12 June 2011: I have just emerged from a year long creative vacuum. The inspiration just vanished. Last month it returned and I have started a new work based upon Russian folk melodies. I'll be giving the site a good clear out too over the next few weeks.
25 May 2010: Reviews of landschaft 04 and landschaft 014 by Mark Tamea.
01 May 2010: New album "Conquered City: Concerto No 2 for Piano, Violin and String Orchestra" released. Preview available at landschaft on VIRB. Context explained on this page.
11 November 2009: New album "The Dark Seasons Triptych" released. Preview available at landschaft on VIRB. Context explained on this page.
25 January 2010 Review of the excellent new album "Metonymy" by Mark Tamea
08 May 2009 Landschaft album "Nostalgia" released commercially by netlabel Atmoworks avialable to buy via links on my Shop page as an MP3 download or CD.
25 April 2009 Landschaft albums avialable to buy online via PayPal. Walpurgisnacht and The Beginning of the New Winter, Indistinct Borders first, others to follow.
Visit my landschaft on VIRB a community of artists and musicians, and perhaps the most elegant forum interface on the web.
Visit my landschaft on Atmoworks a community of ambient artists and fellow travellers.
I am attempting to position myself within the confusing array of sub-genres that comprise “Ambient” music. I have ten albums of music to do that. I am comfortable with the bland generic term “Ambient”, but less so with some of the sub-genres. My music is I think a soundtrack to time passed by.
Landschaft is about re-discovery, re-birth, resurgence. That marvellous Latin word Resurgam; “I shall rise again”. It is about probing moods evoked by remembrance and experience. About old maps and photographs; rediscovered histories. It is about distilling those mood feelings down, adding in one’s own perceptions to generate a synergy of the two: one’s own experience added to one’s perception of history. In other words the components that make nostalgia. The ode to joy or the prayer to the souls of the departed. Music, amongst all of the arts is the medium best placed to do this through modulation of key and tempo.
The found sounds and whimsy of Colleen and the slowed down orchestras of Stars of the Lid are spiritually close to what I am trying to achieve. With an admixture of Cliff Martinez, successor to Brian Eno.
31 May 2003: Indistinct Borders, the first Landschaft tone sculpture released. A collection of Satie-esque piano reflections interspersed with low key electronic works. The mood is dark green.
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Two MP3s are available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
From recollections of the lost and waning cultures of central and northern Europe and by my collection of pre-WWII contemporary photographic travelogues, I was inspired to create these mood pieces, and sometime along the way the verse piece below.
Please see my Indistinct Borders Reviews page for critic reviews of this album.
Also, I have presented in full, at: Chronicals of Lake Narocz by Mieczyslaw Lisiewicz. This book was a major influence on Indistinct Borders and the whole Landschaft project.
31 December 2006: The mood is dark Green, shot with splashes of sunlight glimpsed through trees.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
31 January 2008: Most of the pieces are sparse piano based meditations with subtle ambience to add space, depth and modulation, and is something of a personal journey. The album is a distillation to 12 tracks; the best of a 24 track cycle. The cover photograph was taken by my father in 1947 in Singapore - the first of his extensive collection of photographs that I have restored. The mood is orange fire and gold leaf.
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This is my first commercial release through netlabel Atmoworks, and is available to buy in the Atmoworks Shop (as an MP3 download or CD)
Listen to an excerpt landschaft on VIRB.
09 March 2007: Inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe short story, "Landsor's Cottage", this is a piece in the signature dark-pastoral Landschaft compositional style. If anyone is looking for a visual reference, try looking at this work of art by Samual Palmer, Early Morning (1825), a work contemporaneous with Poe's, and entirely in synchrony with the mood Poe creates in "Landsor".
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
21 June 2007: a canonical/fugal piece of rotating cycles in the dronology sub-genre. Dark, mesmeric, uplifting.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
19 August 2007: "Jute". I was playing around with some out-takes from my "Nostalgia" sessions, overlaying the same piece of music and staggering the start of the layers emulating a canon or round and it sort of took on a genius form of itself. A wonderful happy accident. Hear the extract of the final 67 minute piece here. It sits in the same sonic territory as Eno's Apollo and the Cliff Martinez Solaris soundtrack. 48 hours from start to upload! A preview MP3, an extract of the first 5 minutes or so is presented here - note you have to scroll the player down to see it. I do urge you to buy the full album that comes in a limited edition hand made cover, in real jute cloth.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
17 October 2007: “and now the trembling light”: Cascades and glissandos, slowed-down church organs, a shimmering harmonic tension holds the listener in it’s thrall; an epic in two parts in a vast reverbarent space. Inspired by a wonderful pastoral verse by Samual Palmer, “Shoreham: Twilight Time”.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
read more about the album
Buy in my Shop
Listen to an extract of the album landschaft on VIRB.
16 November 2007: "Silence" A double album in two parts. Dark-ambient drone.
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Buy in my Shop
Listen to an excerpt landschaft on VIRB.
16 November 2007: "The True Path", my most challenging work to date. Two vast slabs of sound each around an hour long...
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Buy in my Shop
Listen to an excerpt landschaft on VIRB.
various dates: a promotional EP that I use as a calling card. Not for sale.
18 November 2008. Beginning of the New Winter - the second work in the Dark Seasons triptych. A return to my more composed style, flowing out of a series of quickly rendered improvisations. Sketches for the month of October. Pastoral in theme, canonical in style, an album I enjoyed making. First work in the Dark Seasons tryptych.
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Buy in my Shop
Listen to the all of the album landschaft on VIRB.
29 March 2009. Walpurgisnacht - the second work in the Dark Seasons triptych. Walpurgisnacht being the close of the old winter; the witches night, St Walpurga’s night. A festival of such potency that Christians, pagans and Satanists lay claim to it across the breadth of Northern Europe. It is the festival marking the transition from winter to spring; 30 April/1 May.
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Buy in my Shop
Listen to an excerpt landschaft on VIRB.
11 November 2009. Third work in the Dark Seasons triptych.
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Listen to an excerpt landschaft on VIRB.
25 January 2010. Beginning of the New Winter, Walpurgisnacht and Zamek, "The Dark Seasons Triptych". A remake, remodel of the three works.
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Listen to an excerpt landschaft on VIRB.
01 May 2010. My second concerto work containing one epic piece of high drama.
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Listen to a long excerpt landschaft on VIRB.