piano – Page 3 – Synecdoche

SOUNDWAVE : 53 : AMBIENTBLOG

Today’s guest deejay is Peter van Cooten, host of Ambientblog and DreamScenes on Concertzender.

I ask each guest to deejay who they know who would be interested in participating in the show with a mix. Harrold Roeland, who was a guest deejay on Soundwave back in December, suggested Peter. I’ve known about Ambientblog for years and have listened to many of Peter’s mixes on Mixcloud. I’m thankful that Harrold made the introduction because Peter’s mix is exceptional.

Mix is not the word for what Peter does on today’s show.

It’s more accurate to say that Peter composed a concept album masterfully weaved from a multitude of sampled material. Take a look at the “playlist” below to get an idea of the scope of today’s show. It’s a work of art you get to immerse yourself in for the next hour.

Peter’s mix, like all of his Ambientblog shows, is an experience. Follow Ambientblog on Mixcloud to hear more of his work.

I’ve included an excerpt about today’s show from Peter’s website below.

Today’s show is special because it’s also Soundwave’s one-year anniversary.

I launched Soundwave to help me cope with the stress and isolation of COVID-19.

This close to what we all hope is the finish line of the pandemic its easy to forget that we were all white-knuckling it for the first couple of months. Every day was filled with existential dread. Would this trip to the grocery store kill me or someone I love? It’s exhausting to live that way.

During that time, I could not watch tv or movies or listen to music because they were not speaking to the truth of our new reality. I’d watch a tv show and fret how there was no social distancing and why the cast wasn’t wearing masks. Pop music was particularly difficult to listen to because it was so painfully vapid. How am I supposed to enjoy a love song when I might be a patient or a vector in this pandemic?

The only music that I could tolerate and gave me solace was ambient, classical, experimental, and instrumental music. It was the soundtrack for my stay-at-home lockdown. And if I found some relief with this music, why not share it with others? Any why not ask people I respect to share their mixes?

I’m humbled by everyone’s gift of generosity of time and effort. We’re all going through this together, each in our way. I’m grateful that during this pandemic that each guest deejay lovingly crafted mixes to share with us.

Today’s show is also special because today, I also got my first shot for the COVID-19 vaccination.

I was shopping for groceries when the Mercy Plaza Pharmacy called me and told me they had extra doses. Could I stop by for a vaccination? Most definitely.

My cilantro stymied the woman who was ringing up my items at the grocery store: were they regular cilantro or organic? She was about to do a price check when I explained that I needed to get the hell out of there to be vaccinated. I didn’t care about the cilantro’s cost; ring me up so I can leave! She understood.

The folks at Mercy Plaza Pharmacy couldn’t be nicer. They’re a family-owned business, and the owner checked up on me after my shot to see how I was feeling. We talked about San Diego, Sacramento, and our kids. This is going to sound weird, but I had such a great time that I can’t wait to go back.

So here we are a year later. We’re almost at the finish line. Hopefully, next year, this will be behind us, and we can all enjoy each other’s company. I’m looking forward to meeting some of you in person. Maybe I’ll even get to meet Peter.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Michał Milczarek.

See you then!

It’s my honour to open the second year of this series with my contribution. Of course, we can only hope that the series will continue for musical reasons, not because of the pandemic.

Clicking through the list of contributions, you’ll find that most of them are what I call mixtape-style compilations: a head-tail-mix of (full) tracks. Traditionally, my (Ambientblog) mixes are different (which does not mean necessarily ‘better’, by the way) in that they incorporate many sampled parts of tracks (a full-length track is either an exception or a very short track itself), mixed in a layered collage-style. I always try to shuffle the collage’s fragments so that they seem to melt together and thus start telling a different story.

Whether this is successful or not can only be determined by the listener.

This mix is simply named after the podcast Soundwave. It is a happy coincidence that it literally starts with waves—sonically manipulated by Jos Smolders—and ends with the same waves morphing into the sound of a cheering crowd.

Different kinds of soundwaves are all around us, every moment. Sometimes we’re aware; most of the time, we are not. This mix (hopefully) shows that it can be rewarding to take a moment’s rest to really listen and let the sounds affect you.

Thanks to Joseph Aleo for inviting me!

Jos Smolders “Plate 7”
Mia Zabelka & Icostech “The Final Stop”
Robert Scott Thompson “Still The Syllables Of Water Whisper”
Charley van Veldhoven & Túrion “Hemellichaam IV (Henrik Meierkord Recycle)”
FM Einheit & Susie Green “Joyful Pleasure”
Joey Largent “Below Diorite Waters”
Barbara Ellison “De Auflaan de Pussychat”
Jana Winderen “The Listener”
Grace Ferguson “Barnumbirr”
C-drík “An Imaginary Place Inhabited By Those Who Are Asleep”
James Osland & Finn Kelvin “Things That Have Form Will Alway Disappear”
Daniel Thomas Freeman “Crawling Out Of The Void”
William Basinski “For Whom The Bell Tolls”
Morgen Würde “Mittsommer”
Biosphere “Stordjupta”
Randal Collier-Ford “Eyes Of The Temple (feat. Northumbria)”
Merope “Alma”
Space Whisper “Park Date”
Innesti “Dark Describes An Arc”
Joost Lijbaart “Twinkling Night”
Pinkcourtesyphone “Another Interior”
f5point6 “Natural Selection”
Andrew Heath “I Sleep Above The Forest”
Lustmord “Journey Of The Dead Man”
Bow Quintet feat. Aidan Baker “Bryanbaum Variation”
Aase Frejadóttir “Saying It”
James Rushford “Musica Callada, Book I – Angelico”
Nick Luscombe “Tokyo Spring Birdsong”
Akropolis Reed Quintet “Homage to Paradise Valley: I. Ghosts of Black Bottom”
Kate Carr “I Spotted Some Backyard Dancing”
Olivier Alary “Khaltoum”
Kazuya Nagaya “the Book Of Sunken Memory”
Jos Smolders “Plate 5”
A Winged Victory For The Sullen “Every Solstice & Equinox”

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SOUNDWAVE : 40 : FITZ GITLER

Today’s guest deejay is Fitz Gitler, and he has a beautiful mix to ease us into 2021.

I met Fitz when I asked Jason Randall Smith (listen to Jason’s mix here) who he knew would be interested in sharing a mix on SOUNDWAVE. Jason did not steer me wrong. Fitz is a musician, deejay, and designs sounds for theatrical productions, many of those in collaboration with director Tim Lee. He also creates under the name Techniken Defunkus or Techdef.

I’m particularly fond of this mix because it was the perfect soundtrack for an eight-hour wintery drive to Sacramento last week. Fitz’s mix had my tapping out rhythms on my steering wheel and grooving in my seat. Don’t be lulled by some of the jazz standards because there are plenty of surprises. More than once, I found myself scrambling to purchase albums featured on Fitz’s mix. As I write this I’m listening to Dan Tepfer’s album, Goldberg Variations/Variations, which is a delight.

If you love Fitz’s mix, and you will, check out his music on Bandcamp or his sets on Mixcloud.

Fitz has some words about his mix below.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Pavlo Storonsky AKA Tineidae.

See you then!

Fitz Gitler
*Photo credit: Cyndi Shattuck*

Twenty years ago, I met Jason Randall Smith behind the decks in a tiny bar in New York’s East Village, and music forged our friendship. I’m honored to be in his company and the full cast of mixes that Joseph has artfully assembled.

Jason and I were thrown together by our friend, EL Soundscraper, who I’ve known since junior high, but fortuitously reconnected with because of our shared love of music. Enrique (Soundscraper) called my tracks meditation music—not the sound, but because of how it functioned for me. This mix I created for SOUNDWAVE does that; it’s a sort of spirit guide through the insomniac thoughts of the small hours, and a kind of requiem too. This year has had no shortage of tragedy; there’s enough to go around.

I already loved music in college, but then I met Bill Hileman, aka Ronin Tengu, aka DJ Payce, aka Gandalf Punk. He gave me his world: hip hop, techno, ambient, jungle, acid jazz, funk, plenty of mischief, and more. He passed last month, too young, taken by cancer, not COVID. Bill is with me in every mix, laughing and needling me to keep searching. Too few experienced his true wealth of knowledge and love, but he influenced many, and his spirit lives on in his musical descendants.

It falls somewhere among the worlds of jazz and electronic music, but really it’s a sound design of sorts. I’m still exploring the loose idea “free-format” that I first witnessed in the middle of the night on college radio in the early ‘90s.

Techniken Defunkus “Pre-show for That Time”
Teebs “The Endless”
Colin Alexander “Bells and Strings”
Tom Richards “Minor Breach”
LV feat. Tigran Hamasyan “Hammers and Roses”
Techniken Defunkus “Ash Girl Post & Almost Nothing”
The Art Of Noise “Robinson Crusoe (downshift)”
Gabriella Swallow “Linear Construction (No. 5)”
Johnny Mbizo Dyani “Afrikan blues (excerpt)”
Aaron Novik “Ballroom of Lost Faith-Lost Dignity-LostSoul”
Rahsaan Roland Kirk “Haunted Feelings”
David Boykin Reads Sun Ra “The Space Age Cannot Be Avoided”
Buddy Peace “Day 138 – Been Glorious”
Jean Grae “BITS part 2 – The Fear”
Angel Bat Dawid “Transition East”
Daniel Carter, Brad Farberman, Billy Martin “I Guess Everything Is Happening As It Should”
Ill Considered “Retreat”
Coleman Hawkins “Hawk’s Variations, Part 1”
Dodo Marmarosa “Bopmatism”
Ahmad Jamal “Ahmad’s Blues”
Roy Eldridge “Echoes of Harlem”
Dan Tepfer “Improvisation 12 / obsessive”

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SOUNDWAVE : 36 : JOEL SHEARER

This week our guest deejay is Joel Shearer, an international and highly regarded session and touring musician, composer and producer based in Los Angeles, CA.

I met Joel through Carmen Rizzo when he was our guest deejay back back in July (check out Carmen’s mix here). Carmen’s mix was beautiful and as is my wont I asked Carmen who he knew personally that would be interested in participating in the show and he recommended Joel. I can’t thank Carmen enough for introducing me to Joel because we very much need to hear Joel’s mix.

If you’re new to SOUNDWAVE then you should know that I launched the show to help cope with the isolation of stress of COVID-19 and the stay at home orders back in March. The only thing that gave me solace was ambient, classical, instrumental and experimental music and I decided to share what I was listening to whoever else might need to hear it as well.

Here we are nine months later in the second wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths. It's going entirely as predicted. What I don’t think think anyone could have predicted is the absolute magnitude of our current administrations ineptness at handling the pandemic. Several vaccines to combat the virus have been developed at astounding speed. That's breathtaking. Equally breathtaking is that instead of the 300 million doses the administration had promised before the end of the year the plan is now to only distribute 35 to 40 million doses. We’re at the beginning of a second wave with over 288,000 deaths and there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel except that light is being blocked by an administration that seems to go out if its way to bungle the distribution of the vaccines.

When I began SOUNDWAVE there is no way I could have predicted these infuriating and crazy making responses to the pandemic by our current administration, which is why I, and maybe you, need to take comfort in Joel’s mix. It's exactly the kind of succor we need. I’m Listening to Joel’s mix as I write this and I find myself wrapping it around me like a cherished and well worn coat to keep me warm in the winter.

Joel has some words to share about today’s mix below but before we get to that I wanted let you know that guest deejay Robert Rich has released his new album, Neurogenesis, earlier this week.

Robert Rich's Neurogenesis album — Robert Rich’s *Neurogenesis* album

I’ve been listening to Robert’s music since last century when I heard I discovered him on the From Here To Tranquility Volume 2 compilation album. I later interviewed him and when I featured his live set on solipsistic NATION. I had the pleasure of finally meeting Robert face-to-face (at a safe and respectable six foot distance, of course) this summer while I was in Northern California and Robert was kind enough to play me a few tracks from Neurogenesis in his studio.

Robert started recording Neurogenesis in Spring of 2019 inspired by a lucid dream. Robert says Neurogenesis expresses optimism about the potential for human consciousness. At the start of pandemic lockdown in March he stopped working on Neurogenesis to record Offering to the Morning Fog because listeners were asking for something calm. He got back to work on Neurogenesis in June, and finished in late October. I’ve been listening to Neurogenesis all week and I’m glad Robert is able to share his album with the world.

You can hear more music from Robert in his mix for SOUNDWAVE here.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Christian Sager.

See you then!

Let’s hear from Joel about today's mix.

This playlist is intended to turn folks onto new music from known and unknown ambient artists.

Joseph August is new artist out of Los Angeles and a frequent guest for Secular Sabbath with Rhye, Diplo, Flume.

Clarice Jenson is best known for being the cellist for Max Richter’s Sleep amongst many others and an incredible solo artist in her own right.

“March” comes from my second release from my latest album, Hours, available on all digital outlets.

Orpheo McCord is the founding member of Ed Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, this song is off Orpheo’s first solo release. Epic ambient marimba beauty.

Naneum is an ambient artist out of New York, who’s played for many artists including Angus and Julia Stone and Passenger.

Jónsi is a member of Sigur Rós and composer and “Boy” is from Alex Somers’ second release.

Joseph August “A Soft Reflect”
Clarice Jensen “Final”
Joel Shearer “March”
Orpheo McCord “As Within”
Naneum “Accretion”
Jónsi and Alex “Boy”

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SOUNDWAVE : 35 : MELORMAN

On today’s show our guest deejay is Melorman.

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 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.

He has released music on various labels such as Sun Sea Sky Productions, SymbolicInteraction, Archaic Horizon, Summer Rain Recordings, Shima Records, IVDT, CCT Records, Sixteen Steps Records, and Envizagae Records.

Aiora “Cinnamon”
Melorman “Eliquis”
Hidden Orchestra “Palace End”
naono “Untitled Merrow”
Purl “Seraphine Tears”
Porya Hatami “Fen (Segue Remix)”
Illuvia “Summer Cloud”

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SOUNDWAVE : 27 : JONATHAN AMMONS

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.

Jonathan has some words about today’s mix below.

Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be Axel Arturo Barceló.

See you then!

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.

Jonathan Ammons “Wishful Thinking”
Tim Hecker “Chimeras”
Wojciech Golczewski “Abner’s Wake”
Jonathan Ammons “Open Eyes”
Ben Goldberg “Demonic Possession is 9/10ths the Law”
Oliver Patrice Weder “Sol’s Lullaby”
Ian William Craig “Mountains Astray”
Goldmund “The Flag of Columbia Shall Float O’er Us Still”
Villages “Life Expectancy”
Jonathan Ammons “Dead Leaves”

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SOUNDWAVE : 16 : SHAD MARSH

Our guest deejay on today’s SOUNDWAVE is Shad Marsh, who hosts 2000 Years on 103.3 AshevilleFM.

This is a rare instance where I don’t know out guest deejay at all. My good friend, Steven Howard, introduced us when I first launched SOUNDWAVE. Steven’s taste in music is impeccable and when he suggested Shad as a guest deejay I said yes without a moment’s hesitation. And I was right it trust Steven because Shad’s mix is singular. On his radio show Shad explores the genres of experimental, freeform, jazz and psychedelic music and while all of that informs today’s show the mix also like a foley’s wet dream. Shad’s mix feels extremely personal and takes you on an unexpected journey.

I’m going to wrap things up because I blew out my knee last week and as a result I’m way behind on chores. Enjoy Shad’s mix and he encourages you to experience it with headphones.

Join us next week when out guest deejay will be Charles Hazlewood.

Take care!

Daniel Bachman “Car”
Israel Martínez “Mi Vida”
Issac Shankler “Future Feelings”
Yarn/Wire “Quartz and Feldspar”
Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille “I Wish I Didn’t Dream”
Gamelan Son of Lion “Sleeping Braid”
connect_icut “Longing Forest”

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SOUNDWAVE : 10 : PLANET BOELEX

Well, that was a week.

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.”

—James Baldwin

Snorri Hallgrimsson “Chasing The Present”
Digitonal “Autumn Round (Planet Boelex remix)”
Mikael Fyrek “Bau”
Data Rebel “Collisions”
Mosaik “Heart Racer ft. Maria Seger”
Krister Linder “Other Skies”

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

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek