connexion: the selector

Something new that’s been floating my boat. Just disembodied voices.

Download: Grouper - “Second Skin / Zombie Wind”
Buy the Album: Grouper—Way Their Crept

Rarities, Vol. 5

Scarce work by the drone ensemble of Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk.

Download: Mirror - “Nights 1″
Buy the Album (good luck): Mirror—Nights

Rarities, Vol. 4

Still waiting for an industrious record label to reissue these fine works.

Download: :Zoviet*France: - “They’re Eating the Passengers”
Buy the Album (good luck): :Zoviet*France:—Misfits, Loony Tunes and Squalid Criminals

Rarities, Vol. 3

Absolute classic reimaginings of Chapterhouse’s Blood Music LP by the sorely missed Global Communication duo.

Rarities, Vol. 2

Futuristic techno by the hiveminds behind B12. I wish somebody would reissue all of the B12 Records.

Rarities, Vol. 1

For those who missed it in ‘99.

I’ve been listening to music during sleep for as long as I can remember.

Long before I ever discovered there was such a thing as “ambient music,” or even music specifically intended to be used in a passive or atmospheric role, I played music to help the veil of sleep fall around me. When I was a child I used to play classical music stations I’d recorded on cassette to help me sleep. Later, I would record quiet passages from rock or folk music I liked onto cassettes that I could play before going to bed—DIY sampling, it could be considered, I suppose. I also enjoyed playing books on cassette at low volumes before slumber—the droning of a man or woman’s voice was often enough to aid the passage to a little death for the night. And, before any of this, there was the soothing tones of a humidifier’s engine, a constant companion to my sick bed, and a long-ago machinery that played songs I’d never heard before, all hidden inside the hiss and moan of the motor.

It wasn’t until the early nineties when I discovered real ambient music suited for the purpose of lying down and listening. It felt finally natural to take to my bed after starting the CD player and allowing the soft music to carry my mind forth for a while until sleep took hold. This mix, That Beautiful Land of Nod, is the product of over twelve years of “field research” in ambient sleep music. All of the selections, new and old, on these two discs, are pieces of music I have personally played in the times before and during sleep. They are also favorites of my wife, and devoid of anything outwardly spooky, so rest easy if you, like her, have an aversion to such things. Each track is special to me, these soothing zones, as they have not only brought me hours of comforted sleep, but also tantalizing, never-lasting minutes of wild and wonderful imagery in those moments before unconsciousness occurs. Each track maps a route across my consciousness over twelve years of sleep listening.

It is my honest hope that this becomes the mix you never fully listen to—if you are at all like me, you’ll be asleep by track five or six every time. So, please, draw the shades, relax, pleasant dreams….

That Beautiful Land of Nod—Disc One (1:10:33)
1. “Seascape” (edit) by Robert Rich from Trances/Drones
2. “When the Morning Light Exits” by Koda from Movements
3. “Wave and Sepia Wire” by Scott Solter from One River
4. “Mist” by Thom Brennan from Mist
5. “The Sky Below” by Jeffrey Fayman and Robert Fripp from A Temple in the Clouds
6. “Noodle #1″ by MLO from Io
7. “Ambient to be Here” by Heavenly Music Corporation from In a Garden of Eden
8. “The Art of Dream” (edit) by Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue from 2350 Broadway 2
9. “Soma 1″ (edit) by Klaus Wiese from Soma
10. “Queen’s Road Cemetery - 28th March 2005″ by Rameses III from Matanuska
11. “Wind on Wind” by Fripp & Eno from Evening Star
12. “Stratos” by Jonn Serrie from And the Stars Go with You

That Beautiful Land of Nod—Disc Two (1:08:23)
1. “Dx-Snth” by Jochem Paap from Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 2
2 “The Color of Wind 1″ by Jason Sloan from Still
3. “Dark Mist, Rain” by Sam Rosenthal & VidnaObmana from Terrace of Memories
4. “Crimsworth” (edit) by Bill Nelson from Crimsworth
5. “Surrender” (edit) by James Johnson from Surrender
6. “#19″ (edit) by Aphex Twin from Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2
7. “Vitamin K” (edit) by Rod Modell & Michael Mantra from Sonic Continuum
8. “Autocaz” by Ruxpin from Midnight Drive
9. “Spheres” by Never Known from On the Edge of Forever
10. “Let the Nightsky Envelope Us” by Oöphoi from Hymns to a Silent Sky
11. “Through the Void” by Mathias Grassow from The Fragrance of Eternal Roses
12. “The Ghost Ship” (edit) by Aloof Proof from Expo Two: Piano Text
13. “Approaching Silence” (edit) by David Sylvian from Approaching Silence
14. “Towards the Blue” by Steve Roach from Quiet Music

Strange bedfellows, I know.

When I listened to the Pioulard I posted, and spoke with Jessica, I was reminded of the Ocean Blue, a great band from Pennsylvania from the sunny, good time before grunge was played on the radio. I used to hear stories about the band when I lived in PA, from people who knew them, that strange small-town mentality included the local indie band who got a record deal, I guess. A few years earlier, I remember that it was my birthday, and my mother took me out to dinner (where was my father? always a good question), and she bought me Cerulean (on cassette!), which probably paved the way for me to love Pioulard somehow. Such a lush sound they had. This track is a Smiths cover (obviously) and recorded live. It’s taken from an ep in my wife’s considerable record collection.

Then there is Death in June. So much emotionally tied up with them for me. They were the single most intimidating band I can think of, for me, to this day. It’s the imagery, I think. I was so sure they were Nazis, and, before the internet, there was no way of knowing. Their records were impossible to find (I knew of only one store who carried them). But, oh, so seductive, nevertheless. It was a relief to find, even though most of their music wasn’t to my taste, that their tactics were pure button-pushing, that Douglas P. was gay, and that his music is almost painfully earnest, rather theatrical, and, oddly enough, sweet. There is a purity in it, to me, because he is just doing what he does. But, What Ends when the Symbols Shatter? was certainly one of the most important records in my life. It’s hard to explain why, and this doesn’t feel like the venue anyway. It’s just lovely and good, to me. Despite the masks and the uniforms and the trumpets and tympani, he just seems like one of the “good guys.” I’ve been revisiting it lately and it still holds power and sway over me, this strange emotion, and who knows where it can come from.

Download: The Ocean Blue - “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (live)”
Buy the Album: The Ocean Blue - Peace and Light ep

Download: Death in June - “The Giddy Edge of Light”
Buy the Album: Death in June - But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?

I’m not sure why I can tolerate Japanese hippies, but this is like the best music in the world to me.

I take a strange sort of glee in posting this track. It is definitely where my head was at between, say 1995 and 1997. It’s music that I can’t believe anybody got away with playing, or making, or hearing. And yet, playing it here today, it seems still seductive, a primal sexuality. There is something undeniable here, for me. It is facile and yet it works, the strange samples and the glossolalia.

Splinter Test was one of Genesis P-Orridge’s side-projects, and it is a “winner,” as you might expect from the Benny Hill of industrial music. I looked at his profile at the Discogs website, and I see he now has a pair of breasts. Oh Gen. Your weirdness is like a heroism to me, and I thank whatever you believe in today that people like you can exist.

This just reminds me of a certain time that we will never have again, that I probably never had in the first place, but there is still a little black spot of this in me.

Because the sun cannot last….

I knew something had changed inside when I found I had fallen in love with this song. It’s so patently not-me.

Anyway, it reminds of elderly Tolkien cartoons and grainy footage of snow drifts from long ago, not to mention that “patient virtues” have never been mine, either.

Today was the day the blackbirds come, a wide, thin sheet of them descending on the yard, blanketing the grass for a half hour or so. My wife had never seen this; I often forget that there are so many hidden benefits of working at home. Hundreds of them, all on the ground, in the tree out back, shuffling through the leaves I never raked, hundreds in the air, careening on and on, around and around. They love the gutters of homes, they love the trees where no squirrels live. They help each other, I noticed this morning, as a few pecked seeds from the branches into the waiting beaks of their brothers below. In the sun, they are hardly fuliginous, but, rather, that black that carries more colors, the shiny greens and purples of the sun in them. They come and come and come, and they are gone very quickly, that momentary black mood that you cannot remember until it returns again.

When you listen like I do, like I assume you do.

Do you hear the windshield wipers and the ocean at once? Is that just happening inside of me alone? Yes, yes, I believe that it is, inside this car, this man-made thing, deep and warm. I have no proof of otherwise.

New Andrew Chalk project.

It’s amazing: all the things I know that just aren’t so.

This one’s for all the hearts who feel differently in the morning, however long it takes for dawn to rise. (Wait for the words inside this one.)

Remember the Selector?

Remember this band?

I think it’s only fair that I dedicate this song to Jessica, who I know will love it. Especially considering the time of year.

There are so many stories tied to so many songs. I hardly have time to write even a few of them.

This one is for November 26, 1994 and all that went with it.

“A hallucinatory voyage through imaginary tribal lands.”

Tracklist:
1. “Light By Initiation” by Alio Die from Under An Holy Ritual (Hic Sunt Leones)
2. “A Sun To Lift Sleep From The Weary” by Mandible Chatter from Of Foreign Lands and People (Release/Relapse)
3. “East Taunts West” by :Zoviet*France: from Loh Land (Staalplaat)
4. “San” by J. Greinke & R. Angus from Crossing Ngoli (Ear Rational)
5. “Dream Theory” by Jon Hassell from Dream Theory In Malaya (EG)
6. “Dusk, Dead Heart” by O Yuki Conjugate from Peyote (Multimood/Projekt)
7. “Curandera” by Suspended Memories from Earth Island (Fathom/Hearts of Space)
8. “Drifting” by Voice Of Eye from Vespers (Cyclotron Industries)
9. “The Velvet Horizon” by Paul Schutze from New Maps Of Hell (Extreme/Big Cat)
10. “Qom” by Muslimgauze from Iran (Staalplaat)
11. “Jacobs Drum” by Rapoon from The Kirghiz Light (Staalplaat)
12. “Future Tribe” by Steve Roach & Byron Metcalf from The Serpent’s Lair (Projekt)

Download: Mister Eden’s Lysergic Africa: “Sticky Tribal Nightmare”

Maybe a little too much wine and we are revisiting the future of yesterday.

Allow me to submit to schmaltze for a brief moment, but I have to admit solemnly that I thought things would be a little different by now. I’m still wearing glasses on purpose, Thomas.

If I had to think of the perfect Christmas present for the young spacenik, I always get the shivers imagining receiving the marvelous “Ambient” boxed set Virgin put out one day, long ago. It contained three unbelievably good albums: Edgar Froese’s Aqua, Klaus Schulze’s Timewind, and Ashra’s Blackouts. I saw the box in a bookstore one day and sighed. I had all the albums already, but I just imagined somebody getting three amazing albums like that all at once. It was almost too much.

So, for a late Christmas (or whatever holiday you may choose) present from Mister Eden, I thought I’d post three tracks—one from each masterful album.

1. Of course, Edgar Froese is Tangerine Dream’s main man, and Aqua was his first solo LP from 1974. It’s environmental ambient of the highest caliber. Oh so icy and haunting. Virgin assembled another box set containing Tangerine Dream’s Rubycon, Phaedra, and Ricochet in one set, too. Can you imagine getting all six of these at once? BLOWN MIND, PLEASE.

2. Klaus Schulze doesn’t believe 1975’s Timewind is his masterpiece and has some rather unkind things to say about it on his own website. Well, what in shit does Klaus know about his own music these days anyway? One listen to anything he recorded in the last twenty years is enough to make you believe it was a different guy drumming in Ash Ra Tempel (and a better one). This edited version of “Wahnfried 1883″ is from the Virgin “Essential” set, but gives you a good idea of the awesome majesty of Klaus at his cosmic best.

3. Finally we have Ashra, at this time basically Manuel Göttsching solo (everything after 1978’s Blackouts is highly suspect, musically, incidentally—I dare you to listen to Correlations and not groan yourself to death). Okay, can you hear the guitar at the end of this track? RIDICULOUS. How can he play like that? A perfect synthesis of Manny’s guitar shredding in Ash Ra Tempel and the later, more ambient, work on New Age of Earth. Oh god. Why don’t they make ‘em like this anymore?

You can’t get the box of these together anymore, in stores at least. But all should be easily available separately. Find them! Love them! (But watch the Spalax version of Blackouts—they made the CD from warped mastertapes and it sounds funny in places. Try to find the Virgin issue if you can.)

Download: Edgar Froese - Upland
Download: Klaus Schulze - Wahnfried 1883
Download: Ashra - Blackouts
Buy the Album: Edgar Froese/Klaus Schulze/Ashra - Ambient

How about something spaced-out and classic? Wait, do I post anything that isn’t spaced-out? Now you know how my friends feel.

Shades of Orion was one of the earliest (1993) albums on FAX and is still one of the best. I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is one of the first ambient-techno releases ever, and probably also one of the most successful (stylistically speaking). These two masters weave trance and Eno-style ambient as though they’d been doing it for years, when, really, they were kind of inventing it as they went along. If you’re looking for an introduction to the FAX sound, look no further than Namlook and Inoue as they make their own “Journey through a Burning Brain” with “Biotrip.”

Incidentally, I linked to a review website for all things FAX, where they talk about the original 1993 version of the disc. That one’s been out of print for years and fetches upwards of $150 online. However, it was reissued fairly recently on the Ambient World label and can be had for $13 at decent online shops like Ear Rational and Forced Exposure. Beware though: FAX is like an extremely addictive hooker.

I figured a mix and a new track might be nice for the food-gorged recovery of us newly corpulent.

This one’s from the new Metamatics CD and features John Foxx from Ultravox! on vocals. Old and new vanguards meet in a pleasingly retro way.

Now pass the mashed potatoes.

Download: Metamatics (with John Foxx) - Free Robot
Buy the Album: Metamatics - 3 Jak and Dive

A mix for the future denizens of ruined Earth.

Tracklist:
1. “Zenn La” ~ Deep Space Network from Deep Rooms (Source)
2. “Leuchtturm” ~ Triola from Im Funftonraum (Kompakt)
3. “Natural People” ~ Stasis from Inspiration (Peacefrog)
4. “End of Time” ~ The Black Dog from Spanners (Warp)
5. “Come” ~ Richard H. Kirk from Virtual State (Warp)
6. “This Can’t Be Happening” ~ Pub from Do You Ever Regret Pantomime? (Ampoule)
7. “Amalia” ~ As One from Objets D’art 92::95 (New Electronica)
8. “Zamami” ~ Plaid from Double Figure (Warp)
9. “Dx-Snth” ~ Jochem Paap from Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 II (Fax)
10. “Sunday” ~ Miles Tilmann from Underland ep (Sub:marine)
11. “Holy Dance” ~ Tetsu Inoue from Ambiant Otaku (Fax)
12. “As Long as I Can Hold My Breath” ~ Harold Budd from Avalon Sutra (Samadhi Sound)
13. “I Like Being Here” ~ Shuttle358 from Understanding Wildlife (Mille Plateaux)

Download: Mister Eden’s “The Future Past”