A couple of months ago, Soundwave guest deejay Ishmael Cormack (listen to his mix here) asked for musical recommendations from his followers on Twitter.
Ismael got a lot of responses, and I listened to every suggestion on Spotify. If I heard something I liked, I’d invite the musician to guest deejay on Soundwave. Anthéne, for example, appeared on the show back in August. And today’s show, of course, features Triplicate Records.
Triplicate Records
I remember back in the 80’s listening to the soundtrack to Birdy by Peter Gabriel and wishing some musicians would record music for imaginary soundtracks. Such music existed, but I wasn’t aware of it until the following year when I was turned on to Brian Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land and Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Finding Eno, and musicians like him, was everything I hoped for and more.
Over the decades, I’ve seen more and more record labels dedicated to ambient, modern classical, experimental and instrumental music. 12k comes to mind, as does n5MD and Ultimae Records.
Music from Triplicate Records was already popping up on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist and music I was discovering on Bandcamp. When Triplicate Records was recommended to Ishmael on Twitter, it felt like the universe was telling me to invite them on the show.
Triplicate Records is a boutique record label working primarily with instrumental electronic music. They are 100% artist-run, by producers Michael Southard (Time Rival), Bryan Kraft (BVSMV), and George Ernst (Suncastle). Despite the pandemic, they have gained a following with their unique musical tastes, striking artwork, and consistent output.
You’re going to love today’s mix. If you want to hear more from Triplicate Records, listen to their Spotify playlist here.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Oleg Puzan of Line Spectrum.
Gert appeared on Soundwave last year, and I enjoyed his mix so much I invited him back. Today’s show is equally fantastic. Gert can expect another invitation from me in 2022.
Gert says today’s show features a perfect mixture of tracks that have influenced him and tracks that currently influence him. He said they’re all such beautiful tracks, and what’s best, you can find them all on Bandcamp, some of them entirely for free.
Today’s mix also includes a track form Gert’s project, Distant Fires Burning. You’re gong to love today’s mix and you’ll want to hear more music from Gert. Good news! You can find his latest album, Inperspectycon Vol.1, here.
Gert De Meester
One thing that’s interesting about the 21st century is music is so freely available, and it’s nearly endless. Consequently, I don’t think most music gets the attention due, and I’m not wagging my finger. I’m just as guilty. It’s exceedingly rare that I will listen to a song or an album repeatedly. There’s so much I want to listen to, and I’m often impatient to listen to the next song, even while I’m listening to something that very moment.
Take today’s show. It’s spectacular. But you’ll listen to it once. Some of you might even listen to it twice. And then you’re on to the next show. Or the next song. Or the next video.
As the producer of Soundwave, however, I have a very different relationship with the music you hear.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I receive these mixes months before I publish them on Soundwave. I live with these mixes. I marinate in these mixes.
I’ve become very familiar with Gert’s mix. It’s a gorgeous experience. But after repeated listening, I’ve come to appreciate just how dense the songs that appear in today’s show are. I’ve become intimately acquainted with every snap, crackle, and pop. I lose myself in the swooshes, the sizzle, and grit.
Gert’s mix is made for repeated listening. I encourage you to do so.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Michael Southard of Triplicate Records.
I met Michael when he posted an interview with Daniel Fuzztone on Micro.blog. I enjoyed the interview and Michael’s other blog posts and Daniel’s music, so I invited both of them to guest deejay on Soundwave. We’ll hear Daniel’s mix in December.
I’m happy about the Micro.blog connection. It’s one of the aspects of social media I still like. When I joined Twitter 2006, it was easier to have actual conversations with people and establish friendships. It was also easier to chat with musicians, label owners, directors, etc and bypass the dual intermediaries. Those days are gone, and Micro.blog’s network is currently too small to be useful to me in that way, what it has going for it that’s invaluable is the conversations and connections you have there. It’s cosier. And because Micro.blog is subscription based, it eliminates the riff raft.
Michael Donaldson
I got a kick out of Michael’s blog. It’s got a lot of 80/90s feel to it, so for me hearing Michael’s mix was like putting on a comfortable, worn-in sweater. Michael’s mix is wonderful, but the track that got me in the feels was My Bloody Valentine/Skylab’s “Incidental Peace.” It’s such an unlikely collaboration but somehow weaves a seamless blend of shoegaze and electronic music. It’s all kinds of wonderful and “Incidental Peace” is buttressed between music that is equally gorgeous.
I think what I love most about Michael’s mix is how dreamy it it. I’ll find myself listening to the it, and lose myself in the music and my own thoughts and feelings, only to resurface laster in the mix, uncertain how much time has passed.
Okay, time for me to pack it in. Tomorrow is my boy’s first baseball game of the season. I’ll be honest, even with social distancing I think it’s going to be unsettling being around so many people. At least we’ll all be outdoors.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Gert De Meeseter.
Today’s guest deejay is Robert Farrugia, co-founder of Complex Holiday, an itinerant label for inside-out ambient and sound art tomfoolery.
I’m usually fastidious about tracking how I come to know guest deejays on Soundwave. Unfortunately, my initial conversation with Robert began on Facebook Messenger and that chat is lost to the ether. Well, really, Facebook has that conversation stored somewhere. But it’s as good as gone for me.
Whatever lead me to Robert, I’m glad I invited him to join us.
What you may or may not know is that I get the mixes you hear months in advance. I usually enjoy it for a week or two before I move on to listen to the next guest deejay’s mix. I’ll also re-listen to the mix a few weeks before their show is released. I listen to the mixes a lot.
Robert Farrugia, Photograph by Chris Vella / Storbju
Robert’s mix was a welcome companion for the last week. Nationally, the U.S. is caught between wildfires and hurricanes. Internationally, the U.S. has left Afghanistan. And on a personal note, the was my kid’s first week at high school. While our area is 75% vaccinated, I’m still anxious about how this will work out. Within the first week there’s already been a report of a student with COVID-19. Robert’s mix felt like an echo of how I’ve been feeling about all of it.
There’s a tension that builds up early in Robert’s mix that unravels nearly halfway through before exploring different sonic territory. The mix ends hauntingly and somberly.
I discovered Anthéne when Ishmael Cormack (listen to his mix for Soundwave here) requested music recommendations on Twitter. There were some great suggrestions, and I listened to everything I could find on Bandcamp or Spotify. Anthéne’s music was warm, dreamy, and organic for all its etherealness. Naturally, I extended to Anthéne to guest deejay on Soundwave.
Last week I drove from San Diego to Sacramento with Jonanathan Ammons’s mix providing the soundtrack for that apocalyptic journey. This week Anthéne’s mix was the music for my night drive back to San Diego. This time there were no abandoned cars, wildfire smoke choked skies, or searing sunlight. Instead, a beautiful, three-quarter orange moon floated on the horizon while the stars came out, one by one. It was a long drive, and I played Anthéne’s mix several times, which got me as far as Los Angeles.
If you feel like sharing, please tell me where you listened to today’s show.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Complex Holiday.
Jonathan guest deejayed on the show last October. Jonathan’s mix was so moving that I invited him back to Soundwave. Today’s mix is equally remarkable. I had the unique opportunity to listen to it while driving from San Diego to Sacramento to visit my wife this weekend. It’s wildfire season in California (it’s always wildfire season), and Jonathan’s mix provided the soundtrack to my apocalyptic drive. The skies were tinted dirty brown from the ashes from the wildfires, but somehow the sun managed to blast the landscape with glaring light: grass and trees parched from California’s megadrought. Every 20 miles or so, I’d pass an abandoned car to the side of the highway. And yet, Jonathan’s mix somehow lent some beauty to such desolate scenery.
Jonathan has some words about his mix below.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be anthéne.
See you then!
Jonathan Ammons
I think that my past year has looked like many people’s lives during the middle of one of the largest global pandemics in history. A lot of isolation, a lot of finding ways to busy yourself or occupy your mind. In the past, as someone who worked from home, I had enjoyed drone, ambient, and all of those experimental genres for the way they occupied a space without dominating it. If ambient music was created to generate music that did not evoke strong and tumultuous emotions — as Brian Eno claims— that was exactly what I wanted droning on in the background of my house while I pecked away at a keyboard for work. As a journalist, it provided this stoic, emotionless wallpaper for the background of my daily existence.
Covid changed a lot of that. They daily monotony left me just craving a change of emotion. But I didn’t want words; I didn’t want lyrics that would remind me of how things were when we were able to go places, meet people, kiss strangers at a bar… I wanted the same stability that the drone I’d come to love gave me, but I wanted something a little more expressive.
I also noticed that the more I used any streaming platform, the more the algorithm would eventually whittle things down to the same handful of artists. I wanted new things. I wanted variety in a locked-down life with no chance of spontaneity. So I decided to cut all algorithmic music out of my life. I stopped listening to Spotify or Pandora or any of those generated playlists and dialed back in to the radio.
I have to give a giant shoutout to Noods Radio out of Bristol, England, because they have been a major lifesaver. A station dedicated to the wild and weird sounds of Bristol. You never know what you’ll find, but the rich spread of creativity has introduced me to a slew of new artists. Props to BBC6’s great ambient show, as well.
Northern England’s A Beautiful Burning World make’s gorgeous sounds using very simple gear and tape loops. They even have a subscription system for $15 a year, and you can get their entire discography for cheaper than that! Much of this mix comes from artists discovered through the radio or combing around Bandcamp.
Seamstress makes delightful chill-out beats. Scanner gorgeously blends drone and ambient with deep arrangements that are so subtle, but meaningful. And I don’t know why it took me till now to notice Garth Stevenson’s incredible compositions. We really are in a golden age for the reinvention of modern classical music. Just look no further than Tristan Perich’s fantastic work.
I also have to give a shoutout to Kimathi Moore. Kima is an incredibly talented sound artist here in Asheville. His style’s shift between ambient, drone, and Edgard Varèse-like tone poems. I got the chance to work with him on a music video he shot for my latest album, and got to see just what a meticulous worker he is.No wonder his sounds are so precise and pristine.
Of course, I had to include some Harold Budd. I included a selection off of his album the Serpent (In Quicksilver) because I remember hearing an interview with him in which he claimed that it was his favorite record that he’d made. A major loss for the ambient music world, losing one of the original masters to this damned virus.
And lastly, the original tracks are two previously unreleased compositions. I started messing around with more tape loops in my studio this winter, and really decided to dive into it, which is how “The Same River” originated. The closing track is actually from a much larger piece I have coming out in the Fall. “A Certain Kind of Light” is a 40-minute piece in five movements. It was an experiment to see just how far I could go using only a single chord. The incredibly talented Olivia Springer performed all of the string parts for that piece. I’ve included the final movement of that piece to close out this mix as its debut.
Endless thanks to Joseph for having me back for another Soundwave mix. It’s been a pleasure to follow along and hear what everyone is listening to these days!
Today’s guest deejay is Sofia Nystrand, AKA Vargkvint.
For months, Sofia’s music kept appearing on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlists. If I didn’t find Sofia’s music there, she’d pop up on someone else’s playlist. Or I’d find her music on Bandcamp. In fact, Brueder Selke (CEEYS), played Sofia’s “Utåt” on their mix for Soundwave a few weeks ago.
There’s a reason for this, of course. Sofia has that magical ability to trasnport you to a world that is uniquely hers yet utterly familiar though her songs. Sofia deftly weaves folk, contemporary classical, pop, experimental music, and ambient. It’s a gorgeous thing to experience and I’m delighted to share her mix with you on today’s show.
If you’d like to hear more music from Sofia, she is featured on the Realismo Mágico compilation album from piano and coffee records. Some of the artists you’ll find on Sofia’s mix can also be found on the album (Klangriket, Sjors Mans, Jakob Lindhagen, Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, Simeon Walker, Ceeys). Sofia has also just released a rework of the first track, “Pomegranate,” by Sergio Diaz de Rojas.
Sofia has some words about her mix below.
Before I get out of Dodge, I’m happy to report that this weekend I briefly had my wife and kids in the same house. It was short lived, though. My wife headed back to work Sunday evening, and the kids will be visiting their dad next week. But after months and months of being apart, it was a small blessing.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Jonathan Ammons.
See you then!
Sofia Nyland, AKA Vargkvint
When I was working on this mixtape, I wanted it to be centered around collaboration and how music can change when being transformed by another person’s creativity. I’ve just released a rework album where people have reimagined my songs from the album Hav (I have two of them included in the mixtape), and it made me inspired to find other remixes or reworks to include. One of my favorite songs of this year is the rework that Alexandra Hamilton-Ayes have made of Frances Shelley’s ”Evening Star”. Apart from the amazing reworks, I have included a few newly released songs, and a couple of my personal favorites from artists who I really admire.
When I began inviting people to guest deejay on Soundwave I requested mixes that were 30 – 60 minutes long. A 30 minute mix is perfect, but ambient mixes lend themselves to long sets, so I expected a log of guest deejays would not be able to help themselves, and would send me hour long mixes.
Then Roel wrecks my format by sending me a mix that’s two hours long!
But that’s what Roel does. He wrecks formats. His expression through music is always from an unexpected angle. It takes you off guard.
Roel Funcken
Strap yourself in for a dense, yet spacious mix. There’s nearly 50 tracks on today’s show. Intermingled with Roel’s mix are songs from his latest album, S1 . MK2. Each of his tracks were recorded in one take.
You can find Roel on Soundcloud here and on Bandcamp here.
I am currently exactly where I was when I launched Soundweave during the beginning of the pandemic. My wife and kids re aways and it’s just me and my dog. The difference is back then Soundwave was my way of coping with the stress and isolation of the pandemic. Now it’s just part of our lives. I’m in a different head space. It’s a beautiful day and I’m listening to Roel’s beautiful mix. While the family is away, I can work on personal projects without distraction. Life is grand.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Vargkvint.
Today’s guest deejays are Potsdam-based Brueder Selke, brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke (CEEYS).
Over the years, I’ve gotten quite good at jotting down notes on how I meet people. But sometimes, I forget to capture that information, and in this case, I don’t recall how I met Sebastian and Daniel. If I had to guess, I believe I discovered them while perusing Bandcamp for new music.
CEEYS’s albums explore and combine experimental, minimalist, avant-garde, pop, jazz, ambient, and classical chamber music. I love all that stuff, and Sebastian and Daniel distill all those forms of music into a heady listening experience, something you can lose yourself in. I’ve had “Yes, Brick By Brick” on repeat for few hours, for example.
Their mix for today’s show was a surprise. I trusted they would craft a mix worth hearing, and while it captures their musical sensibilities, it also subverted my expectations. And the mix is dense. In the space of 40+ minutes, you’re going to hear music from 28 different artists.
Sebastian and Daniel have some words about their mix below.
Paleowolf’s Cenozoic album
Before I wrap things up, I want to mention that Paleowolf has released a new album, Cenozoic. Paleowolf continues to create music inspired by totems of prehistoric animals and describes Cenozoic as the spiritual successor to Megafauna Rituals. It’s impressive how much material Paleowolf has churned up within his self-created genre. Listen to the Soundwave Paleomix here.
Joins us next week when our guest deejay will be Roel Funcken.
See you then!
Brueder Selke (CEEYS)
For us, two brothers coming from beyond the Iron Curtain, the Wall, with a strikingly serene sense of modesty and humility, rooted in the daily improvisation to manage and resolve shortcomings during Communist-era GDR times and the later reunion of Germany, the most intrinsic part of being a musician is the encounter with like-minded friends and fellows.
The aim of this handpicked list of talent is to blend established and emerging artists from diverse genres and origins. Some even shared already the stage with us while others are invited to come over to our little filmtown Potsdam, in the future.
Thanks to Joseph, who gave us the opportunity to curate this cozy playlist.
This week’s deejay is Kévin Séry, AKA From Overseas. Kévin is also the label manager for Past Inside the Present, a label, and resource for the ambient listener.
From Overseas is Kévin’s ambient project. Using his guitar as his tool of expression and looping techniques, he creates a multiplicity of layers, intense drones, and mesmerizing soundscapes both in the studio and in live performances.
Originally from the tiny French Overseas Department and Region, Reunion Island, he routinely bounces between his home island, a small port town on the east coast of the US, and continental Europe, picking up fresh ideas and inspiration along the way.
Kévin’s mix is very familiar, even though I’m unfamiliar with every song and musician featured in his mix. There’s something about Kévin’s mix that evokes the sound and feel of 4AD, a label that was known for alternative rock, post-punk, gothic rock, and dream pop albums. But if I had to narrow it down, I’d say that Kévin captures the spirit of 4AD’s This Mortal Coil. There’s something haunted in the selection of his songs but still quietly triumphant.
Kévin has some words below about his mix.
Join us next week when our guest deejays will be brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke of CEEYS.
Kévin Séry, AKA From Overseas
It’s an honor to be part of the Soundwave series. I love doing mixes like this. It’s a great way to go on a unique journey and to immerse yourself in the work of amazing and influential artists. This mix was made on February 23rd, 2021, when winter was slowly giving space to spring. Hopefully, people feel what I feel and can discover a few gems.
