Decambier & the Twelve Days of X-Ambias

I'm feeling the ambience of the world around me right now more strongly that usual, so I decided that all of December will be dedicated to Ambient Music.

Ambient music prioritizes creating a sonic environment or mood rather than following a traditional musical narrative. It often avoids the cyclical progression of chords found in other genres. Many ambient pieces rely on sustained notes, drones, or long-lasting soundscapes. Many ambient works use electronic instruments & effects to create layers of texture / atmosphere. The goal of ambient music is often to induce a sense of calm or to create a space for thought.

The term Ambient was first applied to music in 1978 by Brian Eno's AMBIENT 1 "Music for Airports".

Eno sez: 
       "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

I am going to try & devote this month to touching on the many diverse types of Ambient Music: ambient Dub, ambient techno, drone, ambient house (perhaps even ambient pop or metal), field recordings, environmental sounds, even glitch or noise, lowercase, minimal piano, new age, dark ambient, musique concrete, wherever this wandering insanity might take me.

One thing of note, many of these ambient compositions don't have typical song-oriented track breaks. Many times the composition continues unbroken across numerous (or even all) tracks. Wherever this occurs, I have eliminated track breaks & allowed the compositions to unfold in their intended manner. I have tried to note the lack of breaks or the run-on tracks when I could (or remembered). Less interested in the tracklist accuracy than with the musical integrity.

Bat Sounds

Let's start out this Ambient Decambier with a bit of the quietus of nature around us, as only Adrian Sherwood could imagine it.

This release was limited to 300 copies with glow in the dark, screen printed cover.

"First exhibited as a soundtrack to Jeremy Deller's 2017 installation Send Bat Echolocation Sounds to Dub Reggae Producers at BRÜCKENMUSIK 23. Located under the Deutzer Brücke in Cologne, the installation's cavernous aspect also nods to Deller's 2004 Turner Prize-winning work Memory Bucket, which captured a bat colony leaving their cave in Texas. The Mexican Freetail bats featured here on Sherwood's ambient Dub were recorded at that Frio Cave in West Texas in the autumn of 2011." 

 

Jeremy Deller & Adrian Sherwood - Freetail Dub, The Vinyl Factory VF283, 2018.
decryption codes in comments

Free Tail Dub

 

 

 

Solar Sounds

At one with my surroundings, I travel through nature to the Solar Lodge...

In the Solar Lodge. 

Solar Lodge is an Italian ambient/industrial project which started in Rome, whose members are Enrico Angarano (guitar, devices) & Fulvio Biondo (keyboards, devices). They got together in 1986, disbanded in 2003, but then got back together in 2011 for some live events. 

 

Solar Lodge - Heartbeat of the Roses cassette, Minus Habens Records MHT13, 1989.

Lato 1 -
Our Dead Steeds  
On the Ship  
A3 Figures in a Landscape 

Lato 2 - 
White Swan  
Sacrifice of Elements  
Heartbeat of the Roses

 

 

  

Have an Ambient December,
NØ