Fresh from his recent trip in Korea, Anton Salvador documented his trip sonically, capturing a mood somewhat less frenetic than one would usually expect when you think of the country, especially its music industry (which he clarified prior to releasing the track). ‘Planet #2’ is – no pun intended – spacey. Its drifting and soothing quality makes you think of old, charming villages, artisan workshops, and traditional comforts from this side of the world, away from the bustling and commercialized spotlight of Korea’s capital, Seoul. At least, it’s how the track’s story appeals to me. Nevertheless, this new offering from Anton Salvador’s side project as The After-School Special has culminated an experience and has shared it in a way that we can see what he saw, taste what he tasted, and feel what he felt.
Tag: ambient
TRACK: ‘Pupa’ – Similarobjects
Similarobjects is known for the wide range of textures, moods, and ambiances incorporated in his sound. While his signature style is firmly embedded in each track he releases, one will find a varying, or rather, evolving dimension, which is precisely (or coincidentally) denoting his newest track: Pupa.
In here, Jorge explores the symbiosis of sounds that attributes to changes. Like how an organism of any kind – especially people – reaches the point where progress is essential for growth. Same as how the track became fully realized at the end, the dynamics shift from quaint to exhilarating and vice-versa – accentuated with percussions and ambient soundscapes. Also released on his birthday, it’s rather symbolic on his journey as a musician and as a whole person. And he’s taking us with him through his craft.
MIXTAPE: Knives & Butterflies (For Writing)
Tracklist
- (Hymn For) The Greatest Generation – Caspian
- Don’t Stay Here – Frames
- Reset # 1 – Clarence Garcia
- Ivered Ago – Earthmover
- Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean – Explosions In The Sky
- Ekki Mukk – Sigur Ros
- Holding Your Absence – Hammock
- They Move On Tracks Of Never-Ending Light – This Will Destroy You
- I Drive – Cliff Martinez
- Ouroboros – Oneohtrix Point Never
- Forgiveness – spazzkid
- I Miss You More – Ta-Ku f/ Atu
- Cloud – Flamingosis
- Michael’s Cloak (callonit) – similarobjects
- Meds – SWVZY
- An Ending (Ascent) – Brian Eno
Tracklist
- Entombed – Deftones
- What You Want – Bombay Bicycle Club
- The Eraser – Thom Yorke
- Goodbye – toe f/ Toki Asako
- This Is The Last Time – The National
- White Mystery – Minus the Bear
- Stay, So Far Away, So Close – U2
- Sparks – Coldplay
- Slow Dancing In The Burning Room – John Mayer
- Bloodstream – Stateless
- Prototype – OutKast
- Love More – Sharon Van Etten
- Come As You Are (Nirvana cover) – Yuna
- Juicy (Notorious B.I.G cover) – Emily Wells
- One Of Those Summer Days – Rhye
- Closer – Goapele
- Diggin’ On You – Iman Europe f/ starRo
- Two People – Flamingosis
Back with a double mixtape for everyone! Now, I do a fair bit of writing now that I have more time in my hands. I do more reading nowadays and whenever I get tired, I go on the Internet to look for new (and old) music, mostly from my SoundCloud feed (fantastic!). I rarely write without listening to music. I actually listen to anything that lets my brain hock up some ideas. Mostly I start with a lot of instrumentals: post-rock and electronica. Then I proceed listening to rock and mostly keys and strings. When I get the brain juices flowing, I mellow down with lo-fi, ambient, and anything calming. Same with when I edit and finished writing, which is what I call my phantom-cigarette phase. I used to smoke occasionally before, and I remember the calm it gives me when I’m strung out. Music does that for me right now.
The mixtape is called Knives & Butterflies. It’s divided into two: Butterflies include songs with vocals. I listen to it when I already know what to write and just mentally organizing my thoughts. I get additional ideas from the general vibe of these songs. Whether it’s personal or professional writing, I get down on it using these. Knives are all instrumental songs. When my head’s all blank, I draw inspiration from the soundscapes. It’s important to listen to it in order (see tracklist) to get the perfect vibe. I swear I rarely get my writing done if I don’t have my iPod. I still meet people who don’t listen to music as much, mostly because they don’t know where to start. Same goes for those wanted to compile a playlist they want to use and don’t know which songs to listen to. So here.
Special thanks to local artists who gave me permission to include their songs in Knives: Earthmover, Jorge Wieneke (similarobjects), Mark Redito (spazzkid), and Clarence Garcia (tide/edit).
LINKS:
RAVE: ‘Perfect Dream’ – Mokhov
I might as well start a daily work playlist, given my current job now that gives me a privilege of working at my own pace – which means I relatively have an ample amount of time to engage on my music-hunting. To be honest, I do this out of want, not out of need.
No such thing as too much music.
I opted to navigate through Bandcamp because SoundCloud takes more time to scour on singles, rather than albums. Besides, sometimes, one Bandcamp album stream is already enough for me (EP or not). And I try to discover more artists depending on sound than name (I’m bad at names anyway).
So for Tuesday, I decide to mellow down a little bit, because whatever I do, my mind aches for soothing audio therapy. Here’s an ambient electronica compilation from Las Vegas-based producer Mokhov.
RAVE: ‘Tales From The Night Sky’ – Stumbleine
The beauty of being a night owl is finding great music in the middle of the night when everything is toned down. The hustle of mornings vacuumed into a temporary halt, giving way to 4, 5-hour séance.
If you’ve been reading my blog for some time now, or came across any of my music reviews, then you have an idea what kind of music I connect to the most: sparse, emotionally laden tracks employed with a wide berth of calm ambiance. So-called bedroom projects that were in fact, got me into writing about them. I try to fill in words they obviously don’t lack.
So I just went and typed ‘rnb’ on Bandcamp’s search field, which brought me to UK-based producer Stumbleine. There were only a fairly decent amount of articles written about him, some of which contain phrases such as ‘atmospheric electronica for the climax-chasing comedown’, ‘fantastic, large and engulfing’, and ‘a journey borne of a love of different styles’.
And they were right. Also, people who look down to dubstep artists might want to reconsider. Stumbleine is one-third of dubstep act ‘Swarms’. However, his stint as Stumbleine focuses on the warmer, more delicate side of his digital/electronic musicianship.
His most recent release, Tales From The Night Sky, is a two-track album loaded with sensuality and ironically, innocence. Combining elements of post-rock and chillwave, Tales From The Night Sky channels a hint of Hammock and Cashmere Cat.
A thing of reverence, if you ask me.
FREE Download: ‘Beginner’s Dose’ – Similar Objects
Jorge Wieneke is a very busy man.
His most recent (and first one released in disc format) album, Tilde~, is only a few months old, but a follow-up has been released yesterday on Bandcamp.
Entitled Beginner’s Dose, Jorge Wieneke compiled 10 tracks inspired by 8-bit video games popular in the past two decades. The kid in all of us never gets old, I suppose.
This album is available for free download (generous, as always!) a “small token of my gratitude for keeping me going on this musical journey,” and “for all those whose [sic] been supporting me since the beginning.”
Early favorites include ‘Pouring.Floating (with Bin5)’, ‘Nephilim’, ‘Cosmic Download’, and ‘Rendezvous(secret)’. The rest is like a trip to a 2D Nintendo game of our childhood.
Stream the album:
ALBUM: ‘Tilde~’ – Similar Objects
A prolific artist gains merit not only by the quantity of work he has produced over time. He is also being challenged by a higher standard the moment his work becomes available for the public’s purview. We can never stress enough that more doesn’t mean better, and less doesn’t mean worse. The amount can be overwhelming to both the artist and his audience. The response might be positive, negative, or worse, passive. The pressure looms and weighs him down at times, whether he accepts it or not. Listeners cannot be treated as a non-market, only factored in as a measure of popularity, because this perception, let’s be honest, is demeaning. It’s like writing on a diary, keeping your innermost thoughts to yourself, locking them away for no other living soul to find. Music doesn’t work that way. It is shared, and while it may not appeal to everyone’s taste, then who’s to dismiss it as failure? Pleasing everyone is not the goal, because if it is, then I should end this short discussion right now.
For some though, a good exposure can mean finding your footing and working from it. Along the way, people start to listen. People who, after spending their time on binge-listening to countless audio files tagged as ‘electronic music’ all over the Internet, finally find artists they deem to fit the same altitude as theirs. Simply put, someone whose music they can relate to, not just for the next two minutes, but possibly, in the long haul. With Jorge Wieneke’s massive repertoire of work, ranging from sampling old records to his multifaceted mood of suave electronica, there is a beat for every occasion – all evidently drawn from inspiration, or even the absence of. Just like a line from one of the tracks in his new record tells us, “It has nothing to do with obligation, it’s pure symbiosis. It’s similar objects.” Whether it connotes or denotes his moniker, it says a lot.
After an impressive 20 releases (excluding his collaborative efforts with other artists and his RnB project, Nouvul), it seems like Jorge Wieneke has no one else to surpass but himself. The themes vary from brooding and deep-set (ShiFt(Age), organic and ambient (The Limits of Thought, Acquainted with the Light, Finding Astral Lovers, OverSoulUrgy), dramatic and reflective (inner temple, inLike (eve), DreamSpell), to a nod to his roots (synchronicity is the norm, Cosmic Stillness, no/noir, Vril Virgoa Virgata). It’s almost safe to say, he had everything covered. But not quite. In a previous interview, Jorge dubbed Tilde~ as a “whole creature in itself,” something born and nurtured out of a collective feeling of longing and hopelessness – and it speaks in volumes. Before we conclude that this is a sullen and depressing record, it is not. Interestingly enough, this sense of hopelessness and longing worked its charm well enough to this release, allowing that energy to take a form of its own: tragic and beautiful. Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher, wrote that, “The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain.”
Tilde~, in its most vulnerable moments, tells us the story of being trapped, while being in an open space. It’s like being surrounded by an overwhelming amount of elegance and arresting beauty, but the only comfort it can give is to resound what disturbs us from the inside. Thus, it frees us. And consequently, it lets the yearning and aching turn into tangible objects, beings of their own, like how “Transformation of Happiness”, “A Day of Singularity”, and “Delograft 5” (a favorite) tell us, hollow, glitchy, and and very much alive. “Belly”, “Infinite Love Is The Only Truth, Everything Else Is An Illusion”, and “Blue Resonant Storm” however, preserve the nature of his emotions, of what were initially there. The chants, chimes, and elemental beats serve as the landscape of his plea for something, or someone. Evidently, there’s no scrimping in the technical side of the production. Or singing, for that matter. “Licheness”, a lilting and spirited track, employs snippets of this record’s philosophies, in words. August Wahh of neosoul outfit, Chocolate Grass, who also fronts Nouvul with him, is an easy favorite in “Sasquasohuh”, a soulful number with plenty of groove to spare. Another favorite, “K(no)w More”, proves how much adept Similar Objects is, not only as an individual, skillful artist, but a producer with an ear for musicality. “MT” and “W8” are extensions of his work in Finding Astral Lovers andThe Limits of Thought, a display of thoughtful interpretation and expression of ambient sonics.
If memories are considered as imprints in the brain, music serves as a time capsule that carries feelings and memories. They are not exact and infallible in nature, but it allows us to take a glimpse to someone’s life and may even help us understand and interpret things more than words can aid us. This is how, as Tilde~ succeeds in telling us, we are connected, symbiotic, similar to each other.
TRACK: ‘In Tides’ – Kyle Quismundo
Here’s a piano-heavy track that speaks to you. Yolanda Moon’s Kyle Quismundo teamed up with Miggy Concepcion in a ‘spur of the moment’ piece that delivers dramatic soundscapes that paint evocative images that are borderline cinematic, to some extent. Towards the middle, we are treated to tinkling chimes with the slightest hint of rasp and white noise, lightening the load and wrapping up the story in a supple note. This thoughtful track pulls you into a meditative trance, pondering on life’s hidden secrets and silent victories. They come in waves, you see.
TRACK: ‘秋を感じる風’ – Skymarines
秋を感じる風, according to Google translate, means ‘Wind to feel the fall’, which of course, makes half-sense. Then again, it doesn’t matter as much, when Skymarines just captured the mood of this afternoon. The thing about ambient music, as many of us hears it, is the light-handed quality that focuses on the details that cover the interior and exterior environment. In this case, today’s gray, but mellow weather, with the slightest hint of sunlight and the aftermath of July drizzle. No fancy workups, just soft synths and lithe beats. That’s how I hear and feel it, at least. But that’s the beauty of her music, the kind that is open to interpretation. There’s the ‘wind’, the ‘feel’, and a bit of ‘fall’ in it even. So maybe, Google translate does make sense, after all.
PLAYLIST: Underwater
From June to probably until the latter part of the year, all the humidity and sweat and rage that summer brought upon us will be doused (pun, pun, pun) with tunes that will either trigger your sap center or your loins. I don’t mind. This, and the excuse to lump with several layers of clothing and eat thrice as much is the best part of the rainy season. And lookie here, a conductor to write!
I love this list of 15 Songs That Make You Feel Like You’re Underwater put up by Pigeons and Planes earlier this year. If you have been reading my tweets or posts, you know I have an unfaltering romance for electronic music (almost as equal as my love for hip hop – well, basically instrumental music that kicks ass). I’ve compiled all the songs to make it easier to stream and hopefully (if ever I become as industrious as today) make my own.
1. Yuna, enough said. Also, check out another favorite, Live Your Life, which I discovered through playing Tap Tap Revenge 4!
2. Hip hop-electro marriage.
3. Always had a crush on Ellie Goulding’s vocals (and locks). This cover of The Weeknd, remixed by Xaphoon Jones is just melismatic.
4. Ryan Hemsworth’s one credible remix artist (at least that’s how he is being categorized, and not for a bad reason). Snobs (who are mostly just hacks) who insist that remixes are some sort of inferior type of music should drown in this. Oh, and did I mention this is a Shlohmo remix? Just listen.
5. FlyLo, of course. Genre-bending FlyLo.
6. Tom Krell is like Triton of this list.
7. Lapalux has been a consistent player in the remix (yes, another one) game and in this particular rework of Breton’s ‘The Commission’, his aquatic centre remix just molded beautifully with the original.
8. The original is a painfully stellar indie pop that’s almost unrecognizable after Perseus’s handwork. Jessie Ware’s powerful vocals glinted against a more somber and soulful arrangement (makes me think of a lost siren).
9. Ocean floor power.
10. XXYYXX (he/she has to come up with another monicker, stat) is described as ‘one of the leaders in the surge of bedroom producers finding their way into the mainstream’. This one makes me forget my name as much as I forget how to spell his name.
11. *sigh*
12. Like you’re sleeping on the ocean floor and hearing unnamed water creatures hauntingly singing you to sleep.
13. Xanax sonics.
14. Cinematic and heavenly.
15. One of my favorites. We need some underwater love, too.
Photo from monday-special.com
DECIBAWL 