Month: August 2014

Ambient Pauses from Kamakura, Japan

A track by Michiru Aoyama

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The white noise could be static or surf. The hum could be hushed vocals or a deep sine wave. The piece is “パラレル” — which I believe translates to parallel. It’s a track by Michiru Aoyama, who is based in Kamakura, Japan, and it is a blissful slice of determined ambient music. Tonally is is consistent and remote, the sort of thing that requires a fair amount of concentration to accept as foreground listening. What distinguishes it as a composition is how it unfolds, in particular a pause about a minute in and then again about a minute before the five-minute piece comes to a close. Both quiet moments remind the ear of the sonic content, waking you up to the atmospherics just as they get underway and just as they begin their slow fade to silence.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/michiru-aoyama. More from Aoyama at michiruaoyama.bandcamp.com, twitter.com/6michimichiru9, and michiruaoyama.jimdo.com.

Building a “Robot Friend”

From computers, keyboards, phones, printers, fax machines ...

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“Robot Friend” opens like an early-Internet take on Pink Floyd’s “Money”: the beat is made of known, non-musical content. In place of the cash register, though, there is, foremost, the halcyon squelch of an ISP/fax handshake. According to the track’s composer/performer, Johnny Ripper, “everything in this song is made from recordings of electronic tools – computers, keyboards, phones, printers, fax machines, televisions, disk drives etc.” The result is a slow yet toe-tapping pleasure, one whose familiar verse/chorus near-monotony gains purpose thanks to its basis in everyday mechanisms.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/johnny_ripper. More from Johnny Ripper, who’s based in Montréal, Canada, at twitter.com/johnny_ripper.