Your favourite song at the moment..

[tartarusrussell]

Niney Blood & Fire - YouTube

Niney the Observer's wonderful "Blood and Fire"

[tartarusrussell]

Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks #### Off - YouTube

Short and sweet...;)

(Isn't it odd how inappropriate the design of the smilies is for TLO?)

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Soukesian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcspR0yCRLY

. . fades in gradually, as dear old John Peel used to say

I don't know, it just makes me feel like a rum riddled Hope Hodgson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eux2qnnslac

Mark S.

[hypnogeist]

When I do yardwork - and I've done it for years, it's my primary source of generating $ - I carry around an mp3 player packed with songs, to keep me sane. After a short while, I quickly realized, the inherently repetitive nature of pruning trees and pulling weeds, coupled with the utter lack of imagination required to collect animal turds or rake leaves, in addition to any number of similar jobs (you'd be surprised at the endless abyss of drudgery my clients are perpetually thinking up for me; I've become convinced at least 40% of the tasks are solely designed for no other reason than to try my patience), have the potential to bring about a kind of zombification of one's thought patterns. The antidote is several hundred tracks set to play in a different random sequence each time I work.

There are the heavy metal, rock, classical, and blues tracks, mixed in with a bunch of video game and horror sound clips for that extra bit of inspirational/humorous/nostalgic accent. But the bulk of the tracks are ambient pieces. These are ideal for warding off the madness of tedium because their structure, relative to that of most other kinds of music, is often capricious and ethereal, more difficult for the mind to latch on to and remember, and thereby sap away the novelty. The longer the track, the better.

The best ambient tracks fequently appear to be hideously repetitive like, well, yardwork (or my bombastic writting patterns). Yet when you listen to them closely (the ambient tracks, not my writing) a rich depth of subtle layering, flow alterations, and additions/subtractions of sound elements becomes apparent. Great stuff for creating an entertaining mental landscape while keeping a mind yoked to a grueling task entertained. I still occaisionally discover new nuances in ambient tracks of this sort that I first heard years ago.

Here are a few choice pieces I recall listening to earlier today while chopping up a giant pyrocantha bush that succumbed to this year's exceptionally harsh winter:

Ancient Campfire - Biosphere

YouTube (Short URL)

Houses on the Hill - Biosphere

YouTube (Short URL)

Hubble - HIA

YouTube (Short URL)

These youtube recordings aren't the best. The videos that go with the songs are pretty lame too (except for Ancient Campfire, which has a bit of interesting eerie imagery). For a much better listening experience find some high-quality mp3s and listen with a quality set of headphones in a pitch-black, warm room in a comfortable easy chair.

[hypnogeist]

@ tartarusrussell I don't think The Dead Kennedys will ever become a favorite band of mine, but I couldn't resist grinning and tapping my foot along with Nazi Punks #### Off for some reason. Cheers!

[tartarusrussell]

Quote Originally Posted by hypnogeist

...But the bulk of the tracks are ambient pieces...

I could never see the point of ambient music when I was younger, but in the last ten years I've realised how wonderfully atmospheric it can be, and how well it accompanies reading and writing. The Biosphere track reminds me of Labradford who are wonderful. I'm going to have to listen to some more of their work....
Stars of the Lid are probably on my turntable most often, though. I've seen them a couple of times live and their sound is really quite stunning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtZwr-adVnY

Mark S.

[hypnogeist]

Quote Originally Posted by tartarusrussell

I could never see the point of ambient music when I was younger, but in the last ten years I've realised how wonderfully atmospheric it can be....

When I was a kid, and by 'kid' I mean roughly 20 and under, I wasn't even aware of ambient as a music genre. Sure, Brain Eno coined the term in the early 70s and there were others creating ambient back then, but it wasn't until fairly recently, probably something like 12 to 15 years ago, when it started getting a lot more exposure. The first ambient group I discovered was Biosphere and I took to them immediately in a big way, yet I was already over 30 at the time. So I don't know if I would have taken to them when I was younger or not. What you say does make sense, though - one must exercise a degree of patience in order to appreciate ambient. And what is patience if not the nemesis of impetuous youth?

Quote Originally Posted by tartarusrussell

...I'm going to have to listen to some more of their work....

Yeah, definitely check em out. Much of the ambient genre oeuvre is junk, imo, while a handful of groups produce stuff worth listening to. Although there are many Biosphere tracks I don't much care for, they (or rather I should be saying 'he' - Biosphere is just one guy, Geir Jenssen) have the best cool-to-sucks ratio of any ambient artist I know. Some of his material is really out there, but it usually interesting and listenable. Two more Biosphere tracks I especially like are "Path Leading to the High Grass", for which I've not been able to locate an online video, and this little unassuming surreal gem:

Dissolving Clouds - Biosphere

YouTube (Short URL)

btw, unless you are into drones or extreme minimalism, stay away from Biosphere's album "Autour De La Lune". Complete waste of time. Ok, I can't bring myself to leave B on a bad note, so here's the superb "Cimmerian Shaft", a collaboration between B and HIA. This piece is richly sinister, and it has a great sense of build and pacing. They should have called it "Slow Elevator to Gehenna" or "Descent into Gigerland" XD

Cimmerian Shaft - Biosphere & HIA

YouTube (Short URL)

Quote Originally Posted by tartarusrussell

Stars of the Lid are probably on my turntable most often, though.

I agree, SOTL are excellent. A couple of their tracks I like almost as much as B's best stuff. Another quality ambient group that does a good job of subtley evoking strange and surreal moods is Loscil. Seems like they were probably heavily influenced by SOTL:

Chinook - Loscil

YouTube (Short URL)

[sundog]

A fine little ditty for all you stalkers out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw9kqoMIuYM

"As the wind blows through the trees, it sometimes seems to whisper.."