Sep 7, 2008

Sundaze (45)

Hello, Sundaze again, and whilst i was working on todays post, i changed my mind and persued a different avenue. I filed two of the planned titles for later use and went with one and drew connections from there...The one left was Tim Story, who's brilliant 84 album Untiteld connects to Roedelius, not just because Story's latest album is a coproduction with Roedelius..It goes much deeper then that, Tim was strongly inspired by the Cluster /Roedelius work of the early seventies, he even went for an audience (wink) when he was in Europe....so with that connection established and having still one ripped Roedelius vinyl on file, Selbstportrait Vol. III ...What's next ?.Coming up with a third connenction was easy, Eno..it seems he's connected to everyone, in this ambient context however, i took the opportunity to post my favorite...On Land a real "Out There" album, true music of the (atmo)spheres....

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Roedelius - Selbstportrait Vol. III ( 80 ^ 187mb)

Hans Joachim is one of the pioneers at the field of the exploitation of electrically generated tones, sounds and noises and belongs to the founders of contemporary popular electronic music. His discografie listes about 80 releases and there are more than 10 productions ready to be released in the next future.

Roedelius was born 1934 in Berlin and lives since 1978 in Baden, south of Vienna. He started to be a professional composer, musician, texter in the late sixties with sound-experiments respectively a sort of "anarchic musical actionism".
He worked with Choreografer Caroline Carlsen for the "Theatro e Danza la Fenice" in Venice, with Esther Linley, Mark Lintern-Harris and Joao de Bruco for the "Wiener Festwochen", the "Donaufestival", the "Eurokaz" in Zagreb, the "Szene Salzburg" and other Festivals. In 1968 Roedelius co-founded the music commune known as "Human Being" and co-formed Zodiak Free Arts Lab, the center of Berlin's Underground Culture at the time, with conceptual artist Conrad Schnitzler. He met Dieter Moebius at the Zodiak. In 1970 Roedelius, Schnitzler and Moebius formed Kluster (later known as Cluster). While he played as a member of Cluster, Roedelius worked in various projects like Geräusche, Plus/minus, Per Sonare, Harmonia, Meeting Point Vienna, Friendly Game, Aquarello and Tempus Transit. He has collaborated with many other composers and performers including Brian Eno.

In the interim, after Cluster went on hiatus in the wake of 1981's Curiosum, he plunged fully into solo work, regularly releasing several new LPs each year. Although most of these projects pursued ambient paths -- the multi-chapter Selbstportrait series, 1981's Lustwandel, 1987's Momenti Felici and 1992's Friendly Game all being good examples -- others like 1982's Offene Türen and 1992's Sinfonia Contempora I explored more dissonant electronic soundscapes. Additionally, Roedelius worked in a series of mediums including theatre, dance and film, collaborating with everyone from Holger Czukay to Peter Baumann; in 1990, he and Moebius also reunited for Apropos Cluster, and the duo continued working together throughout the decade to follow. Roedelius has written poems in English and German, some of which he recites on his albums. His solo albums are collections of quiet atmospheric piano pieces, including solos Momenti Felici (1987), duos Pink, Blue and Amber (1996) or groups of up to four performers Bastionen Der Liebe - Fortress of Love (1989).



01 - Sonntags (3:45)
02 - Geburtstag (1:50)
03 - Fieber (6:06)
04 - Hochzeit (3:05)
05 - Geradewohl (3:50)
06 - Erinnerung (3:25)

07 - Zuversicht (11:05)
08 - Stimmung (9:50)

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Brian Eno - On Land (Ambient 4) (82 ^ 179mb)

Determining his creative pathways with the aid of a deck of instructional, tarot-like cards called Oblique Strategies, Eno championed theory over practice, serendipity over forethought, and texture over craft; in the process, he forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived. Born, May 15, 1948, Brian Peter George St. Jean le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, sometimes simply Eno, started his musical career with Roxy Music. He then went on to produce a number of highly eclectic and increasingly ambient electronic and acoustic albums. He is widely cited as coining the term "ambient music" in his Ambient series (Music for Airports, The Plateaux of Mirror, Day of Radiance and On Land). He collaborated with David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts which was one of the first albums not in the rap or hip hop genres to extensively feature sampling. Eno collaborated with David Bowie as a writer and musician on Bowie's influential "Berlin trilogy" of albums, Low, Heroes and Lodger, on Bowie's later album 1. Outside, and on the song "I'm Afraid of Americans". Eno has also collaborated with Robert Fripp of King Crimson, Robert Wyatt on his Shleep CD, with Jon Hassell and with German Cluster. Eno has acted as a producer for a number of bands, including U2 and Devo. He won the best producer award at the 1994 and 1996 BRIT awards. He is an innovator across many fields of music and recently he has collaborated on the development of the Koan algorithmic music generator. He has also been involved in the field of visual arts. In 1996 Brian Eno, and others, started the Long Now Foundation to educate the public into thinking about the very long term future of society. Brian Eno is also a columnist for the British newspaper, The Observer.

On Land represented a significant move away from the strategies Brian Eno had employed in earlier ambient releases such as Discreet Music and Music for Airports. Here he uses a more intuitive approach, creating dreamy pictures of some specific geographical points or evocative memories of them. It's quite easy to imagine these works as soundtracks to mysterious footage of imprecisely glimpsed landscapes. The music is unobtrusive, warm, relaxed, shining, earthy. The first piece, "Lizard Point," includes an early recorded performance of Bill Laswell on bass, and one imagines that his association with Eno was a crucial factor in the ambient directions his later work would sometimes take. On Land remains a landmark event in the genre, as well as one of its high-water marks, and sounds entirely up to date 25 years after its initial release... Daze away



01 - Lizard Point (4:34)
02 - The Lost Day (9:13)
03 - Tal Coat (5:30)
04 - Shadow (3:00)
05 - Lantern Marsh (5:33)
06 - Unfamiliar Wind (Leeks Hills) (5:23)
07 - A Clearing (4:09)
08 - Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960 (7:13)

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Tim Story - Untitled (84 ^ 99mb )

Tim Story was born in 1957 in Philadelphia, and currently lives in the small river town of Maumee, in northwest Ohio.
In the mid 70's he landed a record store job, the holy grail, and into contact with the really exciting, if obscure, European music of the time. Robert Wyatt, Can and he gobbled up everything he could afford: King Crimson, Terje Rypdal, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Hatfield and the North, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis.." I remember Cluster and Roedelius' records were revelations to me, as was Robert Wyatt's "Rock Bottom". Here were these very iconoclastic, very personal, very individual recordings coming from small European labels, and it was incredible to discover there were people actually making this kind of music, and, possibly, an audience for it as well. So it was probably this period which had a significant impact on my own music, even if it was hopefully more an ideological than stylistic one".

Tim's intensely personal style as a composer, synthesist and pianist evolved from years of experimentation in his home studio, and a love of composition. Along with his self-taught, idiosyncratic approach to the piano, Story saw the great potential of the new breed of electronic music instruments that were appearing in the early 70's. This affinity for synthesizers, as well as electric guitars, tape loops and kitchen utensils, is evident in the early recordings. The careful juxtaposition of acoustic instruments with electronic textures, and an inventive approach to composition are common threads running through most of Story's work.

Tim Story's work has garnered an international reputation for its haunting elegance and meticulous compositional detail. When writing and recording, he often spends months carefully working and refining the shape of each composition until he achieves the desired emotional and intellectual effect. His seemingly effortless pieces distill harmonic and melodic ideas that are often quite complex.

"I like to work with a finite palette of sounds and keep paring things down to a pure, though often ambiguous, expression. Simplicity without simplemindedness. Like the deceptively unadorned, ironic pieces of Erik Satie, or the lovely yet challenging piano music of Debussy. The work of these guys appears so effortless and perfect that the pieces seem as if they've existed forever - they've created this unique, timeless world..." Story also cites a diverse range of musical touchstones including Bartok, Arvo Part, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Steve Reich, Dwight Ashley, Can, Cluster and Robert Wyatt.

" ...a goal of mine is to get the listeners to put something of themselves into the music. I want to prod the listener to find his or her own feelings about a piece, even if those feelings are sometimes uncomfortable. As Charles Ives said, 'Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair.' I like to think of good music as a sculpture or a Japanese garden, where you can never experience the whole from any one point. Music that insinuates, you must move through it, live with it for a while, before it yields its secrets." As Philadelphia's City Paper described it, "Story’s unsentimental blend of still-life piano and eerie synthetics conjures without explaining. His instrumental music comes at the listener subtly yet subversively...."

In addition to nine solo albums and dozens of compilation appearances, Story's work has appeared on numerous television and film soundtracks, including the original score for the popular NPR documentary “In Search of Angels” (1994), and “Caravan” (2005) , a feature-length documentary from the production company of acclaimed Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar. Story's music has been nominated for a Grammy award (for 1988's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow", a children's recording with Glenn Close), and a NAIRD "Best Album" award (for "Beguiled"). Notable collaborations include three acclaimed cd's with Hans-Joachim Roedelius (including "Lunz", named by the editors at Amazon.com as one of the year's "Top 5"), and 3 with Dwight Ashley. Tim's music has consistently landed on critics' annual "Best Of" lists, and his 3 most recent solo releases were called "one of the finest trilogies in contemporary instrumental music" (Wind and Wire, USA)
Latest 2008 release is Ínlandish"a another collaboration with Roedelius, music that makes you stop and listen. Tim Story, has received worldwide acclaim for his haunting compositions which blend orchestral acoustic instruments and elegant electronics.



01 - The Hold (4:08)
02 - A Promise And A Plea (3:38)
03 - In This Small Spot (4:07)
04 - Shadows In The Cracks (2:23)
05 - Sargasso (5:09)
06 - City Of Scaffolds (3:42)
07 - November's Eve (3:12)
08 - Untitled (4:01)
09 - Her Lost Fleet (3:39)
10 - Plucking Islands From The Sea (4:18)
11 - Out Like A Whisper (4:52)
12 - The Seventh Chance (3:37)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

roedelius 3 is super cool.. merci, blackmarble

Rho said...

Hello Blackmarble, glad you like it. If y haven't already, you should check out Sundaze 13,14,15 and 16 where you'd find Cluster, Harmonia and more Roedelius solowork.

best of luck,

Rho

Anonymous said...

Wonderful posts, Rho. Thank you!
I'm wondering if you might also have another record by Roedelius, Piano Piano. Long since out of print, the man himself only has one copy in his house!

Thanks again for all of your wonderful posts.
Robert

Anonymous said...

Hi,
any chance you could repost a link to Selbstportrait III? The link you have here leads only to a page that can't be found.
best wishes
Chris

Rho said...

Check again , Anon

Anonymous said...

Any chance you re-up the albums? Thanks.