17 September 2008: review of Tessellation by Mark Tamea: Tessellation
12 September 2008: The first pages of an archive of found newspaper clippings from The First World War, 1914-18 published. A major new subsite accessible via my sidebar History link or direct: World War I newspaper archive
02 September 2008: review of the work of The Golden Sores: Ashdod to Ekron
26 August 2008: New section Essays added to the website - follow the sidebar link for some Landschaft thoughts.
13 August 2008: review of the latest Horchata album "Isolated House" on the Darkwinter netlabel. See my Horchata Reviews page.
03 August 2008: opened a Facebook account Landschaft at Facebook.
25 July 2008: Whole Nostalgia album available to listen to at Landschaft at Atmoworks.
24 July 2008: new web presence for Landschaft: Landschaft at Atmoworks.
2 July 2008: book reviews added to Book Reviews; "The Jew of Linz: Wittgenstein, Hitler and the Battle for the Mind" by Kimberley Cornish.
12 May 2008: review of the work of Linda Bjalla: Linda Bjalla
12 May 2008: review of the work of Kymatik: The Paignton Anomaly
14 May 2008 Cordell Klier and Datura 1.0 review published on Darkwinter
April 2008 ressonus net vol.1 - ambient/glitch/electronic music compilation published - review 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.
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.
At indistinct borders past histories are forgotten and maps are burned. Bones, ghosts and fragments of barbed wire are the only reminders of conflicts past. The flatlands of Northern Europe, scorched by conflict, destroyed, reborn, and destroyed again. A demolished City where wildflowers silently grow, cities renamed, reborn and renamed again. In the Landschaft, unbroken miles of conifer, 10,000 lakes where voices and music sink slowly to the lake floor. Legends born of optimism and fear promise rescue and a reversal of misfortune. But in the borders, no one remembers and all that remains is dust.
Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
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.
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
Presented in a video format Super Jewel case with poetry and original artwork. Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
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”. The title, a metaphore for Palmer’s own life-work – twighlight time: a fleeting moment of clarity before darkness closes in. Palmer’s family destroyed much of his work immediately after his death evaporating his lifetime achievements. But “Shoreham: Twilight Time” survives and I wish to celebrate it’s preciousness in one of my most harmonically structured works, it’s title taken from this poem that I quote in part: “And now the trembling light Glimmers behind the little hills and corn, Ling’ring as loth to part; yet part thou must And though than open day far pleasing more (Ere yet the fields and pearled cups of flowers Twinkle in the parting light); …”
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
31 December 2006: Karelia happened by accident. It is an extension of the Indistinct Borders exploration. The mood remains dark Green, but shot with splashes of sunlight glimpsed through trees. I rested the music for a year or so and added sonic components to broaden the depth and width of the stereo image. My blog of 11 January 2007.
Title piece, Karelia was a pure stream of conciousness event which surprised me. I happened across a beautiful resonant drone experimenting late one night with a Korg Karma synthesiser and I captured a 35 minute monophonic tone drifting the sound when the time seemed right. A simple response to the monophone's call was then etched over the top with Greenoak Crystal - a wonderful VSTi.
Partner piece, Narocz is a sample based below the lake wash of marching pebbles across a forgotten shoreline. Inspired by a long out of print autobiographical travelogue "Chronicles of Lake Narocz" by Polish author Mieczyslaw Lisiewicz.
Available to view at landschaft on VIRB
Limited edition hand made covers comprising Japanese hand-made paper in a Super Jewel Case. Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
9 March 2007: a work that evolved quickly and to a great extent under it’s own momentum. A late night session of ideas-sketching produced a remarkable Korg Karma layered orchestral cycle. This turned into quite an upbeat Stravinski like gallop with pizzicato strings driving the piece along to a big mellow horn section crescendo. There followed a chamber music version – a perky stripped down skeleton of light instrumentation. Both of the upbeat versions remain in the Landschaft vaults. I then headed it off into darker water - the whole piece was time stretched by a 5 times multiple and a violin solo was laid over the top that turned it into a haunting pastoral epic more in the Vaughan Williams vein; this the completed work is available for public consumption.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
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 DVD format super jewel case with a hand made cover art insert. This is the sixth Landschaft album..
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
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.
I have uploaded the whole album in 80kbps MP3 format to listen to at Landschaft at Atmoworks.
Available to buy for £8-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
16 November 2007: "The True Path", my most challenging work to date. Two vast slabs of sound each around an hour long. Part I, a solemn hymn; part II an epiphany. Both are near monotones. Each piece interplays very subtle repeating phrases - each identical in melodic content, but in differentiated temporal layers. Canonical in the tradition of Bach and Pachelbel. My aim has been to produce a work that is both repeating but in such a rarified fashion as to approach abstraction – that stimulates the mind to build it’s own pictures from a whole that is greater than the sum the parts. I commend you to listen to these works in a very quiet space, perhaps late at night with the volume turned down low or through high quality headphones.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
Available to buy for £10-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.
16 November 2007: "Silence" A double album in two parts. Dark-ambient drone, and the album attracting most critical attention.
An extract MP3 is available to listen to at landschaft on VIRB
Presented in a CD format Super Jewel case with original artwork. Available to buy for £10-00 GBP. Please see my Shop page.