I was never comfortable with “world music” as a term. But, as previously noted, I will use my modern privilege to hear the sounds from everywhere I can. These are historical artifacts.
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
It’s a big planet full of people, and I want to experience as much of its art as I can before I go. People like Unexplained Sounds help a lot with that. You can stream all this, and buy the material in digital or CD, at their Bandcamp page.
I’ve always, since I could afford to buy music regularly, kept a small collection from musics that are not from Britain, from the songs of the Bayaka to Tuvan throat singing.
I’m actually falling way behind with photographing what’s coming in as I (re-) build my library. I mean, I’m sure it’s pretty boring for you, reader, but as it’s only you and I reading, and I pay for the website, you’re kind of shit out of luck there sorry
I don’t remember ordering this. And so I checked my receipts. I didn’t. So I checked the Bandcamp page for this. I still didn’t. So, thank you, Faint Music, for the cassette. (Which has served as a reminder that I need to pick other things up from you.) I will have to see if I can get the single tape deck in the house to work. Or maybe I’ll just go back and buy the CD, because this is some good rainy techno atmospherics for a good rainy day.
Like I wasn’t going to listen to a musician called Metatron Omega. Come on.
It’s like the sound you imagine choirs in the ancient cosmic temples of Philippe Druillet’s LONE SLOANE comics would make. The album descriptions that Metatron, a musician from Serbia, writes, are insane:
Under the ever-watching Eye of the distant, yet omnipresent cosmic force, Man has been growing and constructing his own symbols of himself and of the Ages. The great Mover is slowly pushing the grand mechanism of time and space, altogether with the boundaries of Universe, toward a greater step of knowing.
And look: a tri fold nature of Man has been exposed and put under a trial. His body, his mind and his spirit had come under the shining ray of Revelation, where there are no secrets. Within the boundless, deep, architecture of cosmic monastery of the Universe, one seeks his destiny and perceives the journey he is upon, with his eyes transfixed by the boundless silhouette of the great Kosmokrator, reigning supreme at the Throne of Life. The gates are open, and the priests of Evangelikon have begun their mass.
I can appreciate this kind of commitment to the bit.
The most recent, EVANGELIKON, is here at Cryo Chamber’s Bandcamp page.
Also arrived today: Ager Sonus, a German musician, brings the big, deep-time dark ambient. Here’s the link to stream the most recent album and buy stuff. (If you’re seeing this on a different site, click over to warrenellis.ltd to find the links).
I would have been lost, the last few months, without being able to sink down into these soundscapes. You’re goddamn right I bought ten CDs from Cryo Chamber in recompense. And to make sure I always have these sounds to hand.
I have loved the band Northumbria for a long time – they’ve been going since 2011. So while I was shopping at Cryo Chamber, I decided to send them some extra money, and so these arrived today. Their most recent is VINLAND. They have their own Bandcamp page, where I’d encourage you to start, but, as I say, I picked these up through the excellent dark ambient label Cryo Chamber.
These here comprise “a trilogy inspired by the Norse discovery of Canada.” You can do what I did and buy the trilogy as a bundle, if you like. It is extremely good atmospheric ambient with notes of early Canadian post-rock glinting out of the mist from time to time.
Also, these are beautiful objects.
The top one is LEVIATHAN the documentary. I had a digital copy before. Let’s see if this works.
The beginning of my mission to own as much material by Phurpa on CD as exists. Because if you’re going to go dark you should be accompanied by rumbling Russian ritual drone music, right? (I have another three or four discs en route.)
You can find their base page on Bandcamp, but they’ve been released on other labels too.
I’ve been fascinated by the SHIPWRECK RADIO recordings by Nurse With Wound since I discovered them on their Bandcamp page.
Shipwreck Radio is a series of albums by Nurse With Wound documenting their residency in Lofoten, Norway during June and July 2004. Invited to stay in the unofficial capital, fishing village Svolvær, Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter were commissioned to produce 3 radio broadcasts per week for local station Lofotradioen of music constructed from whatever they heard or could find around the island. The project was instigated by Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young of The Wire and by Kunst I Nordland, an organisation committed to bringing contemporary art to county of Nordland[.
The duo created 24 broadcasts in total, each of either 15 or 30 minutes duration. Each broadcast was preceded by a jingle of a male voice saying “Velkommen Til Utvær” followed by a female voice saying the English translation “Welcome To Utvær”, Utvær being the most remote island in Lofoten, with no permanent residents but 2 lighthouse keepers on hand.
If you’ve got any experience at all with radiophonic sound design or crunchy electroacoustic ambient music, these are among the most accessible entries in the Nurse With Wound catalogue. It’s like putting two mad scientists in charge of The Shipping Forecast. They’re all available for streaming and paid digital download on Bandcamp, but I wanted the objects too, and that’s how I became a crate-digger on Discogs