i hope the original posts were at least clear enough that they didn't give people the impression that rattling off genre names (is modular synth really a genre?) was the ultimate goal of this thread. organizing subgenres into a bigger picture according to sliding scales like the ones i proposed would be more like it.
a cartographic expedition into ambient
woops
is not like other people
i think there probably is a modular synth gene oddly enough but it only encompasses a certain kind of 20 minute "generative" track, wibbly drone based modular music. other styles are available
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
The first two binaries / sliding scales that sprung to mind were electronic vs acoustic and clarity vs blurriness. Where each of those is probably conflating a few other ideas, so "acoustic" covers both the sound quality of acoustic instruments but also the "feel" of live playing, and "clarity" simultaneously refers to clarity of tone, pitch and music gesture.
I thought a bit about soothing vs unsettling but I don't thing that really works as a sliding scale - something can have soothing and unsettling elements in tension and be quite different from something that's just sort-of neutral. You maybe want something more like a mood wheel for that, with independent axes for, say, calm, ecstatic, melancholic, unsettling, cinematic, playful etc.
Is this a helpful direction?
I thought a bit about soothing vs unsettling but I don't thing that really works as a sliding scale - something can have soothing and unsettling elements in tension and be quite different from something that's just sort-of neutral. You maybe want something more like a mood wheel for that, with independent axes for, say, calm, ecstatic, melancholic, unsettling, cinematic, playful etc.
Is this a helpful direction?
blissblogger
Well-known member
"audio animation" is a great way of looking at music generally (especially electronic but not exclusively)
ambient, though, feels like it might be one kind of music where it has less traction - simply because the music is not very animated in the sense of motion and liveliness.
in a spiritual sense much of it is aspiring to the grace of the inanimate
probably ambient is more like (at its worse) a screensaver and (at its best) a mandala
also certainly kinds of visual art - Rothko... Monet's Waterlilies was a big one for Eno
I also often think of things like mobiles - the Calder kind but also the type that gyrate very slowly above a child's crib.
ambient, though, feels like it might be one kind of music where it has less traction - simply because the music is not very animated in the sense of motion and liveliness.
in a spiritual sense much of it is aspiring to the grace of the inanimate
probably ambient is more like (at its worse) a screensaver and (at its best) a mandala
also certainly kinds of visual art - Rothko... Monet's Waterlilies was a big one for Eno
I also often think of things like mobiles - the Calder kind but also the type that gyrate very slowly above a child's crib.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Dockstader
Song is really off its axis. Academy meets Ashram. Vertiginous. Upwards! Wait, wtf is happening, did you dose me?
Song is really off its axis. Academy meets Ashram. Vertiginous. Upwards! Wait, wtf is happening, did you dose me?
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Re-editing terrible shows like the Mormon-fest sponsored Skinwalker Ranch with such music is necessary. Bit too Chris Morris admittedly. Instead of UFO’s, they investigate ambient. All the caffeinated adhd jump cutting stays but leave the music playing, like the broadcast itself is on heroin
Cartographically too - Utah, mesas, some fuckin triangle, terrible crimes against chinos, hats and beards and for the entire show certain tracks are playing
all at 1.6 ghz
Cartographically too - Utah, mesas, some fuckin triangle, terrible crimes against chinos, hats and beards and for the entire show certain tracks are playing
all at 1.6 ghz
clarity vs blurriness is great. definitely an essential addition. i agree soothing vs unsettling can be so multifaceted, the way i tend to sort of consolidate disparate emotional impressions is by asking: would i want to live there, in a place with that atmosphere? sometime i find that the music has an unsettling quality but it's so lush that i'd still say yes.
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. in more formal terms you might say that acoustic is all about traditional melody and harmony whereas audio animation makes greater use of timbre and space. (hopefully i'm riffing off what you said and not going completely in a different direction...)
it seems like ambient musicians often approach what they're doing on very traditional terms. they see themselves as a performer when their music would be more interesting if they saw themselves as, idk, a movie director or a mage something. so imo, "advanced" ambient moves beyond that.
i suppose music doesn't need to be that lively to work as audio animation? evoking relaxing, graceful, somnolent motions like the migration of clouds, fog rolling in, or yeah on the really low end a screensaver, is fair game surely.
but you're right, my main interest is the "edge cases": to borrow droid's dichotomy, stuff that's unusually kinetic for ashram music and stuff that's unusually lush for academy music. an example of "advanced ambient" on the former end would be like tetsu inoue, who started off very culturally aligned with all the music for nodding off after raves stuff but was always as brilliant an audio animator as the best electroacoustic composers. an example on the latter end would be later francois bayle, who by the 90s and 00s had left behind the shrill tinnitus synths he'd used in the early 70s and was using the same sort of lush "cyber gaia" synth pads appearing in ambient around the same time, albeit in a much more active way.
imo this is a great synthesis of ambient and electroacoustic values into lush audio animation. a sort of parmegiani-esque compostional structure of having sounds moving violently in and out of a more stable "continuum" that subtly changes in their wake. evokes being in a wide open space on another planet, peripheral ufos careening through the atmosphere.
reposting my vangelis rant in case any irate fans of his are here this time and want to argue:
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
A minute of mercy and ambiguities, between 5-6 minute stamp, ideally looped for much longer (before the shrill noise enters)
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
The whole dark ambient phrase is a crime and conceals, rather than reveals, ambiguous moods. Tyranny of painful dross too. A more pertinent pointer might be
He could probably rewrite his blurb without so much allusion to landscapes and blackballing graphics, yet the way LYC catches and augments submerged sounds under extreme ocean travelling vessels at different depths, tips sections into the uncanny. It can be a weirdly cosy world too
He did another, Twyll Du, which does a different take incorporating a lake. Bypass the writing
Not that field recordings are cartimantic references in themselves, more of an Alan Splet style nuance for capturing elemental sound features. I can stay for an hour or so in such realms, surveying what compliments, before moving on
He could probably rewrite his blurb without so much allusion to landscapes and blackballing graphics, yet the way LYC catches and augments submerged sounds under extreme ocean travelling vessels at different depths, tips sections into the uncanny. It can be a weirdly cosy world too
He did another, Twyll Du, which does a different take incorporating a lake. Bypass the writing
Not that field recordings are cartimantic references in themselves, more of an Alan Splet style nuance for capturing elemental sound features. I can stay for an hour or so in such realms, surveying what compliments, before moving on
Yeah, sorry, this is bollocks.
Albedo 0.39 is probably the culmination of bizarro electronic prog rock, next to a few others, Heldon etc.
Although as a Marxist I don't accept the concept of genius as definitionally valid so I won't get involved in that debate.
Last edited:
bizarro electronic prog rock? not exactly making me want to listen to it
I mean you posted The Orb. which is basically classical minimalism, not very ultra-modernist at all!
haha i figured posting the orb would ruffle your feathers, for some reason. that orb track is full of what francois bayle would call i-sounds, and these sounds move very freely in "a cinema for the ear" kind of way. the more traditionally sequenced hook is just sort a floating, morphing element. it's not sophisticated work of audio animation exactly but it is a brilliant one.
Oh I really like it. I just don't understand how you can trash vangelis and post that, when they're just an updated version of what V was doing in the 70s.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
and transcendence