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Tag: music

Konsztrukting Soundz Evening 19

Published November 17, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Last Saturday night at the Fishermen’s Chapel in Old Leigh. Here’s the details of what was. I want to make some notes while it’s fresh in my mind.

First off, the sound art of event organiser Lev Dudas, which that night seemed strongly radiophonic to me.

Saulius Bendoraitis & Brian Webb: the former providing complex and gorgeous musique concrete soundscapes while the latter did some (slightly muffled) spoken word over the top.

And finally Sunfish Starfish, who to my mind owned the night with an absolutely IMMENSE sound reminiscent of Philip Jeck, only more expansive and meditative – like listening to eight sunken bands and orchestras. Made my fucking week, it did.

Special shout to Karina Townsend, who performed with an assemblage of plastic tubes, sound pickups, a straw and a Marigold washing up glove that I can really only describe to you as an electronic bagpipe…

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telemetry 16nov25

Published November 16, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Late Junction: Warped laments, serpentine hums

Verity Sharp presents another round of experimental listening taking in the unusual and exhilarating from around the globe. There’s chastening, contorted, laments from Peru’s Alejandra Cardenas (Ale Hop) as she delves into the trauma not only of her own life but that of her homeland – charting colonialism, cultural turbulence and addiction with a steely gaze. Plus an inquisitive and emotionally immediate return from Japanese experimenter Phew, paired this time with American multimedia artist Danielle de Picciotto, the duo melding their singular voices into sparse yet tense collages. Berlinde Deman meanwhile offers droning reflections on the Serpent, a unique wind instrument enhanced with effects pedals and her unique vocal stylings; and Will Glaser presents a bewildering collection of ‘Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future’.

SS Rajamouli Announces “VARANASI,” a Globe-Trotting IMAX Adventure — Two 3-Hour Movies Set for 2027 Release

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14nov25

Published November 14, 2025 by Warren Ellis

I was thinking about this song last night but could not remember the name of the band for the life of me. This bugged me all night. I ended up going to category: Japanese musical duos on Wikipedia just now to see if anything jogged my memory. Afrirampo ! Everybody I knew back then hated this song. I loved it and love it still.

James Callis was still awake at 2am LA time. Fran Strukan was messaging at 4am his time. I feel old and lazy for being asleep by 1am.

Finished reading STELLA MARIS, Cormac McCarthy (UK) (US+) last night.

The word cretin comes from the French chrétien. Supposedly if you could think of nothing good to say about a dullard you would say that he was a good Christian.

Today is all bits and pieces – landing the newsletter, working up test pages, making notes, setting up development for a couple of new projects, general catching up.

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telemetry 13nov25

Published November 13, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Mark Elder conducts the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra in a sea-themed concert as part of the orchestra’s Harmony with Nature season. Sibelius’s powerful depiction of the ocean waves in his Oceanides is paired with Vaughan Williams’s mighty first symphony, the Sea Symphony with soloists Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha and David Stout.

After testing three different toys powered by AI, researchers from the US Public Interest Research Group found that the playthings can easily verge into risky conversational territory for children, including telling them where to find knives in a kitchen and how to start a fire with matches. One of the AI toys even engaged in explicit discussions, offering extensive advice on sex positions and fetishes.

COPENHAGEN, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Iceland has designated the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security concern and an existential threat, enabling its government to strategize for worst-case scenarios, the country’s climate minister told Reuters.

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GLEANN CIUIN, Claire M Singer

Published November 13, 2025 by Warren Ellis

“Gleann Ciùin is the second album in a trilogy that explores two narratives: my journeys across the vast landscapes and weathered peaks of the Cairngorms in Aberdeenshire, and my exploration of the rich, resonant tones of pipe organs, contemplating the weight of history and the timeless beauty of these majestic instruments.”

Nothing I can add to that, to be honest. Magnificent.

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telemetry 12nov25

Published November 12, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Beehiiv, who host my newsletter, is touting some transformative “winter release” for tomorrow, which I’m presuming will be some major pivot to enterprise that will simply make everything harder and less fun for someone who just wants to send a newsletter once a week.

Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three,” which started shooting in July, has officially wrapped production. That’s four months of filming for the final chapter.

Though early reports had referred to the project as “Dune: Messiah”—a direct reference to Frank Herbert’s 1969 novel on which the film is based—Warner Bros. recently confirmed the film’s title would follow a more straightforward numerical approach. This further hints that Villeneuve could be tackling not just “Messiah,” but also parts of the third book, “Children of Dune.”

Much about Jordan Patterson’s music seems to follow a logical path. Listening to her songs, you likely wouldn’t be surprised to learn she was born in North Carolina and raised on Roberta Flack, or that she then traveled west to study at the L.A. County High School for the Arts (alumni: Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, and Sasami) and soon after discovered Nick Drake, Radiohead, and Ableton. Her warm, hand-held but slightly unsettled music is constitutive of all her influences.

What can’t be accounted for, however, is that voice, which seems to exist entirely outside any lineage or explanation. Her singing almost seems to propose a new paradigm: What if all of the stress were emphasized in the backend? What if the human lung were capable of taking its largest breath just as it reaches emptiness?

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LOVE LETTERS VIA ECHELON, Nerthus

Published November 12, 2025 by Warren Ellis

With Love Letters via Echelon, German sound sculptor Nerthus explores the shadowy tension between intimacy and control in the age of global surveillance. Inspired by the infamous ECHELON system, a vast and secretive network of electronic espionage, the album evokes a world in which every message may be intercepted, and every thought silently monitored. Rather than relying on familiar samples of intercepted transmissions, radio noise, or encrypted signals, Nerthus opts for a more nuanced and evocative approach. Through deeply immersive sound design, he constructs an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere that reflects the psychological weight of being watched, tracked, and decoded. The result is an ambient/post-industrial landscape steeped in paranoia, silence, and dread. The soundscapes also conjure the very environments in which such covert operations might unfold: cold, fluorescent-lit facilities, underground data centers, anonymous laboratories filled with machines humming in coded dialogue.

It’s a lovely spooky late-night thing.

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telemetry 10nov25

Published November 10, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Thousands of songs representing some of the rarest and most uniquely American music borne from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression would have likely been lost to landfills and faded from memory. Fans and historians have long credited obsessive record collectors for preserving much of that music, and today they can thank a new partnership between UC Santa Barbara and the nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation for making it available to the public for free. 

UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections has been uploading music from the foundation’s trove of approximately 50,000 songs to the university’s Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) database. So far, more than 5,000 songs from Dust-to-Digital have been added to DAHR, said David Seubert, curator of the library’s performing arts collection. “Thousands more are in the pipeline,” he noted.   

“The Dust-to-Digital Foundation has digitized some of the most significant private collections in the country,” Seubert added. “We are pleased to partner with them to make this rare content accessible.”

https://www.inclementweather.xyz

The school for inclement weather is a 365-acre refuge and radical observatory set on the banks of an atmospheric river, just above the thermal belt in Kashia Pomo territory in Northern California.

We practice disaster companionship – systems of knowledge and care that emerge from weathering the earth (and each other) amidst planetary demise. Our work asks: as the earth mutates, how must we mutate in return? 

A weirdly sparkly cover of one of my favourite Xmas songs:

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telemetry 8nov25

Published November 8, 2025 by Warren Ellis

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, University of British Columbia Okanagan adjunct professor Mir Faizal and colleagues say they’ve proven that the fundamental nature of reality simply cannot be simulated on any computer.

By using mathematical theorems, they argued that some truths can only be understood through non-algorithmic understanding.

From ARMAGEDDON GOSPELS (2019)

We’re racing towards a future in which devices will be able to read our thoughts. 

You see signs of it everywhere, from brain-computer interfaces to algorithms that detect emotions from facial scans. And though the tech remains imperfect, it’s getting closer all the time: now a team of scientists say they’ve developed a model that can generate descriptions of what people’s brains are seeing by simply analyzing a scan of their brain activity.

They’re calling the technique “mind captioning,” and it may represent an effective way for transcribing what someone’s thinking, with impressively comprehensive and accurate results.

One from 2010 today:

Also, GOD DESTROYER, Osvor, 2011:

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