"New Age Music", search and destroy.

how about some destroys?

i'l throw out andreas vollenweider ...

my best friend used to love vollenweider. I've never dared to listen to him.

vollenweider is great, but maybe not as "new age music" per se

vollenweider is not great, beardo revaluation be damned

so saccharine, so not transcendent.

http://www.discogs.com/Andreas-Vollenweider-The-Trilogy/master/82258

^^ this was my dip into vollenweider and i didn't enjoy it

am i looking in the wrong place?

I had a friend who LOVED Vollenweider in the 80s but back then I was the kind of dickhead who couldn't get past the dude's hair

now I'll even listen to Kitaro, I straight do not give a fuck, new age for life

if you're looking for balearic windham hill-style pop-classical harp jams from the 1980s he's kinda the only game in town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwgUNwA6vz0

too cheesy to be new age, but definitely more palatable than your metheny-types

LOL aero my best friend who loved vollenweider in the 80s is a mutual friend of yours and mine but I don't think you knew him til later...

yeah that trilogy thing has pretty much all of the good stuff but i could not imagine listening to even one of those albums in one sitting. it sounds great in the context of an early-era cafe del mar mixtape, it fits perfectly with that whole vibe in small doses

the only person I know of who I know loves A.W. is a woman so idk who this friend is! mysteries!

I am now floating along on the Quintessential Kitaro collection on Spotify...ahhh....whole room feels like a massage studio

too cheesy to be new age

i'm inclined to say destroy kitaro but i actually love his work with the far east family band

he has a bunch of proggy looking late 70s things that look like they might be good

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=1786734

I am making a huuuge spotify playlist for this thread called Sternherzen, will link it when ready

xpost aero he draws comics and his last name rhymes with Sklart. Pls tease him abt andreas sometime.

ha oh word

gahh i love those first two vollenweider albums.

tell me what there is to love about them, maybe i will give it another shot

I actually really like his harp sound, so if that just puts you off, I can understand. I also like the lush atmospbere, the plainness of the synths, the melodies.

cheesy, yeah. "New age of earth"/klaus schulze/TD/most 'kosmiche' is pretty cheesy too, imo, but i have wack taste in general.

i agree with psychgwple that a little goes a long way, however. 1 lp (or side) at a time is enough.

i love love love ash ra / td / schulze/

Those don't sound cheesy to me though. Wonder if I could narrow down what I mean when I say cheesy?

Maybe an analog vs digital thing? Also the attempt to replicate an "atmosphere", or "setting" (like, a cave) is sillier than just some abstract cosmic riffing. Don't get me wrong, i love it all (not klaus so much, though).

Anybody know about the Palace Of Lights label? http://www.discogs.com/label/Palace+Of+Lights
I have a K. Leimur album that is pretty cool. A couple tracks are like minimal soft focus proto-ambient house.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUxV6_ewLR0

Ok i haven't listened to it in awhile, i misremembered there being a fat 4x4 kick here. Still dope, though.

^ feeling this, also feeling the claire hamill from above. k. leimer has like 9 albums on spotify

I haven't heard much Emerald Web but I absolutely love their song "Refraction" on Dream Chimney's excellent "New Visions" mix. It is basically instrumental synth pop, though, and I imagine most of their stuff is less beat driven.

i checked out claire hamill's voices and it is gooooorgeous. tracks like 'tides' are definitely proto-grimes etc.

if ashra are suitable material for this kind of thread then i've also been digging correlations lately, 'oasis' has the most blissful vibes of anything ever.

Yeah, "oasis" is wonderful.

picked up the emerald web yesterday, wasn't feeling it so much. not really "weird" enough i guess.

sadly i'm not really feeling this one yet, either

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/7084/products/laraaji_two_sides_1024x1024.jpg?v=1383003823

the second disc turns out to be the entirety of this bargain bin trip-hop "classic", will teach me to look more closely at track listings

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/39184833/The+Way+Out+Is+the+Way+In+audio_activelaraajithe_way_out.jpg

I listen to this comp p much every day now

Biggest revelation to me on the LITA comp so far is Aeoliah, which is currently touching many of my Popol Vuh buttons

man I started reading that daughter's remembrance of her mom (the "Waterfall" track) out loud to my wife the other night and totally choked up, that is some deep & beautiful imagery there.

Aeoliah is one of the early standouts for me as well. love the picture too, the guy looks like an awesomely manic nutjob (in the best possible way).

aeoliah looks like if george michael were the leader of a suicide cult, writing hymns to himself on his zither and boffing teenage girls.

due to this thread, i have dug this out of the archive ..

http://www.discogs.com/Charly-McLion-The-Nature-Of-The-Universe/release/41604

i think the cover says it all really.

gorgeous stuff for a hangover session.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_uQ679Lm3rs/TfQtLWTy4TI/AAAAAAAAFbY/lKL-39Javsc/s1600/Henry%2BWolff%2B%2526%2BNancy%2BHennings%2B%25E2%2580%2593%2BTibetan%2BBells%2BII%2B-.jpg

Part of me felt hennings/wolff were missing from IATC. The four records in that series are great. (The one with Mickey Hart is ok too, I should listen to it again, and the last of the four where they get more into electronic processing threw me at first but i love it now). Their sound is a lot more intense and sharp than a lot of the other stuff on the compilation (active meditation music as opposed to restful) so it might have been difficult to find a spot for them that didn't wreck the flow.

xp title looks like "tibetan bullshit"

isn't the thing abt Hennings/Wolf that Antilles (that's the one I have) doesn't qualify as "private press"? it's outside the remit of the comp.

I misremembered the first one as being indie, but even that one was Island, so you're absolutely right.

ok starting to better understand the emerald web reissue. it's kind of all over the place, but i like it. i really like the incongruous chillwave-y track ("ars nova") and i like songs like "dragons gate" that do the stiff and chilly john carpenter electro thing. and the exotica tracks are good too. still getting into the second half.

I didn't see any mentions of the VERY VERY EXCELLENT Iasos comp Numero put out anywhere on this thread; it's not as good as that unbelievable LITA genre comp but it's pretty goddamn choice

http://open.spotify.com/album/4teQ1kGvpBu2cxPc4xo9Kh

oh yeah, iasos is fantastic. youtube has a 1979 documentary he did where he's a total sausalito space-hippie talking about third eyes and multidimensionality and stuff.

this japanese import is worth a go if you can find it

http://www.emrecords.net/records/00065.html

& if you can't it's on spotify...

Only (very minor) complaint: the track-by-track liner notes are good (not great - serious dearth of info re: what instruments were used, etc) but was surprised by the lack of overarching introductory material; the booklet just sorta dives right into the profiles. I guess I'm used to comps like Nigeria Special and stuff, which frame the music in historical context, but I realize, of course, that's much easier to do when you're dealing with a mere decade of highlife and juju produced by a single region.

Guess what I'm saying is I'd v happily read a book about this stuff.

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Wednesday, November 20, 2013 7:23 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too, the profiles were pretty interesting! now that you mention it a bit more gear talk would have been nice.

― sleeve, Wednesday, November 20, 2013 7:24 AM (2 weeks ago)

So finally got IATC the other day and gave it a listen today -- truly lovely for all reasons described, etc. I mentioned it on Twitter and tagged Douglas McGowan, the compiler/liner note writer aka the guy behind Yoga Records, and mentioned how I enjoyed that the liner notes weren't exhaustive/specific a la Numero's approach but more impressionistic. His response:

The concept was that the notes are for people 100 years from now, which changes what you write about rather a lot.

I actually like that! Given he links just about all the artists via their own webpages it's not like he doesn't give you further spots to investigate.

Ha! Well, now that I know it's conceptual, I don't mind as much. Seriously though, I'm not sure I've played a single compilation this much since, err, DGC Rarities. Aside from maybe one or two tracks, this thing is perfect for pretty much every mood. Maybe I'm just getting mellow?

Bought the Laraaji comps, haven't listened yet. The 'bargain basement trip hop' thing the late great mentions upthread is a little scary.

last track on the second disc = all time greatest music ever

http://i.imgur.com/v8UuA5c.jpg

Another precious find from Andy Votel’s impeccable Dead-Cert imprint, Kat Epple & Bob Stohl made music for Carl Sagan, composed sound pieces for Planetariums and scored nature documentaries in the early 80’s. Most of their recordings were only ever released on private edition tape, with this selection hand-picked by Andy Votel, remastered and cut by Matt Colton and available on vinyl for the first time ever. Operating in Florida from 1978 until Bob’s untimely passing in 1989 at the age of 34, the husband/wife duo were among the first to blend synthesisers and acoustic instrumentation in a home studio equipped with a variety of early synths and instruments. As lovers and collaborators, the couple created a rich and vivid parallel dimension of new age music borne from the ‘70s prog scene and probably best referred to as “Space Music”. Throughout their unfortunately curtailed career the couple earned a noble crust creating music and mood-pieces for nature programmes, most notably for the legendary Sagan, under the Emerald Web aegis (expect to hear more of this on Finders Keepers later on this year) while continuing to issue numerous tapes to friends and fellow musicians. Following contact with Kat Epple - who still plays concerts at venues ranging from MoMA to Ground Zero - Dead-Cert were made privy to Kat and Bob’s private tapes, drawing for five pieces ranging from brooding deep space scapes to shimmering, gaseous sonics and impressionistic sound murals streaked with progressive traits and an alien, yet pastoral nature. Recorded using an Arp 2600, Mini Moog, EML Synkey, Roland RS202 String Ensemble and Electro-Harmonix Vocoder, plus a range of woodwind (both Kat and Bob were trained flautists, making colourful use of Bill Bernardi’s innovative Lyricon I, a hybrid flute/synthesiser) with some guitar assists here and there by friend and co-composer, Barry Cleveland. Their music is rich and unapolagetically tethered to the Space-Age iconography of their age, the result being a warm and often highly unusual hybrid of Kosmische and Prog signatures, quite distinct from the more austere variants more recently associated with the era.

flute synth!

http://www.dominicsmusic.com/photosdm/5178.jpg