Looking for old and new music always becomes leads you down different paths, one of my favorite ways is just seeing how deep in Bandcamp I can get without hitting a dead end. This is probably the most raw way of searching just behind blindly clicking thru Soundcloud via their community.
I urge everyone to buy or even click thru and learn more about each artist, most of them aren’t in retail shops or even iTunes, so if you like something please support.
I did a 34 minute calming mix for Ryan Griffin’s perfect music site AStrangelyIsolatedPlace, I hope you all enjoy.
As with all isolatedmix curators I invite into the series, they have inspired me in one way or another. Jakub Alexander, is probably the only artist that actually started off inspiring me through words; his posts, his ears and links on ISO50 have been the only longstanding articles to remain in my reader for the last three or four years, constantly unearthing new artists and brilliant music – an approach I aspire to today. Recently, it’s Jakub’s music which has took this admiration to another level.
Jakub’s latest masterpiece is set to be released on Ghostly early next month and i’ve been lucky enough to wrap my ears around it several times already. For those familiar with Heathered Pearls earlier work (‘Vaults‘, or ‘Intervene‘ for example) you would have seen the potential Jakub has been cultivating for some time now. And it’s fair to say, that ‘Loyal’ is Heathered Pearls most defining moment so far.
‘Loyal’ came to life after an introduction to ambient music by his mother ten years ago and the album is Jakub’s dedication to that moment. His love for grainy, repetitive, processed textures is a dream approach for many of us and the most simple pictures come to life with subtle looping melodies and beautifully nurtured sounds that are easily visualised, imagined and immersed in. ‘Beach Shelter for example, available as a free download, is the perfect example of Jakub’s vivid imagination coming to life through constantly crashing, looping waves, a hazy blur from a low sunset, and a slow-motion pan across a heavenly vista. There’s hints of many of our favourite artists throughout Jakub’s work, from early Wolfgang Voigt (Gas), to his self proclaimed influence, Markus Guentner, who has provided a stunning bonus remix on the album alongside the equally legendary Loscil.
Until ‘Loyal’ sees the light of day on December 11th, we’re lucky enough to have an isolatedmix from Jakub, taking us through some of his inspirations. But before you indulge, I recommend you preview ‘Loyal’ over at Ghostly, then jump back into the mix to dissect the many forms and textures that have been instrumental in shaping Heathered Pearls most perfected sound to date.
1. Mr. Rogers Speech to Congress My hero when I was little, I always tried to picture myself being able to deliver a speech like this, impossible.
2. KIDS Soundtrack – Second To Last Scene This song always stuck with me, its one of those songs on my short list of songs I wish I made
3. Foxes In Fiction – Static Cults Warren beautifully put together a state of in limbo in music form
4. Steve Hauschildt – The Impossible Flower One of my favorite releases from last year, glides along with these perfect dips
5. Yagya – Rigning Níu Yagya and a few others make up the 3% of newer trance that is well done
6. Cuppcave – Circuit Fade I found this song to be that missing link to what I wish I made, the lo-fi silence with a pulse slowly swelling in and out, I truly wonder if it didn’t end I wonder how long i’d let it play for? 1 day? 1 week? who knows.
7. Pub – Derail Pub is up there with Wolfgang Voigt, Erik Kowalski and Scott Morgan as my main reason I love to make music, when I first heard Derail I was soo floored by the control of how steady he kept this song, how he never used extremes but the whole song sounds like your standing in 100ft+ tall wind tunnel.
8. C V L T S – Realiser lo-fi digital meditation zone
9. The Sight Below – Unforetold The master of giving the ambient of shoegaze a pulse
10. Piano Magic – Halloween Boat I have a soft spot for arpeggios and water
11. Loscil – Coyote Scott has a way of making it okay to drop everything you’re doing and calm down, i’m sure if you were at work and your boss saw you stop working and then heard what you were listening to he’d understand and let the song finish, always powerful, heavy and genuine.
12. Heathered Pearls – Raising Our Ashes The song title always felt a bit morbid after seeing it written down but has grown on me since thats the visual I get when I hear it again. This track was written when I wanted to imagine a song to play out that the whole venue could slowly leave the ground and it would be the last you’d ever hear because you’d just have tinnitus for the rest of your life.
13. Solar Year – Currents These guys are my latest favorites, such a pleasure to hear vocals slowly swirling, I hope to work with them in the near future.
14. Boards Of Canada – Unknown I got an email from Marcus once after sending BoC a package of Ghostly vinyl and cds, would it be odd to frame an email?
Its been over a year since we started our series “Instagram Photo Favorites” we’ve highlighted over 70+ photographers and I wanted to just got back to not only recap but to share other great shots the photographers have taken since then.
With the latest trend of live shows trying to out do each other Flying Lotus goes dreamy and multi-layered with projections onto him for his project Layer 3:
new mini-documentary peeks behind the scenes of Flying Lotus’s new live audiovisual extravaganza, Layer 3 – which the Academy was proud to assist with developing in support of the Until The Quiet Comes tour. Made with the help of visual artists Strangeloop and Timeboy, the trio have devised a method of transporting FlyLo into outer dimensions using two transparent scrims and interactive front and rear projectors, conjuring nothing short of the acid-fried Space Odyssey “Stargate” scene.
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The most Proggy of the Disco coming out of Italy is Mushroom Project, everything is a climb in slow waves, these songs could go on forever and I wish it did.
Prins Thomas has this way of always visually simulating me with his music, to me there is this Scandinavian beauty to it that the rest of us don’t know about.
Joakim has a great track record of some of my favorite remixes, he starts with making sure your patient but always delivers a well worked out idea, its always about the unique steps to the meat and potatoes of the song, the yearning for it to never end and not the drop.
End this spaced out Halloween music post on a tropical planet curated by Woolfy Vs. Projections, almost coma inducing in a good way.
The team at Saunders Architecture put together one of the most ideal 3 floor studios imaginable. Only reachable by hiking this black twisted tower is sits in one of the most peaceful looking terrains, I can’t even fathom the idea of living like this, its too good.
One of the more elegantly put together produced albums this year has to be Luxury Problems by Andy Stott. He has been bubbling and raising with every EP and single he’s put out in the UK beat scene but with this release and the help of NPR this could quickly take over as not just filler for a need of more Bjork, Portishead, Massive Attack for the broader audience out there but as a one that will stand among those names for this generation.
Sometimes it makes me smile how big The Xx are and imagining all the fans out there hoping for something dancey or trendy but instead what they get is real music and I can see some of them being bummed out because of that.
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Sabrina Ratte has done it again and this time its for this upcoming Steve Hauschildt upcoming release. The song alone would have been a true pleasure but Sabrina came in created a beautiful world for it, as always perfecting inversion/decay/color.
Courtship’s [Imageless] caught me off guard on his recent EP, it wasn’t asking for my attention, its as almost like you were watching the song happen, it settles in the distance like a slow moving still, the dialog makes it though, it drops you back into reality in seamless way.
4AD signs an unknown Danish man that goes under the name Indians(how was that not taken?), sounds like something Bibio will one day become.
Knxwledge aka Knx. has the loosest sounding beat out there, almost to the point that it almost sounds like your wood block jacob’s ladder is struggling to work again. My favorite part about him is the quickness he gets in and out of a song, he makes me come back and play his songs 7 or 8 times so I can get the full satisfaction out of them, beat makers take note.
