Makes me think of the Alien Anthropologists Surpize and delight when they find this 1000 years in the future..:)

wonderful music with your fine voice and inner laugh

The rendering with this Kalimba is magical 💚

ominous/forboding background matches well with the lyrical message, which comes first

In the Face of You (Part III - Hope)

Built up a patch in Diva that sounded quite JM-Jarre. Thought to myself, in terms of melodic, stylised synthesizer music, JMJ is a founding father. The patch, and that idea, was the seed for the track. It fell together then.

Melody came first, then harmony happened. Spent alot of time on the drum programming then, way more than I typically would. 

Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy..

Time of the Ancients

Where on earth was I?

Duet

Art work: Juanita Mulder via Pixabay

誰かが今も狙撃されてる
今夜のおかず
今夜のおかず
ごはんのしたく
ごはんのしたく
いくさのしたく

Even though someone is being sniped at this very moment, 
I am thinking about tonight's meal.
As I am preparing dinner, someone is preparing for war.

Duet

VON ALLEM ETWAS

When It All Falls Down

This is a weird one!

Part of a new album I've been uploading, featuring compositions written over the last several months of 2021. If anyone can pinpoint what all of these compositions have in common, musically-speaking, put it in the comments - there was a concept tying everything together but I'm not going to reveal what it was, haha.

Cover art created using NeuralBlender.

This album is going to be called "Prohibited Topics," a tribute to the textbook authors and teachers whose work is being disrupted by right wing efforts to stifle education about racial disparity and structural racism in the US. These compositions weren't written with this subject matter in mind, full-disclosure, but the album has now been named in response to this issue and will be dedicated to educators, and to truth, which will win in the end despite efforts to silence it.

Prohibited Topics

21 8 15

Eight days after I listened to this song, my mother came and asked me to play it again. Two days after that, she said to me that she had heard a wonderful song a long time ago. It was clear to me that the time had come when she would see everything only through fog. It was this song: https://youtu.be/izsjRpcgfmk. The Empire of Angels had impressed her so much that she had decided for herself to go there. Then, a year and six months later, she had arrived. She must be happy there. 

I don't quite reach the quality of a master, but one evening she knocked quietly on my door and asked what I was going to do. Rattling keys she would hear. I told her that I was trying to create my own interpretation of that very song. She sat down next to it, listened........and said, "Thank you!"

Those were the last words I heard from her. Before she flowed over into the realm of the angels. This, my interpretation, lies since then fallow on a data medium. Now again. Here on this, a server somewhere in the world. Slightly edited I now release this song to the realm of the angels, that she may hear it...

To my dear Mom.

Empire Of Angels

I created the first part while watching the Winter Olympics. I was inspired by the grit of the athletes. I wrote the rest during Hope Week, a week dedicated to mental health and suicide prevention.

(Lyrics)
(Verse 1)
It all starts with a vision, then it becomes a mission, to be the best that you can be.
Ideas, inspiration. The action’s motivation. To be the best you can succeed.

(Chorus)
Keep training, keep praying, keep going, keep knowing,
Keep striving, surviving, keep going, keep growing.

(Verse 2)
No problem is worth dying for, dying for.
Getting through them is worth trying for, trying for.
So many things to look forward to, forward to.
Many activities that you can do, you can do.

(Chorus)

(Bridge)
The world has so much competition, many obstacles in the way.
Got to find a way to get through them or let the situation stay.
Tough times never last, but tough people do.
So many I’d like to thank, and God, and you.

(Chorus) (X2)

Drums: Motown Revisited and Benny
Keyboards: Luscious Layers, Brass Ensemble
Strings: Modular
Bass: Liverpool
Chords: A major, 100 bpm
Verses: F#m, Bm, E, A
Chorus: A, D, E, A
Bridge: C#, F#m, Bm, E

Keep Going

Method: An electrified kalimba, two pedals, some digital wizzzardry. What does a soothing kid‘s program sound like when it turns sour?
Narration: How to make these times we live in understandable to our descendant‘s children. Image an elementary-school show-and-tell. You‘ll have some 21-century hominid walking in, sporting a top-hat and sideburns, brandishing a toy fire extinguisher and reeking of real gasoline. The kids will  roar with laughter and cringe with disgust when Punch goes about his antics. Later, he will recite his kind of 'lullaby'.

lyrics / copyright jo richter:

the nations we lived in
were made to protect
the interests we lived for
the leaders we backed

we had some religions
hierarchies, laws
we greedily grabbed
what never was ours

we modeled our lives on
ignorance, trifles
scorching the soils
designing new rifles

bereft of kindness
we turned land into waste-land
it‘s all in the system
we shrugged and complained

we longed for an ending
with fanfare and trumpets
to watch with some pop-corn
complacent, like puppets

the stupid ages

The Stupid Ages - an elementary-grade primer

I am overjoyed to partake in sounds beautiful:
https://youtu.be/1TnalFltP_Q?si=VidMVZ9VDKGZiNUm  by Dan and
https://stonerjazz.bandcamp.com/album/up-up-out by Jeff.

Jeff also gifted me a visiting role on his previous album: 
https://stonerjazz.bandcamp.com/album/quintessential

On his bandcamp page, Jeff points out: "This is the page where you can give some monetary support to me and the StonerJazz experiment."

.... and here is my own test account:
https://sonicstructuresandsilentstretches.bandcamp.com/track/eliza

POETRY IS VITAL

This threshold space exists for those who feel like listening to some of my quite professional poetry embedded in rather amateurishly recorded but judiciously arranged sound, a modicum of purely acoustic work notwithstanding.  Fortunately, some other artists have also transformed the symbolic expression of my words into the tangible beauty of real songs and soundscapes - just listen to Sympoetic Ultrasounds: https://soundcloud.com/sonic-textures/sets/sympoetic-ultrasounds !

SOUND, SPACE AND TIME

Tend your listening senses gently. Even though my general approach welcomes and embraces lo-fi concepts like the precision of spontaneously occuring imprecisions, headphones worth their membranes are recommended - unless you like your sounds flat, mangled, battered and helpless. You don't, do you? Be kind to these soundscapes.

STRUCTURING IMPULSE

Due to the nature of "poetry soundscapes", your listening expectations regarding traditionally structured "songs", sonically purified "raw wildlife soundscapes", keyboard-laden "ambient recordings" or voice-centered "readings" might not be met. You will find some of those in my list of /likes/. "Noise" is a recurring structural element like any other. This is what this sounds like - within its own rights, limitations, tangents and interconnections. Sonic structures. Silent stretches. Poetry emerges from the gaps between the ruts, seeps in from the undergrowth, sweeps down.

CARVING, CHISELLING, KNEADING, MORPHING

A quick glance into my toolshed rests on Zoom recorders, Samplitude software and a dizzying array of diverse sonic machinery.

LARGE AND SMALL GIFTS

-----------------------------
Small Gifts

the less to remember, the more to listen
gifts from the ice age reverberate
a simple story, a forest, a coastline
entangled in silence, one starts to relate
---------------------------------------------

In case you have read up to this point, you might be a sonic creator yourself. May I ask you for a helping ear? Above, there is a tiny poem of mine that I do not understand how to translate into sound. If you do - please act on it. It is a matter of common decency, of course, to keep the title (Small Gifts) and to credit the lyrics to me (jo richter). And please do notify me of your version via a soundcloud message. One bewilderingly beautiful version crafted by mono-lux has already gone public, as well as an amazing version by cthonicist.  You'll find both in my playlist Sympoetic Ultrasounds. This is just a small gift, not a challenge - life already has more than enough of those on offer, doesn't it? Treat it this way.

POETRY IS VITAL
sound, space and time
structuring impulse
carving, chiselling, kneading, morphing
large and small gifts
poetry is vital

GENERAL POLICY regarding the use of LIKES, REPOSTS and FOLLOWS:
I like what I like and want to hear again.
I only repost what I've had a hand in creating.
I follow when I see directions or arrivals I like, not when followed (though I might peek in to get an idea of what your sounds are about). I have set myself a limit of accounts I follow not to be all too overwhelmed. Not following does therefore not mean I do not appreciate what you contribute to the enjoyments of soundcloud.
Do not expect other behaviour from me.
(jo richter)

The Stupid Ages - an elementary-grade primer

sonic structures and silent stretches

Recent comments

Mono-Orbit

Dave Orestes 1

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Wivresse ᚂ

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