"wide open desert music" S/D

unless i'm missing something crucial, the "wide open desert music" under discussion here is, by and large, a genre of contemporary americana, sort of "post-country and western". in its essential form, you get clean, bright, reverb-heavy guitar lines drifting slowly through darkened ambient space. a combination of western twang, blues grit, and surf spaciness drained of vigor to point where it's practically undead, vampire music in cowboy drag (or vice-versa). dragging in hamza el din seems perverse.

I was with you until "drained of vigor", basically I started this thread to get more recommendations as to what else sounds like "Binah" from Live Low To The Earth In The Iron Age. the desert has color!

edited version, wtf this is supposed to be 27 minutes:

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

i agree that the non-american stuff doesn't fit with this cinematic staring across a (most often imaginary) desert soaking up the atmosphere vibe, hence just alluding to it initially. deserts in this context are a blank inhuman wilderness for the listener to passively inhabit & think/feel/do graphic design

I was with you until "drained of vigor"

yeah, that was my prejudice showing. i'm not a big fan of the cinematic slowcore western thing.

It doesn't have to be cinematic slowcore western. Sometimes it's a particular style of cinematic instrumental guitar. Or krautrock infused country.

As far as the original post(s), the thing that makes this sound so special is that there really aren't too many things that hit these specific buttons. Hired Hand, Tuma, "Binah," etc are singular, which is why this thread jumped the shark as soon as people started suggesting every 90s post rock band that liked Morricone

I do really like that Bruce Licher piece mentioned upthread, and that Garlo thing sounds amazing. But even these have almost nothing to do with the Steve Roach album that inspired this thread

i did this a while back was pretty happy w/it but if anything too on the nose

http://soundcloud.com/matthew-lee-helgeson/desert-jive

Nice! Here's a rough little jam I'd done when I was obsessing over Paris, Texas. Improving a little with messy results.

https://soundcloud.com/factual-1/open

i like that!

i like this sound but i do get a little suspicious of it, like it's almost too easy to hit those stylistic cues that conjure up desert stuff

Thanks!

Yeah I feel like you can say that about solo instrumental music or electronica or ambient... It's helpful to have a unique take and not rely too much on gimmicky flare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6YioCO0n8s

https://youtu.be/72csh1Zm38A
02 Oren Ambarchi - Knots (Touch)

ffs, it's silly to say this thread "jumped the shark" when it's got me listening to that Eyvind Kang record again (I downloaded it last time someone was raving about it on ILM, and liked it well enough, but it's been been a minute since I listened)

it's so good. his book of angels entry is fantastic too

Maybe the thread title could have been something more like 'music that sounds like the thing it's trying to imitate', or 'landscape music alchemy' or 'Richard Skelton plays quavery strings while ghostly children chant the names of lost Cumbrian villages.'

This video I had not seen before, and it is amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYJkH6mdbAY

The Harold Budd / Clive Wright albums (3 in all iirc) are all very worthwhile

Does Michael Brooks' HYBRID fit this genre?

I know this thread was CONDEMNED for stepping outside some relatively arbitrary parameters, but I'm still off exploring tangents.

My favourite discovery has been the Padang Food Tigers album from last year, Bumblin' Creed. I loved Ready Country Nimbus (from 2012, I think), but this is something else again. We don't really have a tradition of 'landscape music' as such in the UK*, cos we're too hemmed in and our imaginations are too stunted by post-colonial melancholia to allow us to mythologise the landscape or something, but what these guys do is perfect, evocative 'wide open space' stuff.

*OK, some/most local folk music is arguably landscape music, but not in the sense of trying to evoke or transmute landscape into music.

And thanks to Evan for the Calexico primer - lots of those I was unaware of.

yeah I still need to dig into those

sorry for condemning the thread! landscape music is a clear and interesting way to put it. I think if anything it's a colonial tradition, that is, relating to a place through the atmosphere/impression offered by its landscape is something of an outsider/touristic approach mb. it seems of a piece with national geographic etc. when you said british landscape music i thought of the excellent chris watson, who has made field recordings all over the place but including in the UK (listening to stepping into the dark now). he did a thing with robert macfarlane which is another parallel seam of landscape-art. the relationship or contrast between this stuff and field recordings is interesting. I'm def more into the latter for whatever reason. they feel lighter.

can't think of much that might fit the "british (or old world in general) landscape music" description though, that is curious

this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yPnLIwIA1E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-px60iPueEk

can't think of much that might fit the "british (or old world in general) landscape music" description though, that is curious

maybe Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins?

Last year's album Elite Feline by Lotto is a minimalist/mantric guitar trio take. bandcamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErG7vJ-L5-M

Must be something in the water: Latest Mojo with cover story on The Joshua Tree has an accompanying CD of "desert songs" that seems very, uh, compiled by British rockists who've never been to the desert

Good to see a mention of Giant Sand upthread---here's a little review of their uncrowded expansion I did several years ago---if you don't mind some company way out yonder, more than the occasional lizard etc., it's agreeable:
Giant​ ​Giant​ ​Sand, ​Tucson:​ ​​It's​ ​not​ ​so​ ​uncommon​ ​to​ ​hear​ ​albums​ ​inviting
comparisons​ ​to​ ​spaghetti​ ​western​ ​soundtracks,​ ​but​ ​few​ ​really​ ​'ppreciate​ ​the
possibilities​ ​of​ ​American​ ​and​ ​European​ ​give-and-take:​ ​Latin​ ​in​ ​the
Southwestern​ ​and​ ​Transatlantic​ ​senses,​ ​small​ ​room​ ​jazz​ ​a​ ​la​ ​Weill,
Ellington,​ ​Arizona​ ​highway​ ​lounge;​ ​steel​ ​guitars​ ​and​ ​twang​ ​bars​ ​with
nothing​ ​left​ ​to​ ​prove,​ ​Giant​ ​Sand​ ​(many​ ​of​ ​whom​ ​have​ ​been​ ​Danish​ ​for
some​ ​time) are now ​momentarily ​expanding​ ​into​ ​Giant​ ​Giant​ ​Sand​ ​and​ ​offering​
​​Tucson---which is billed
as​ ​a​ ​country​ ​rock​ ​opera, uh-huh---without​ ​ever​ ​being​ ​anythang​ ​that​ ​can't​ ​be​ ​hitched
to​ ​s​ ​dustcloud​ ​drum​ ​kit,​ ​usually​ ​bouncing​ ​through​ ​stagecoach​ ​ruts.
Sometimes​ ​swinging​ ​a​ ​little,​ ​though​ ​a​ ​droll​ ​drawl​ ​and​ ​and​ ​a​ ​tall​ ​tale​ ​(of​ ​love,
y'all--it's​ ​all​ ​very​ ​romantic,​ ​in​ ​a​ ​worldly,​ ​wide​ ​open​ ​spacey​ ​way).​ ​"You're​ ​so
much​ ​like​ ​the​ ​river/Beautiful,​ ​twisted​ ​and​ ​blue/You​ ​appear​ ​to​ ​be​ ​here
forever/Passin'​ ​through."​ ​And​ ​baby,​ ​it’s​ ​hot​ ​outside.

Also you might want to check the Giant Sand/Howe Gelb thread, or maybe not.

So Floating Points has literally been in the Mojave desert and recorded a load of "wide open desert music" which he is releasing soon.

https://www.floatingpoints.co.uk/

Oof - that sounds interesting. The Mojo CD, not so much.

Also thought about Alan Lamb's wire recordings, but I guess once we get into field recordings the whole thing suddenly widens into incomprehensibility.

Alan Lamb's recordings don't really evoke the desert for me. They're somewhere in the space between the Voyager probe's electromagnetic recordings, Thomas Köner's glacial atmospheres, and contact-mic'd long-string instruments (Alvin Lucier, Ellen Fullman).

Also thought about Alan Lamb's wire recordings, but I guess once we get into field recordings the whole thing suddenly widens into incomprehensibility.

― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski)

oh god i thought you meant something else when you said "wire recordings"

oh god i thought you meant something else when you said "wire recordings"

Like what?!

Either wire recording or Wire recordings, I imagine.

assuming the former :)

Found this on an old hard drive: https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/left-in-the-desert/

Couple of missteps, but basically full of excellent desert-y goodness (Earth, Lanois, Six Organs, Roach, Ennio etc)

Ikue Mori w/ Robert Quine and Marc Ribot, "Painted Desert."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjxbU-GlVag

I nominate the severely underrated Steven R. Smith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsFD4Drgs3s

Captain Obvious checking in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVexT6itPA&list=PLs2o_po-FzbF0Z_P-l4bQUDAllxLlFdry

Tinariwen:
https://youtu.be/PItnw3Z7WgY

Harold Budd "The Photo of Santiago McKinn" or pretty much all of Dawn's Early Light

that Mori/Quine/Ribot record is excellent and I had forgotten about it, good call

HI DERE (cross-posted from main Eyvind Kang thread for interested parties

A gorgeous set of new tracks by the brilliant composer and multi-instrumentalist Eyvind Kang. It took him a decade and a half to revisit the vibe concocted on his masterpiece from 2001, Live Low To The Earth In The Iron Age, but the wait was worth it. It features an array of spiritually intoxicating instrumentation: tamboura, electric guitar, organ, trumpet, oboe, trombone, and Korean traditional instruments. Eyvind Kang on Plainlight: "In 2002 I wanted to make a kind of sequel to my first solo record on Abduction, Live Low To The Earth In The Iron Age. I found that the 'weight' of sounds seemed to evaporate the compositions. The last thing I wanted to make was a traditional shoegaze recording. 15 years later, I had a strange dream: a voice said 'Because a plainlight has fallen in Heaven, heartbreak would cease.' This statement then became a kind of guiding image and method. Thus, with Korean traditional instruments playing the ostinato and drone, things fell into place. I would like to thank all the musicians, Randall Dunn, Alan Bishop, and each and every listener." Limited edition, one-time pressing; Edition of 400.

That's me well and truly sold - Live Low is magnificent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP1G-cdRuCM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZnSC2u7RU

or any Thin White Rope song really...

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0152862597_16.jpg

Admittedly, the resultant wares don’t stray too far from the crafted templates McPhee has used previously but his capable hands continue, with increasing authority, to render bleakly alluring atmospheres that both express the intimacy of a solitary artisan and the desolation of wide empty landscapes. Hence, the opening “The Blood of St John” unfurls as a slow-motion desert-blues with a shimmering inscrutable underlay; “The Devil’s Knell” drifts along in a buzzing shadowy blur; the more sonically linear “The Rule Of Threes” pirouettes as a madrigal-like meditation; “Dance Macabre” curls yearning slide-playing around a pattern of looped melodic low-end parts; and the closing epic 14-minute title-track sprawls e-bow and slide manipulated figures across a heartbeat-pulsing percussive underbelly.

https://deanmcphee.bandcamp.com/album/four-stones

McPhee is brilliant. Been meaning to check this.

https://barthel-boehm-bauer.bandcamp.com/