String-Based Ambient MP3 Collection

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The 22-track, various-artist String Ambient collection benefits from a more literal enaction of its title than some record labels may have elected for. There are, indeed, harps and ukuleles and acoustic guitars put into action on this set of varied atmospheric music. But there are also electric guitars, as heard on Djinnestan‘s “C Plus A,” in which pin-prick texture is about as much amid the quiet that could be certifiably attributed to anything string-based, (MP3), and Glenn Brown‘s “A Crystal Fascination I,” which works a melodious but retrained solo into its spacey system (MP3). Terge Paulsen employs an EBow to achieve the monolithic sustain of the richly industrial drone poem “Blues for Lhasa” (MP3).

Thanks to heavy use of electronic effects, the divide between acoustic and electric string instruments is a nuanced one on String Ambient. The detuned zither that serves as the sole identified tool on Jon 7‘s “An Eerie Paradise” is plucked with the tentativeness of a kalimba, each note reverberating into a cloudy background of extended tones (MP3). Likewise, the hall-of-mirrors echoes that characterize “Cathedral (excerpt)” by Caleb Dupree originated on piano (as the liner notes state: “yes, a string instrument!”), which will surprise just about any listener (MP3).

More info, including track-specific instrumentation, at the releasing netlabel, webbedhandrecords.com. The individual tracks are stored at archive.org.

NIN MP3s: This Dub’s for You

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The leader of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor, announced this week the release of a new NIN album, and it’s available entirely for free. He did so with a simple statement: “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me.” The album, titled The Slip, contains 10 tracks, much of it in the mode of industrial-rock, a former niche genre that NIN helped push up the Billboard charts. The Slip follows quickly on Ghosts I-IV, a 36-track collection of instrumentals released by NIN back in March (disquiet.com, ghosts.nin.com). Though the majority of the tracks on The Slip are proper songs with vocals, three are heavily electronic instrumentals that continue the ambient effort that Ghosts I-IV initiated. The full set is available (as MP3s and in other formats) at theslip.nin.com (there are no direct links to individual tracks).

Before diving into a song that’s oddly reminiscent of the Kinks, The Slip opens on “999,999,” a minute and a half of tapered incidental noises and swelling electric pulses. Toward the end of the album, there’s a one-two lull in the form of “Corona Radiata” and “The Four of Us Are Dying.” Neither is an interlude. “Corona” is the album’s longest cut, at seven and a half minutes, and as the title suggest, it plays like the score to a documentary about the collapse of star systems. “Dying” is a low-key slocore pop instrumental, with guitars that sound like someone’s humming the melody absentmindedly, amid heavily echoed background tones and a sublimated guitar crunch.

And, as they say on infomercials, that’s not all. The entirety of The Slip has been made available for open-source, multi-track remixing at remix.nin.com, where musicians are invited to download the constituent parts of songs (encoded as individual WAV files) and to upload their mixes. This means, among other things, that you can download the songs on The Slip, remove Reznor’s serviceable but utilitarian vocals, and just listen to the instrumental versions — and, furthermore, you can reduce or excise the occasionally heavy rhythms and enjoy the album’s atmospheric touches.

Turntablism MP3 Megamix

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest podcast from tablist.net — that’s “tablist” as in “turntablism” — collects about 20 tracks by the unsung home-studio strivers who are regulars on the tablist.net website, alongside some accomplished beatmaker players. The contents range from rhythm-heavy studio production to rap-ready instrumental hip-hop to goofy scratch-happy hijinks, leavened with the inevitable jokey soundbites.

As the tracks are mixed together seamlessly by Honna, it’s fairly easy to get lost in the sequence (a complete set list, with artist links, is provided), but so be it. In our current moment of precise, digitized synchronization, getting lost is a rare pleasure.

Tracks by Jurassic 5 vet Cut Chemist and X-ecutioners alum Rob Swift are mixed in with material by the ensemble Flowlife Bumz and the self-styled retro-futurist Airnino, just to name a few. The following link — MP3 — should lead to the hour-long file, but if not, just follow the tablist.net post through to the download page.

“I mean, records aren’t made the take that kind of a beating,” goes one of the many coy found-sound-bites dropped into Honna’s mix. Maybe not, but MP3s sure are.

21-Year-Old Henri Chopin 7″ MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Courtesy of musician Steve Roden‘s blog, inbetweennoise.blogspot.com, a five-minute recording of Henri Chopin, the pioneering poet who passed away earlier this year. Roden has ripped to MP3 format the 7″ that accompanied the 1987 Chopin catalog published by Galerie J&J Donguy.

Roden describes the track: “made with mouth and tape, [it] resembles very much a typewriter’s frenetic/rhythmic activity. it’s a beautiful rhythmic stuttering presence that mimics the visual works.” Roden also notes that “if you listen quietly it sounds a bit like trickling water” — and, for that matter, like a pneumatic drill on concrete (MP3). Meet the late Henri Chopin, avant-garde poet and France’s premiere human beatboxer.

Image of the Week: Tales of Hofmann

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the face — and, more to the point, those are the eyes — of Albert Hofmann, the Sandoz chemist who first synthesized LSD.

Hofmann passed away this past Monday, April 28, at the age of 102. According to the Telegraph obituary (telegraph.co.uk), which the above photo accompanied, he was “the first person in the world to experience a full-blown ‘acid trip.'” That would have been on April 19, 1943. (The photo, undated, is credited to the European Pressphoto Agency.)