{"id":4331,"date":"2022-01-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephaleo.com\/blog\/?p=4331"},"modified":"2022-01-30T11:55:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T19:55:48","slug":"soundwave-96-harrold-roeland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josephaleo.com\/blog\/soundwave-96-harrold-roeland\/","title":{"rendered":"SOUNDWAVE : 96 : HARROLD ROELAND"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s guest deejay is Harrold Roeland<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Harrold was our guest deejay back in December 2020. His mix<\/a> spanned the gamut from Biosphere<\/a> to John Coltrane<\/a>. It was so gorgeous that I asked him if he would be so kind to grace us with another one. Today\u2019s show is equally breath taking and the range is just as broad and unexpected yet some somehow manages to be cohesive.<\/p>\n\n

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<\/a>, and hosts the radio show Sensenta<\/a>, a musical serial, at the Concertzender<\/a> every Sunday evening that explores many of these themes.<\/p>\n\n

Oh, and Harrold also shares his daily haiku+picture on Instagram, which you can experience here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Special thanks again to Kirk Markarian<\/a> of Neuro\u2026 No Neuro<\/a> who introduced me to Harrold (listen to Kirk\u2019s mix for SOUNDWAVE here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n

Harrold has some words about today\u2019s show below.<\/p>\n\n

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Robert Koch<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

See you then.<\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Harrold
Harrold Roeland<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A slightly moody mix. I couldn\u2019t help but point to the current affairs in Afghanistan, which are much on my mind, as is the death of Raymond Murray Schafer<\/a>. Such an admirable composer and thinker, such a loss for the music world. So there\u2019s a reference to today in the description. I don\u2019t mind if that has lost its urgency by the time this mix sees the light of day, but just so you know it\u2019s there. The soundscape weeps today.<\/p>\n\n

Toby Wren<\/a> is an Australian guitarist who has an album called The Carnatic Jazz Experiment<\/a><\/em>. As the title implies, it heavily uses Southern Indian Carnatic Rhythms<\/a>. I think he\u2019s a genius and this album deserves to be much more widely heard than it is now. The album is strictly acoustic, so the electronic echoes added in the end are my own, better to segue into the next track.<\/p>\n\n

Lotto<\/a> are from Poland, a band playing very minimalistic Post-Rock. Drones with drums. Once, for Sensenta, my weekly radio show at the Concertzender, I needed a variation on one of their tracks we played the week before. That\u2019s the one you hear, the original but with little echo\u2019s and delays added. I think it makes the track more hypnotic than it already is, and hope they will forgive me for messing around with their work. Both the original and this version appeared on Sensenta, and you can find their original version on their excellent album Elite Feline<\/a><\/em>. If you like this music, check out their album VV<\/a><\/em> too. It\u2019s a gem.<\/p>\n\n

To add some depth<\/a>, Lull<\/a> fades into the background around the 18 minute mark. Low frequencies galore. Though used for effect and drowned out here, Mick Harris\u2019s album, Like A Slow River<\/a><\/em>, is a beauty when it comes to dark, noisy ambient. Music like a haunted transistor radio.<\/p>\n\n

Kloob<\/a> hails from Spain. Synthesizer-based ambient is what he\u2019s good at, and he seems to be getting better at it each year. This is an oldie, from his album Deep Emotional Phases<\/a><\/em>, a remix found on the album as a bonus track.<\/p>\n\n

Martin St\u00fcrtzer<\/a> is next. I ran into his work through the Concertzender. A synthesizer wizard from Germany, he knows just how to twiddle those knobs and connect those modules to make splendid colourful textures. This is one of his more minimalist works, taken from, at the time of writing, a brand new album.<\/p>\n\n

Martin St\u00fcltzer\u2019s track turns out to combine well with another new work: Loscil<\/a>\u2019s \u201cLux\u201d<\/a>, from the album Clara<\/a><\/em>. I mixed the two together on the radio the day prior to making this mix, and thought that move deserved repeating here. Loscil joins the mix from Canada. Pure blissful ambient.<\/p>\n\n

Sedibus<\/a> are The Orb<\/a>\u2019s Alex Paterson<\/a>, and former Orb member Tony Falconer<\/a>. Tony was around for the acclaimed album Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld<\/a><\/em>. These two men meeting again in the studio, decades later, was the birth of a marvelous album. Classic Orb stuff, but from 2021.<\/p>\n\n

And on to the final track.<\/p>\n\n

The time of writing is 15 august 2021. In the wonderful country of Afghanistan the situation seems to be going completely down the drain. The news is worrying and hard to drive out of one\u2019s mind. Thinking about what could happen to innocent people, especially girls and women, is enough to give you a knot in your stomach. Anouar Brahem<\/a>\u2019s work Improbable Day<\/a><\/em> feels right. He is a famous Ud player from Tunesia. During the Arab Spring, he was home and couldn\u2019t believe what was happening around him. He then wrote a full album about that. His opening track is our closing track for this mix. Yes, the context is much different than that of Afghanistan, but the music is fit for an Improbable Day.<\/p>\n\n