doug sessions

New Zealand's Black City Lights, premiere their new track "Tried So Hard" exclusively with The Work Magazine. Be sure to see their US debut at The Satellite in Los Angeles when we present a showcase with Stars & Letters on Thursday September 5th!

Produced by Black City Lights
Mixed by Black City Lights & Charlie Bronson
Engineered by Adam Ladley
Mastered by Mike Gibson
Based on a remix for Zen Mantra
Art Work by Timothy Marsh

→ www.blackcitylights.bandcamp.com
→ www.facebook.com/blackcitylights
→ www.starsandletters.com
→ www.facebook.com/starsandletters

© 2013 Stars & Letters
℗ 2013 Black City Lights

Released on Stars & Letters Records

Black City Lights // Tried So Hard // Premiere

Sunboy - Anxious People

From a split 7" with King of Cats 

coming out on Reeks of Effort on the 9th of September. 

Pre-order here http://reeksofeffort.bandcamp.com/album/i-like-what-you-say

Listen to King Of Cats' side here https://soundcloud.com/kingofcats/bright-lightbulbs

Chokehold

ambient, weird, spunkshine, vintage samples, retro-future,

Clean Bodies

from the album 'virgins' available 10/14
on kranky [world] and paper bag records [canada].

tim hecker 'virginal ll'

Signs ft Aes Dana



"Promises" is from Travis Bretzer's new album 'Waxing Romantic', available in LP / CD / Digital formats on February 24(US) and February 23(UK-EU).

www.mexicansummer.com


Travis Bretzer - Promises

The new year is just more days, unless you do something new.

This work has Creative Commons, for information on how you can use it, please see the website: www.dexterbritain.co.uk/creative-commons

Free Download

Charge Into 2015

Vinyles, CDs, Digital: http://venera4band.bandcamp.com

All songs written, recorded, mixed and perfomed by Venera 4 
Mastering by Paul Rannaud 
Artwork by Morgane Caux

Buy Digital/Vinyle/CD

Black Paws

USC Thornton Chamber Singers
Dr. Jo-Michael Scheibe, conductor 
Aram Arakelyan, accompanist 

Sheet Music: http://www.sbmp.com/SR2.php?CatalogNumber=1277

There is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 
Or night-dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; 
Music that gentler on the spirit lies, 
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes; 
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 
Here are cool mosses deep, 
And thro’ the moss the ivies creep, 
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. 

~Lord Tennyson Alfred (1809-1892) 
The Lotos-Eaters: Chronic Song I 

There Is Sweet Music Here

Edmahnd - As Skies Merge [Preview] - ANTE011

banales trauerspiel - anachronistic ghost

Something different from what i usually tend towards... 

Peace,
-Still

Burial

https://sevenism.bandcamp.com/album/semi-random-meditations-v1

Snippets of my new extended LP (about ten hours long).

Ambient meditative music made from random synth tones and random note progressions, improvised then slowed down.

video here: vimeo.com/sevenism/typebark

I wanted to explore randomness and control on this piece. Also, I wanted to make a really long album. All these old tunes from electronic artists surfacing, suddenly hours and hours of stuff to listen to, I felt I was getting an idea of a period of time and personality beyond the tracks themselves.. Generalizing the listening.. And there was that nostalgia of the ambient bits on old rave.. (The strings on sweet harmony!..) and i got deep into the the new weird ambient stuff only released on tape - digitalis stuff, analog concept, gorman, emuul, celer, 0pn, mark mcguire..

There was this program on an old coldcut album called playtime, it cut up the samples and automated the music then you could fiddle with these faders and change it but it was never clear what they did exactly. I spent hours on that, I can't get it working now as I haven't got Windows 95 anymore (not that there's much difference). I do some data management and colleagues are often dumbfounded when my computer is doing work on it's own - i set up mouse recorders for repetitive tasks.. then let it get on with it. When i was a kid i liked listening to 45s on 33 and vice versa.. there was an old Bukem release that i swore was downtempo that turned out to be DnB and then getting back into the slowdowns with the chopped n screwed stuff..All these things were percolating with what I wanted to do here.

So I did a quick formula on excel to give me a random sequence of 4 notes and another to tell me how many note progressions will be in each track. Then i searched for a synth plugin that had a randomize function and used the first one i found (acidrack). So, the notes i play and the sound is pretty random*.

But then I do have an element of control - i play the notes and can change the volume. However, there's a reciprocity because i'm improvising the music and this is based on how the notes sound together, the reverberations in and between the notes, how i feel at the time, and I play for as long as I feel like.

Also, I've got the choice.. i mean, i've given myself the choice, of whether to play the different note progressions in the same tone or press random again.. so if it's a harsh tone I can do an additional one (as long as excel said i was allowed to). Of course it might give me an even harsher tone and the note sequence doesnt go, but it was a risk i was willing to take. In addition, i found that acidrack doesnt randomize the octave selector or the lfo2/arpeggiate selector so i was allowed to choose those too.

Then to randomize it further I stretched the track to 30 minutes long. This also hopefully made it sound more ambient (control) and meant that each track could be seen as an album in it's own right. i like that fractal recursion idea of an album made up of a load of albums. Of course, i got better at learning how the track would sound slowed down by how long I played for in the first place.. control control control.

If I didnt like how the track sounded after all this I overdubbed with a different pitch, re-amped with self-feedback generating digital guitar fx, or just tried to accept it. I never discarded a track.

semi random meditations v1 (cassette/DVD/digi)

Our very first Stratos Ensemble recording session with Jazz/progressive-rock, industry-legend bassist, Doug Lunn. The whole set is temporarily available as a free download. Just click the download icon.

Personnel:

Coco Roussel - drums
Daniel Coffeng - guitar and guitar synth
Dean De Benedictis - keyboard/synth and embellishments
Doug Lunn - fretless bass

(photo by Marcin Majkowski https://www.facebook.com/marcin.majkowski.16)

Live Set - 1st Doug Session - The Stratos Ensemble

It was an honor reworking Colours for Sub Hero - its never easy 
re-working a track you already love as is - I Hope you all 
E N J O i - Big props to Sub - https://soundcloud.com/subhero

Colours-  a Sir Name remix(downstream exclusive)

musique,,deep man
voix,,https://soundcloud.com/luciole-langevine

Nonchalamment - Luciole Langevine and deep man,(version electro)

unloveable

Belated credit to Arjun Gupta for devising the wonderful http://www.musicinimages.com/ site. Two different images (not the one shown) were used to provided the sounds for this track.

doug sessions

Mark Narcho