a cartographic expedition into ambient

[luka]

like, it's not hard is it. 3 pages of failing to state the obvious

 

[woops]

then your cartography gets quite literal; the coast, the polar wastes, the desert, the rainforest, the moor, the forest and so on, with all the associations of climate (arid to humid, hot to cold, stormy to still, winds of various types, hard/soft) flora and fauna (inevitable bird chirrip, song of the loon) so on and so forth
open as a desert is, tangled and confined as a forest is
all this stuff is pretty obvious i guess, and as i say, more than often quite literal, thomas koner arctic etc

is this really what we want from ambient though to pretend you're in a forest by a lake? doesn't this just validate thirdforms point about glorified field recordings for 14 year olds with no ideas? (or whoever that was?) or listening to a chris watson recording of a bear and going er yeah that sounds quite unusual. there must be more scope that that.

 

[luka]

i have no idea what your on about? the title of the thread of cartography of ambient. not what does woops want from ambient.

 

[woops]

acoustic vs electronic is probably getting to the heart of what this is about, for me. thinking about it not so much in terms of the nature of the sounds produced as what they evoke. so acoustic meaning, like you said, "live playing"—music that sounds like a dude playing an instrument; electronic meaning audio animation—music that sounds like an imaginary environment

for me it's quite easy to forget that a lot of acoustic orchestration does make timbre a key part, think of miles davis carefully assembling the right combination to get the effect he wanted, doubling the clarinet or whatever, getting rid of the ppiano to set a mood for improvisation, or to pick a perhaps slightly more crass example imagine if that 2001 fanfare from thus spake zara thruster were played on any instrument other than the brass, it wouldn't have anything like the same impact

just cos you can get a madder range of sounds when using a synth doesn't mean tone quality is irrelevant when you're not

 

[woops]

i have no idea what your on about? the title of the thread of cartography of ambient. not what does woops want from ambient.

fuck off

 

[luka]

look what you've done corpsey you sticky fingered degenerate!

 

[woops]

i have no idea what your on about

cos you're well thick as fuck presumably? i don't think @mvuent his map is the one with the north pole at the top and the rainforest round the middle. you seemed to agree until that last rubbish post about nice weather and green trees

 

[luka]

but there is a very literal and obvious aspect to this discussion which miraculously has been missed and i am helpfully pointing it out.

 

[luka]

cos you're well thick as fuck presumably? i don't think @mvuent his map is the one with the north pole at the top and the rainforest round the middle. you seemed to agree until that last rubbish post about nice weather and green trees

i disagree actually. i think that the map basically is like this.

 

[woops]

the discussion is about @mvuent's first post not what map does luke think is

 

[luka]

becasue all our co-ordinate points are derived from this. all our reference points, all our extremities are measured by this
from desert to rainforest pole to pole and all points in between. add the atmosphere and little fluffy clouds, forbidden planets and outer space and there you have it

 

[woops]

i like this record cos it reminds me of my holiday's

 

[Corpsey]

Landscape and music

As I walked home on this pristine summer evening, the sky a gorgeous milky blue, planes gliding silently in the distance, the trees murmuring, etc. This came on shuffle and I wondered why it's trancey synths were so perfect for the weather. It seems to me that these synths "appear" absolute...

dissensus.com

 

[Corpsey]

"the trees murmuring" that's how you know it's a corpsey thread (TM)

 

[luka]

this is a poem you wont have come across before but will help you understand

Correspondances by Charles Baudelaire

fleursdumal.org

 

[woops]

becasue all our co-ordinate points are derived from this. all our reference points, all our extremities are measured by this
from desert to rainforest pole to pole and all points in between. add the atmosphere and little fluffy clouds, forbidden planets and outer space and there you have it

no you're right that's a very good map, it's probably the best map. look at this map @mvuent. bet you wish you'd thought of this map.

 

[luka]

do you really not understand this edmund? we've been explaining it to you for about 10 years!

 

[luka]

its like when you said a synth is not a spaceship to everyones horror and disbeleif

 

[luka]

its the table of correspondances. dry, as a descriptor in music. that correlates necesarily with arid environments, eg deserts

 

[luka]

cold in music necessarily correlates with cold environments, eg the poles, and beyond that, space (as well as internal cold, emotional cold, the cold of poor health)