The eerie and whimsical sound of aged and ageless BBC electronic music and television, now with a decidedly modern (and twisted) twist by today’s strangest artists, plus one orgy. An uninterrupted mix.

Tracklist:
1. “In Your Own Time” by Moon Wiring Club from <em>Shoes Off and Chairs Away</em> (<a href=”http://www.blankworkshop.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Gecophonic</a>)
2. “Main Titles” by John Gale from <i>Dr. Phibes Rises Again!</i> soundtrack (<a href=”http://www.perseverancerecords.com/” target=”_blank”>Perseverance</a>)
3. “Rosy Retrospection” by The Caretaker from <em>Persistent Repetition of Phrases</em> (<a href=”http://www.installsound.net/” target=”_blank”>Install</a>)
4. “Melancholia VIII” by William Basinski from <em>Melancholia</em> (<a href=”http://www.mmlxii.com/” target=”_blank”>2062</a>)
5. “Grey Water” by Tor Lundvall from <em>Empty City</em> (<a href=”http://strangefortune.com/” target=”_blank”>Strange Fortune</a>)
6. “Amoeba” by Woob from <em>Woob</em> (<a href=”http://www.emit.cc/” target=”_blank”>Em:t</a>)
7. “Hotel Freund” by Black to Comm from <em>Alphabet 1968</em> (<a href=”http://www.typerecords.com/” target=”_blank”>Type</a>)
8. “Warp/Warpable” by Deathprod from <em>Nordheim Transformed</em> (<a href=”http://www.runegrammofon.com/” target=”_blank”>Rune Grammofon</a>)
9. “Ten Years or Twenty” by Moon Wiring Club from <em>Shoes Off and Chairs Away</em> (<a href=”http://www.blankworkshop.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Gecophonic</a>)
10. “The Willows” by Belbury Poly from <em>The Willows</em>  (<a href=”http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Ghost Box</a>)
11. “The New Mobility” by Belbury Poly from <em>The Owl’s Map</em>  (<a href=”http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Ghost Box</a>)
12. “Dead Eyes Opened” by Severed Heads from <em>ComMerz</em> (<a href=”http://www.ltmrecordings.com/” target=”_blank”>LTM</a>)
13. “The Devil Is in the Details” by Boards of Canada from <em>Geogaddi</em> (<a href=”http://www.warprecords.com/” target=”_blank”>Warp</a>)
14. “New Trumpets of Time” by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti from <em>Lover Boy</em> (<a href=”http://www.ballbearingspinatas.com/” target=”_blank”>Ballbearings Pinatas</a>)
15. “Secret Admirer” by Freescha from <em>Head Warlock Double Stare</em> (<a href=”http://www.attacknine.com/” target=”_blank”>Attack 9</a>)
16. “My Game of Loving” by White Noise from <em>An Electric Storm</em> (Island)
17. “Salty Sun Tales” by The Focus Group from <em>We Are All Pan’s People</em> (<a href=”http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Ghost Box</a>)
18. “They Are in the Room with Us Right Now” by Roj from <em>The Transactional Dharma of Roj</em> (<a href=”http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Ghost Box</a>)
19. “Man” by Edward Williams from Life on Earth (<a href=”http://www.trunkrecords.com/” target=”_blank”>Trunk</a>)

… and various clippings from the BBC Sound Effects Library (Volumes 8, 15, 19), released by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Princeton NJ.

Alva Noto—Xerrox, Vol. 2 (Raster-Noton)
An incredibly immersive album sure to appeal to fans of what we used to call glitch or microsound in olden times as well as folks who like their ambient music with meat and volume. Raster-Noton also released Atom™’s fine Kraftwerk homage, Leidgut, which almost made this list.

Papercuts—You Can Have What You Want (Gnomonsong)
I guess you could call this indie rock, but what does that even mean any more? It’s kind of similar to what Beach House are doing, though a little more on the hypnotic drone side of things. Spaced themes, plenty of reverb, and a faded-out sixties vibe. I played this one incessantly.

The Church—Untitled #23 (Second Motion)
They’re my favorite band, sure, but I wouldn’t put them on the list if I didn’t like the music (example: the execrable Shriek soundtrack they did last year). See my full review here.

Ducktails—Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee)
This LP-only release was a breath of fresh air to me this summer. I can’t say I’m convinced that “glo-fi” or “chillwave” is the next big thing in trendy indie music (if it is, I hope they give it a new name)—it’s just too hypnotic, and that never sells records to the kiddies, in my experience. Anyway, this had some great post-punk guitar tracks amidst Tang-Dream mandala sequencing and even some Ariel Pink inspired goodies.

Oneohtrix Point Never—Rifts (No Fun Productions)
The Russian Mind LP would have been on my list had it not been contained inside this mammoth double-CD compilation of most of the rest of the Point Never catalog. I love the new “classic” electronic music coming out right now. We who’ve been into it for years think it’s about time Schulze and Göttsching and Hoenig started getting some credit for making brain busting space drones years and years before many of us were born. Now if Steve Roach and Michael Stearns began getting some press, we’d really be going places….

Mokira—Persona (Type)
I found this album length paean to Spacemen 3 wholly bewitching. It runs the gamut from classic Fax Records style ambient, to William Basinski/Wolfgang Voigt classical loop echoes, to full-on Sonic Boom guitar phasing. This record is a classic from start to finish.

Animal Collective—Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
I know, I know, this one was everywhere, and it doesn’t need me adding to the hype. Look, I’m thirty-three years old and I was the oldest guy at their local concert last year. I did not belong amidst the robo-tripping teens and the afrobeat text-dancing. I had no idea about any of this. But I sure played the latest Animal Collective CD a lot in 2009, even if it did make me a little more “NPR” inside. I’m not positive how much real longevity this record will have, but it would have been disingenuous for me not to include it on this list.

Sleepy Town Manufacture & Unit 21—No Traces (Infraction)
This one dwells in the hinterlands of ambient, all spooky samples and Biosphere-esque imaginary landscapes for films that never were (you can also insert your own overused stock description for ambient music here). Infraction is the ambient label to watch—classic material reissued, acclaimed artists supported, new and wonderful music unearthed. They deserve your support.

Celer—Engaged Touches (Home Normal)
Celer just got better and better last year with a string of memorable ambient releases on a variety of new and interesting labels. While several of their works were great in 2009, this was undoubtedly my favorite, two thick slabs of ambient classical vignettes, sad and haunting and eternal. Unfortunately, this CD went out of print, but those who are curious to know the unique sound of Celer are directed to their other fine 2009 albums on Low Point, Slow Flow, and Sentient Recognition Archive.

Tim Hecker—An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
Tim Hecker is probably the best way to get your wayward friends into listening to ambient and electronic music. His records have a backbone and it’s a great taster for those who can’t seem to initially find interest in the harmonic tone float background music of a lot of other material. While An Imaginary Country doesn’t represent the great stylistic leap forward of Hecker’s previous album, it still proves that he’s one of today’s best in “the field”—this one’s a titanic swath of cleansing distortion that suggests impressive alien vistas.

The B12 Records Archive; (7 volume, 14 CD set on B12 Records)
I used to dream about getting this music when it was all rare 12″ vinyl back in the grand old days of Warp. Who could afford the £200 price tags on that crap? The generous B12 guys come through with a vast set of everything they ever released on the label. All fourteen CDs are essential purchases for those who love Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series, GPR, the A.R.T. stable, and the sound of Detroit techno …

Belbury Poly—From an Ancient Star (Ghost Box)
The hauntology “genre” seems to be a bit hard to pin down, though the Ghost Box label is determined as the core source for the scattered sounds of library music, Ron Grainer, 70s supernatural TV programming, original Doctor Who or The Tomorrow People, and BBC logotones. Belbury Poly are my favorite Ghost Box act and this album is perhaps their best—a zippy and fun collection of themes to British shows about psychic detectives that never were. If you grew up in the seventies and early eighties, and were a total nerd, you’ll know just want I’m talking about within a few minutes of putting From and Ancient Star on the player. You can almost see Jon Pertwee board his hovercraft …

Black Moth Super Rainbow—Eating Us (Graveface)
BMSR are hard to pigeonhole and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy their stuff so much. Too poppy to be experimental, too weird to be indie rock … it’s a little of both and not really either. There’s a decidedly Electric Company PBS vibe about what they’re doing—maybe it’s all the vocoders and patently false hippy lyrics. I think they’re a love-it or hate-it affair. Check out my last podcast and see what you think.

Adam Pacione—2009 “Still Life” 3″ series
I think the most incredible ambient music of 2009 came out of Adam Pacione’s archives this year, in the form of his fourteen volume Still Life series of 3″ CDRs. Every last one of them was good, and some were downright transcendent, like “Ending Titles.” This guy has my full attention, and if you like traditional ambient, he should have yours too.

White Rainbow—New Clouds (Kranky)
Adam Forkner was on a fake “shit list” in the back of my mind for talking a slight amount of trash about Steve Roach on his shareblog. Kids have some nerve dropping a deuce on the masters of a genre of music they owe total allegiance to, is the way I see it. It’s like those new age vs. ambient wonks going around the internet a few years back. That kind of discussion is just preposterous. Nevertheless, this latest album of four solid White Rainbow tracks is quite excellent, if perhaps a bit too indebted to Ashra here and there. It’s still a mighty fine listen, and way more new age than ambient, in a good way.

Here is part two of my best-of selection for 2009. This segment goes a little further afield into music that flirts with indie rock, techno, among other styles, but it’s still so quiet …

Tracklist:

1. “Add Infinity” by Mountains from Choral (Thrill Jockey)
Mountains have been quietly releasing albums for the last several years that sit between lovely Takoma style guitar passages and granular synth ambience that wouldn’t be out of place on 12K or Raster-Noton. Lately their stuff has become even more bucolic in nature, culminating in this year’s fine Choral album, which is as good a naturalist ambient drone record as you are likely to hear anywhere. Also worth looking out for are the fine works of fifty percent of Mountains: Koen Holtkamp.

2. “Maginot” by Benoit Pioulard from “Flocks” 7″ (Blue Flea)
I was lucky enough to see Thomas Meluch (Pioulard himself) live this year at the local Wordless Music Concert Series here in New York, where he supported bliss-out veterans Windy and Carl. Meluch himself straddles the line between atmospheric dream pop and straight ambient, and does it very well. This confection from his latest 7″ on Windy and Carl’s own label is a great example of having feet both on the ground and way out in the aether.

3. “Dopplerton” by Bibio from Vignetting the Compost (Mush)
Bibio got bad press for years as a kind of Boards of Canada copycat. This is unfair, not because it’s untrue, but because he was probably the best BoC copycat out there. Recently he’s moved in a different direction for his association with Warp Records, but not before he released this fine ambient folk record. It’s sunny and gorgeous, and, in my opinion, sounds as though he’d shorn himself of any BoC association well before Warp came knocking.

4. “Part 2″ by Grouper from live recording from All Tomorrow’s Parties (Free Music Archive)
I heard this song when Grouper played live a few months ago and wondered what the song title was. Thankfully, Free Music Archive released the entire set from another show from around the same time so I can at least possess the track, if not the title. Check out FMA for more unreleased Grouper, as well as free music by a staggering number of excellent artists.

5. “From An Ancient Star” by Belbury Poly from From an Ancient Star (Ghost Box)
Doing electronic music as if it’s 1979 is a “thing” right now, and I love it. Belbury Poly were there before a lot of other artists, with their 2004 debut, The Willows (especially notable for what appears to be a Dalek singing—and I’m talking OG Doctor Who, here). The latest might serve as a great soundtrack to Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, but it also serves to remind of dusty Penguin paperbacks, Arthur Machen, Beaver and Krause, and strange field recordings from an old BBC nature documentary. These guys are mining the late 20th century nerd subconscious.

6. “Fields Are Breathing” by Black Moth Super Rainbow from Eating Us (Graveface)
I completely forgot to mention that I played this in the podcast, and for that I apologize. I love BMSR, who mix completely bonkers psych-rock with In Search Of … electro sensibilities. Like playing Belbury Poly on angel dust while watching a Sid and Marty Krofft broadcast? I’m running out of descriptors for this stuff, I can’t help it. Anyway, this disc came in a hairy case, and I’m a sucker for anything sung on a vocoder; so sue me.

7. “Spring” by Ducktails from Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee)
I used to live one NJ town over from the artist known as Ducktails, but that was likely before he was born. At the same time, I kind of get the Jersey Shore vibe he’s going for, even if he might not have been old enough to remember it as it was in the late 80s (and, according to MTV, still today). This track will likely appeal to those who enjoy Animal Collective and the like, but the rest of the record oscillates between this sort of thing and bizarro synth patterns. Chillwave? Glo-fi? C’mon.

8. “The Void” by Papercuts from You Can Have What You Want (Gnomonsong)
I have to admit I’m normally skeptical of “indie rock,” but there’s a supremely chilled-out variety going around right now (until the next temporary trend appears), and I’m really grooving on it. I watched the video for another track on this and it had all the right moves: post-apocalyptic hermits, warm and echoey organs (with help from a Beach House member, apparently), and some truly nice harmonies. Here’s the video, and the whole record is a gem, too.

9. “Quicksand” by Lotus Plaza from The Floodlight Collective (Kranky)
Speaking of indie rock, here’s the dream pop side-project of the guitarist from hipster faves Deerhunter. I like the main band, too, and the solo recordings prove this is a group of very talented guys. In my opinion, none of the music would be out of place on 4AD back in the grand old days of the label, and, coming from me, that is very high praise indeed. The Phil Spector drums are a nice touch, too.

10. “Long Way” by Parks from Hidden (Infraction)
Parks made it onto my best-of from last year with his fine Umber album, so it’s no surprise to see him here again, though I doubt it’ll be making my top-fifteen of ‘09 (to come on ZapTown soon). This one is a bit different, sometimes reminding me of the euro-techno of Peter Benisch, with that distinct (and very slick) ambient sound noted on his earlier work. Vocals make their way into the mix here and there, something I normally eschew in this type of music, but they seem to work pretty well, and are not excessive or distracting. I’ll be keeping my eyes on future works from Parks—one of the distinctly interesting new “scene” of Russian ambient musicians.

11. “Lest You Forget” by BVdub from We Were the Sun (Quietus)
Brock Van Wey made a big splash with listeners this year with his sprawling White Clouds Drift On and On. While I enjoyed that album, it didn’t have the punch I was expecting, considering all the positive press I continue to hear. My initial feeling was that it was impressive only if you hadn’t heard a lot of ambient lately, and many of the tracks were far too long for their weight, not to mention terribly sweet and “emotional” with a capital E. Still nice stuff, (especially the Intrusion remix disc), but nothing earth-crumbling, especially when compared with recent work by The Sight Below and Markus Guentner, for instance. Still, the limited CDR on Quietus (sounds like outtakes from White Clouds to me), really struck me as something special, despite its similarity to the other album. This is the sweet and pretty final track from the record, and it makes a good segue to what I hope will be a sweet and pretty 2010.

Happy holidays everyone!

58.3MB – one hour, three minutes, thirty-nine seconds

Welcome to the twenty-sixth episode of The Quiet Sounds. In this segment, I’ll be exploring my favorite music of the year 2009. There was a lot of great ambient and electronic music this year (not to mention other styles), and I felt that only two episodes could cover my favorites completely. So please stay tuned for the next episode coming within the month.

Tracklist:

1. “100 Years Ago” by Tim Hecker from An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
I played a portion of the terrific new Tim Hecker album last episode, but it’s worth exploring a little more. I think Hecker is producing some of the most interesting and oddly symphonic ambient noise around, and his style seems to become more refined with each release.

2. “We Might Just Have What You Need” by The Fun Years from Split 10″ w/.cut (Three:Four)
The Fun Years are a relatively new project, one guy on guitar, one guy on turntables. There’s a power to the overlapping sounds that builds in intensity over each of their tracks. I highly recommend their two albums on the Barge label, which give their sound a chance to stretch out in longer lengths, but you get an idea of what they can do with this brief track from a recent split 10″ on the Three:Four label out of Switzerland.

3. “The ACC” by Simon Scott from Navigare (Miasmah)
All you 90s era indie-kids probably remember Slowdive from your years of digging through record crates looking for albums as good as what My Bloody Valentine were doing at the time. Scott, Slowdive’s former drummer, has returned as label owner and artist in his own right, releasing this excellent drone record (with distinct rock moments) on Erik K. Skodvin’s (Svarte Greiner, Deaf Center) label, Miasmah. It’s loud and vast, yet still peaceful, and I find it a hell of a lot more engaging than Mojave 3 ever were.

4. “Sunday After the War” by Harold Budd & Clive Wright from Candylion (Darla)
One day in the future, Harold Budd will be regarded as a unique American treasure. Until that time, we’ll have to sate ourselves with his unabashedly pretty and elegant records. Candylion is much more to my liking than his previous work with Wright, and reminds me of Budd’s other great work from this century, the painfully beautiful Avalon Sutra.

5. “Gaited Florets” by Celer from Mane Blooms (Low Point)
It seems unfair that the year Celer produced their most mature and exciting records was also the year the project was forced to end due to the untimely and tragic death of founding member Dani Baquet-Long. Nevertheless, musically, the duo have left some staggering works this year to remember her by, including this fine 7″ on Low Point, as well as the truly remarkable works on labels like Home Normal, Sentient Recognition Archive, Slow Flow, and others.

6. “Canal Rocks” by Solo Andata from Solo Andata (12K)
This Australian act caught my ear this year with an engaging set of naturalistic ambience that recalls latter period Biosphere and Italian ritual-ambient master Alio Die. While I find myself tired of the recent spate of neo-classical passages in a lot of current electronic music, here the instruments are used tastefully and for dramatic color, not as a stab at schmalzy “imaginary film soundtracks.”

7. “Xerrox Sora” by Alva Noto from Xerrox, Vol. 2 (Raster Noton)
This is my first experience with Alva Noto, who I’d previously thought only made albums of difficult computer noise. I’m glad I found out otherwise because this is a truly fine record slewing back and forth between Basinski-esque orchestral mashings and digital detritus. Apparently this is part two in a projected six-part series and I’m curious to watch its development over the coming releases.

8. “Ships Without Meaning” by Oneohtrix Point Never from Rifts (Not Not Fun)
Oneohtrix Point Never hit me by surprise this year, with a mammoth collection of the majority of his recorded work on various labels. Fans of early-80s synth masterpieces by Vangelis, Jarre, and Tangerine Dream who were put off by these artists’ decision to head down the path of electro-cheese will die for Point Never’s incredible synth arpeggio armada. My wife thinks it sounds like the music for L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics commercials from the 80s, but that’s the point, right?

9. “Lord, Am I Going Down?” by Mokira from Persona (Type)
Andreas Tilliander revives his Mokira project for this absolutely staggering album, ostensibly a tribute to heroin-stewed space-rockers Spacemen 3, but really a paean to the heartfelt things software can do in the right hands. This one takes a little work to fully get into, but the payoff is evident as Tilliander manages to thread together Spacemen 3 phase-rock, Inoue-style ambient, William Basinski tape loops, Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle,” and Tilliander’s own clip-hop beginnings into a futuristic ur-music.

10. “Blooming Woods” by Sleepy Town Manufacture & Unit 21 from No Traces (Infraction)
The burgeoning Russian ambient music scene has produced a lot of excellent music, not much of which has met with Western ears as of yet. This record (as well as STM’s side-project Beautumn and the incredible work of Parks) makes a fine introduction. Sleepy Town adds the oddly nostalgic and yet still modern electronic sound of Pete Namlook (or Biosphere, for that matter) to the warm crackle of Unit 21’s LP collection plunderings. It’s a beautiful and foreign experience to hear old spoken-word story-records from Russia amidst haunting forest ambience and the hooting of a distant owl. Applause to Infraction Records for shedding light on these woefully obscure projects with domestic releases.

60.4MB – one hour, five minutes, fifty-seven seconds

Welcome to the twenty-fifth episode of my ambient music podcast, The Quiet Sounds. Since 2005, with frustrating irregularity, I’ve posted sprawling collections of the relaxing, lulling, bizarre, unexpected, experimental, soft, womb-like, quiet sounds of ambient music with the hope that it will make a difficult genre more user-friendly while exposing the work of new and classic artists to a wider audience.

In this episode, I focus on some more recent records to catch my fancy, as well as some forthcoming ambient and electronic works via the always interesting Kranky label. There is a small amount of commentary included on the cast, but I have also written some extended words below regarding each of the tracks to provide further information and thoughts.

Thank you very much for listening and I hope you enjoy The Quiet Sounds!

Tracklist:
1. “Major Spillage” (edit) by White Rainbow from New Clouds (Kranky) (start time: 1:17)
This is an edited track from the forthcoming album by Portland artist Adam Forkner, recording as White Rainbow. His first for Kranky, Prism of Eternal Now was a trance guitar epic, worthy of Ashra’s Manuel Göttsching. The follow-up is a more spaced out affair, with extended passages of pillowy synth and Steve Hillage guitar.

2. “Seagull’s Flight” by Ducktails from Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee) (8:03)
New Jersey native Matthew Mondanile records as Ducktails, making Durutti-Column-in-the-sack-with-Terry-Riley soundscapes that will appeal to fans of Animal Collective as much as it will elder ambient heads. New LP Landscapes is his most developed and diverse set so far, and likely one of my favorite records of 2009.

3. “Cloudbank” by Julianna Barwick from Florine (Julianna Barwick Productions) (19:07)
I had the pleasure of seeing Barwick in concert a few weeks ago as part of the Wordless Music Series here in New York City. Her live-looped vocal harmonies are cunningly constructed, and it was interesting to see her take risks with her voice in the hope that unusual tones might somehow take flight. Her EP Florine is a good taster of what she’s capable of, but it will be a pleasure to continue to monitor her development.

4. “False Horizon” by Grouper from split 7″ w/City Center (self-released—please note I referred to this as released by Soft Abuse in the ‘cast, which is incorrect info!) (23:18)
Liz Harris has made something of a splash in the last two years, bursting out of obscurity with a very fine record on Type called Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. The hype is 100 percent justified to my ears, as her completely bombed, benzo-bucolic sound is likely to inspire a whole generation of home recording artists of the future. This track is culled from a split seven-inch with fellow Type artist City Center, and perfectly exemplifies her melancholic dream-pop soundscapes.

5. “Paragon Point” by Tim Hecker from An Imaginary Country (Kranky) (27:18)
Hecker’s latest is yet another monumental slab of noisy ambient blissout. I had the pleasure of hearing this record in concert before it was released last year and he pretty much blew out the back of the room. The best part: Overhearing twenty-year-old avant-classical student composer-douche at a restaurant before the show stating to his friend that (and I paraphrase), “Today’s audiences just accept whatever’s fed to them—they just don’t have the knowledge to understand truly good music.” And later seeing the same student composer-douche with his hands over his ears and a sublime look of total discomfort on his face as Hecker wrecked the place in the dark.

6. “Diotima” by Emeralds from Emeralds (Wagon/Gneiss Things) (31:42)
Here’s a track from the latest by Cleveland trio Emeralds, who are shaping up to be the next Monsters of Electronic Music. While much of their stuff appeared initially on cassette, the last few have been on both CD and LP and showcase a band unafraid to channel Tangerine Dream of the early seventies while also indulging a noisier side Froese and Co. would never have imagined. And it works.

7. “Seaside” by Ethernet from 144 Pulsations of Light (Kranky) (45:39)
Ethernet is new artist Tim Gray’s first foray into the world of ambient electronic music for Kranky and it’s a crisp and clean affair, sure to appeal to fans of both techno and more traditional synth ambient. While I would have liked a little more grit here and there, it’s a very pleasant and engaging listen, if a little similar in tone along the length of the album. Fans of Loscil will really dig this, and I did too.

8. “Wind Blown Guitar” (edit) by David Tagg from Wind Blown Guitar (Second Sun Recordings) (50:45)
David Tagg’s prolific output can make it a little hard to decide which releases to buy (good luck collecting his associate Brian Grainger’s material, while you’re at it). His recent work on 3″ CDR has been without a doubt some of the best guitar-drift ambient ever recorded. While I felt as though it would be unfair to include an entire track from one of those fine releases, I have taken an edit from his latest CDR on Second Sun called Wind Blown Guitar. It sounds exactly how you’d think from a title like that, and gets nicely noisy and intense toward the end. A fine record, in lush packaging, as always from Tagg.

9. “A Darker Light” by Steve Roach from Dynamic Stillness (Projekt) (58:23)
Steve Roach is arguably the most well-known ambient musician beyond Brian Eno and his monumental work of the last thirty years proves he’s nowhere near stopping. While it can be difficult to choose from his many releases, you can always expect a deep, affecting, well-produced collection of ambient no matter what you pick. Because he’s released no fewer than six(!) full length albums in the last year, I decided to select a track from his recent mammoth set of deep ambient pieces called Dynamic Stillness. While it is not his most intense work (by nature), I felt it fit the more introspective tone of the Tagg piece and makes a relaxing closer. Enjoy!

Catastrophic uncertainty in the world and the Church stand again with three new works to help make sense of all the chaos. I like their business model—regularly launching space and trance rock masterpieces regardless of who’s paying attention. I’ve been a fan for seventeen years, since I heard their biggest hit on an old 120 Minutes CD compilation, when teenagers would bother to go into record shops and buy samplers to figure out the new bands. Now a new record, a single, and an EP, the first of each in a few years, if you don’t count the continuing side-projects and tertiary releases like the somewhat rough, to put it politely, soundtrack (to a Jeff VanderMeer novel) of only a few months ago.

But what Church would we hear on 2009’s Untitled #23? The fin de siècle mystics post-Gold Afternoon Fix, before the late-nineties dethroned-wasteland Church (this latter era contained the underrated Magician Among the Spirits followed by a long silence until Hologram of Baal)? The dusty and broke raconteurs of the Quick Smoke at Spot’s b-sides era? The overheated lysergic cowboys of Forget Yourself? The sweet art-damaged drifters creeping out of upstairs windows on Uninvited, like the Clouds and After Everything Now This? We know the sci-fi dreams of Heyday and before are gone, embittered and disenchanted during Starfish already, but it was okay because the echoes left have way more to tell us anyway.

The music is a little bit of all of these, by my estimation. Every Church record’s got a misfire, every single and EP has a perfect gem of a b-side, and this latest brace is no different. By the titles:

The Pangaea disc contains the “single” from the album, a lovely tune in the vein of “Crash/Ride” and the softer tunes from After Everything and Uninvited, a velvet fog drifting out of Copenhagen 2:30 AM. This is followed by a duo of songs sung by Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper, “LLC” and “Insanity,” respectively. The former harks back to paisley underground cheers from Koppes’s solo Manchild & Myth, the latter slouched in the darkened coffee bars Willson-Piper’s recent solo efforts have inhabited since Hanging Out in Heaven. These welcome interludes are followed by the strongest lengthy piece the Church have ever managed on record, the nearly eighteen minute “So Love May Find Us,” which I feel should have been on the main album, as I’ll mention later. While the Church’s “jam” discs (Jammed, Bastard Universe) have been, arguably by nature, self-indulgent and unfocused, this track manages to pump along with great lyrics and musical shifts throughout; the sense of a band willing to stretch out within a song, while still keeping it tight and organized. It’s over much too quickly.

The Coffee Hounds EP contains what I feel ranks among their very best songs, “The Coffee Song.” In an earlier age before personal record labels marketing directly to fans, when artists had to worry about what songs to put where on their major label releases, this would have been a criminal backstaging of such a great song. Twin swoon-guitars interlocking, hazy atmospheres, languid vocal delivery—it’s everything I love about the Church. This is followed by a bright, driving, unexceptional cover of Kate Bush’s seminal “Hounds of Love” and an excellent instrumental version of “The Coffee Song” that fades in and out like an apparition. This one is the best supplemental EP since the Louisiana and Block singles from years past.

And, finally, the main course, which is the full album, Untitled #23, cheaply packed in plain black cardboard wraps (for those of us who were impatient and ordered the “special edition” that came with a really nice T-shirt), or the cover above for the regular edition in a digipak. Ten solid songs, one or two of which would have made excellent B-sides in favor of “The Coffee Song” and “So Love May Find Us,” and four or five that number among the Church’s best songs of any time period. “Cobalt Blue” could have been a lost track from the opiated era of Hologram of Baal. “Deadman’s Hand,” one of their best recent songs, is driving and claustrophobic, like “Grind” updated for troubled and hopeful times. The return of “Pangaea,” followed by another gem of a track, “Happenstance,” which, like “Unified Field” of the previous record, should have been a hit in a better world. This is followed by Kilbey in full-on moon-eyed Bob Dylan mode, “Space Saviour,” which I just can’t get into at all—about two minutes too long for me. Two sparse tracks, “On Angel Street” and “Sunken Sun,” follow—the latter containing fine keyboard work (and just a hint of “Milky Way for a moment?)—and slightly dilute the album’s previous momentum. Back up to speed with the epic “Anchorage,” chugging along on strong guitars and declarative vocal delivery. The album ends with the incredible tracks “Lunar” and “Operetta,” the first reminding me of the sadly ignored aether mysticism of the Magician era; auditory moonlight. “Operetta” is Church in Sgt. Pepper mode, a sweeping, melancholy epic—my favorite track on the record.

The production of these various works seems a little “off” to me, but I’m not expert enough to weigh in on just exactly what is wrong about it, other than that it sounds a little rough, in the same way Forget Yourself suffered. I miss the crystalline production and cover art values of Arista, as seen and heard on Priest = Aura, but the major label days are long gone, replaced by more local efforts by band members and associates. Still, in an era when a band like the uncompromising Church chug along for thirty years, with almost all of their peers fallen by the wayside, they are a kind of treasured anachronism. I’m just happy they’re still here for me, and anybody else who’ll lend a kind ear. “… you keep on going.”

Animal Collective—Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
The new Animal Collective is really good, enough to make me sit at Ticketmaster with my hand over the button to get tickets that sold out near-instantly (Grouper’s opening, too). I don’t understand the hype—what is it about this band that makes the press and people on NPR interested in electronic, mildly experimental music? Did ambient just need Beach Boys vocals to get that recognition? Another baffling element: the claim that this record makes electronics and samples seem “organic.” This is one of the most inorganic recordings I’ve ever heard, which is, in my opinion, a kind of strength. Organic is Alio Die recording the sound of mushrooms decomposing a tree trunk in Italy. This album is about as organic as its cover art (which looks like more of an optical illusion on the internet than in real life—surely an important message about the former, right?). Anyway, this has been a terrific album to swim laps to, and it’s something Mom might like. It peters out a little bit at the end, but I love it.

Deerhunter—Cryptograms, etc. (Kranky)
I basically bought all of the Deerhunter stuff on Kranky and I am obsessed. I haven’t been this excited with a new “rock band” in like forever; probably since the future sound of Bristol in the early 90s, of which this is tangentially, sonically related. You can trace a direct path from Flying Saucer Attack and AMP to here, walls of blissful noise with pop songs somewhere inside. Basically I think they’re incredible, and it’s rare that you find a pop-oriented outfit that does ambient tracks so well (i.e. “Tape Hiss Orchid” from Cryptograms). Side projects Atlas Sound (on my best of ‘08 list) and Lotus Plaza are very fine as well.

Fleet Foxes—s/t (Sub Pop)
In my continuing trend to be faintly “relevant” by reading Entertainment Weekly and watching Lost (I’m totally hooked), I stumbled across Fleet Foxes almost everywhere. When some of you had it on your best of ‘08 lists, I figured I’d give it a try. I have played this CD so much since I got it back in December. What wonderful music, it’s like folk-flavored candy (Ricola?). I don’t know if I’m sold on the current spate of bearded folk masters, but this one was a winner for me.

Mountains—Choral (Thrill Jockey)
Mountains came out with their best album thus far, and they are now on Thrill Jockey. I bought the double-vinyl because it has extra tracks and instantly regretted it as I’m always getting up and flipping over the platters to hear more. Four sides of vinyl is not enough for this music; they could have filled six and remained as potent. I’m not sure that this is a contender for best ambient album of the year, but it’s top-five worthy, for sure.

Atom™—Leidgut (Raster-Noton)
Finally Uwe gets his act together and releases a solid album, and on Raster-Noton, too. This one is undoubtedly an acquired taste (like most on Raster), but if you like Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity, especially the vocoder parts and Franz Schubert fixation, this is the post-electronic album for you. A robot vocalist and radio static orchestra perform polka hits. The packaging is, as ever, brilliantly clever.

Yagya—Rigning (Sending Orbs)
Finally, a new Yagya album. Though it doesn’t achieve the sublime heights of Rhythm of Snow (admittedly an almost impossible act to follow for me), it’s very nice stuff. The melodies are a little tamer, but the atmospheres are strong and totally three-dimensional. This is probably the fullest recording Yagya’s done so far and it made for perfect brunch music last Sunday morning. There’s a clear reason this guy takes two or three years between albums, there’s terrific care taken here.

The Church—Shriek–Music from the Soundtrack (Unorthodox Records)
I never thought I’d find a Church record lousy, but in this case, I just do. This is the soundtrack to a movie of a book (they screened the movie during the last concert tour, so I’ve seen it) so it isn’t exactly a Church album per se, so I guess it can be excused. I have not read the book, but I can say with certainty that the lines they use in the recording probably read better on the page than they do spoken aloud with nebulous musical enhancement. There are a few almost-Church tunes inside here somewhere, but, in the immortal words of Garfield the cat: inside all of this horse meat, I’ve yet to find the pony. The new album sounds incredible (drops next month, I think), but this is half-baked stuff.

Sleepy Town Manufacture & Unit 21—No Traces (Infraction)
Another incredible ambient release on Infraction, and certainly a contender for 2009’s best. Sleepy Town Manufacture (also known as Beautumn) takes Unit 21’s LP collection and cobbles together a Tarkovsky-esque trip through the Zone. If you liked last year’s Parks album, imagine that mixed with samples from 1950s stereo-test records and obscure soundtracks. This whole record is a tour de force, from the ample packaging to the bonus disc.

Also really fine:
Black Moth Super Rainbow—”Don’t You Want to Be in a Cult” picture 12″ (Mexican Summer)
Grouper / City Center split 7″ (definitely look for this one) (no label)
Pop Ambient 2009 (finally) (Kompakt)
Richard Pinhas & Merzbow (!)—Keio Line (Cuneiform Records)
Of—Rocks Will Open (Digitalis) (another fine tectonic ambient release by Loren Chasse)
Night Control—Death Control (Kill Shaman) (interesting avant-pop, sometimes has a Suicide feel)

Perhaps it was nostalgic folly, but I imagined a revisitation of the science fiction books I’d read as a boy might still be somehow instructive to the increasingly jaded adult I’d become. Would these works, so captivating and inspiring to a seventh grader, hold fast under the harsh glare of twenty more years and thousands of competing pages since read? I picked a remembered favorite, and one rather hard to track down, and hoped for the best.

I can still recall the day I read aloud my book report about James Blish’s Welcome to Mars to Mrs. Blumenthal’s seventh-grade English class. It was December 6, 1988—the day Roy Orbison died. I spoke with great gusto about Dolph Haertel’s historic trip to the Red Planet in his bread-boarded antigravity-driven packing crate — a nod, perhaps, to Blish’s own marvelous city-toting spindizzies — loaded with enough K-rations and bottled oxygen to allow him to survive the overnight journey there and back. Dolph appeared so adult, compared to my own eleven years, and would have had the experience obviously necessary to invent a personal antigravity ship at the advanced age of eighteen. To a boy obsessed with Robinson Crusoe tales, more exciting was the high adventure of Dolph’s stranding on Mars (via faulty vacuum tube); his struggle for survival cloistered from the harsh environment; the eventual introduction of his girlfriend, Nanette—who, pluckily armed with only a sewing kit, had followed using Dolph’s own notes and antigravity prototype. Add in a friendly, primitive cat-man for a Martian Friday and the doomed alien intelligence resting within a crystalline Martian city, awaiting the settlers who would become future Martians, and Blish had achieved perfection. The school principal, inexplicably attending our class that day, seemed convinced by the scientific merit of these ludicrous events as I explained them, a rare triumph of my spotted academic career.

When read today, Welcome to Mars is a cold, dry book, with enriched educational content intended for 1967’s school libraries’ science fiction sections, where it appears to have enjoyed a brief and unremarkable life. Dolph’s flight to Mars is described in loving detail with the scientific facts available before Mariner IV. His course when faced with stranding is the pure, blissful Boy Scout propaganda of self-reliance and adaptability now completely absent from today’s SF. Welcome to Mars 2009 would be thirteen pages long, featuring Dolph’s spectacular crash-landing in his backyard and subsequent hospital trip for a broken collarbone. A cautionary tale for all ages: science is meant for experts, not kids with soldering irons.

The relationship between Dolph and Nanette—two teens marooned alone in a leaky packing crate for over a year—is handled with sexless sterility that makes Beach Party seem a veritable bacchanalia. I was surprised to note Blish’s deft acknowledgement of Nanette’s menses (affected by mischievous Martian moons, you see) rather than ignore the reality altogether. I imagine I blushed at the thought of all of this, at eleven, and skimmed past it (and much of the science), to the fun parts.

When compared with Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit–Will Travel, it’s hard to remember where the fun parts in Blish’s book were. Heinlein’s future—spacesuits and ships built by familiar corporations like Goodyear, not precocious pubescent faux-engineers—is a rollicking space adventure. The extrapolations are convincing and elegant; quite different from Blish’s attempts, whose joints creak under the sheer weight of exposition. Kip Russell, owner of a used-spacesuit won from a soap-slogan contest, is in the thick of more action during the first thirty pages of Space Suit than exists throughout most of the Blish book, despite Welcome’s aliens, fights for survival, and Nanette and Dolph’s hyper-extended seven-minutes-in-heaven inside the crate. Heinlein’s tone is frothy, likeable; Blish’s plods along, ever the physics class proctor. And yet . . .

Welcome to Mars was the book I treasured and fantasized about months after I read it. It was my mental template of what proper SF should offer a young reader, full of deep emotive qualities that had mysteriously sublimated themselves out of the book by the time I reread it twenty years later. Heinlein was clearly the far better writer of engaging juvenile fiction. Poor James Blish—seminal SF writer and critic, unreasonably ignored by most readers today—justly overshadowed by the top SF writer of his time, never had a chance. Though Welcome is more sensitive and introspective (the scene with the dying alien intelligence still haunted even this hardened adult the second time around), and mercifully lacks the self-satisfied pompousness of Heinlein’s characters, it was no great contest. The classics remain so, despite the stress fractures and pitting of time, and the rest fall clean away.
But you might go home again, as I learned reading the final pages of Blish’s unlamented Welcome to Mars at the advanced age of thirty-one:

He saw a bearded figure, dressed like Nanette and himself in fresh green Space Force fatigues. His expression was hard to read behind all the whiskers, but his gaze was level and probing. Judging by his color and stance . . . he looked lean and competent.
“Anybody you know?” Mrs. Haertel said softly.
“I don’t—” Dolph started to say, and then stopped, for as he spoke, the stranger spoke too. He said exactly the same words.
He was, in fact, only a reflection in the polished metal of the von Braun’s hull. The tall man was Dolph himself.

Seen through the unforgiving lens of adulthood, this scene’s devastating power adopted a fresh meaning, previously hidden to me. The finale no longer exemplified just the inevitable aging we all endure toward experience and maturity—it was also about the unforeseen importance of the roads we take and their unintended effects upon us. Welcome to Mars and its ilk must be appreciated not for how they appear to us today, crude and unwieldy, but for the best qualities, transformative and sublime, that made SF the language expressing both our youth and adult aspirations.

A bibliography of James Blish can be found at Fantastic Fiction.