The Boxhead Ensemble’s Ambient Beat

A taste of the group's new cassette/digital release

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a new Boxhead Ensemble album, *La Hora Magica*, which is to say there’s a new album of gentle, half-folk, half-ambient musings. The loose-knit group is centered around Michael Krassner and has included among its members David Grubbs, Scott Tuma, and many others, and they have released a steady series of tremendous records that explore the tonality of folk and country without foregrounding elements generally emphasized in proper songs. That said, the group’s *The Unseen Hand: Music For Documentary Film*, released last year, was less ambiguous than previous releases, especially thanks to light guitar lines that, for all their simplicity, fell short of falling short. The first track hinting at *La Hora Magica*’s contents adds yet another element to the Ensemble’s kit, a spare if persistent and automatic beat, not a drum or drum machine, more like a small battery-operated device left on a loop, a children’s toy, perhaps. It underlies all of the track in question, [“Cats Cup,”](https://soundcloud.com/astral-spirits-records/cats-cup-from-la-hora-magica-by-boxhead-ensemble-as011) and what keeps it in the sphere of ambient-ness is how that trenchant beat never quite aligns with the melodious cloud of sounds that surround it, all bowed violin and pristine guitar. I haven’t heard the full album yet. I bought it as a [“batch”](http://monofonuspress.com/store/astral-spirits-batch-4) pairing with the RED Trio’s *Live in Munich* from Monofonus Press. As evidence of how below the radar Boxhead Ensemble tend to fly, neither *La Hora Magica* nor last year’s *Unseen Hand* are listed on the group’s Wikipedia or Discogs pages.

More on the record at [monofonuspress.com](http://monofonuspress.com/store/boxhead-ensemble).

A Roadside Snapshot

A field recording like a photograph

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A fine field recordist has skills like those of a fine photographer. An everyday slice of life takes on the sense of a composed thing, a considered object, something constructed by hand from start to finish. The person holding that camera no more put that mountain next to that moon than the person holding that microphone put that bell next to that birdsong. And yet, by framing the material, they both present it as their own, lay claim to the natural world and the built environment. This “Small Roadside Shrine” on the SoundCloud account of London-based Mola Recordings frames a brief moment in time, when the rush of water or traffic, or both, and a dull bell — or perhaps a bucket — and the wisp of bird chatter combine into a sonic snapshot of a moment and a place. It is barely half a minute in length, but then again that framed photo over your desk is just six inches square. Both contain lifetimes.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/mola-recordings](https://soundcloud.com/mola-recordings/small-roadside-shrine). More from Mola Recordings at [mola-recordings.blogspot.com](http://mola-recordings.blogspot.com/).

Cities and Memory: Oblique Strategies

An international sound-art project based on the Eno/Schmidt card set

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20150406-oblique

For *Cities and Memory: Oblique Strategies*, more than 60 musicians and artists from almost 20 countries around the world took the classic card set by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt as their guide. Each participant either made a field recording or reworked an existing sound, or both, in pursuit of responding to the Oblique prompts. Marcus Lisle, for example, took the sound of cracking ice on the Merrimack River in the U.S. and had these as his Oblique Strategies: “Trust in the you of now,” “Work at a different speed.” For David Mixco, it was a Pudong airport in China and “You are an engineer,” “What context would look right?” For Christina Wong it was a tuna auction in Tokyo, Japan and “Move towards the unimportant,” “Do we need holes?”

This playlist contains some of the resulting sounds:

The mix of unmediated and repurposed sounds works well in this context. The sheer breadth of material can’t be easily consumed, and even the map-specific locations don’t entirely focus the imagination on what is generally unmoored and often abstract. Instead, variety is the guide, a flux of contrasts in a sea of geolocated audio.

More on the project at [citiesandmemory.com](http://citiesandmemory.com/projects/oblique-strategies). The audio is hosted at [audioboom.com](https://audioboom.com/channel/citiesandmemory).

Kate Carr’s Ambient Naturalism

Put "Once Upon a Rose Coloured Time" on repeat.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Kate Carr’s “Once Upon a Rose Coloured Time” is a piece of nature-infused ambient music. It’s all rustling leaves, birdsong, and a slow foundation of pure droning sonic billow. Two components stand out from the naturalist undercurrent, nudge it from background audio to foreground listening. There is a gentle guitar line that arrives about halfway through, and there is a brief, upward, single-note melodic line. The latter may, in fact, be a snippet of birdsong set on loop. That, as a result, it brings to mind, quite favorably, Brian Eno’s *Thursday Afternoon* is a sign of just how well those naturalist and sonic tendencies overlap.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/katecarr](https://soundcloud.com/katecarr/once-upon-a-rose-coloured-time). More from Carr, who is from Sydney and is currently based in Belfast, at [twitter.com/flamingpines](https://twitter.com/flamingpines).