Charlie's Feburary Ambient Roundup

What is Ambient Music? (Ambient Music will henceforth be referred to as AS, for Ambient Sound) Is it music without a beat? Is it just a really long song without any words? I do not plan on answering any of these questions.

I had plans today. I was going to record my Helen Keller album—an aural interpretation of Helen Keller’s thoughts—but my producer bailed on me. I’m not mad or anything, usually these projects don’t get far off the ground unless someone’s throwing some money at someone else, and I haven’t thrown a penny.

So instead of contributing sound to the canon of AS I’ll contribute to it with a written blast of hot air.

(Speaking of which, while I was doing some rough prelims for this article I came across a pretty terrible Pitchfork review. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/190-here-comes-the-indian/ Were I a responsible editor I’d rewrite the entire article thusly: Good album sober. Great album tripping. Excuse me; I am going to go buy some drugs with all the money I just saved from firing a writer.)

Usually I put on some AS when I try to be productive, when I decide to use my free time wisely. When I am hurried and chasing after a fast moving deadline the application of AS is usually an afterthought. I put this kind of music on like a bathrobe. I drink from the sacred chalice to get drunk.

In my studies of Chinese philosophy I’ve become infected with a pretty nasty case of chronic doublespeak. I say something is good, and then I say that something is bad. (I am willing to concede that the nuanced nature of 无，为，无为，and the less popular 无无为 probably went over my head, but for the sake of this article’s observation I’ll let my understanding stand.) So please consider the attached playlist when I say that AS is meant to be heard and not heard at all.

If one is engaged in writing or reading or sleeping or studying it is easy to forget the music is there. It fades away like a broken sentence in a short parag

Brian Eno is attached to the Ambient genre like someone’s hand onto someone else’s hand after a hand-graft. I think Eno is associated with AS in the same way Mozart is associated with classical music. In composing the playlist below it was really hard not to put in more than one Eno track. In composing this playlist I had a good time going over music that I consider AS that I had not considered AS before. I always regarded Zone and The Diamond Sea as pretty loud-volume tracks—something to be blasted out of a car or an empty house. I really tried to put some of Yo La Tengo’s longer hits into this list, but my YLT collection—or so I’ve just learned—is entirely M4A, which is cool, I like the boost in sound quality, but it is a bitch to get into playlist form. Instead of placing them into the list I’d like to suggest to the reader that The Story of Yo La Tango and The Glitter is Gone should be wedged in there somewhere if you have them already.

Sincerely,


Charles Harper

Newweatherorder.blogspot.com

Click here to download the playlist.

Tracklist

1) The Sinking of the Titanic --Gavin Bryars
2) Pastoral Symphony_ I. Dominoes II. Infinity Room --ARP
3) He Loved Him Madly --Miles Davis
4) The Colour of Three --Fennesz
5) Fullness of Wind (Variation on the 'Canon In D Major' By Johann Pachelbel) --Brian Eno
6) Wind Coda --Lou Reed
7) Bend Beyond --Woods
8) Two Sails on a Sound --Animal Collective
9) Zone --Lightning Bolt
10) The Diamond Sea --Sonic Youth