‘How to breathe like a stone’ is the third release from the ongoing collaboration between Dutch, ambient and experimental guitarist Anne Chris Bakker and British, minimal pianist Andrew Heath. Their work charts a slow moving, lower case journey inspired by place and process. Combining tonal washes and textural recordings, punctuated by pointillist piano and guitar notes to produce music that creates an ephemeral, dreamlike state.

Previous releases have been on Chihei Hatakeyama’s small Japanese label, White Paddy Mountain (Lichtzin) and the English, tape cassette label, Rusted Tone Recordings (A Gift for the Ephemerist).
Having been aware of each other’s music, Chris and Andrew finally met when Andrew invited Chris to play in the UK’s Resound festival several years ago. This cemented a friendship and mutual admiration of each other’s music. Various visits to both The Netherlands and the UK offered opportunities to record and improvise together before a file exchanging process followed, allowing their work to be edited and further refined.

Both artists are experienced performers and collaborators, with Andrew having played at Iceland’s Extreme Chill festival and working with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Toby Marks; Chris Has performed with the trio Kleefstra/Bakker/Kleefstra, touring Europe and Japan.

How To Breathe Like A Stone utilises Chris’s mainstay, the guitar, often processed with a huge 20 second delay and placed alongside Andrew’s piano and electronic sounds. Two different church pianos were used for their natural tones, one recorded in Noordlaren and the other in the village of Sheepscombe. Additional textures derived from field recordings and reel to reel tape machines, providing a layer of subtle detail to complete the aesthetic. One of the more unusual recordings on the album was made at the Kröller Müller museum in The Netherlands in the large sculpture room. The sun outside was causing the building to emit various quiet creaks and clicks, amplified by the acoustics of the space. It was as if the weather had its own improvised response to the collaboration, creating further notable moments that became woven into this story of chance.

This album does not have a mapped out concept, more that it uses the artist’s evident love of process and improvisation as a springboard into their sound world. It is hoped that the listener will pause to absorb this environment, both contemplating and losing track of time.

releases March 20, 2021
Written and produced by Andrew Heath and Anne Chris Bakker
Art and Design by Andrew Heath

How To Breathe Like A Stone

wlr089 Andrew Heath & Anne Chris Bakker - How To Breathe Like A Stone

This is the fifth episode of the Disquietude podcast of ambient electronic music.

The goal of the Disquietude podcast is to collect adventurous work in the field of ambient electronic music. What follows is all music that captured my imagination, and I hope that it appeals to your imagination as well.

All five tracks of music are featured with the permission of the individual artists or record labels. Below is the structure of the episode with time codes for the tracks, the spoken annotation of the tracks, an interviews with one of the musicians (Lesley Flanigan), and a brief essay about reading waveforms.

02:15 Lesley Flanigan's "Headphone Space"
http://lesleyflanigan.com

08:09 Dave Seidel's "For LMY and MZ"
https://mysterybear.net

15:51 KMRU's "Figures Emerge"
https://kmru.info
	
23:34 Celia Hollander's "5:59 PM"
http://celiahollander.com

26:55 John Hooper's "Underwater Stream"
https://johnhooper.net

29:20 Annotation Begins

32:39 Lesley Flanigan Interview

39:53 "Reading Waveforms"

42:00 Credits

42:59 Closing Music

43:26 End

Thanks for listening.

Produced and hosted by Marc Weidenbaum. Disquietude theme music by Jimmy Kipple, with vocal by Paula Daunt. Logo by Boon Design.

Disquietude Ambient Podcast 0005

A -Worx 1

A - Worx 1

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the tracks on this album were recorded in the winter of early 2020. the mood of the album was influenced by various thoughts about the irreversibility of passing time. it´s about the remembrance of former friends you haven´t seen for quite a long time and then you hear of their passing. it´s about the fly on the window which is there and then it isn´t. thoughts floating through your brain like water through the river and where do they go? where is the green meadow you knew years before? you come back and then there is a new flat, a power station or a street to keep the traffic out of the village.

the tracks were recorded with a eurorack modular setup at Oberlin´s home in koblenz, germany, in the early winter of 2020.
◣
https://secretpress.bandcamp.com/album/those-fleeting-moments
released July 31, 2021

produced by Alexander Holtz
oberlin.bandcamp.com

photography by Alexander Bondar
bondaralexander.com

Those fleeting moments

cassette \ download

Oberlin - Wolli´s Tune

A soundscape to relax the mind and maybe help to paint mental pictures.Perceive as you wish and hope you enjoy.

Illumination

neksis

hushed harmonix

In The House Of Wacan

Back To The Fields

recC LP5

rCX_VI in

Artist: FOURM
Release Title: Plastic Diamonds Ep
Catalog: 10189815
Release: 2021-02-11

Back To The Fields

Orange Crush