Antonis Haniotakis is Melorman and he comes to us through Stratos Pilos. Stratos works for Inner-Ear and SDM Records, two of the most active independent labels in Greece, and contacted my way back in August about featuring music from those labels on solipsistic NATION, my defunct electronic music podcast. I suggested that an artist from his roster guest deejay and here we are with today’s show.
Melorman’s mix is short and sweet and will take you through an emotional journey. It’s been the soundtrack to my Thanksgiving week and I know you’re going to love it. I hope to have Melorman on SOUNDWAVE with another mix in 2021.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Joel Shearer.
See you then!
Melorman
Melorman is the alias of Greek electronic producer Antonis Chaniotakis. For over 20 years, the Athens-based artist has been making electronic music, ranging in musical style from emotional and ambient electronica to experimental and glitch.
His sound is instantly recognizable, and his music is often described as warm and commanding, seeking to inspire nostalgia and create an emotional imagery through sound. The melodies are aerial and fluffy, often changing frequently. Melorman attempts to reach and capture the ultimate feeling and embodiment that melody has on the human emotional state.
Today’s guest deejay is Jonathan Ammons, a journalist, radio producer, and musician living in Asheville, North Carolina. You can find his music on Bandcamp and listen to his radio show from WPVM and Pacifica Radio Network at the Dirty Spoon.
Jonathan is yet another amazing person I was introduced to through my old friend, Steve Howard (listen to Steven’s SOUNDWAVE mix here). Meeting Jonathan is one of the unexpected pleasures in the evolution of SOUNDWAVE.
I launched SOUNDWAVE to help cope with the stress of the pandemic. In the first few months of COVID-19 it seemed that stepping outside your house might kill you. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, my family was scattered about the country so for a long time it was just me and my dog. That took a toll on me and my usual distractions, music, reading and television, could not hold my interest at all. In fact, they annoyed me or angered me. The only thing that provided any comfort was ambient, classical, experimental and instrumental music. I reasoned that if that music was giving me solace it might help others as well so I launched SOUNDWAVE. Very soon afterwards I decided to invite the talented people I know who might enjoy or, more importantly, need to share a mix of their own. And that very quickly led to asking my friends who they knew personally who might want to participate in the show. That decision introduced me to such wonderful people as Adrian Utley, Hannah Peel, Charles Hazlewood and Jonathan.
I don’t really know Jonathan, though. We’ve just had a few email exchanges arranging today’s show but through his mix I feel I know him more intimately than I might know him through a dozen conversations. That’s all projection, of course, but that is the power of music. It bypasses the rational and hits on emotional truths, which is why I launched SOUNDWAVE in the first place.
Back in 2016 there were a series of forest fires that broke out throughout Western North Carolina, surrounding my home in Asheville. The air was thick with smoke, and a perpetual haze fell over everything. It just so happened that it fell right on the heels of a devastating national election, and for a moment, it truly felt like the whole world was on fire.
I had just started spending time with a very lovely lady, and I asked her one night if she’d like to go watch the mountains burn.So I threw some camping chairs in the truck, grabbed a camera and a bottle of Champagne, and we headed out to the center of the fires.
There’s a strange feeling when you sit and watch your home burn to the ground. Halloween orange glowing from every hilltop, brick red clouds in the night sky. Knowing that everything would grow back eventually, but that the sights you grew up seeing would be permanently scarred. The world would be better, maybe even healthier than it was before, but it would take a lot of ash and rubble to get there.
I started making my first ambient LP — First Sight — during those fires. At the time, my office was on my screened in porch, and I could sit while I composed and watch ash fall from the sky. I like to think that much of my approach to the way I currently make music came from that experience.
I remember calling a friend one day, and saying, “you know how I’ve been complaining a lot about that knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away? I think I finally figured out what that is. I think it’s despair. I just think it’s the first time I’ve ever felt it. Ithink I just didn’t realize it because it doesn’t feels as hopeless as I would have thought.”
From that point on, I was able to see the fragile, delicate things that fall apart, and not feel the overwhelming sense of loss I had initially felt. Instead, I understood it to be a burning of the dross, a disposal of things that were unnecessary. When a fire burns, after all, it makes way for far better things than grew there before. Sometimes you just have to let it burn.
I like to think of this mix as songs from the fire. Pieces of music that are as devastating as they are restorative. A little hazy, a little bleary, but beautiful in their own right. There are three original compositions in the mix, the first and last are from an as of yet unreleased record (this is actually their debut). The other, “Open Eyes”, is from my new album First Sight. The rest of the mix runs a gamut between crumbling organic sounds and stark synthesis. Ian William Craig actually wrote his new and beautiful record while also being surrounded by forest fires, Goldmund delivers gorgeous ambient versions of old Civil War era songs, and Oliver Patrice Weder delivers the most thoughtful, pensive piano performance… music to watch the world end. My favorite kind.
On today’s SOUNDWAVE our guest deejay is Hannah Peel! I’ll tell you why I am so excited to have her on today’s show shortly.
I just got back from traveling to Chicago for a vacation. I love that city and each time I go to there the more I want to move there. Granted, we went there just before fall, which is the best time to visit Chicago. It was neither hot and humid or wet and frigid.
I got to spend time with my brother and sister-in-law, run to the lakeshore and watch the sunrise, and bike around the city but overall it was an eating vacation. I live near Los Angeles so my expectations for superior restaurants is high. Chicago surpasses those expectations. You simply can’t get a bad meal in that city. The restaurant that served the best meals was The Purple Pig but our favorite dining experience was Podhalanka. We met Greg, the owner, who made us feel welcome and ordered our meals for us and each dish was delicious. Greg clearly loves what he does and he cares deeply that you are well fed.
But I’m not here to talk about what I did on my vacation. I’m here to tell you that I’m grateful that I was able to spend time with family and friends. I hadn’t realized how much I needed a vacation until we landed in O’Hare. Usually it takes me a day or two to unwind but I instantly relaxed the moment we arrived. And I’m also grateful for our vacation because it gave me some time to process a lot of my thoughts and feelings regarding COVID-19 and how to lead my life going forward. I’m not going to go into the details here but what I will share with you is that COVID-19 has brought into sharp relief that our time on this planet is short and we could leave it at any moment. The last few months I’ve met many people who have I opened up and shared their deepest thoughts with me. And why not? Now’s the time to do it. And like a lot of people, I’ve been reevaluating my life and what I want to do with it during the time I have remaining. Despite the anxiety of COVID-19 I’m also excited about the possibilities that lie before all of us.
I began SOUNDWAVE to help cope with the stress of the pandemic but over the last half year my relationship to COVID-19 has changed dramatically. I hope it has for you as well. Carpe diem.
Let’s get to today’s show, shall we?
As I mentioned above, our guest deejay is Hannah Peel.
Until a few weeks ago I wasn’t familiar with Hannah and had only become acquainted with her when I asked SOUNDWAVE guest deejay, Charles Hazlewood, who he knew personally that might be interested in sharing a mix on the show. Charles put me in contact with Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Hannah Peel. Adrian’s mix was lovely and Hannah’s mix is no less so.
On today’s show Hannah will take you to some very surprising places and she begins her mix with a track from Joni Mitchel. So unexpected! You’re in her capable hands so enjoy the journey. I know you’re going to love today’s show.
As I said, I was unfamiliar with Hannah but I’ve been getting up to speed. And you should, too, because Hannah’s music is also unexpected. Her songs can be delicate and achingly familiar. She’’ll paint impressionistic music with swathes of sound but will also delight you with covers of pop songs from the ‘80s performed on music boxes. I catch myself singing Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” constantly thanks to Hannah.
Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be Jonathan Ammons.
It’s late and its been a long week so I’m going to keep this short.
The only thing I can think off the top of my head that’s COVID-19 related is that supposedly a bunch of teenagers on Tik Tok punked President Trump earlier today by reserving tickets for his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was supposed to pack a stadium full of supporters but instead it was barely half full. Was it teens that did this, though? At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if it was pulled of by Russian or Chinese hackers. In any case, whoever did it, well done. That means half as many people might get infected with the virus. Reading Trump’s rage tweets is going to be something.
Our guest deejay for today’s show is Jaime Irles.
Jaime was one half of Known Rebel, an electronic music duo from Ibiza. I very much wanted them to interview them for my electronic music show, solipsistic NATION but it never happened. I always regretted missing that opportunity so when I launched SOUNDWAVE Jaime was one of the first group of people I contacted to participate on the show.
Jaime was kind enough to send me this mix we’re going to listen to on today’s SOUNDWAVE. It’s spectacular and ranges from Burial to Ryuichi Sakamoto and I know you’re going to love it.
Jamie’s going to tell us all about his mix below but before I go I encourage you to pick up his latest album, Cardonova. I was expecting sometime more in the style of what he was recording when he was in Know Rebel but I was delightfully surprised to hear the new horizons he’s exploring. It’s got more of an 80s synthwave kind of sound. Go get it, its only a few a few dollars. The price of a cup of coffee, as they say. And while you’re at it, if you dig any of the the songs you hear on today’s show, go buy them too. Sure, you could stream it, but then the artists only get the tiniest fraction of a penny. They deserve more than that. Splurge and buy one of their songs. Better yet, buy an entire album.
Next week’s guest deejay is Tijs Ham. See you then!
Jaime Irles
The set I have recorded is a mix of organic soundscapes, melancholic melodies, textures and darkambient sounds with a strong cinematic touch.
Burial has been one of my musical referents for years and wanted tostart the set with one of his latests works. “State Forest” is full of gloomy ambient textures and foggy atmospheres.
Lorn is one of the usual artists on my spotify lists, this specific subject takes me straight to an imaginary cyberpunk movie.
I came across A Winged Victory For The Sullen’s “Retour au Champ-de-Mars” a while ago looking for movie soundtracks. I haven’t had the chance to see the French movie In the Shadow of Iris, but the soundtrack is just as beautiful as it is powerful.
“Encounter Me In The Orchard” is a relatively new track from Polish producer Jacaszek. I love the mix of reverb drenched melodies and sonic textures on thisone.
Lauge and Matt Tondut’s “Above the Clouds” is ambient music at it’s finest, melancholic soundscapes that keep the cinematic vibes of the set.
Nicolas Winding Refn is one of my favorite directors and Too Old To Die young one of the best series I’ve seen lately. Watching the show is like being in an art gallery, watching one beautiful moving painting after another and as an accompaniment to that visual work of art, the music of Cliff Martínez with one of his most outstanding works. “I’m Hunting” is the best fit on set but could have used any of them.
The “Annihilation” end-scene wouldn’t have been this impressive if not for this amazing piece of dark ambient. Not the typical Moderat song but I wish they would do more music on this direction.
Lorn again, not much to comment on, I just love “SILHOUETTE “ and his haunting landscapes of sounds.
With Ryuichi Sakamoto and Oneohtrix Point Never’s Rework you can’t go wrong. Daniel Lopatin is one of my main influences and this trackis a clear example of why. A beautiful piece of art.
“Naval” is the last track of from my Cardonova EP I released in April. The album is an eclectic mixture of downtempo, synthwave, and dark ambient sounds reminiscent of past decades,evoking soundscapes and leading the listener through a journeythrough the depths of oneself. I named the track in honor of Naval Ravikant, an Indian American entrepreneur and investor that really inspires me.
Protests blazed across the US, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, from the kindling of over 150 years of police brutality, systemic racism and hundreds of years of slavery. I watched police cars run into protesters. I watched police officers beat and shoot peaceful protesters. I watched protesters raze property, sometimes from their own communities. I’ve even watched a man armed with a bow with an arrow notched aiming it at protesters who quickly took him down.
It is nauseating.
It makes me ill that it’s come to this. I want to hope that out of all this anger, suffering and pain that some good will come of it. But I don’t think my country is ready to have an honest conversation about race that might lead to the healing that this nation so desperately needs.
I’m fried. Once again this show is a balm and a welcome distraction, brief as it is.
Our guest deejay on today’s SOUNDWAVE is Planet Boelex.
I met Planet Boelex through Travis Nobles of hiddenplace music. He suggested that I feature one of Planet Boelex’s live sets on solipsistic NATION, the electronic music show I produced. Planet Boelex’s sound music is impressive because aside from being beautiful it was also distinct. His personality is imprinted onto his music. Electronic music often sound anonymous because some musicians use stock sounds and loops. When you hear a song by Planet Boelex you know it.
I hope today’s show gives you some respite.
Next week’s guest deejay is Dronny Darko. I hope were all in a better place by then.
I’ll leave you with two quotes.
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
— James Baldwin
“One is responsible to life. It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.”
Here we are in week whatever of the safe at home lockdown in California. I’m in really good spirits because I got to see my wifee for the first time in over two months. She’s in the military and her unit has been tasked to pack boxes for food banks. Being apart from her for so long was taking a toll and seeing her, if only for week, did me a world of good.
She was on bereavement leave for her grandmother’s funeral. It was a sad day but due to the Corona Virus I think everyone took extra solace being with family members. It was a little surreal seeing everyone wearing masks at the ceremony.
I’ve continued to find comfort and enjoyment in the mixes guest deejays have shared on SOUNDWAVE. Today’s show is significant to me because our guest deejay is musician and producer, Robert Rich. I’ve been a fan of Robert since first hearing his music on the From Here To Tranquility Volume 2 compilation album way back in 1993. I was excited to interview him for solipsistic NATION and share his performance at Fort Mason and the Morrison Planetarium and I’m equally excited to share Robert’s mix with you today! You can read Robert’s show notes below.
Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be Kirk Markarian, who composes music for video games, film, animation, stock music, and other projects.
See you then!
Robert Rich
One thing that ties all of these together, is that I was involved in each of them. All but the first two are also unavailable to the public. I mixed and mastered Forrest’s Folklore album, and played a bit on it. I have also mastered almost all of his other albums, and I appear on his next one which I will also master soon.
Amoeba is a group I was in you that might know, then there’s the debut of my next album, and a live recordingof a Lou Harrison concert that I made in the dome of the observatory on top of Mt. Hamilton, as a favor to the gamelan group and to Lou. They debuted this composition at the concert, and it was the only time that piece was ever performed. This recording is the only one made. After Lou died I sent a spare copy to his archives in Joshua tree.
The last piece is one that I edited along with six others for the Mexican composer Arturo Salinas. I spent several weeks working with him in 1998, down in Tepoztlan, Mexico.He had a grant to complete the album, but then couldn’t find alabel to release it. It remains unreleased.
Forrest Fang “The Bridge of Chan-Chou III. Falling Stones (Kuan Yin)”
Let me rehash some stuff with you before we got to today’s excellent show featuring a lustrous mix from Sean Horton.
I launched SOUNDWAVE because it was my way of coping with COVID-19. My wife is away for the next month with her unit and our kids our with their dad for the foreseeable future. It’s just me and my dog. Work keeps me busy during the day but at night it gets lonely. I found myself listening to a lot of ambient, classical, experimental and instrumental music and I decided to share it with my friends and created the show you’re listening to now.
My intention was to release a new show once a month. After the first show I decided I would release SOUNDWAVE weekly until the stay at home order ends. But then it occurred to me that pretty much everyone else on the planet is also stuck at home so I invited friends, deejays, musicians, producers, etc to participate on the show. And that brings us to our first guest deejay, Sean Horton.
I interviewed Sean Horton for solipsistic NATION to talk about Decibel Festival, an annual music and digital arts festival in Seattle that ran from 2004 to 2015. Decibel Festival was unique platform for exposing attendees to leading-edge multimedia art from around the globe. With a focus on live performance, interactive multimedia art, state-of-the-art sound and technology based education; Decibel solidified itself as one of the premier electronic music festivals and promotional organizations in the world. In 2014, Sean was named #43 on Rolling Stone’s “50 Most Important People in EDM.”
Sean also records under them name Nordic Soul where he distills his love for techno, house, hip hop, jazz, soul, industrial, ambient and dub. As Nordic Soul, Sean has shared the stage with an eclectic mix of musicians from Grimes to Moby to The Orb to Major Lazer to… well, the list goes on. Sean has also performed at several major festivals world-wide, including Dimensions (Croatia), MUTEK (Montreal) and Communikey (Boulder). Nordic Soul has released music on a wide variety of labels including K Records, Buttermilk Records, Peloton and basic_sounds.
Given all that, you understand Sean was one of the first people I invited to join me and SOUNDWAVE. Funny thing, Sean and I have struck up a friendship online which moved from talking about music to our favorite books, tv shows and movies and then to living under COVID-19. An unexpected and welcome development of the pandemic. I look forward to meeting Sean in Los Angeles after this dies down a bit and hoisting a pint with him. From a safe six feet, of course.
Sean has crafted a beautiful mix, but I expected no less from him. Prepare for an emotional journey and see where it takes you. I’ll let Sean introduce his mix below. I know you’re going to love it just as much as I do.
I’ll see you all next week when we are joined by our next guest deejay, my old and dear friend, Steven Howard.
Sean Horton
During this time in isolation I’ve been rediscovering my love of ambient music. I first discovered ambient music working at Harmony House records in Detroit my junior year in high school in 1992. It was the early days of the Rave Movement and Detroit was a hot bed for warehouse parties and Techno Music at the time. This was also a remarkable time where nearly every Rave would have two rooms, a “Dance Room” and an “Ambient Room.” I was an “Ambient Room” individual largely in part because I fell in love the music.
Out of all of the ambient music albums I’ve encountered over the years, the two that I come back to the most are the first and second ambient albums I ever knowingly experienced, Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks and Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. This mix features two of my favorite selections from each album.
Historically ambient music has predominantly been characterized as synthetic, but over the past fifteen years or so there has been growing movement of more organic forms of ambient music and film scores which are often referred to as neo classical (i.e. Nils Frahm, Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, Hauschka, Jóhann Jóhannsson , Hildur Guðnadóttir, Stars of the Lid, etc.). Where Ambient music fueled my teen-early 20’s love of electronic music; neo classical music fueled my love of melody and organic tone. I firmly believe that both ambient and neo classical music can and should co-exist.
This particular mix evolved out of a playlist I put together in late March 2020 featuring some of my favorite ambient and neo classical artists and songs. As common with a lot of ambient music, these selections are all void of rhythm and nearly void of all voice. That said, this is an ideal mix for reading, writing, sleeping, meditation, yoga, etc. My hope is this mix will instill a sense of calm and mental clarity with the listener.
Last week I said that SOUNDWAVE would be a monthly show. I’ve changed my mind and decided to release the show on a weekly basis for as long as we are told to stay at home to flatten COVID-19’s curve. I’ve also invited friends, podcasters, musicians, deejays and record label owners to contribute mixes to SOUNDWAVE so expect to hear from them shortly.
Okay, today’s show…
We open with a track from Richard Moult’s Celestial King for a Year album. I came across Moult while listening to writer Warren Ellis’s excellent SPEKTRMODULE podcast. A casual Google search didn’t turn up much information but I did learn that Moult warrants an unofficial fan page on Facebook.
From there we segue into “Regnantem sempiterna” by Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble. If you’ve been watching Alex Garland’s Devs you’ll recognize it immediately. I’ve been following Garland’s career since he wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later but Devs is quite possibly the best thing he’s ever done, and he’s accomplished a lot, but he really gets to shine in a long-form tv series. The writing is great, the acting is great, the cinematography is great, etc. and the music department have been selecting absolute gems and “Regnantem sempiterna” gave me the chills and is the emotional cornerstone for this week’s show.
The next track is from the soundtrack from the horror film Hagazussa by MMMD. I’m not going to spoil the movie but I will say this, if you’re listening to “Hagazussa” over your speakers, and you really should to experience it fully, prepare for your windows to rattle and for plates and glasses to vibrate off your kitchen table.
Our penultimate track is Colin Stetson’s “Sorrow: II – Lento Largo—Tranquillissimo” from his SORROW – a reimagining of Górecki’s 3rd Symphony album. I’ve been listening to Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 for a couple decades now and it never fails to rend my heart. I’ve also been a fan of Colin Stetson for quite a few years. He’s played with everyone from Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Tom Waits to Bill Laswell and a gaggle of other stellar artists. When I learned he had released an album of his interpretation of Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 I purchased it without question and Stetson did not fail to deliver. It’s actually quite faithful to the original, but with Stetson’s own unique take, of course.
We close today’s show with Kazuya Nagaya’s “Thanatos” from his Dream Interpretation album. I discovered Nagaya on the Bandcamp Daily blog and fell in love with his music and this track in particular. When I released last week’s show I sent the episode to my mom knowing that she’d enjoy it. She did, mostly. She found the mix beautiful but Nine Inch Nails “The Cursed Clock” was a bit too solemn for her. I get it, especially during these days of COVID-19. I don’t think today’s show will agree with her but if you are listening, mom, I think you will find solace in Nagaya’s “Thanatos.”
If you enjoy SOUNDWAVE, please share it with someone you think will also appreciate it.
I’m keeping today’s show mellow. I’ve got a cold and I wanted to convey to you sonically what I’m feeling. I’m also not going to talk too much on today’s show because my throat is still alittle sore and I never know when I might cough and you don’t want to hear that.
