Name: Ensemble Oscillator 2 by 4ms
Duration: 1 min 1 s
Description: Ensemble Oscillator demonstration by Max Drummey

Is it just me or these demos are musically insanely good ?

Listen to Beacon: https://Beacon.lnk.to/listen
Tour Dates: https://www.beaconband.com/tour-dates

With a deep rumble of electronic noise and a billowing whirl of starlit melody, we are once again invited into the world of Beacon through "Until Next Time." The poignant new single from Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett reveals a fresh aesthetic of contrasts. Kick drum tremors pair with intimate piano notes, swells of fuzzy static rise and crash into hushed vocals, and the whole earthly ensemble eventually floats right off the ground. "It really captures some key dynamics of our new work," Jacob reveals. "Shifts between rich, delicate piano and intense electronic noise are defining characteristics of this genre-bending, soft-loud direction."

Watch and Listen

Beacon - Until Next Time

https://soundcloud.com/vanessawagner revisits on the piano a piece of https://soundcloud.com/rone-music released in 2019. Bold in her changes of rhythm, but always precise and intense of her play, the French pianist, carries in her movement the synthesizers of Rone until a very cosmic final.

On the flip, *KAITO*, a Japanese ambient legend with releases on the prestigious Kompakt and Transmat labels, lifts "Motion" a little higher into the sky, doing justice to Vanessa's arrangements while swirling the composition in a resolutely immersive sound palette.

Stream/download : https://vanessa-wagner.bandcamp.com/album/motion

Bandcamp

Vanessa Wagner - Motion [Rone] (Kaito Reconstruct)

Canto Ostinato is the new volume of classical minimalism from musician and producer Erik Hall. Written for four pianos in 1979 by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt, the piece is freshly framed as an intimate, hour-long solo performance consisting of multitracked grand pianos, electric piano, and organ. Modern yet warm, ethereal yet tangible, Hall’s Canto Ostinato expertly bridges a revered piece of meditative concert repertoire with a tactile and highly personal studio setting.

Chicago-born and Michigan-based, Erik Hall is known as a multi-instrumental pillar for the groups NOMO, Wild Belle, and his own songwriting moniker In Tall Buildings. He has composed music for feature films, and as a producer/engineer he has shaped records for Natalie Bergman and Western Vinyl labelmates Lean Year. In a 2020 creative pivot, he chose to reinvent composer Steve Reich’s monumental contemporary classical masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians as a solo undertaking, applying the piece’s score to the familiar keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers in his studio. “At the time I think I was working through my identity as a musician and an artist,” Hall explains, “and on a level there was some sort of exorcism of a long held pop spirit.” The album was celebrated for being “freshly thrilling” and “legible in history but assertive of the moment” (Pitchfork) and “beguiling, meditational, and magical” (Electronic Sound). It won the 2021 Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and it quickly joined the canon of the piece’s quintessential recordings.

“There is a pseudo-meditational benefit to working on a longform piece that’s built on repetition,” Hall says. “Every stage— from internalizing the music, to executing the performance, to editing and mixing the record— requires deep and sustained presence of mind. I’ve always been drawn to a hallucinatory combination of harmony and repetition, and I found the entire process addictive.”

An apt second chapter, Canto Ostinato is inherently vast, and its score gives great creative license to the performer. Comprising 106 sections, complete freedom is given to repeat each one as many or as few times as desired. Additional leeway is given with regard to dynamics, articulation, and even instrumentation. On the heels of his previous, rather maximal arrangement, Hall chose to limit this album’s palette to three foundational keyboards of his studio: a 1962 Hammond M-101 organ, a 1978 Rhodes Mark I electric piano, and his family-heirloom 1910 Steinway grand piano. “This particular piece brought the added challenge of rekindling my dexterity as a pianist, something I haven’t maintained in earnest since I was a teenager,” he admits. The ensuing five-note rhythmic motif— the piece’s primary building block— is steady and workmanlike, forgoing virtuosic flare for depth, texture, and resonance, and eventually giving way to the stunning gratification of a gorgeously lyrical left turn.

As with Music for 18 Musicians, Hall employed no loops nor quantization nor any programmed or sequenced instruments of any kind. Every part was performed live in a room and captured with microphones, one at a time, each informed by, and reacting to the last. In this way the record breathes with interplay and an organic humanity, complete with flaws, noise, and the faint sound of turning pages. The recording quality is nonetheless toneful and saturated, characteristic of Hall’s production style and straying from the usual transparency of classical albums by using gear with tubes, transformers, and various stages of compression in the signal path. Always there is unmistakable realism and the feeling of being present in the room, sitting among the keys, hammers, and tines.

Ten Holt said: “Time, patience and discipline are the prerequisites for making a genetic code productive." His landmark composition provides Hall once again with a wondrous space in which to reverently embody this sentiment and deftly convey the elegant beauty of this music.

Erik Hall - "Canto Ostinato - Sections 17 - 30"

Harmonica and synth piano performed by Eli Green. Sub37 performed by Dan Green.

Radiostationoninternet

Sub37 and synth guitar by Eli Green. Drums by Dan Green

We're going down to the ground

Live Harmonica, synth guitar and fx by Eli Green. Drums by Dan Green.

one road of two roads

Spectral Multiband Resonator and vocals by Eli Green. Mixed by Dan Green

Two roads of one section

Paul Jove (San Pedro Music) Beats Per Minute Show #48

Paul Jove (San Pedro Music) Beats Per Minute Show #94

Ensemble Oscillator demonstration by Max Drummey

Ensemble Oscillator 2

Jet Jaguar - Storm In Lisbon

Taken from the new album "Recording"

Out now: https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/recording

Released January 29, 2020 

Written and recorded by Michael Upton 
Mastered by RedRedPaw 
Photos by Michael Upton

Ensemble Oscillator 2

4ms

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