eleven thousand dreams.

of course everyone knows this one, but i'm clearing out my itunes & posting everything i had in backlog. never bad to revisit this gem.

qualchan ~ dead solid perfect (a screwed tangerine dream mix).

hey, it's been a while. hurt my arm at work so i've been outta commission for a while now. anyway, to relieve some of the boredom, i made this screwed mix of tangerine dream's dead solid perfect, one of their lesser known gems. i found that when i was screwing it took on more of an october feel, more in line with umberto/carpenter/simonetti/as much as i hate to say it, a stranger things kinda vibe. anyway, i hope y'all enjoy & are having a great weekend!

ps will try to be a lil bit more active over here, but we'll see.

pps artwork by main man, alex.

ages upon ages upon you.

i'm feeling nostalgic for old seattle, so i'm sharing this. comp from a few years ago compiled by a local space featuring some heady blissers & shredders from around these parts. perfect for this time of the year.

under the palms.

picked this cassette up the other day & just had to share it here with y'all. so so so good you guys. weird krauty post punky minimal wave shit from australia released in 1976. this is the reish, remastered & sounding crisp with an additional track thrown on at the end. if you didn't grab the other cybotron album i posted, don't be a dummy.

go to dallas & take a left.

not the boring detroit cybotron, here is the australian duo on a private press live recording from the mid seventies that was recently reish'd. this is weird swirling krauty head space muzak perfect for lighting up a rainbow & floating away in the clouds.

hollow earth.

one of my absolute favorites from my main man rother. thanks to paul for the upgrade to 256 from my shitty 128.

library of solomon.

a classique of kosmische synth vision quests. grosskopf played in cosmic jokers, ash ra tempel, & with klaus schulze, but you already knew that right? & yes, this is a 320 of the reissue, without the second disc because i don't really care for the "remixes" as they are all basically garbage compared to the beauty of the original album.

song of the plasticator.

some bleepy bloopy kosmische library jams from parry in the late seventies to mid eighties. one of my favorite things ever. i swear i heard these cues growing up as a kid in the eighties, anyway, just get this. mind blowingly good!

ulythium.

i bought this cassette fairly recently, & it hasn't left my tape deck since. i probably listen to this at least four or five times a day the entire way through. vangelis is absolutely in top form on this one. although never having traveled to china before 1979, he took it upon himself to use the full array of his synth wizadry to construct beautiful washes of soft sound inflected with "far east" sounds. there are few moments of tension to build up the more contemplative moments to make it that more effective of a whole album to listen to. don't skip any tracks or otherwise yr missing out boss on all these subtle nuances like subaquatic bass notes pushing up against synth swells. a fucking rager right here.

ps not that y'all care about shit like this, but of course this is in glorious 320 to capture the full spectrum of sounds.

the sound of young america.

*Much needed reissue of this early computer music classic, recorded between 1977 and 1980 and one of the first albums to feature music produced almost entirely with digital synthesizers. Remastered from the original tapes and cut to vinyl at D&M Berlin - made in an edition of 700 copies only, initial copies come on strictly limited white vinyl* Digitalis dig deep to unearth and reissue one of the first albums to be produced almost exclusively on digital synthesizers. The work of Canadian composer and video artist, Jean Piché, his densely layered and harmonically rich 'Heliograms' was pieced together between 1977-1980, inspired by the music of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Lou Harrison and enabled by new computer and digital synthesis techniques developed at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, BC, and Stanford University, California. It was released in 1982 by a small Canadian record label which specialised in classical music, but as history would have it, the label went bankrupt pretty much as soon as it came out and the treasure was obscured from the view of all but the most ardent electronic music fiends. Now rescued from the annals, we're presented with three solemn, star-gazing wonders which really need to be heard by a wider audience. The first piece and highlight, 'Ange' constitutes sounds created on the Systems Concepts Digital Synthesizer, aka the Samson Box, during a residency at Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) facilities. This prototypical system was designed to synthesize complex musical events in real time using FM synthesis, and once melded with the voices of Piché and Joanna Anonychuk back at the analog studio of SFU, its oceanic waves of microtonal frequency drift recall Popol Vuh's ultra-lucid and celestial elevations. It's joined by the more tentative, tingling microtonal piece 'Lamerlaube' on the A-side, while the two-part B-side returns to the Interactive Compositional System developed by Barry Truax at SFU. By contrast, it presents much more rhythmically and instrumentally diverse facets of his work, incorporating ecstatic organ bluster and moments of darkly blissful, Badalamenti-esque melancholy. It's a truly striking, historically important release, reminding us of everything from Suzanne Ciani to Vangelis, Leyland Kirby, Popl Vuh and beyond - now subtly enhanced by James Plotkin's remaster and a faithful vinyl cut at Berlin's D&M. - boomkat


cuz imma helluva guy. just got reissued not too long ago, a fucking beautiful engaging behemoth of a record. if yr into library, kosmische, electronic bleepbloopery or just plain ole fashioned mindfucks of music, then this is up yr alley u guise. i have listened to this album at least twenty or thirty times now, & it just gets better & better with each listen. the nuances are subtle, but hit you like a train once you discover them. i can't hype this record enough. this & that robert turman tape are all i've been listening to.

are you gonna look after my boys?

this will probably be the last ciani album i post here. this is her third album... it veers off into new age lite at moments, but it's a really strong entry into her body of work. not quite as majestic or transcendent as seven waves, but still essential if yr a fan.

pines of rome.

vangelis is on this shit! how does that not immediately sell this to you? this is one of my favorite new records, & it will definitely be yrs as well.

modulo lunare.

With a sonic portfolio that boasts commissions for the Xenon classic pinball machine, the sounds for the Meco Star Wars theme, the Atari TV commercials and the electronic sound effects in the original Stepford Wives film (amongst many others) the mutant electronic music CV of Suzanne Ciani is proof that in a 1970s commercial world of boys toys, monopolised by a male dominated media industry, a womanÕs touch was the essential secret ingredient to successful sonic seduction. A classically trained musician with an MA in music composition this American Italian pianist was first introduced to the synthesizer via her connections in the art world when abstract Sculptor and collaborator Harold Paris introduced Suzanne to synthesizer designer Don Buchla who created the instrument that would come to define Ciani's synthetic sound (The Buchla Synthesiser). Cutting her teeth providing self-initiated electronic music projects for art galleries, experimental film directors, pop record producers and proto-video nasties Suzanne soon located to New York where she quickly became the first point of call for electronic music services in both the underground experimental fields and the commercial advertising worlds alike. Counting names like Vangelis and Harald Bode amongst her close friends Suzanne and her Ciani Musica companybecame the testing ground for virtually any type of new developments in electronic and computerized music amassing an expansive vault of commercially unexposed electronic experiments which have remained untouched for over 30 years... until now.

Finders Keepers Records are happy to announce a new creative archive based relationship with Suzanne Ciani and as a precursor to the release of our Lixiviation compilation next month we present a very special limited edition double cassette studio portfolio and as well as a rare KPFA Interview. - finders keepers website

i have been obsessed with everything that this woman does. she has profoundly changed my viewpoint of electronic music & art, & i'm always on the look out for new stuff from her. how does everyone feel about that seven waves i posted? her music just has this dreamy quality, like jan hammer as seen through a soft focus lens. they only put out 55 copies of this double tape compilation, good luck getting one.

i still love the girl from bennington.

Suzanne Ciani (born June 4, 1946) is an italian american pianist and music composer who found early success with innovative electronic music.

She received classical music training at wellesley college and obtained her m.a. in music composition in 1970 at UCB where she met and was influenced by the synthesizer designer, don buchla. She studied computer generated music with john chowning and max matthews at stanford's artificial intelligence labs in the early 1970s.

In 1982 Ciani began to record albums in the new age genre, characterized by a mix of electronic and traditional instruments. Her first album, Seven Waves was first released in 1982 in Japan, and was later released in her native US in 1984 through atlantic records. Her 1986 album [[The Velocity Of Love, released by rca records, featured Ciani's best known song, the title track. In 1987 she signed to the private music label, which released a number of albums from 1988 to 1992, including re-issues of her first two albums. Although emphasizing electronic music in her recordings, her solo piano album Pianissimo, from 1990, became her best-selling album. Ciani ended her contract with Private Music with the compilation The Private Music Of Suzanne Ciani, in 1992.
In the 1990s Ciani founded her own music label, Seventh Wave, from which she has released all her subsequent albums, which have been more classically oriented than her previous recordings. 1994's Dream Suite was recorded in moscow with the Young Russia Orchestra, and was Grammy-nominated. 1999's Turning featured her first composition with lyrics, in the title track, sung by Taiwanese artist chyi yu.
In early 2006, Ciani's Silver Ship won in The 5th Annual independent music awards for Best New Age Album. Ciani was also an inaugural member of the independent music awards judging panel to support independent artists.
Five of Ciani's albums have been nominated for grammy awards. - wikipedia

just discovered her recently. ridiculously good. sublimely beautiful & utterly essential for everyone remotely interested in catchphrases like ambient, drone or finding yr footing in an ever shifting & boundless genre. for the lo-fi tweens out there in ripped sweaters & skinny jeans, here is yr new ferraro.

cool, cool water.

lo-fi kosmische kraut noise recorded live back in the golden days of san diego past. beautiful hypnotic synth jammers... if yr into emeralds or any of the modern shit, then you'll really dig physics. put out on gsl a long long time ago, i haven't seen this around very much, but everyone should know this gem.

i just wasn't made for these times.

brian wilson is the greatest songwriter of all time. he was also the best producer of all time. i think a lot of people forget about that aspect of his earlier career. this is a collection of projects he worked on. dig the honeys which was brian's wife at the time & how much they sound like a mix between the beach boys & the ronettes. if brian hadn't been derailed by mike love, he could have single handedly changed the face of modern humanity. or at least produced some really amazing albums. anyway, you should grab this & throw it on now that the weather is warming up for y'all.

scenes in the city.

this is absolutely one of my favorite post rock records ever. i bought this right when it came out because it had members of crimson curse & guyver one, two of my favorite bands at the time. i loved the artwork for the cover, & i stared at the record sleeve (this was '99 after all & i was one of those vinyl nerds) everytime i would put it on. the first song golden hill made it onto every single mixtape i made for anyone when this came out. tristeza used clean guitars in this amazingly propulsive ways to build stunning dynamics without falling into the cliched tropes of soft loud soft that many bands like this do. really emotionally gripping, i think the closest might be the mercury program or six parts seven. this soundtracked many hot hazy summertime afternoon naps after i spent all day at the beach.

tropical belles.

more teenage mutant glue huffing channel surfing neon jams from everybody's favorite martyr of 2k11. not quite as good as grippers nother onesers, but definitely still very much worth yr while.

one sided tape looping infinitely.

chuck person is the nom de plume of daniel lopatin (kgb man, skyramps, infinity window, total system point never, games, oneohtrix point never). nothing like anything he has done... well, i guess this was kind of the precursor of the new opn album replica. i didn't really care for that album, but this chuck person tape is dope as fuck. chopped & screwed steez perfect for green afternoons.

the crow returns as the arrow flies north.

matt mondanile (the parasails, ducktails, real estate) channeling gnarled noise rock through kraut sensibilities with thick clouds of smoke enveloping everything. perfect for blaring out of the windows of yr bitchin' 77' thunderbird.