Here is a fantastic index of innovative composers, improvisers, and sonic artists which if you fulfil the criteria as an artist you can request to be added. Follow the About link –
The focus of this index is on women in experimental/avant garde music: contemporary classical/post-classic composition, free improvisation and avant jazz, electronic/ electroacoustic music, sound art, sound installations, radio art, sound poetry, etc. A few of these artists may also work within relatively mainstream forms, but they are included here because of their other work that is more challenging (example: Yoko Ono)
This is a pure ambient joy and wonderful collection of tracks that I can’t fail to make my Todays Discovery, including Christina Vantzou and Mia Hsieh to name a couple of artists.
Courtesy to A Closer Listen for the review.
Before podcasts, there were pod tunes ~ long, intricate songs flowing from underwater behemoth to underwater behemoth. These dynamic vocalizations carried stories of other pods in other oceans. Together, the humpback whales would learn these new songs, sometimes hours long, and share them with those they met. Even with dwindling populations, they continue this practice to the present day.
A humpback whale’s ability to memorize music is unsurpassed, and yet each rendition is different: a nuance here, an inflection there. It’s easy to project our emotions upon the whales, hearing plaintive cries in the drawn-out lower registers and joy in the higher tones. Yet their true depth of meaning lies beyond us. Whalesong provides a window into something ultimately unfathomable: the life of the earth’s largest creatures, connected by ancestry and geographic expanse.
Humans have been fascinated by whales for years, although the earliest fascinations had more to do with…
I have loved the sound of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smiths’ music for some time, (a lot to do with the use of the Buchla Music Easel) ever since I first heard the track Sundry and this review has prompted me to make her the Artist of the Week.
Artist: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
title:Tides
keywords: experimental, electronic
Tides by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is a remarkable pleasant release for the ears and the inner soul. It opens up with the calm easy going birds exploring the temperatures of a lovely day; but instead of having just nature do its thing it’s the artist’s lovable kindness in music that will make the inner hearts smile. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith manages to use limited sounds to bring a melodically minimalism that seems to breath in and out love in the kindest order. It’s as if the artist captured the senses of naive innocence of a beautiful wishful day in natural surroundings; it’s soft, kind and cherishing.
This is not just the beginning if this amazingly soothing record; it’s a feeling that IS this record. In each ‘Tides’ track the artists explores a theme that is lovable and kind, the music that makes…
A sea of foliage girds our garden round,
But not a sea of dull unvaried green,
Sharp contrasts of all colors here are seen;
The light-green graceful tamarinds abound
Amid the mango clumps of green profound,
And palms arise, like pillars gray, between;
And o’er the quiet pools the seemuls lean,
Red—red, and startling like a trumpet’s sound.
But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges
Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes
Into a cup of silver. One might swoon
Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
On a primeval Eden, in amaze.
How mutable is every thing that here
Below we do enjoy? with how much fear
And trouble are those gilded Vanities
Attended, that so captivate our eyes?
Oh, who would trust this World, or prize what’s in it,
That gives, and takes, and changes in a minute?
Philip Pain (1667)
If the day is done,
if birds sing no more,
if the wind has flagged tired,
then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me,
even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep
and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk.
Just because we came back with commercial shit,
I thought it is nice to also have something to celebrate with a free downloadable thing. A freely downloadable release by Mirum Mulier named ‘Metaphysical Spectra’. It contains 7 tracks and a cover that fits the uprising of the rainbows that we have seen spiraling out of control on social media. Rainbows here, rainbows there but no leprechaun or pots of gold to be seen… Let’s get to the pointless point and tell you a bit about what to expect when hearing this album…
Think something slippery like an jellyfish or perhaps a drill pudding that shivers itself forward over a wet, but still a bit dirty professional kitchen floor, and add some weirdo humble mumble singing in the background and you’ll probably get something similar as what ‘Ancient…
The always creative Flaming Pines label has just launched its third 3″ series, arriving on the heels of the successful Birds of a Feather and Rivers Home sets. Tiny Portraits is a year-long series in which artists are invited to reflect on place, in particular “somewhere small, overlooked or obscure”. It’s also a broadening of concepts first explored on Flaming Pines’ Australia-based 2013 compilation of the same name. The first four singles (released concurrently) come from Siavash Amini (Iran), Yuco (Japan), Zenjungle (Greece) and Sound Awakener (Vietnam). Arash Akbari’s sound map helps the listener to position the recordings in space. Yet while the inspirations may be international, the tone is similar; these singles sound like home.
Given the theme of the last series, it’s appropriate that the new series includes the sound of birds. Siavash Amini‘s Luminous Streams of Dawn (Doostan Boulevard, Tehran) isn’t what most people think…
Feminatronic has been putting together playlists for some time on different platforms. At first, I used the 8Track format but with the recent changes on that platform, I found that I couldn’t continue to put together the eclectic and wideranging playlists any more. Unfortunately, I had to close that account.
Over the past weeks I have been replicating and creating new playlists directly on Soundcloud. I post these each Monday on Twitter and Facebook, where they are pinned for the week. Here is this weeks playlist inspired by a message I received from the artist Alma Laprida, who provided me with a great list of South American electronic musicians. There is a rich heritage of electronic music creation in that part of the world and this is the first part of my exploration. More to come soon.
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 trackDeltais 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 Thompsonmade 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.
Feminatronic 
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