Tag: denmark

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SOUNDWAVE : 126 : JOHAN DE REYBEKILL

SOUNDWAVE : 126 : JOHAN DE REYBEKILL

Today’s guest deejay is Johan de Reybekill, AKA Phaedrus.

I discovered Johan through Quasi, the album collaborated on with Dronny Darko (listen to Dronny’s mix for Soundwave here). I was swept away by the experience and listened to Johan’s projects and concerts. Of course, I invited Johan to guest deejay on Soundwave, and he’s shared something wonderful with us.

I have a routine for my four-year-old grandkid when it’s time to sleep. I tell him a story that includes events from his day and his friends, the Little Old Mouse and Purple Monster. Then I play some ambient music for him to drift away to, usually Brian Eno, whom we call Uncle Eno. My go-to’s are Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land and The Pearl, an album he recorded with the late Harold Budd. I’ve listed to a lot of Brian Eno since becoming a Dziadzia (that’s Polish for “grandpa”), and as much as I love Eno’s music, sometimes that means switching things up. Johan doesn’t know it, but I’ve used today’s mix to send my grandkid off to Sleepytime on more than one occasion.

Johan has words about today’s mix below.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Sunwarper.

See you then.

 

Johan de Reybekill, AKA Phaedrus
Johan de Reybekill, AKA Phaedrus

In this mix I have worked with subtle contrasts like: “noisy / minimalistic”, “melodic / droning”, “dark / gentle”, “static / volatile”. A majority of the pieces on the mix is from some of my favourite Scandinavian artists.

The process of creating the mix made me realise just how much I love listening to music in that special way, where I am actively listening to the music in depth; its composition, qualities and details.

I found myself going for long walks just to listen to the mix in its entirety, go home and make adjustments, go for another walk, and so on. I loved the process of working with my own and others’ music as an integral part of what came to be the mix. It was a pleasure and an honour to contribute to Soundwave.

Thanks, Joseph.

  1. Deru “1979 (On a Snowy February Day)”
  2. Badun “SP​-​0 (Space Leslie Lovers)”
  3. Maulex & Phaedrus “Ouatim”
  4. Phaedrus “Lnog”
  5. Fieldhead “Sky Peals”
  6. Sofie Birch “Begin Sync End”
  7. Kiloton “Disarray”
  8. Signelykke “Wetlands”
  9. ROSYAN “Retaw”
  10. Maulex “Reijka”
  11. Dronny Darko & Phaedrus “Ptolemy’s Parable”
  12. Phaedrus “Rooibos”

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SOUNDWAVE : 46 : IVAN SOMOV

SOUNDWAVE : 46 : IVAN SOMOV

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today’s guest deejay is Ivan Somov, AKA Notnotice.

While I stream music like everyone else, I’m also old fashioned and still purchase songs and albums. Bandcamp is my preferred vendor because they give the music labels and artists a generous share of the money generated from Bandcamp sales.

I spend an hour at least an hour a week exploring Bandcamp and listened to great music. If I came across someone I thought would be a good fit for SOUNDWAVE, I’d invite them to be a guest deejay. It’s a no-brainer, really, and we’ve heard great mixed from folks such as Tim Six, who runs ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ Records with his wife, Mila, and Ishmael Cormack . Next week’s show will feature Out of Hell, and in the weeks to come our guest deejays will be Less Bells, Emil Zapffe, and Rhucle.

Ivan is yet another talented musician I discovered after searching Bandcamp for ambient, classical, experimental, and instrumental music to listen to. These are difficult genres. It’s easy to record music in those genres that are awful, hard to do mediocre, hard still to record something great, and a challenge to create something great. When I find something great, as I said, I am compelled to reach out to the artist and invite them to be a guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE. And that brings us to today’s show, which I’m listening to as I write this.

Ivan’s mix is going to take you on a journey. To me, that is the point of art. It’s not enough to craft a pretty or catching sound. Evoking emotion is one thing, but if the music can transport you to somewhere else and spur your imagination, that’s magic. And Ivan’s mix is magic and will be your soundscape for today’s sonic safari. The mix is the map. Your destination will be your own for you to discover.

Quick note: Ivan begins today’s mix with a track from Symphocat, a Russian musician and label owner. Tim Six also featured Symphocat on last week’s show. I’m taking that as a sign that I need to extend an invitation to guest deejay on the show.

Ivan has some words about Notice that he’d like to share with you below.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Out of Hell.

See you then!

 

Ivan Somov, AKA Notnotice
Ivan Somov, AKA Notnotice

Notnotice – a project created to implement the ambient and not only the mood of the author. Originally was written only dark ambient, but later decided not limited by the rigid framework, but at the same time, the music has not lost the original dark and cold, Notnotice tries to embody in their tracks the idea of loneliness and alienation.

  1. Symphocat “Svifa I Himininn”
  2. Forest Management “Fill In The Blank”
  3. unknown “Way number 3”
  4. Notnotice “Stockholm Syndrome”
  5. Acronym “Rails”
  6. очень длинный кот “v parallelnih mirah”
  7. Bad Sector & Tommaso Lisa “Untitled”
  8. kmerl “Constellation”
  9. Stanislav Tolkachev “Borderland”
  10. Canadian Rifles “1812”
  11. FH HF “Seconds Remain As Abstract Strokes”
  12. gacha bakradze “Broken Keyboard”
  13. Jeremiah M. Carter & Chelsea Bridges “White Rose Royale”
  14. Appropriate Savagery “Makeup & Ketamine, During a Quiet Evening”
  15. Christian Michael Filardo “Charm Syndicate”
  16. Concrete Fantasies “stealth2 (Agadez Magi)”
  17. Varg2™ “600 Lives To Become Nothing But A Memory (ft. Soho Rezanejad)”
  18. Cio D’Or “Triplet”
  19. EyeScream “(A)(ny)(thing)(ll)”

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SOUNDWAVE : 38 : HARROLD ROELAND

SOUNDWAVE : 38 : HARROLD ROELAND

Today’s guest deejay is Harrold Roeland. Harrold is a trained composer, a poet, sound designer and performing musician, specializing in the use of environmental sounds and long attention spans. His works try to invoke the timelessness of the world and its landscapes. He sings medieval and renaissance music with Ensemble Vlechtwerk, and hosts the radio show Sensenta, a musical serial, at the Concertzender every Sunday evening that explores many of these themes.

From the beginning, whenever I’ve had a guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE I’ve asked them who they know personally that they think would be interested in participating in the show with a mix of their own. I do this for several reasons. For one, I like the intimacy of the invitation. While I have no problem contacting people I don't know to be on SOUNDWAVE I prefer this more personal touch. It’s a network built up of likeminded people who actually know each other. Secondly, having guest deejay’s on the show introduces me to wider scope of music. I’d like to think my knowledge of music is fairly deep but I know its really shallow. The guest deejays on SOUNDWAVE open me up to having so much more music in my life. And so many surprises! Today’s show features both Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane.

Harrold’s mix has been my soundtrack to many a late night and I'm thrilled to share it with you. Harrold’s will take you by the hand down darkened paths. It’s the kind of mix I love that seamlessly blends each song into the next and takes me on an emotional journey. I recently had the opportunity to listen to Harrold’s mix while driving through a sun-blasted Arizona highway and all it did was make the shadows cast from Harrold’s mix longer

Special thanks to Kirk Markarian of Neuro… No Neuro who introduced us to Harrold (listen to Kirk’s mix for SOUNDWAVE here). I’m curious to know who Harrold will introduce us to.

Harrold has some word about his mix which you can read below. But first, a few items I wanted to discuss.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I launched SOUNDWAVE to help me cope with the stress and isolation of being stuck in my house due to the stay at home orders brought about by COVID-19. It was a very lonely time in my life: my wife was away at work and our kids were with their dad’s. It was just me, my dog and my music. Here we are in the second wave of the virus and once my wife has been sent out of town and yesterday I dropped off the kids to be with their dad. The difference this time is that instead of waiting months to be with my wife I’m going to see her today's and work remotely for the next few days. As a bonus, I’m going to spend the eight or so hours in my car listening to mixes for upcoming editions of SOUNDWAVE.

Pauline Anne Strom
Pauline Anne Strom

Finally, last week we lost Harold Budd and this week we lost pioneering blind composer and synthesist Pauline Anne Strom. Pauline released music in the 1980s under the name Trans-Mellenia Consort and explored the ambient and new age. Pauline’s last album, Angel Tears in Sunlight, is her first new album in 30 years and is scheduled to be released in January 2021.

Join me next week when our guest deejay will be Applefish.

See you then!

Harrold Roeland
Harrold Roeland

This mix starts with jazz, an album by Yusuf Lateef which has a nicely worn out sound. Biosphere’s wonderful impression of breaking ice quickly enters the scene. As far as worn out and slightly off key sounds go, Denmark’s Øjerum is an expert on that. His works are often soothing and slightly disturbing at the same time, as are Roly Porter’s, entering the mix around the 7 minute mark. We take a step back then for the second third of the mix, combining IA’s “Mater Lacrimosa” with, again, the percussive side of Biosphere. The last third of the mix is a piling of works, as often happens in my radioshow Sensenta on the Dutch Concertzender. IA meets John Coltrane meets Markus Guentner meets the genius of Kaija Saariaho. And finally, since it’s polite to introduce oneself, the last notes of “Glacier Looming,” is an impression of the weight of the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand, a work using birdsong and semi-modular synthesis.

  1. Yusef Lateef “Purple Flower”
  2. Biosphere “Skålbrekka”
  3. Øjerum “The Forest Is Sleeping With The Trees, Part 1”
  4. Roly Porter “Inflation Field”
  5. IA “Mater Lacrimosa”
  6. Biosphere “Bergsbotn III”
  7. John Coltrane “The Drum Thing”
  8. Markus Guentner “Magnetar”
  9. Kaija Saariaho “Six Japanese Gardens IV”
  10. Harrold Roeland “Glacier Looming”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

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SOUNDWAVE : 37 : CHRISTIAN SAGER

SOUNDWAVE : 37 : CHRISTIAN SAGER

Today’s guest deejay is Christian Sager, co-host Supercontext, a podcast autopsy of media: how we consume it and how it informs our everyday culture.

Christian Sager
Christian Sager

I loved Supercontext. It felt like a podcast that was produced exclusively for me. For example, some of the topics they covered have been the anime Akira, Roy Scranton’s book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization and Bruce Sterling’s state of the world address at SXSW 2016. All those things are in my nerd wheelhouse. Even the shows that discussed topics I knew nothing about were gems.

Sadly Supercontext is now defunct although Christian and co-host Charlie Bennet still release a monthly podcast for Patreon supporters where they chat about the media they’ve been consuming. I highly recommend you go through their archives and listen to shows you think might strike your fancy.

I respect Christian and Charlie’s taste in music and invited them to guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE. Christian has delivered a mix that ranges from prog to math to dirge rock with a dollop of hip hop. Not your usual SOUNDWAVE fare but for me, at least, it was the perfect soundtrack to this week. 300,000+ dead from COIVD-19 and a President and his supporters who seemingly want to upend democracy. Christian’s mix is the blast of sound and fury I needed to propel me though the week.

Special thanks go out to Taylor Shechet for sequencing this week’s mix. Christian didn’t have the original tracks and when I offered to assemble the mix GarageBand refused to import the audio files. Taylor did me a solid by putting the mix together. And if you love today’s show then you’re definitely going to love Taylor’s mix for SOUNDWAVE that I’ll release in the next month or so.

CORRIDOR Magazine
CORRIDOR Magazine

Before I go, I want to mention that Christian and David Moore are launching a project called CORRIDOR Magazine, a new horror magazine bringing the weird worlds of short fiction, art, comics, and essays together under one roof. I’m helping fund it and so should you if this sort of thing is your bag.

Jonathan Ammon's American Splendor album
Jonathan Ammon’s American Splendor album

I also wanted to share Jonathan Ammons’s new release, “Living Proof,” from his forthcoming album, American Splendor. I’m looking forward to the album. If you want to hear more music from Jonathan, listen to his mix for SOUNDWAVE here.

Harrold Budd
Harold Budd

Lastly, some sad news. Ambient composer Harold Budd died December 7. Just the day before I was listening to The Pearl, an album he recorded with Brian Eno, the day before he passed and was thinking how much I enjoyed his music. Harold was a pioneer in ambient music. He will be missed and my condolences go out to his family and friends.

And on that somber note, it’s time for me to say goodbye.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Harrold Roeland.

See you then!

  1. Aspects of Physics “Level 3”
  2. Battles “Tonto”
  3. Atomsmasher “Thunderspit”
  4. Sannhet “Invisible Wounds”
  5. DJ/rupture “A04 Untitled from ‘Nubus’”
  6. Run The Jewels “Don't Get Captured (Instrumental)”
  7. MONO “After You Comes the Flood”
  8. Thrones “Ephraim”
  9. Russian Circles “309”
  10. Sunn O))) & Boris “Akuma No Kuma”
  11. OXES “Bees Won”
  12. The Fucking Champs “What's A Little Reign?”
  13. Orthrelm “rdd 1+2”
  14. Heilung “Norupo”
  15. Earth “Crooked Axis for String Quartet”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek