So in light of the review from Pondewaywayway, here are a couple of tracks from Imogen Heap –
REVIEW REBLOG – Imogen Heap: Sparks – Album Review
Couple of different things tonight…Thanks and Courtesy to PonDeWayWayWay for the reviews
I’m going to be honest and say from the start that this review underwent a complete overhaul right at the last minute. Originally I tried to look at how fans and casual listeners would view Imogen Heap’s latest album but, as I am myself a diehard fan, that became too difficult. What I concluded in that draft was that, for the casual listener, the success of the album rests on how they deal with what is, really, a rather fractured listen. Imogen’s new protracted approach to making an album has resulted in a release that lacks the sonic or thematic cohesion that would usually draw the songs on an album together. If you’re a fan whose followed the run-up to Sparks though this probably won’t prove to be a stumbling block because you’ll know about the projects that accompanied most songs. As a soundtrack to Imogen’s adventures over the last…
View original post 898 more words
TODAYS DISCOVERY – APHIR
Todays Discovery is slightly different, in that this is a premiere of a new track by the artist, Aphir. She first came to my notice via the Oneiric Escapism Vol 1 release from A Lonely Ghost Burning, where her track Delta is the opener. You can find out more about Aphirs’ releases on her Bandcamp site.
Aphir has written a short accompanying release statement that explains her methods and the background story to the track –
” Tanabata grew out of a tiny poem I wrote while I was working on my first album, Holodreem. At the time I didn’t know how to expand on it but when I started working on my next release, I remembered and sat down with it and all of a sudden it was a full song.
The song owes its name to the Japanese festival of Tanabata, and more specifically to a story that I was told in Japanese class when I was a little kid that follows the relationship between the goddess Tanabata and a farmer called Mikeran. I must have only been 7 or 8 years old when I first heard the story but this one part has stuck with me ever since.
Tanabata’s father is angry that his daughter is in love with this mere mortal, so he forces Mikeran to watch over a melon field for three days and nights without touching the melons. Of course Mikeran caves in and takes a melon thinking to quench his thirst. But the melon cracks open and out spills an enormous river, separating Mikeran from Tanabata. It’s pretty much the perfect allegory for the way our weaknesses can separate us from the people we love.
Regarding the production of the track, last year I worked on a project with some beatmakers who were really adept at turning vocal samples into synthesizers in Ableton and it was an inspiring experience. I’ve wanted to experiment with this technique for ages, and this track gave me ample opportunity. I wanted this song to have more energy than any work I’ve done before now while still feeling coherent with the previous electronic choral work I’ve done for Aphir. I’ve included some FM synths and drums but, other than these elements, Tanabata is all vocals.
Even though I engineered and produced this track myself, it feels very collaborative because the artwork that Simone Thompson made for it fits with it so perfectly. Tanabata was inspired in part by her recent short film, Warrior, and I love her digital artwork, so it made sense to work with her to create a visual face for the music.
REVIEW REBLOG – A Sense of Place: Tiny Portraits on Flaming Pines
Courtesy to Stationary Travels for this review.
NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2015
Listen to the sounds…
TODAYS’ DISCOVERY – ONE MAN NATION
Really interesting interview here
Perennially Peripheral – The fury of musician Marc Chia’s One Man Nation.
POSKOD.SG – 2 Jun 2012
This is a slightly revised version of a post from earlier this year.
ARTICLE REBLOG – Ritual, Noise, and the Cut-up: The Art of Tara Transitory
I first came across the artist Tara Transitory aka One Man Nation when I put together a season on African and Asian Electronic artists, so I have been looking forward to reading this article ( also recommend the series ). Just as an aside – I posted the article on the Feminatronic Facebook page and it has had a very positive response.
Marginalized bodies produce marginalized sounds to communicate things that escape language. The queer body is the site of sounds that engage pleasure, repression, rage, isolation, always somehow outside of dominant language. Sound Studies tells us that we should trust our ears as much as our eyes, justifying our trust in sound, and of the resonating body. Affect Theory goes further, saying that all senses play into a body that processes input through levels of response, experience, and anticipation. Affect is the vibrational space that is both bodily memory and anticipation. So where do sound and affect meet in queer bodies? How do marginalized peoples use sound and the body to express liberation, objectification, joy, and struggle?
Our writers in Sound and Affect tackle these questions across a spectrum of the marginalized experience. I opened the series by offering the concept of the tremble, a sonic form of affect that is…
View original post 2,121 more words
FEMINATRONIC SEASON – LOUD EXPRESSION
Feminatronic is focussing on Noise music in all its variants.
Here is the most recent playlist that demonstrates some of the huge variety of sound and genres ( but there are many more) that I will be exploring.
REVIEW REBLOG – p0stm0rtem – p0stm0dern p0stm0rtem
This fits in well with my focus on Noise music and I have included a track by P0stm0rtem on the recent Soundcloud playlist. (see above).
Thanks again to Yeah I Know it Sucks for this review and also for highlighting those artists who may not get any exposure otherwise.
The album art for p0stm0dern p0stm0rtem is an image of the artist wearing a pair of comically oversized shades. It is, otherwise and even in that regard completely detached from any symbolic reference that I could deduce to the album in question. If you’re asking, what could it all mean?.. nada. No, I am fully convinced that there is not a shred of tangible evidence here to suggest that this image has any conceptual relevance to… wait… upon closer inspection, I’ve discovered that the sunglasses are a faint yellow color and that a screen of some kind is being reflected, mirrored by the surface of the glasses, and the image is all pixelated, and… yeah, I guess I’ve still got nothing. Nevermind. Wow, I feel like I’ve just wasted a lot of your time. I apologize for the useless tangent. Next time, I swear we’ll find something post-modern about an…
View original post 1,298 more words
SUNDAY MIXES – BIRDS
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,–
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings–
I know why the caged bird sings!
Sympathy – Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872 – 1906)
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
Hope is the Thing with Feathers – Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.
When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.
Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
Beside his window-pane.
O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep
I Love You – Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933)
Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,
The Linnet and Thrush say, “I love and I love!”
In the winter they’re silent—the wind is so strong;
What it says, I don’t know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving—all come back together.
But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—
“I love my Love, and my Love loves me!”
Answer to a Child’s Question – Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1884)
You must be logged in to post a comment.