Alan's Free [Prog.] Electronic Blog

This entry is going to be a little bit different than my previous entries. I've been going hard on the ambient glitch sound lately, so I need to feature something different. 

So, here we have Flutwacht's Fields of Emptiness, which is industrial harsh noise. Flutwacht is a German group who have been consistently releasing albums for some time, and this particular album was recorded live in two different sets. Like Lustmord's live album Rising, Flutwacht's live album doesn't feature the audience yelling and moshing (or whatever crowds do at noise concerts) but is instead recorded directly from their musical devices. The sound on this album is not like the dark ambience of Lustmord however, but is much more in the vein of the infamous Merzbow with more emphasis on the lower register rumblings and gurgles than unsettling high-pitched drones. I'd even go as far as to call this Merzbow-lite, sounding more like something from his Frog+ or Marmo albums rather than Venereology or Pulse Demon. Also, in addition to being noisy, the sounds of the well-establish German industrial sound is ever present on this album, sometimes almost sounding like hellish interludes from a KMFDM album, minus the terrible music.

I realize that noise is an acquired taste, so I've decided to be considerate to the whiny folk and feature an album that could be considered much more accessible. Excerpts from "Let the Sun Shine On Me and Make Me Feel Special" is a short EP by a Brooklyn, NY based collective by the name of Arturo en el Barco. This music on this album is only partially electronic, and could be better described as post-RIO chamber post-rock (or maybe a more uplifting version of GY!BE), I guess. It's really very beautiful and moody, and most of this album makes me think of floating through a river canal in Venice. Chamber instruments, bells, piano, accordion, electronics, horns, banjo, and "toys" all come together to create a heavenly audio experience that is perfect for watching clouds roll by. 

Y U NO GIMME TIME?

Yea, tough econ - wait, what?

Here's more of the same glitchy microsound music with a slightly increased amount of abstractness. Enjoy.

Another long distance collaboration from artists in the US and Norway, Granules' Unfolding is glitchy improvisational ambient music built from microsounds and more field recordings, and it is very cold and glorious. I've personally never been to Norway, but I can imagine walking through the streets of a snowy Oslo at dawn and hearing the icicles mingle with each other as they dangle and drop and shatter upon impact on the freshly hardened earth, and the water that slowly drips and drops from their stronger peers also comes into play on the sound of this album. At some points, the weak radiation of the receding sunlight across the snow pulses delicately and almost therapeutically, and birds of the cold quietly croon against the beauty being so naturally displayed and relayed into your ears. And somewhere, a computer exists and it's making noise from probably dialing-up to the internet, but whatever. It's cold ambient electronic music, ya dig?

Enjoy! And thanks for reading/listening!