"The only sound source used in this quite minimal piece is an improvisation on e-bowed guitar. It was made as a personal late night or sleep soundtrack, but maybe some other people could enjoy it - for similar or different purposes."
"...for me this track is like a simple organism breathing slowly in obscurity, or obscurity/night seen as a living organism, i don't know if it's something 'inside' or 'outside', the kind of feeling you can have while half asleep, when you lose the perception of your body as something of your own and of the 'world' as something exterior..."
If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.
Music composed, produced and performed by Zreen Toyz. Recorded in 2011 at Studio du Coin Cornu, Cæur de Beauce. Mastered at Scoz Mastering Suite, Cæur de Beauce, France. Photos by Ironside. Design by Zreen Toyz & Graph'Hypnotic.
Released previously as limited edition CDr of only 30 copies in 2011.
Rather than think of himself as a composer or musician French artist Zreen Toyz likes to think of himself as a Sculptor of Sounds.
He started with classical training on piano and percussion but the stifling conformity of the academy led him to turn to the world of improvised music.
From this point on his training is essentially self-taught.
Along the way he encounters composers such as Luc Ferrari and İlhan Mimaroğlu but he considers the improvised electronic music of Tangerine Dream during the early 70s and his meetings with Conrad Schnitzler (Berlin 1973) and Herman Poole Blount (better known as Sun Ra) as providing the foundation for his experiments with sound.
Since his first pieces created in 1970, he works the sound material following inspiration of the moment, a raw and instinctive approach by stratification where any imperfection or sound incident become a harshness on which to hang on atmospheres or reflections.
In this way, he creates impalpable and timeless landscapes where vibrations, noises, and collages erase the structure of the piece.
I think of myself as a complete mystery. To myself.
The Chestnut Tree compilation includes over 60 artists from 18 countries, collected for the program’s one year anniversary on KPFT , 90.1FM in Houston, Texas. The program also airs on Stillstream.com, the largest ambient radio community on-line. This compilation is released through Buddhist on Fire as a creative commons download.
This project represents a system of artists, community radio and net labels that promote a large range of non-commercial and legally free music. This encourages new, creative and experimental music, listener exploration and free information. Thank you to all who donated their work, time and creativity for this compilation.
I'm grateful for anything that reminds me of what's possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It's so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made...
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (2002)
Recorded on February 1, 2012 using guitar, eBow, and various effects. Additional modifications, including brainwave synchronization, were made on February 13, 2012.
It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake.
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (2002)
A tribute to Sadayatana from field recording guru Luís Antero. Thank you Luís.
Luís Antero - field recordings, electronics and electric guitar
Recorded in january 2012, in Oliveira do Hospital, Portugal
This soundwork is a tribute to Sadayatana, a radio show curated by John Tocher
www.luisantero.yolasite.com
Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
There are several different Marsynths, which are electronic instruments created to exhibit a large variety of organic characteristics similar to their acoustic counterparts.
The artists in this collection illustrate the diversity of the Marsynth through their varied use, interpretation and collaborative efforts.
Now an invention has been wrought out that proves that electricity is capable of producing--not reproducing, but producing--music of rare beauty and purity.
CDRX a citizen of Elgaland-Vargaland began making music in 1996. He started as Cereal Killer and does audio manipulation and mixes using sound bites, field recordings, loops, distortions and harsh noise. CDRX has created and released a number of cds via his own label Bad For Health Records.
"I listen to a lot of industrial, ambient and concrete music but also metal, folk and pop."
He takes his inspiration from the likes of Nurse With Wound, Pierre Henry, Final and Aidan Baker and many more.
While the title is taken from a release by Nurse With Wound (which in turn was a cover of the original by French experimentalist Jac Berrocal), this is not a remake or cover of it's namesake.
A film for the disused cinema of your mind's eye. Don't forget to save us the aisle seats.
Yes I am a Nurse With Wound fan, the greatest band in the world since music was created.
Palancar, the man behind the Earth Mantra Netlabel, founder of ambient internet radio station stillstream.com, ambient composer and multi-instrumental musician and father of four is and has been a huge inspiration for us here at Buddhist on Fire.
Buddhist on Fire is very proud to release this album.
From his notes:
These are not the final intended mixes of this album. They are
rough intermediate mixes that I made during the composition process. I would
say they are fairly close to what a final polished version of this album
would sound like, but unfortunately the source files and uncompressed
masters of these tracks were all lost in a hard drive failure. So this is as
finished as this album is going to ever get.
The theme of the album is the redemptive and instructive value of pain, as explained in Kahlil Gibran's poem "The Prophet":
On Pain
by Kahlil Gibran
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
Dedicated to my mother. We sip our bitter potion together.
Special thanks to Lucette Bourdin, for collaborating with me and for sharing so much of herself with all of us. There is a bit of her in every track on this album. We miss you, Lucette.
--Palancar
The Warr guitar is a relatively rare instrument; however, it can be (and has been) used in many genres, including jazz and metal and now ambient. Dan Miñoza --an ambient ninja, lover of horse head masks, and touch guitar freak.
On February 4, 2011 Dan brought his special magic to the dark ambient podcast Sadayatana. His performance was included in and released as Sadayatana Podcast number 12: "Come Back Later I'm Masticating".
The version released here is a remaster of this performance.
Shane Morris is a synthesist, percussionist and composer of ambient electronic music, shaping ethereal realms, poly-rhythmic grooves and tribal soundscapes with a variety of acoustic instruments, software, hardware and processing.
"Set the Penfield Mood Organ to Aware" was recorded live on electro.music.com/radio and dedicated to Philip K. Dick. It’s released on Buddhist on Fire in honor of Philip K. Dick's birthday.
In Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the Penfield Mood Organ is a psychological appliance used by a future society to adjust to life after nuclear war.
In addition to colorful tones from Alesis and Roland hardware, Shane uses alpha and beta brain wave tones to simulate the effect of a real Penfield Mood Organ.
Shane feels such a device would naturally spring from today's electronic musicial instruments.
For your audio pleasure, here is Shane Morris' Penfield Mood Organ. This one dials all the way to eleven.
From the bedroom Iran’s voice came. “I can’t stand TV before breakfast.”
“Dial 888,” Rick said as the set warmed. “The desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it.”
- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost...perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well.
"
- Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
About
Buddhist on Fire releases dark ambient, experimental, field recordings, sound collage and maybe even some spoken word... Everything is released using a Creative Commons license.
Buddhist on Fire Release: BOF-023
