Tiny Dancing - Arts For Conecers

Friday, April 11, 2008

The Songs Of The Anaesthetist

A shiny new present arrived in the post recently, all the way from the Amazon. It's called Lifetracks and it's by Mr Tom Middleton, one of my top 20 ambient music heroes (I have a lot of ambient music heroes). Tom Middleton was one half of Global Communication who were doing their thing way back in the nineties, the other half being Mark Pritchard.

As well as creating one of the slowest albums ever with 76:14 (here we give you the last track on the album, 12:18. It's a choral piece that has always put me in mind of the lapping of waves on a beach and is simply beautiful, especially the reprise at 7 minutes 30. It's also excellent for falling asleep to - in a good way), they were also partly responsible for one of my favourite albums in Remotion, a compilation of seven remixes for other artists (and a couple by themselves including one under their Reload guise) that manages the tricky business of hanging together as an album in it's own right.

Not only that but they also recorded an electro funk odyssey under the moniker Jedi Knights, nearly got sued to high heaven by George Lucas and then wrote the bona fide CLASSIC deep house tune The Way / The Deep (I'm going to leave you to seek this one out - it's too good to give away). Since then they have gone their own ways, recording under various names and DJing themselves silly all over the world - nice work if you can get it. For full information I can do no better than direct you towards the excellent and informative Reloadonline here.

So it was that I gave Lifetracks a spin - and I must confess did so with some trepidation, hoping that Tom would have not lost his magic. I was rewarded for my faith with an album of shimmering beauty. Recorded over a period of nine years, and linked inscrutably somehow to the Big Chill festival where Tom has played several times, each track is "inspired by history, people, places and experiences". There are two good reasons for buying this album:

1) it's bloody lovely; and

2) it has a really nice picture of a coastal scene in the fold out booklet. Nice touch.

For your listening pleasures:

~~Tom Middleton - Optimystic~~

~~Reload - Le Soleil Et La Mer (Global Communication Remix)~~

~~Global Communication - 12:18~~

Labels: global communication, jedi knights, reload, songs of the anaesthetist, tom middleton

Sunday, December 02, 2007

A Lovely Day

Browsing through The Guardian’s 1,000 Albums To Hear Before You Die a couple of weeks back I spotted an album that sounded like it might be right up my street; Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure. Here’s what The Guardian said about it:

"Astley's ambient meditation on a summer's day in Arcadia is so bucolic it makes Nick Drake sound like Ghostface Killah. Garden gates creak, church bells toll, birds twitter and Astley's piano sparkles like sunlight on the surface of a mill pond. Possibly the most English album ever made."

"I’ll have a bit of that" thought I and immediately purchased it from Amazon for the princely sum of £5.98, which was daft really ‘cos if you go straight to everyone’s favourite label Rough Trade’s website you can pick it up for 98p less. Although if you choose Super Saver delivery on Amazon it’s free whereas Rough Trade charge a quid, meaning that you’d actually be 2p better off with Amazon. But Amazon sent me a Seinfeld boxset where the third disc doesn’t work properly, so "balls to them" say I.

Virginia is not exactly what you would call prolific (From Gardens... was recorded in 1983 and is currently her only album that it seems to be easy to get a hold of) but she does have a very lovely website which is well worth a look. Check out the Features page and click on the From Gardens... link under Miscellaneous for some pretty pictures and words that help sum up the whole album.

For it is, indeed, a thing of beauty. As a self-confessed ambient music champion – to the extent that I was briefly nicknamed The Anaesthetist as a teenager - it was love at first hearing. I think it might be the most peaceful album I have ever heard and does indeed achieve its aim of creating an atmosphere of English country calm. Here’s a couple of tracks from the album to get you in the mood.

~~Virginia Astley - With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming~~

~~Virginia Astley – Summer Of Their Dreams~~

To my mind it also has echoes of Delius – take a listen to On Hearing The First Cuckoo Of Spring – and contrary to what The Guardian think, a hint of Nick Drake on his most delicate songs, like Which Will.