Okay so I listened to the soundclips and I guess I must've gotten the wrong impression from somewhere. Deaf Center is much more similar to Max Richter, Rachel's, and the soundtrack to the videogame Silent Hill. It's definitely not like Keith Fullerton or Basinski or Belong. I'm like the Basinski stuff infinitely better, but that's just me. I liked the Deaf Center stuff alot but I was expecting something altogether different.

Yeah, I think you get the jist. I need to hear more Basinski.

Anyway tell me if this isn't a jem if you haven't already heard of them: Cloudland Canyon. I just looked them up after they listed on Dusted Magazine. They have some awesome Myspace clips. #4 on my cds to get list (out of 93).

Also how well are you familiar with This Heat. I've been looking for the albums for awhile and it looks like a box set of all their stuff may finally be heading stateside. I almost ordered it from the UK.

What a strange coincidence. I read that list on Dusted too. I actually know Kip Ulhorn from Cloudland Canyon. He was in a local band here in Knoxville, TN where I live called The Red Scare from 1997-2002. They were fucking hands down the single best band ever from this town, playing super noisy/discordant post-hardcore ala Unwound, Angelhair, or Mohinder. I do not like the Cloudland Canyon stuff. I was really expecting it to be alot better. I know he's trying to come off like Faust and Ash Ra Tempel but it just sounds goofy, especially when I know what the dude is capable of creating. The UW Owl guy he mentions in that list is Jon Asher, the other guitarist from The Red Scare. I used to go to shows at their houses back in the late 90's when I was still in highschool. If you're into that stuff, you should check out their first LP, Capillary Lockdown, as it is phenomenal. It came out on Troubleman Unlimited and I'm sure it's still in print. They are both really nice individuals and pretty good acquaintances of mine.

As for This Heat, I have that box set and it is absolutely essential. The self-titled record and Deceit are worth the price of admission alone plus the other stuff is good too.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jonathanbrisby,

Cool. From what I listened to I liked Cloudland but maybe I'll have to give a couple more tries. I always forget to mention it but one of my absolute favourite avant albums to come out last year was The Kallikak Family. Did you ever hear that record. Absolutely 100% wonderful. Also I just saw their reissuing a limited release Animal Collective album from 2003 called Holli-something. You ever heard it before?

I've never heard that live Animal Collective record, but it looks like all the songs on it are unreleased. Pretty exciting. I remember looking into that Kallikak Family record last year, but I was never able to find a copy of it. Sounds cool, maybe I'll give another shot at tracking it down.

Oh, and don't get me wrong about the Cloudland Canyon stuff. It's not terrible or anything, I think I was just expecting something a little different. While I don't love it, I might give it another shot and see how I feel about it after a few more listens.

I certainly can appreciate and listen to "noise-influenced" bands/groups but when you talk about artists and bodies of work that are pure "noise" (such as merzbow), I can't really do anything more than respect it. I respect them in that they are profound artistic statements that challenges the way in which we think about music, but do I want to listen to it? Not for more than once. It kind of reminds me of the Mark Twain quote that goes "Wagner's music is better than it sounds".

Doesn't there also need to be some sort of distinction between "ambient" and "noise"? To me, eluvium, basinski, fennesz, are all "ambient". I understand that the two genres may share some ideas back and forth but to me, those are two completely different genres of music. Noise demands attention when you listen to it, Ambient does not. Noise is abrasive, ambient is not.

While I can certainly see the argument for Basinski and Eluvium as "ambient," I'm not giving you Fennesz. Have you heard Endless Summer? Some of that stuff is particularly jarring and even prior to that record others like Hotel Parallel and Instrument are Merzbow-like as far as abrasive quality is concerned.

Sorry, I kind of threw it in that direction. This topic is really for avant-anything, or is turning into that. I feel like most people interested in one are also interested in the other and there is no reason to create a bunch of new topics for 'em.

The correct genre term for many of the aforementioned artists including Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Tim Hecker, and others is electro-acoustic. This is where the artist records a physical instrument such as a guitar, piano, etc. and then changes it's texture, tone, structure, etc. through electronic (most likely computer) manipulation. I certainly don't think ambient applies to Basinski and Eluvium either after more consideration. Ambient is a term used to imply a lack of sound or sound that is barely audible. Brian Eno's ambient works being the prime example. Basinski's work is full of sound with long passages of winding distorted piano figues and not at all similar to Eno except at the face value/aesthetic level, where both artists' works are melodic. Eno plays few notes. This is the major difference. Also, when most people hear that word now and not in reference to Brian Eno's ambient works it is almost mutually exclusive with the term "boring." By no means is this the last word on the subject and anyone is free to disagree with me.

I'm not personally disuaded by the label of ambience nor do I associate it with the lack of sound or sound that is scarcely audiable and while I can't really figure out how to describe it now it the genre label, for me, depicts as specific relaxed or meloncollie mood/atmosphere that is produced by the music. I personally am torn between hyper-categorizing and blanket genre description. Breaking down everything extensively can be helpful but it can also inadvertently turn your interest away from things that you would otherwise love. I find Fennesz, Eluvium, Whitman and Basinski to all find very similar if not overlapping themes despite the array of differing method. I would consider all their work to at least partially be described as ambient. For those timid in the their search for music excessive categorization could frighten them from a release that might otherwise be liberating. And where do you stop separating genres? Eventually (especially in this age of "genre hopping") we are going to have to create a genre for every artist and then a sub category for their releases. I think there is something to be said for dividing, say, Keith Fullerton Whitman from Yellow Swans but even one on opposite ends of the playing field they still share some things. Extensive labeling is (only partially) beneficial to genre enthusiasts. I think in all other situations we should take efforts to simplify genre labels.

Okay. Since I don't personally like the word ambient, how about we agree on the fact that all of these artists could be blanketed with the term "avant-garde"? Seems simple enough. Too bad we can't change the thread name to reflect that. It would definitely make more sense, given what you (Sicnarf), myself, and others always seem to be discussing here.

Yeah, maybe you should start one up and we should just drop this one all together. It would probably be worth it. I'm sure people see the title and don't enter but I'm interested in a topic that would incompass all we've discussed here really. And ambient or not they are all definately great and avant-garde for sure

Since you started the topic, S., you can also change the title. Go back and edit your original post and you'll see that the topic header can also be altered.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Now Playing: NPR's All Things Considered

Hey Sicnarf,
Have you heard the Luke R. Dubois record Timelapse? This also goes for anyone else here. I saw it on the Forced Exposure employee list a month ago and after reading up on it, the idea seems very interesting. The first four track on it are titled "Billboard I-IV" and are essentially processed snippets from every number one Billboard chart single from I think 1958 through the late 90's. Every song gets one second for every week it spent at number one on the chart. The remaining two tracks are processed excerpts from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier and the Casablanca score.

I actually just read about it today on TMT (5/5). Crazy concept. Have you listened to any of it? I'm super intrigued.

Public Radio International's Studio 360 produced an interesting feature on DuBois' time-lapse phonography technique earlier this year. You can hear some of it there.

His own explanation of the project is really interesting, too.

Now Playing: "Gonna Take Over Now" Freddie McGregor Bobby Babylon

It seems cool in theory but the recording itself doesn't seem like there is much going on besides randomly shifting tones that are altered by which song clip is played underneath. The Bach piece was more interesting, but all of this is just from me hearing the thiry second clips on the Allmusic Guide. I'd love to hear the actual record since I don't think a short clip is going to do it justice, but it seems too homogenous to warrant an order from a distro for me. I'd also like to call bullshit on the TinyMixTapes writer who claimed to know which popular song he was listening to underneath all of this when reviewing the record. I listened carefully and patiently and there is NO WAY you can tell what song is being used.

i'm disappointed that this DuBois record is garnering such exitement. in comparison to ekkehard ehlers, this is more or less on par with his mental excercises of music creation, but ehlers actually makes listenable songs about 50% of the time (check out his "plays" tracks called john cassavettes 1 and (especially) 2. those are great songs) whereas this is literally nothing. it's just tones, tones that could have basically been produced by a kid with a synth if he was so bored/boring to make an album of two note chords hazed out.

i guess the problem i have with this sort of "high art" sector of avant-garde/experimental/etc is that the songs themselves have nothing to hold my interest. the ideas are good enough, but at some point, as a musician, don't you have to write compositions that somewhat resemble songs to put out albums? evidently not...

I love Ekkehard Ehlers. His new album A Life Without Fear is spectacular. So I guess to answer back, I too felt that the Luke R. Dubois record is definitely an interesting experiment, but in practice it was kind of boring.

i haven't been able to get into A Life Without Fear. some of the songs seem pretty great, but others seem just too abstract, but i think i will give it another try. the two individual "Plays" songs from Cassavettes which i mentioned earlier not withstanding, i think my favorite ehlers is the Wir Sind Hier album by Marz. i read a reviewer somewhere say that he'd rather hear a great experimentalist try pop type songs than hear the experimentalist musings of a rock/pop artist, and i didn't know how right on that statement was until i heard Wir Sind Hier (even if a couple of the songs are less than awesome).