviousness...

THE DIFFERENT WORLDS OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC

 

 

                                          (“Emmett Williams' Ear” Dick Higgins - 1977)

 On reflection, I have the impression that under the label of "electronic music", there are different worlds that coexist, overlapping or not...

— heirs of the Berlin School: they offer variations on a now "classic" musical genre, based on the great ancestors, Schulze and Tangerine Dream. They use hardware synthesizers, often modular, and produce a highly electronic sound coupled with sequence loops. Is this an illusion, or are the main musicians in this genre (mostly) men and women of a certain age already, who in their youth experienced the heyday of this musical trend?

— the "cinematic" genre, designed to provide soundtracks for films or TV series, but also a commercial label for many virtual instrument manufacturers, offering emulations of classical instruments and orchestras. The target audience is assumed to master certain classical orchestration and composition techniques. It is interesting to note a certain standardization of soundtracks, with sound and stylistic conventions that are often repetitive (Hans Zimmer set the standards for the genre).

— the ambient genre, which is distinct from, but sometimes overlapping with, the previous two. Today's ambient music, as I perceive it, covers a fairly broad spectrum: at one extreme, what used to be called "new age" music, a fairly uniform sound environment without too much relief, accompanying meditation, relaxation, sleep and so on. At the other extreme, more sophisticated music, moving towards minimalism, abstraction, dark ambient and drone.

— scholarly or experimental electro-acoustic or acousmatic music, developed in particular by institutions such as IRCAM or GRM (in France), where profitability and commercial distribution are not the primary objectives; composers are often subsidized, benefit from residencies and so on.  It's a place of innovation in sound, technique and form. It's worth noting that the new tools developed in these institutions are gradually becoming more widely available, as demonstrated by granular synthesis plug-ins, 3D spatialization plug-ins, multi-channel broadcasting, etc.

— techno in its various sub-currents, which constitutes a culture in its own right, with its own audience, its own venues, its own subdivisions...

Of course, there are many hybridizations between these categories.

I'm particularly interested in the emergence of the "modern classical" or "contemporary classical" movement, represented in particular by musicians like  musicians such as Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Roger Eno and others, who offer a synthesis of classical music, electro-acoustic music, minimalism and ambient, and cinematic music. The fact that this demanding, sometimes experimental and relatively "academic" trend is enjoying real public and commercial success is encouraging....

As for me, I feel I've been through all these different genres (with the exception of techno), but that my "musical anchor" is now at the epicenter of "serious" ambient and "contemporary classical", with a zest of abstraction and sound experimentation to spice things up...

"Sphaera Armillaris" released on all download / streaming platforms

 

AUDION #76 - REVIEWS

 

 

(review by Andy Garibaldi)

 

 

(Review by Alan Freeman)

Many thanks to Andy and Alan for these reviews...

Audion Link

Next Steps?

 I have several works in progress, some of them are already completed...

 In february 2024, I have an album to be released in the erecord  series of the British label Whitelabrecs . 

The title is: The Story of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. This album, draws its inspiration and artwork from a vintage book by a woman, Agnes Giberne, under this title, published in Cincinnati in 1898.

This was the heyday of imaginative, conquering and speculative astronomy, a telescopic astronomy, driven by such great figures as Jules Vernes, Camille Flammarion, Percival Lowell...

This detour into late 19th-century astronomy frees me from the stereotypes of contemporary space music or cosmic music, and I try to evoke this exploration of thye sky with a different musical language.

This release will have a  pdf booklet with a beautiful artwok, like CDs.

 

My second release for DiscoGecko Recordings, scheduled in the first quarter 2024 is a new exploration blending electronic minimalism and "modern classical" atmospheres. It is called Impressionism and is a musical hommage to the pictural world of Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and other French painters.

 

In the meantime, I will probably release two new albums on my Bandcamp page. These projects are almost completed, and they are opening new paths in my musical journey. I am very excited by these new directions, on the contemporary and experimental edge of ambient musics and I cannot wait to share them with my fans and followers....

 

 

 

 

"SPHAERA ARMILLARIS" ON BANDCAMP!

 

     

 

 

 

Coming next...

In Classical Antiquity, as in the modern European tradition, the armillary spheres, geocentric, and then heliocentric, were not only models of the universe, but also supports for contemplation, inviting the viewer to meditate on the place of man in the immensity of the cosmos, on the vanity of his values, on the ephemeral nature of his existence in the light of the cosmic eternity.

"Sphaera Armillaris" is inspired by this philosophical tradition and invites to a journey in spirit into the mechanics of the world: ambient music, made of slow rotations and expansion of the gaze, between centre and periphery, between different scales of contemplation and listening, in the mechanics and geometry of cosmic circles and wheels.

It could be worse...

 

 Before the drastic reduction in stream fees announced for 2024, Spotify's algorithms are kind enough to provide us with a review of the year (almost) gone by...

These figures testify to my audience, confidential but real, and in my eyes honorable, given that my music doesn't fit into the mainstream ambient boxes: too abstract, too dark, not melodic enough, no rhythm, a little too experimental, too atmospheric, and so on.

I see this as a major encouragement to continue on my path, without losing my soul, and remaining myself...

There is indeed an international public for music that's a little "different", that stands out from the standards of yoga and other relaxation music...

From South America to the Japanese archipelago, from the farthest reaches of Canada to Africa, from Northern Europe to Australia, there's a loyal, open-minded following for my creative journey...

Thanks to all my listeners and to the playlists curators who support my music and share my tracks!

ALBUMS ARE TO STREAMING WHAT GASTRONOMY IS TO FAST FOOD...

 

One of the major changes affecting music creation today is the promotion of single tracks to the detriment of albums, in CD, vinyl or cassette format.

 

The supremacy of streaming over album purchases, whether in physical or digital form, marks the end of concept albums and the reign of individualized tracks that can be endlessly recombined and recontextualized in hybrid playlists, with a strong anonymization effect.

 

Most of my musical life, both as a listener and as a creator, has taken place in the album era. "Dark Side of the Moon", "Close to the Edge", "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", but also "Blonde on Blonde" or "Beggars Banquet", to limit myself to a few references, have unfolded for me coherent musical universes, thought out, conceptualized, linked by an aesthetic and an artistic project.

 

Similarly, my classical musical education has led me to listen to symphonies and concertos in their successive movements, and to coherent bodies of lieder or sonatas.

 

Can you imagine Beethoven symphonies or Vivaldi concertos being deconstructed in Spotify playlists? Or Mahler 5th Symphony? Will its "Adagietto" will be featured in “Playlists for sleep, relaxation, yoga” ? Come on!

 

So, is it still possible today to produce a "concept album"?

 

As an ambient musician, I'm still deeply attached to this format.

 

I like the idea that my "albums" tell a story, create a world, explore spaces and create atmospheres by following a common thread.

 

I like the idea that an album, even of ambient and electronic music, is a creative entity, a whole, with aesthetic, sonic and emotional coherence.

 

I like the idea that an album, from the first track to the last, unrolls a common thread and invites the listener to immerse themselves as if on a journey.

 

Perhaps this concept of musical creation is definitely outdated. I suppose the album format still makes sense for international stars and record companies who can still promote the CD object. But even then, the dismemberment of works is required for commercial exploitation on streaming platforms.

 

Of course, single releases are naturally destined to explode streams...

 

But what sense is there in seeing works cut up into tracks subject to the algorithms of the platforms, the goodwill of playlist curators, and the vagaries of listeners' "likes"?

I like Bandcamp because it recognizes the artistic integrity of the album, as a concept that organizes several tracks around an idea, an atmosphere, an emotion and an artwork...

It's probably the last "Treasure Island" for true explorers of musical worlds that are often marginal, non-commercial, but faithful to a creative ethic, and willing to take the time to listen. An album is to streaming what gastronomy is to fast food... 

 

Thanks for reading this post... 

 

... and, by the way, here is my Bandcamp Page:    link

 

Listening to Music / Creating Music

 

It's a truism to say that listening to music is learned and enriched over the course of a lifetime, through concerts and recordings, with steps of discovery, zones of comfort and discomfort, strategies for deciphering, and specific aesthetic pleasures. Some ears can be expert, like those of music critics comparing classical recordings, or those of music lovers in this or that particular genre.

 

Another point is striking. Every musician's composition integrates and adapts the memory of the works he has listened to, and the musical genres that have accompanied him throughout his life. In other words, his musical sensibility, his creativity and his sound universe retain traces, obvious or discreet, of the music that has shaped his own listening and sensibility.

 

We might therefore ask ourselves whether every musician is not engaged in a process of repetition, or rather in an attempt to return to the sources of his inspiration and to the models and references that have shaped his own musical personality, and have, in the end, given him the desire to pass from the status of listener to that of creator.

 

Another way of putting this idea... Is it possible to innovate when you carry the memory of everything you've heard, of all the musics you listened to? This question is equally valid for the writer, who carries the memory of all the texts he has read, or for the visual artist, who carries the memory of all the works he has seen...

OUMUPO (3): Time and Space

 

 

I'm continuing my reflexive thread about music (my music, but non only...).  Basically, what are these auditory artifacts that I construct and decide, at a given moment, to share with an audience?

I like the term "artifact". Because music is constructed. It's the result of craftsmanship, of assembly, of shaping. I don't share the mythology of the creative genius who produces a work by pure intuition, without effort. Music is the result of work, like a text, a painting or a sculpture. It is an artifact.

Music is first and foremost a segment of time: there is a beginning, an end, a measurable duration. But at the same time, we know that certain types of music linger in the mind and sensibility of the listener long after the end of listening, in the form of a kind of memorial halo... Music is a segment of time shared with the musician, but also with all the other listeners, particularly in the context of collective listening, in a concert for example.

Music is also a multi-dimensional space, with three or more dimensions, where sounds, harmonics and melodies move, coexist and overlap. The very essence of music is to create spaces that can defy the laws of physics and geometry, through the trajectory and layering of sounds, through the interplay between proximity and distance, through scales of depth.

Electronic, ambient or acousmatic music sculpts spaces that are possible or impossible, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, reassuring or vertiginous.

I like to play with panoramic effects, delays and reverberations to create immersive environments that lead listeners to rethink their position in relation to the sounds they hear...

TWILIGHT: Ambient Music for the Threshold of the Night

 

Between day and night, the time of twilight begins...
A slow fade of light, shadow and color, as the city lights awaken from their daytime torpor.

Between wakefulness and sleep lies the time of twilight...
A silent film of memories, sensations and thoughts, which this musical project attempts to set to sound...

Imbued with a gentle melancholy, this intimate ambient journey to the threshold of night explores the confines of silence, sculpted by slow melodies...

 

Bandcamp 

 

TWILIGHT: Ambient Music for the Threshold of the Night

 

OUMUPO (2)

 If I pursue this reflexive (and ego-centric) effort - what is the music I'm trying to create?

... a few key-words come to mind...

- SLOWNESS: my music is a praise of slowness. Stretched, multidimensional time... taking the time... to listen, to follow the birth, the apogee, the evanescence of a sound...

- INTROSPECTION: my music is introspective... I mean, it doesn't invite you to dance at a techno rave (I've got nothing against techno raves!), but to focus on the present moment, whether it's daydreaming, relaxation, intellectual concentration, meditative accompaniment... That is... Just listening to music...

- ABSTRACTION: I like the idea that music sculpts and reconfigures mental spaces, helping us to perceive the world and reality from different points of view. I like the idea that music helps the listener perceive... abstract forms, ideas, possible worlds, unsuspected spaces...

[among the albums that have given me this experience, both aural and intellectual... Tangerine Dream [Phaedra, Rubycon, Zeit, Atem]... Klaus Schulze [rrlicht, Cyborg, Black Dance, X, Mirage...], Brian Eno [On Land, Music for Airports, Apollo...].

- MINIMALISM: a good musician must erase, subtract, renounce, reach the essential, the quintessence, in an economy of sounds, in a reaffirmed demand for listening...

OUMUPO ("Ouvroir de Musique Potentielle")

 

How could I put my music into words?
How could I describe what comes out of my keyboards and virtual instruments that I consider to be "my" music?

And am I in the best position to talk about it?

I'm not a programmer or a "composer" in the strict sense.

I see myself more as a craftsman, using sounds and sonic spaces as others use colors, shapes and materials: as a medium for a creative performance, where intuition and improvisation play an essential role.

There's a necessity, a logic to improvisation: at a given moment, while composing my palette of sounds, setting up spatialization effects, my fingers on the keyboard find the right tempo, the right tonalities, the right harmonic path... It could not be otherwise...

Basically, I'm following threads of intuition, a bit like the "automatic writing" of surrealist poets like André Breton, Soupault and co (all things being equal, of course).

But to continue this literary metaphor, I'm probably also close to OULIPO, the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, represented by writers like Raymond Queneau, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Pérec, Jacques Roubaud and many others...

We should create OUMUPO, L'Ouvroir de Musique Potentielle... whose founding text could be the "Oblique Strategies" card game created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt.

"Oblique Strategies" means reintroducing the rules of the creative game into a combinatory of possibilities...

One of these rules, in my musical work, is the staggered duplication of the same track on several instruments. This shift creates a series of random events within a predefined harmonic structure. What would otherwise be pure superposition, even if shifted, is most often cut and sculpted by silences through an editing stage...

 The result is random music edited by human decision...

ANDREW HEATH - Scapa Flow — Disco Gecko Recordings (Review)

 

Three major references run through  Andrew Heath unique musical universe: the sea, the map, the landscape. These references fit naturally into one another. There are nautical charts, just as there are maritime landscapes.

 

But in the end, the common thread, the guiding and leading principle, is space, expanse, perspective. A constant interplay between surface and depth.

 

Each of the sixteen compositions on "Scapa Flow" opens a window onto a fragment of the world, a space-time where vanishing lines are traced, where thoughts stretch out in dreamy contemplation.

 

Andrew Heath's music is a praise of contemplative slowness, of a presence in the world hic et nunc, where we commune with a landscape, fly over a map, trace a wake on a distant ocean.

 

Ethereal layers punctuated by the melancholy of sparse piano notes, crossed by the shimmer of an electric guitar caressed by a bow that sublimates its harmonics, while here and there, concrete oscillations, creaks and murmurs, discreet "objets sonores" sketch out possible places, the deck of a sailboat, ropes and sails beaten by the winds, floors crunching under invisible footsteps.

 

Slowness and depth, long comets of reverberating notes: "Scapa Flow" reinvents an intimate and subtle ambient music where everything is but soulful shifts as time flies away...

 

 

https://andrewheath.bandcamp.com/album/scapa-flow

"Orpheus" featured on Hearts of Space PGM "Darktime Atmospheres" (Oct. 27-nov. 3)

 

The Dark Ambient genre evolved out of the Industrial, Experimental, and Noise genres of the 1970s. The arrival of affordable synthesizers, samplers, and effects units in the 1980’s led to more complex styles like Ritual Industrial, Black and Doom Metal, Dark Wave, Gothic, and who can forget the reverberating chains and tortured screams of Dungeon Synth?

Our yearly immersion in the morbid emotions of fear, death, and horror at Halloween, provides an insight into the more aesthetic and environmental qualities of Dark Ambient. Whereas the horror genres aim to shock and terrify, Dark Ambient seeks merely to disturb, evoke feelings of isolation, melancholy, and confinement, and reflect an atmosphere of gloom and darkness. 

I'm DR. DARKO, and on this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, a subterranean underworld journey for Halloween, on a program called DARKTIME ATMOSPHERES. Music is by BRANNAN LANE, CHRISTIAN WITTMAN, SUN'S MUSE, SHIBALBA, REMANENCE, YEN POX, INSECTARIUM, and TOR LUNDVALL.

 

 Link

 Orpheus is on BANDCAMP

The music I am currently listening to...

 Brian Eno

Andrew Heath

Hammock

Schubert

Paul Bley

Ólafur Arnalds

Chopin

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

Harold Budd

(my own music too...)

 

New Album: EVANESCENCE

 Taking the time to listen to...
... Music...

A slow
Ambient
Deep
Tranquil
Minimal
Airy
Meditative
Music

A music…

…Enchanting as a perfume
As floating as clouds in the sky
Fascinating like reflections on water

Music of the moment
Music that slowly fades away
Eyes closed
In the inner kaleidoscope of memories, feelings, ideas and sensations...

Music for sound gourmets
Who take the time
Time to listen
To listen to evanescent melodies….  

 

Bandcamp 

Apple Music

 

Review of "Orpheus" by Andy Garibaldi (Inkeys). "An absolute gem!'

 

"A near 40 minute track in 5 parts, and from the opening, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were listening to some lost outtakes from the Tangerine Dream “Oedipus Tyrannus” project, specifically the “Overture” track, as delicate, but deep, calmly atmospheric, slowly shifting, subtly changing waves of cosmic synths drift effortlessly into view, and it’s he perfect soundtrack for watching galaxies drift by, or exploring the “out there”, and at short of 12 minutes, arguably, just the right length.

 
Part 2 at just over 9 minutes, does actually continue from where the previous one left off, and along the way, this time, you’ll hear distant whispers, occasional footsteps, the clanking of long forgotten electronic machinery, in fact, the perfect soundtrack for any one of the legendary “2001" movies, when it comes to the slow motion viewing of the unexpected. 

 

Whatever your headspace, the music is absolutely riveting, and as fine an exaple of constantly changing amorphous cosmic synth music, as you’ll encounter.

 
From there on, it’s a simply beautiful ride through the universe as the mood is maintained but the landscape changes and it’s not until the final track where we get hints of “Blade Runner”-era Vangelis, creeping in to add to its unfolding space music charms.

 
Although I hear a ton of space music, and often it’s difficult to separate the planets from the stars, this is one that I could listen to for as long as we all shall live – an absolute gem!! "

Andy Gee, INKEYS.

"Orpheus, Pt. 3": Review by Beatradar

 

 

 Link to Beatradar

Work in Progress: "Evanescence"

 

I am working on my next album project, "Evanescence".... Listening again and again to the eight tracks recorded. Correcting mixes, trying different level balances. Changing the order of the tracks: which one is the best, the most efficient? 

 

Fine tuning the tracks titles... Words matter... 

 

Should I include "Edge of Oblivion" or not, as a second or as a third track? Listening again and again, with hi-fi loudspeakers, with my headphones...

 

I love this album... I don't know if anyone else will love it...

 

I think it is a step in a musical quest that makes sense...

 

No one of my ambient albums is the same...

 

I feel I go further, deeper, elsewhere...

 

Listening again and again...

 

Where does this music come from? Where does it go?

 

Why does this music matter so much for me?

 

What am I trying to express through it?

 

Music is the mirror of a soul.

 

Of the soul of the composer.

 

Of the soul of the listener.

 

I love so much the music of "Evanescence"...

 

"Lines" (from "Ambient Mapping II") featured in Hearts of Space Playlist!

 

 

 Wandering the endless hallways of Ambient Cool

After the burn of our increasingly intense summers—now featuring epic fires and floods in the wake of biblical storms and record-breaking heat waves—we emerge into the relatively cooler, quieter atmosphere and deflationary energy of early autumn. It's a time to regroup, recharge, rebuild, harvest, and prepare for the challenges of the winter season to come.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space from Canadian guest producer DAVID J. EGAN, a journey down the endless monochromatic hallways, complex timbres and metallic overtones of Ambient Cool, on a program called SUMMER'S END 2.

Egan has an extensive catalog of shows on his Mixcloud channel "The Armchair Traveler" at www.mixcloud.com/the-armchair-traveler

 

Link

My music is a mirror....

 

Can I put into words what I'm trying to express and convey in my music?

I think music is a mirror.

A paradoxical mirror with two sides.

One side reflects the composer, his state of mind, his sensitivity, his personality.

The other side reflects the listener.

So, my music reflects me.

Questioning, sometimes melancholy, an introspective itinerary, an existential quest, a taste for abstraction and experimentation, a desire for horizons, even unattainable horizons, in short, a desire.

There's also a desire to create possible harmonics, sonic and rhythmic worlds, microscosms with their own laws of gravitation...

My musical project is undoubtedly also a desire to escape, a longing for somewhere else...

My music lies at the crossroads of an intellectual quest and an imaginary desire...

How can I say who I am, who I think I am, who I imagine I am, other than through soundscapes where the power of words abolishes itself in the wake of the senses...?

 

Review of "Nocturnes I" and "Shadows of Fading Time"

 

Thanks to Alan Freeman!

Link

Review of "The Light Before the Dark" and "Far Away"

 Many thanks to Uwe Saße  at SequenzerWelten for his nice reviews of my music!

Christian Wittman - The Light Before The Dark

 

....is just a title that reflects the thoughts during the twilight - dreamy and melancholic.
Improvised and implemented....just beautiful :-)

Christian Wittman - Far Away

 

No album is like the other - and that's what I like so much about Christian Wittman's music :-)
-Far Away- consists of three short pieces, on which Christian's journey into space is depicted again in a wonderful way. The thoughts thereby, from which factors space or cosmic music consists, Christian leaves open in his short texts on his Bandcamp page each time and thereby the necessary free space for the own fantasy.

It takes us again and again into unknown galaxies - with new effects, or even choral singing, which sounds really good!

It's always a great experience to accompany Christian on these journeys....

Works in Progress

 I use the "draft" section of my Bandcamp page for various album projects in progress, before their public release.

It's a way for me to listen, test, experiment with track order, to correct mixes, to consolidate concepts and to fix track titles.

I currently have eight albums in this transitional zone.

Four albums are completed, from my point of view, and ready for release.

Four other albums are under construction, and as my studio sessions progress, and after an initial filtering of the finalized tracks, I direct this or that track towards a particular album.

All these albums differ in concept, musical style and sound aesthetic.

In this way, I can diversify my musical work in different directions.

It's only after numerous re-listenings, corrections and retouching that I consider an album ready to be released and to go out and meet its listeners.

I listen to them over and over again, at different times of the day....

It's a bit like my secret workshop...

A creative electronic musician must be a hacker...

 

Thinking about it (a little...), I realize that today's electronic musician has countless virtual instruments, sound banks and plug-ins to program and parameterize...

But at the same time, as far as I'm concerned, I don't see myself as a programmer or an engineer...

More like a craftsman, or even a do-it-yourselfer.

In this new digital and computerized environment, driven by algorithms, I want to reintroduce chance and accident, intuition rather than calculation, the imperfection of gesture rather than the perfect geometry imposed by DAW grids.

In the way I make electronic music, from the facades of my modular synthesizers of yesterday to the screens of my computers of today, it's basically chance and accident, human intuition rather than machine logic, the risks of improvisation rather than the security of programming that matter.

There's a playful dimension to the way I create my music: bending the rules, forcing chance, rolling the sound dice until I get the most improbable combinations.

For me, a creative electronic musician must be a hacker of the technologies that constrain him: a smuggler, a poacher, a pirate, a gambler...

25% Discount on all my Bandcamp Discography! (until September 22)

 Dear friends and followers,

To thank you for your loyalty and interest in my music, I'm offering you a 25% discount code on ALL my albums (except "Shadows of Fading Time" on Disco Gecko).

Do you like Ambient Soundscapes à la Brian Eno and Harold Budd?

Hybrid ambient music that blends electronics and acoustic textures, à la Ólafur Arnalds?

Atmospheric space music in the style of early Tangerine Dream albums?

Or abstract ambient, combining sound design and a certain experimental touch?

In the pages of my blog, you'll find four "orientation tables" enabling you to browse my discography according to these broad categories:

https://christianwittman.blogspot.com/      (links to pages in the right-hand column).

As always, I welcome your feedback and your impressions of my music.

For an independent musician like me, the direct link with my community of listeners is the most important thing.

By purchasing on Bandcamp, you're helping to support a creative approach that's uncompromisingly honest...

Discount Code: ambient4all

expires on 9/22/2023

link: https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com

Thank you very much and see you soon for new electronic journeys!

Christian

ORPHEUS is available on all Streaming and Download Platforms!

 

Orpheus. A Dark Ambient Symphony (Only on Bandcamp for now)

 

 

 

"Orpheus" is a new step in my musical journey...

It's been several months in the making, and has gone through several working versions...

I think I've succeeded in expressing my vision with the tracks on this album.

I conceived "Orpheus" as a dark ambient symphony. An abstract, atmospheric meditation on Orpheus' descent into the underworld, driven by the hope of bringing his beloved Eurydice back to the world of the living through the power of his music.

"Orpheus" is a symphony of depths and darkness, a symphony of shadows and sorrows.

In my solo career, "Orpheus" reconnects with the sound universe of Lightwave, in particular "Uraniborg" from "Tycho Brahe" and "Mundus Subterraneus".

"Orpheus" continues the quest for a certain abstraction, and for structures that escape the traditional canons of "well-tempered" ambient music to venture into borderless sonic spaces.

Dark ambient symphony.

Abstraction.

Experimental dimension.

Long stretches of sound.

I know my music will find adventurous ears...

 

Orion Nebula / Review (Ambient Blog Net)

 Ambientblog.net

Music: How to use it?

 

Spotify playlists and the commercial strategies of the major record companies, particularly for classical music and jazz, are making increasing use of labels : music for relaxation, for sleep, for yoga, for reading, for work, even for napping!

What these strategies have in common is that music cannot be listened to for its own sake anymore, but must be divided into different marketing categories according to its supposed use.

Another point in common is that the coherence of musicians' artistic projects (that is an album)  is deconstructed by the systematic use of compilations or playlists, which are to listening to music what zapping is to watching films.

Does music need an instruction manual?

Is music just a colorless, odorless, impersonal backdrop, adapted to predefined uses, with no real listening experience?

Has ambient music in particular, which often veers towards the most traditional new age, become a mere prozac or sleeping pill?

Music for sleep!  What a program!