One of the first improvised ambient duo tracks by recording artists Dean De Benedictis (from Surface 10, The Stratos Ensemble) and Coco Roussel (from Happy The Man, Kit & Coco, Michael Manring), both of which are current members of The Stratos Ensemble.

On this track Dean plays piano and melodic sound textures generated from voice samples.  Coco plays electronic drum pads that trigger percussion kits.

This track is the first of what will likely be an eventual album  collaboration between Dean and Coco. Stay tuned for more track previews from these two musicians.

Photo by Dean in Patagonia 2008

Dean De Benedictis & Coco Roussel - Ambient Improv 1

Músico  y organizador de eventos culturales multidisciplinarios del colectivo Encuentros en el Jardín de Diógenes, director de la comunidad del concepto Conocimiento en Vía ( cursos en linea de filosofía, arte, historia y más)

I love music. I have fond memories of singing with my family in the car, harmonizing in rounds and singing along with the radio to the Carpenters, or in the living room to the Sound of Music.

I have always loved the sound of human voices harmonizing together, raising each other's vibration, both simultaneously giving voice to other-worldly Spirit and being driven by that same otherworldly Spirit to connect with something larger than any one of us alone; and thru this higher connection, realizing the true joy of our common, divine identity...

I love the universal humanity of singing: the voice is the cleanest, purest instrument of audible human expression. Such qualities are the most direct way to the heart.

But I'm interested in stretching myself too. I love reaching for more expression of feeling, in experimenting and manipulating my music in service of expanding emotional experience. Such stretching reflects one quality I love about science fiction: in sci-fi, humanity stretches its vision into possible futures and all sorts of places that the promise of our hopeful imaginations can take us. In that way, I often imagine my music as a soundtrack to beautiful and otherworldly sci-fi/fantasy settings, utopian futures that I love to daydream about… 

I love SoundCloud for many reasons: it's how many musicians these days (including me) share their most intimate, ineffable souls. And it's timeline comments allow us to connect with each other, to support each other, to help raise our common vibration, and to simultaneously remind ourselves of our common divinity. Thank you, my virtual vibrational brothers and sisters...

A little history:

I've always had music in my life. I grew up singing rounds of "Frere Jacque" and "London's Burning" with my family. I sang in the church choir and in high school, I made the Texas All-State choir.

I started composing music in college, using staff paper and pencil, then learned enough keyboard to pluck out melodies and chords, at which point I started using two cassette decks to bounce multiple takes and thus layer instruments and vocal harmonies. Also in college, I took a composition class which gave me access to their electronic music lab. The lab was built around an ARP 2600 which was both exciting and frustrating: you had to plug in at least a few wires (in all the right places!) to even get the thing to make a sound. But, as frustrating as that classic synth was, I was hooked.

My friend Dell Little and I (together known as Syntax) continued to compose music however we could: we purchased a used TEAC A-3440 4-track open-reel deck and instantly had quality multitrack recording capabilities. Dell then bought a Yamaha DX-7, and I bought a Roland SDE-1000 digital delay, and we were off!

Syntax led to Renjeaux, our first band, which, after a few months of weeding, settled into me and Dell, along with drummer/keyboardist Domingo Leija, guitarist Luis Longoria, and artist Lawrence Garza. While Renjeaux never officially played a gig, we composed and recorded originals of uniqueness and sufficient complexity to impress Donnie Jones and Chris Fisher of Shreveport's the Late Show, which was an extremely talented and rockin' working band who were simply masters of progressive '80s synth pop. Chris and Donnie invited us up to Shreveport to pool our gear and take a crack at the commercial music industry. While we never made any money working out of their studio, Arthurized Music, we did make some really cool music, and I hooked up with prodigious musical naturalist Geoff Walden to produce the first King Felix album, 1987's "Rivers and Veins." KF even played two gigs with new members Wade Ozment on guitar and Mitchell Player on bass. 

I'd had enough, though, of being a starving artist, and went back to college, where I earned a Bachelor's degree in English and then continued on into grad school because I wanted to create a Master's project, which eventually became 1996's "logos, eros, cosmos," a 48-minute original music and 416-digital-image multimedia piece. I had purchased a Yamaha SY-85 workstation synth with gift money from my first degree, which begat 1994's "cloud-hidden," the first official yugenro release. 

Also around that same time, I was joined by Keith Krause and Gregg Willman to form (officially the second incarnation of) Makak, an all-drum, world-beat, gigging party band. Makak played quite a few shows in the Corpus Christi area, always to excited audiences, and also released a full-length album, 1995's "Visiting Dog." 

Since then, I've been composing tracks here and there and compiling them into loosely-themed "albums," including 2004's "Technoliberación," and 2010's "Oashaa." 

As of Feb 2012, I have become newly-inspired to create some new music, which always has been and continues to be my first and foremost passion. Stay tuned for more music!

PS: check out this blog entry which details my musical history: http://yugenro.com/2009/09/19/yugenro-music/

<3 kr-y

multi-instrumentalist & composer.
Genre fluid music for images / instrumental / contemporary post-fusion / experimental jazz / electro acoustic ambient / melodic noise / neoclassical / naive hard core / cosmopolitan world music.

bio here:
http://dedeland.com/daniel-diaz-bio/


In some words:
Composer, arranger, producer, multi-instrumentalist. Born in Argentina,
I studied music in Buenos Aires, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Paris.

For 20 years, I developed an important career as a session and backing musician in Argentina and Europe, playing, among other instruments, the bass, touring and recording with many jazz, rock, fusion, world, Latin and tango bands.

At the same time, I worked as an arranger, producer and musical director with many projects and artists in the USA, Argentina and Europe.

From 1992 to 1997, I performed my compositions live with my own band in Buenos Aires and began a solo recording career with the worldwide release of my first album "The Years Alone" on the North American label Green Linnet/Xenophile. On this album I arranged and performed 11 of my songs written between 1986 and 1993. I played most of the instruments, but included guest appearances by some great South American players.

My recording career continued with "Segundo Ciclo" (1997), released worldwide by Timeless Records, and 12 more albums released between 2000 and 2016.

Currently, I work as an on-demand film/TV composer while continuing to play live and produce.

The Stratos Ensemble is a progressive jazz band, the brainchild of producer Dean De Benedictis. The Fateless Flows Collective was an organization that Dean once ran, but now is simply the brand canopy that represents many of his extended projects, such as collaborations with original FF members and related material. Dean has decided to merge both his Stratos Ensemble content and his general Fateless Flows content on this particular SC page. 

The company name was originally the name of an electronic music collective Dean ran from 2003-05. From 2007-11 there was a plan to relaunch Fateless Flows as a record label, but it fell through. What remains are video channels on Youtube and Vimeo, and this Soundcloud page. Dean keeps his art and content coming, so he still uses the FF brand to release anything he works on that he also maintains rights control of, be it solo efforts or collaborative. Dean also has a separate SC page for his solo material.

Fateless Flows main image by Michael Jantzen and Dean De Benedictis. 

Dean De Benedictis' website can be found here:
http://deandebenedictis.com/

(Michael Jantzen's website:
http://www.michaeljantzen.com/Welcome.html)

I'm inspired  by 70s & 80s electronic music and use many vintage and modern synthesizers such as the Minimoog model D (1974), Moog Sub37, SCI Prophet 5, Oberheim SEM, Oberheim Matrix 1000, Korg polysix, Roland SH-101,  Roland JX-3P, Kurzweil k2vx, Yamaha DX7II, Nord Lead 4, Behringer RD-8, Behringer TD-3, Elektron Analog Rytm mkII, and a custom eurorack modular synth. I'm also a big fan of software vsts and like using U-HE Zebra, Creamware Pulsar synth plugins, Spectrasonics Omnisphere and many other. Ancient Greek mythology, 80s horror films, science fiction are some of my inspirations.

Dean De Benedictis & Coco Roussel - Ambient Improv 1

The Stratos Ensemble & Fateless Flows Music