Category: ambient

[photo by Dave Quam]

I Only Know (What I Know Now) – James Blake

In the waiting room of heaven’s dentist office they play James Blake’s “I Only Know (What I Know Now)” and nobody feels any pain ever again. On the other hand, DJ Nate is what the angelic kids doing nitrous hear, up there.

And then there’s us. We’re stuck in this real-seeming world, sometimes a terrifying place to be if your heart is open, and this is music for competitive dancing, which equals graces times speed multiplied by gravity and the fight against it. Gravity’s a stubborn law. Hard to break. And yet these samples detach, float upward, unhinge themselves from the beat as the angelic kids fool around with anesthetics, way down there. Songs as spells for moving feet, bodies — that focus of purpose, its functionality, is what lets footwork (the music, the dance, why separate them?) get so weird. In Chicago!

Dave Quam is up to his eyeballs in this.

[audio:DJ_Nate-My_Heart.mp3]

DJ Nate – My Heart (buyable)

& a Lil Wayne refix. you can’t get on my level / you will need a space shuttle / or a ladder that’s forever

[audio:DJ_Nate-3_Peat.mp3]

DJ Nate – 3 Peat

 

[Richard A. Ingram, Consolamentum cover art, White Box 2010]

More late night music, from a fantastic debut album by Richard A. Ingram, Consolamentum. Don’t sleep! Guitar, mood, tape-pause edits, jagged warm panes of solitude disguised as darkness with enough space between them to allow for shafts of light. Plus some extra-textual pleasures: googling the track title or album name reveals a gnostic rabbithole. #Cathars

Also I feel like fans of “witch-house” or “drag” or “hushtunes” or “Salem’s expensive publicist, Biz 3” are just one or two clicks away from a vast world of mind-melting ambience/weirdness such as Consolamentum. But I checked – Hype Machine lists dozens of MP3 blog posts for oOoOO and 0 for Mr Ingram. Well now there’s one.

[audio:Richard A Ingram – The Melioramentum.mp3]

Richard A. Ingram – The Melioramentum (buyable)

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Ingram put together a podcast using actual vinyl discs for a pleasant-seeming Italian website that, uncharitably, forces you to jump through registration hoops and hand over your email address before you can download it. I jumped through their annoying hoops so you don’t have to.

Richard explains his selection: “It’s a rather sombre collection but does end on an upbeat note with a rather worn out copy of one the best songs ever written. (Well, it’s as upbeat as a song about doomed lovers on the moors can be anyway).” This podcast is strong (although I have to fast-fwd thru the Satie, how can anyone not have Gymnopodie burnout these days?) but his Consolamentum, has been a real standout for me this year. It makes for great, rewarding listening at a whole variety of volume levels.

Richard A. Ingram -Electronique.it podcast (original post)

tracklist

1. Vangelis – Soil Festivities Movement 4
2. Sylvain Chauveau – Et Peu á Peu les flots Respiraient comme on Pleure
3. Satie (orch-Debussy) – Gymnopodie No.1
4. Tomita – Clare de Lune
5. Koen Holtkamp – Walker
6. Jacaszek – Zal
7. Helios – Shoulder to Hand
8. Vangelis – Memories of Green
9. Balmorhea – Night Squall/On The Weight of Night
10. Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights