my personal library
Number 4 is still on back order. Not sure I’ll ever feel the need to own all of this series? I think there are sixteen of them. But right now they’re a fascinating sound diary of a working life in art, during what I find to be a particularly interesting period.
There are two copies of this left at forged-river.com as I write this. Or you can buy the digital download. Mark Williamson is among our most important British landscape artists, and also our most inventive ambient musicians. I feel very lucky to have been able to grab a copy of this.
I saw this, I think, in the early 90s, on what was probably its second terrestrial transmission. It files next to ARTEMIS 81 as one of those genuine curiosities of British video. (Director Jamil Dehlavi is Pakistani/French, but he was based in Britain for a long time and much of his work was produced and/or funded here, like this one, which came out of FilmFour as I recall.)
I haven’t seen it since. But while looking for something else I came across this limited-edition release, and, hell, I’m in lockdown, and I can have the occasional film if I want. Hoping for a clear couple of hours some time next week when I can sit down and watch it.
Peter Firth has always had a quirky career, and has done ambitious and off-centre things apparently just because he’d like to try them and thinks they should exist. Suzan Crowley’s entire career has been weird; she’s one of the great rogue actors of our generation. Nabil Shaban, who co-stars, is a powerhouse.
At this point, I should probably just give Sub Rosa Label my bank account details, as they can apparently sell me anything.
“Belgian electronic music composer André Stordeur born 1941. His musical career started in 1973 with a tape composition for the soundtrack to a film on Gordon Matta-Clark titled Office Baroque. Later in the 1970s, he participated to avantgarde music ensemble Studio voor Experimentele Muziek, founded in Antwerp, Flanders, by Joris De Laet. Since 1980, Stordeur composes exclusively on Serge synthesizer, either a Serge series 79 and a Serge prototype 1980, which was especially built for him by Serge Tcherepnin himself. In 1981, Stordeur composed the music of Belgian film director Christian Mesnil’s documentary Du Zaïre au Congo. He studied at IRCAM in 1981 with David Wessel and then flew to the US to study with Morton Subotnick.”
Three CD set with sleeve notes and booklet. Nice.
“Letters To The Farthest Star is an ambitious and deeply personal dispatch: a far-reaching sojourn into the diverse ambient/electronic influences that helped shape the last three decades of Fang’s unique “Fourth World” style. Like messages from a universe without geographic borders, these pieces shift from dark, organic ambient passages to emotional, melodic interludes.
projektrecords.bandcamp.com to the rescue again.
“Stuart Hyatt returns with another sonic wonder in the Field Works series, bringing the listener into truly uncharted acoustic territory. Ultrasonic is perhaps the first-ever album to use the echolocations of bats as compositional source material. For this special album, Hyatt has assembled an extraordinary group of contributors: Eluvium, Christina Vantzou, Sarah Davachi, Ben Lukas Boysen, Machinefabriek, Mary Lattimore, Felicia Atkinson, Noveller, Chihei Hatakeyama, John Also Bennett, Kelly Moran, Taylor Deupree, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Julien Marchal, and Player Piano. Ultrasonic is part of a broader storytelling project about the federally endangered Indiana bat. Generously funded by the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute and the National Geographic Society, each album contains an official printed booklet of The Endangered Species Act of 1973.”
“Amalgaam is a raw and unpolished album. Which doesn’t mean that it’s blunt or trite. The grainy, textural sounds on this record have a fleeting, cinematic quality to them, combining spaciousness with a sense of intimacy – at times interrupted by noisier outbursts. The album is based on a series of improvisations on a very hands-on hardware setup, with an old tone generator, effects pedals, dictaphones, contact mics, etc. This material was then mixed and edited into the pieces on this album, while retaining the liveliness of the source material.”
Ordered a couple of things from a recent sale at projektrecords.bandcamp.com and they threw one in for free! Thank you so much! Projekt Records, if you’re not aware, do amazing service for ambient and deep listening music. Sam Rosenthal started that label in 1983 and still apparently runs it by his own hand today.
This sale was how I discovered Alio Die, who has his own Bandcamp page which I will get into later in the week.
Ian Holloway just sent me, by surprise, a box of close to his entire library. You can find him at ian-quietworld.bandcamp.com – I’ve mentioned him here before, I love his work. He claimed he just had some doubles in his storage space. I’m knocked flat by his generosity. Thank you, Ian.
