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"Almost a capella" - another minimal noise/field recordings experiment

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 3:03 pm
by caryoscelus
A few days ago i've made another experiment; initial goal was to record an album in under a day, but then it took me a few days more to finish. Arrangements are mostly more minimal than in my previous noise albums, and while recording variety may still make it interesting to listen, it's perhaps less pleasant in most places (not that it was intended to be a pleasant listen, anyway).

As i mentioned in my introduction post, i host my music on zeronet; if you run it, you can reach the new album here, otherwise it's also available from proxies, such as https://zn.amorgan.xyz/1FiHm91tcDdjkiGk ... a-capella/ (unfortunately there's no convenient downloading with this option yet). All tracks contain 100% original recordings and are licensed under CC-BY-SA

Re: "Almost a capella" - another minimal noise/field recordings experiment

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 6:10 pm
by milo
Didn't want to let this go with no comments. This is a hard genre to review, though. I agree that this is not a pleasant listen, although it has its moments.

The second track sounds like mostly wind noise on the microphone, and this "theme" recurs throughout the album. "Typing on the Mountain" I think is a cool idea, but the track would have been better with more nature noises, like the birds that chirp briefly at the start of the track. Is that a mouth harp in "Varganing?" That sound reappears on a later track, with distortion. "There is nothing I want to say" and "Tired man" both get off to a good start, but then taper off rather than building. There are a few tracks where you get into a musical groove briefly, and then . . . nothing. This isn't really my genre, so I'm not sure what the rationale for this is. There is a fair amount of vocal nonsense through a distortion effect on the album, which reminds me of messing around with my friends when I was a teenager, with a microphone plugged into an amplifier with all of its knobs turned up to 11. Good times.

There are two ways to listen to ambient music: 1) with deliberate intent and persistent focus, on headphones or a nice sound system, or 2) as background sounds that you don't pay conscious attention to. This album doesn't really work for #2, because it has so much dissonant or "unpleasant" noises in it. Also, human voices are very difficult to ignore, and pull your attention to them. It is very distracting to listen to this album while trying to do other work at my computer. That said, I'm not sure I would want to listen to this album on headphones either.

All in all, I would say that my favorite thing about this album is that is sounds like it was fun to make. :) So I hope it was! Go Linux!

Re: "Almost a capella" - another minimal noise/field recordings experiment

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 8:28 pm
by lilith
@caryoscelus What are your influences or what are you trying to achieve?

Re: "Almost a capella" - another minimal noise/field recordings experiment

Posted: Fri May 24, 2019 3:19 pm
by caryoscelus
milo wrote:Is that a mouth harp in "Varganing?"
Yeah. "Vargan" is one of its many names.
I would say that my favorite thing about this album is that is sounds like it was fun to make. :) So I hope it was!
I think i mentioned elsewhere that it was probably more fun to make than to listen, so yeah ;)
That said, I'm not sure I would want to listen to this album on headphones either.
9 times out of 10, i wouldn't as well. But i'm kinda hoping for that tiny chance to work for someone, among other things.
lilith wrote:What are your influences or what are you trying to achieve?
Here, the main thing was to make something fast and do more voice experimentation than what i usually go with.

Beside that, i guess i could name John Cage (among others, not even necessarily music) as one of my influences for creating music that may have no direct aesthetic merits. And all sorts of philosophical considerations which i may need more time to formulate in a form worth writing.

Not quite content with my explanations, but i hope it's better than nothing.

Thanks for comments.