Posts Tagged ‘minimal’

Today’s Headphone Commute podcast comes from Floyd Kelley III, a selector of eclectic sounds and a curator of sonic journeys, including the last two mini-compilations on Dynamophone (003 and 004). This mix is almost exclusively composed of tracks from Taylor Deupree‘s 12k label and Richard Chartier‘s LINE imprint, both at the forefront of experimental, minimal and microsound evolution. Here are some words [...]


Welcome to our newly redesigned Sound Bytes column! Today we feature four thematic releases following a trajectory of sound and words through ambiance, minimalism, and drone. In this particular installment we went to focus your attention on a few fantastic labels - Slow Flow, Twice Removed, and Unfathomless. Segue Into The Fall Slow Flow Slow Flow is a [...]


Before I go into the details of this review, I’d like to take a moment and talk about the label. Glacial Movements is an Italian label, specializing in “glacial and isolationist ambient”, founded and curated by Alessandro Tedeschi, also known as Netherworld. The label was launched in July of 2006, with a customary introductory compilation. The [...]


Japanese instrumentalist Taishi Kamiya’s Spectra of Air is the artist’s first studio album. Released by the ever impressive Home Normal, the album is a departure from Kamiya’s previous focus on improvisation. Instead we find a carefully constructed soundscape, rich in steadily built texture and detail. The result is both immersive and intriguing. The artwork on [...]


Today we are honored to share with you a special mix from Richard Chartier. With numerous releases on his very own LINE, as well as 12k, Raster-Noton, Room40,  Spekk, Die Stadt and many other experimental labels, Chartier is a highly regarded sound artist, manipulator and sculptor of ambient, minimal, and reductionist electronic music. I could continue [...]


My good friend and accomplice in exploration of beautiful music, Peter van Cooten, returns to Headphone Commute to showcase some of his favorite selections from 2011. And what a great way to start off the year! Here is an introduction from Peter: This mix obviously found its name from the lovely intro (and outtro) track [...]


Waking up this morning, a day of Thanksgiving (and more importantly a day off), I gravitate towards my studio and power on the system. Across the river, the sun is rising, and its bright yellow fingers sweep the cold Autumn skin. On this early day in November I gather my thoughts of all music, in [...]


I suppose a part of me suspected that after Brock Van Wey released Tribes At The Temple Of Silence on Home Normal, it would not take long for him to engage in some kind of a collaboration with the label’s curator, installation artist and prolific musician, Ian Hawgood. I just didn’t expect it to happen [...]


Wrapping up our four-part 12k special with three latest favorite releases, I can’t help but point out the label’s continuous attention to detail, its intricate aesthetic characteristics, coupled with an additional dimension of conceptual representation, where music really meets art, and art starts to sound like music. Whether the recordings are left to gently purr [...]


In this third installment of our four-part 12k special, we examine two live performances and an experimental EP. In all three, the label excels at providing a service of archiving, if you will, of single events, group gatherings, and academical studies. With these releases, 12k once again stands out among today’s cutting edge experimental, improvisational [...]


Here’s the second installment in our four part 12k Sound Bytes special. In this particular entry, I decided to dig back a few years and cover the albums that I really enjoyed from the label, but didn’t have the time to write about before. As with all music, I don’t believe in assigning a numerical value [...]


I’ve been a long time fan of pretty much everything from Taylor Deupree‘s Pound-Ridge based label, 12k. Undoubtedly, one of the catalysts of boundary pushing developments in ambient, minimalist, and electro-acoustic frontiers, 12k is at the forefront of today’s independent labels. With well over 80 releases since its inception in 1997, the albums dominate the [...]


James Alaska is a London based composer. He began DJing at the age of 16, drawing inspiration from the likes of David Mancuso, Larry Levan and Danny Krivit. Over a period of 20 years he ran club nights and held DJ residencies in Liverpool and London. These included gigs with the likes of Andy Weatherall, [...]


We’ve got another album sampler for you! This time, it’s an 18 minute meditation session, with selection of the tracks from the latest album by Mark Harris – The Boy Observes The Ocean released by Hibernate Recordings. Thick ambient pads, swell in layers of sounds, filling the empty spaces with vapors soundscapes, and then recede [...]


With a stressful week behind me, feeling a bit in a reflective mood, I sit down to revisit some of my favorite ambient pieces, as featured in Headphone Commute’s Best of 2009 : Music For Bending Light And Stopping Time. A few of my selections have not been previously reviewed on these pages – and, [...]


Infrequency Editions is a sub-label of Dragon’s Eye, the latter owned and operated by Yann Novak himself. The label was originally founded by Jamie Drouin and Lance Olsen, but after a brief hiatus, and introduction to Novak, it merged with Dragon’s Eye. Originally concerned with documenting live performances and sound installations presented through public concerts at a [...]


Monochromes Vol. 1 is the first volume of archival installations by the Italian multimedia duo, Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli, performing under the moniker TU M‘. The name, taken from Marcel Duchamp‘s same titled painting, is a French expression in which the verb is missing (tu m’…). This literally translates to “you [...] me”, where the missing verb [...]


In the first few months of 2010, Ian Hawgood, the owner of Home Normal, bombarded my mailbox with envelopes full of promos, and my ears with sublime ambient bliss. In 2009, Hawgood managed to publish eight releases, and this year he’s already on the way with another five! I spent a whole weekend enveloped in [...]


I have to admit that I’m mildly surprised by where my musical preferences are taking me these days. Until recently, I didn’t really have much patience for drone and noise music. I found it intriguing but I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. Now I find myself increasingly gravitating toward these more abstract forms [...]


It’s easy to write about beautiful music. When the ambient pads wash over the gentle picks of a guitar and the distant eavesdropping of radio frequencies, it’s easy to write. When the soft piano chords are smothered in a generous dose of warm reverb, spreading over the field recordings of a rainy city street, it’s [...]



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