I don’t want to overwhelm the blog with ambient music because if I just posted what I listen to 70% of the time you’d be all in bed by 8pm every night but completely comfy and in dreamland. Hold on though, this isn’t just any kind of ambient though here on ISO50, I usually have to dig though alot of mediocre releases to find the gems to share with you and today i’ve found 2 Cullinan diamonds(largest polished diamond). The legendary Fennesz has put out a new LP called Black Sea this month and its drop dead gorgeous. Below is just a hint of the what the album has to offer, I already see it popping up everywhere on Best Albums of 2008.
As for something more bright, bold and beautifully orchestrated with soft dynamics and gentle samples of polaroid cameras taking pictures of friends laughing, Shigeto and A Setting Sun offer up their new Table For Two EP(that is name your own price for only 1 week) that is only comparable to uncovering a room of someone’s lifelong hard work of putting a miniature smalltown together. The detail and enjoyment of making a song like Polaroid Romance makes me want to stop everything and work on making music.
Excuse this dark tone period i’ve been highly enjoying, it definitely has something to do with the winter and also wanting to listening to more than just drone, diggin deep for colorful and moody material. One of the less ambient pieces on this new A Setting Sun EP is this remix by Dial81, if you like it download it for free.
I fully support anything by Rafael Anton Irisarri but this one is an absolute gem, he needs to be scoring film on the highest level, he can grab sounds and articulate an emotion so well.
I don’t usually stream music like Swans on ISO50 but I can’t hold back on this one, too much passion behind their own sound, I can only share and sit back and be blown away.
The Soft Moon video for “Circles” premiered today, check it out:
Jay Bodley aka A Setting Sun has been on the blog before with his cover of Air’sLe Soleil Est Pres de Moi but that sound is far different from what he’s brewing which is more of a textured doom metal that you’d find from an artist like Ulver with hints of what a non-metal fan would call beautiful. Raspberry is a song that could be split up into multiple sections where you start off with the unforgiving coldness of the intro and lets you enjoy a bit of familiar acoustic guitar and then fades into an almost ceremonial muted brother of the intro, its grey yet ends on a restful feeling that everything has calmed down.
The mysterious grace that Johann Johannsson shares with us reminds me of what a mad man would hide from anyone that feared him to not show that he has such a passionate side. Think if Tangerine Dream had to make a dark classical piece with Jan Jelinek without beats or glitches.
The label Kranky can never do me wrong, you dig in their back catalog and just find treasures and one song that I found from this Christopher Bissonnette LP made me happy that there were such things as good A+R.
Tim Hecker is a hero in my mind to lo-fi ambient, if I ever drowned this better be playing so its as bittersweet as I could ever imagine it being.
Take your time with these songs if you really want to enjoy them, if this sound isn’t something you usually listen to then I suggest listening to it alone, yet close to you but not overwhelming yourself. Try listening to it as background sound quietly then try listening to it noticing every detail, you might realize how much goes into making this sound appealing.
Finally we have a new Broker/Dealer release, in my opinion if these guys were constantly making music they would be as large as Lindstrom or Metro Area. This track is like a night drive on the curvy coasts with the top down, it’s so driving yet at a pretty slow tempo. I hope this release will get these guys on the road playing live shows, i’ve only seem them once live and they have the best setup with both of them wearing brown leisure suits and all this 70’s footage of planes taking off on the hottest day. As for the D. Gookin track it’s my favorite to watch live especially the synth breakdowns, he is playing tonight in Brooklyn if you get a chance to come out. A Setting Sun is definitely a change up from the last 2 tracks, there is tons detail here very similar to older Mum without the vocals, every time it comes onto my iTunes it sounds like you’re about to go snowshoeing with the Leno character from the Royksopp video. I should of probably put this Le Technique track first since its more upbeat then the rest, do you remember Wipeout XL for the original Playstation? well this track should of been on the soundtrack if they made a sleeker and more visually beautiful version of the game where you would drive cola brown Maserati’s and wear caramel perforated leather aviator gloves.
XLR8R posted a free mix by Shigeto today, its a great mix of loose beat material and plenty of organic textures, tracklist below. For the EU ISO50 readers, we finally have tour dates from someone who I treat as family on this blog coming to visit you, definitely worth seeing, we also attached a glimpse of him playing live(18 mins of it).
TRACKLIST
01 A Setting Sun “33 (JDSY Remix)” (Moodgadget)
02 Deru “Between You and Me” (Hymen)
03 Shigeto and Devonwho “Cirlces” (All City)
04 Simple “Barely Together”
05 Zack Christ “Fox Prawn” (Tall Prawn)
06 Mount Kimbie “Would Know” (Hotflush)
07 Pajaro Sunrise “Old Goodbyes (Charles Trees Remix)” (Lovemonk)
08 Shlohmo “Forgot Where I Was” (Friends of Friends)
09 Burial “Broken Home” (Hyperdub)
10 King Midas Sound “Lost (Flying Lotus Remix)” (Hyperdub)
11 Devonwho “Holup (Hi Res’ Refix)” (Klipmode)
12 Take “Neon Beams (Dibiase Remix)” (Alpha Pup)
13 Dabrye “With a Professional” (Ghostly International)
14 3LLL “Melt”
15 Shigeto “Children at Midnight (Saturn Never Sleeps Remix)”
TOUR DATES
04.29 San Francisco, CA @ GAFFTA (XLR8R EVENT)
05.14 New Orleans, LA @ THE ALLWAYS LOUNGE
05.24 Paris, FR @ LA MACHINE DU MOULIN ROUGE
05.26 Den Haag, NL @ POP CENTRUM
05.28 Ausburg, DE @ GLITCH HAPPENS
06.01 Belfort, FR @ POUDRIERE
06.02 Nijmegen, NL @ ODDSTREAM FESTIVAL
06.03 Brussels, BE @ LE MIRANO CONTINENTAL
06.05 Miltown Malbay, IE @ COLDPRO FESTIVAL
06.06 Berlin, DE @ MONARCH
06.07 Chemnitz, DE @ BETA BAR
06.09 Neuchatel, CH @ CASE A CHOCS
06.10 Trinitaires, FR @ TRINITAIRES
06.11 Bologna, IT @ NODE
06.16 Budapest, HU @ A38
06.17 Bucharest, RO @ CLUB BERLIN
06.18 Wien, AT @ LOUD MINORITY
Dry Waves is a compilation put together to show how gorgeous and diverse music can get when you stay away from filing work into genres. All the musicians on the compilation I personally feel are on a path of making music that keeps me on the edge of my seat when it comes to new ideas and experimenting.
I recently put together a collection of remixes that weren’t really out there that were related to the Moodgadget label I run. It’s a very diverse collection of new and old songs from the catalog and I thought the ISO50 readers could be the first to hear and download the compilation, let me know what you think, enjoy your weekend.
TRACKLIST Benoit Pioulard – Forming At The Mouth (Worst Friends remix) D. Gookin – Glad I Met You (Mux Mool remix) Machinedrum – Fresh Kids (Mogi Grumbles mix) The Young Friends – Be My Baby (Boyfriends mix) Shigeto – Life Eternal (A Setting Sun remix) Body Language – At A Glance (Toro Y Moi remix) Praveen & Benoit – Embers (Shigeto remix) Addled – Heartbreachno (Frank Omura remix) Mux Mool – Eagle Fantasies (Tom Croose’s 60 super bowl champs remix) A Setting Sun – Sun Hammer Pounding (Joe Lapaglia mix)
It was my birthday this weekend and I went out on a limb earlier in the week for a last minute HUGE favor from some close musician friends to do covers of some of my favorite songs or songs I thought the musician would do a cover of really well and surprisingly they agreed….20 of them! So here are the first 5:
Benoit Pioulard covers Hum: This is absolutely stunning, Benoit has a voice that i’d want to have if I could sing. I heard once that Benoit liked Hum so I asked him to cover a song by them and everyone should be more glad with this outcome.
Corbu covers Colder: This one was a touchy song since its probably one of my favorite songs of all time but I didn’t want an all electronic or post rock group to cover it so I asked Brooklyn’s experimental guitar duo to do it right and they did by taking it to a very unique and detailed level that i’m sure you’ll enjoy.
Alex Cornell covers Empire Of The Sun: You know him from his phenomenal work and posts on the blog and if you haven’t already seen him on youtube then here’s a very fine example of what he’s capable of creating musically.
A Setting Sun covers Tracy Chapman: A Setting Sun probably had the most challenging and off the radar cover to do but I thought a brighter doom metal approach might the only thing that would make this matchless pair up work and he killed it, especially check out how he gets to the end which is surprising after you hear the first few seconds.
Shigeto covers Boards Of Canada: This one is out there, as some of you may know Shigeto is a drummer that makes beats similar to Dabrye meets Caribou or something of that nature but loves to experiment so I thought why not see what he could do with a Boards Of Canada song since I know he’ll try to get crazy with it and not steer towards the guitar angle which I had to hear.
I don’t want to overwhelm the blog with ambient music because if I just posted what I listen to 70% of the time you’d be all in bed by 8pm every night but completely comfy and in dreamland. Hold on though, this isn’t just any kind of ambient though here on ISO50, I usually have to dig though alot of mediocre releases to find the gems to share with you and today i’ve found 2 Cullinan diamonds(largest polished diamond). The legendary Fennesz has put out a new LP called Black Sea this month and its drop dead gorgeous. Below is just a hint of the what the album has to offer, I already see it popping up everywhere on Best Albums of 2008.
