That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not redemption, who saves nothing, fulfils no purpose--a god who simply is.” 
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

Back in the early seventies, Edward Artemiev created a wonderful and prophetic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinema adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s book Solaris, a study of the clash between faith and science presented as a sci-fi story of astronauts who encounter a mystical and superior intelligence which exists as an ocean on a distant planet. The soundtrack, as well as Artemiev’s own extended adaptations of it, and his music for Stalker and The Mirror have recently been re-released on vinyl by Russian collectors’ label MiruMir. These synthesised ambient works, far ahead of their time, should be heard anyone who loves or has any interest in ambient music.

For me, the outstanding feature of the Solaris soundtrack was the repeated and varied use of J.S. Bach’s sublime chorale prelude BWV 639, “Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” from the Little Organ Book. I became obsessed with it, collecting and compiling different versions, especially Isao Tomita’s wonderful adaptations, also inspired by the film.

As a tribute to all of the above creative masters, this is my offering to one of the great directors, one of the great authors and two of the great composers. If it is too long, that is because I am still obsessed with it.

Candles on his altar

Landfall

Hell Feeder proudly announce The Mabon Remix Project.
An international remix collaboration with admired artists on Soundcloud.

hellfeeder.com/mabon

The celebration of the Autumnal Equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, is a modern Pagan ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them to secure the blessings of the Goddess and the God during the coming winter months. The name Mabon was coined by Aidan Kelly around 1970 as a reference to Mabon ap Modron, a character from Welsh mythology. Among the Sabbats, it is the second of the three Pagan harvest festivals, preceded by Lammas / Lughnasadh and followed by Samhain. (Source Wikipedia)

Hell Feeder - Mabon (Tuonela Remix)

Made for Naviar;s 397th Haiku Challenge. See https://www.naviarrecords.com/2020/03/04/naviarhaiku322-the-sun-set-behind/ for enlightenment.

Moonwatcher [naviarhaiku397]

Atavistic retreat

I've posted a new album at https://tuonela.bandcamp.com/album/borrowed-reflections, a few recent-ish Soundcloud tracks and a couple of 40 minute monsters which are released elsewhere. This track is an edit of one of those.

Borrowed Reflections

Buy or download

Neverscape Part 1 - Album Promo

Made for Naviar Records' 401st haiku challenge. Enlightenment at https://www.naviarrecords.com/2021/09/08/naviarhaiku401-floating-lanterns/

Words of fire drift in night skies [naviarhaiku401]

I laid DD’s samples end to end and made them into a wav file in Audacity. This was then explored using my demo copy of The Mangle (using a bit more restraint than I usually display). The result was cut up and rearranged over several drones created from the cello sample, with some reverb added and some other fiddling with track lengths and channels. A few glitches were cleaned up and some extra bits from the mangle remixed and sprinkled over the beginning and end sections.

I doubt that the end result is still in C, and probably has strayed into many other keys, hence the title.
 
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The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.

Step 1: This week’s project is based on a great “construction kit” of WAV files in the key of C recorded for us by Disquiet Junto member Daniel Díaz. 

Step 2: Listen through the tracks, which include piano, two electric guitars, melodica, bowed upright bass, and other instruments.

Step 3: Record your own track employing the source audio.


More on this 507th weekly Disquiet Junto project — In DD’s Key of C (The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key) — at: https://disquiet.com/0507/

The Sea of Keys [disquiet0507]

Made for Naviar Records; 403rd Haiku Challenge. Enlightenment at https://www.naviarrecords.com/2021/09/22/naviarhaiku403-on-the-spring-equinox/

Clouds worship in a mountain temple [naviarhaiku403]

Stratosferric

A rather uninspired Mangle treatment of a Shepard Tone track pinched from YouTube ended with an accidental glitch overload. So I made it an integral part of the track. Then added a track produced with Audiobulb’s ambient v.3, and some re-processing of the glitch.

 Then ran out of time, but here it is, late, anyway.

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The Assignment: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.

Many thanks to Robert Precht for having proposed this project.

There’s just one step: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.

More on this 508th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Germane Shepard (The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key) — at: https://disquiet.com/0508/

STGM [disquiet0508]

Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it, the studio's gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.  ~  Tom Waits
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Tracklist:
Alice Coltrane – Journey In Satchidananda
the marble tea – Mantra On A Sandy Knoll
Formes – I Walk On Stones
Eden Rose – I Was There... (The Frankenstein Disco Demo)
Hank Tilbury – I Killed Some Time
Paul Winter Consort – Icarus (live)
Manu Dibango – Nights in Zeralda
Audio Obscura & The Norfolk Fjords – Mahler in Kings Cross
Tuonela – Kombobulata
Adderall Canyonly – Shadow Systems On High
Orestis Mammis – Human Galore
Roy Semmens – A Desert Sunset
Sarah Blasko – Life On Mars
Joe & Eddie – The Drinking Gourd (live)
The Sound Defects – Angels   
Ragnar Bjarnason – Smells Like Teen Spirit
Jose Reyes E Los Reyes – Duels de Guitares
Gabriel Saloman – Adhere Part 5
Savage Nightingale – A Boy & His Ladder
Tuonela – Symptoms and Side Effects of Time Travel
Billie Holiday – As Time Goes By

Eclectic current – Side effects of time travel

Bone scrapings

“One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”    ― Salvador Dali

Track list:
Barbara Moore – Steam Heat
Limpe Fuchs, Christoph Heemann, Timo Van Luijk – Dark Animals
Jarred Osborne – Psychedelic Nature Alchemist / Lily
Susumu Yokota – kinoko
Chris & Cosey – Cowboys In Cuba
Height-Dismay – Girl From Ipanema
Hiss Tracts – half-speed addict starts with broken wollensak
Tisero – Solemn Night Under The Moon
Locrian & Christoph Heemann – The Drowned Forest
Laurie Anderson – Blue Lagoon
Peter Thomas – Moontown
Dead Can Dance – Yulunga (Spirit Dance)
Cabaret Voltaire – Theme From Earthshaker
John Carpenter – Night
Boson Spin – Glostentrooft
Christian Marclay – Black Stucco
Peter Thomas – Main Theme (From "Der Hexer")
Sofía Bertomeu – Hermetism
Mark Trayle – Simple Degradation (Border)
ray_cobley – Set Free (naviarhaiku401)
Stephen R. Smith – Cities In Decline
Merzbow – Hanamuguri (excerpt)

Eclectic current – The greater illusion

Shadowgraphik

“We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human.”   ― Charles Eisenstein

Track list:
Daniel Lanois – Sketches
Jonathan Kawchuk – Overhang / Lagos
Eugene Hammond's Ramshackle Black Packard – Of Symptoms and Waves
Alessandro Cortini & Lawrence English – Immediate Horizon 5
Cindytalk – The Spirit Behind The Circus Dream
Angostura Elwar – The day aint the same without the sun
Ichtyor Tides – Sath Eart Transmission
tourmaline hum – 42 Diseases
Clock DVA – Primal Eroticism
Mike Patton – Calculus of Finite Differences
James Hill, Rudy Ensueno & Marco Lucchi – I am black as if bereav’d of light
Deutsch Nepal – Faint Retard
Helen Money – Beautiful Friends
Common Eider, King Eider – Talking Ravens, Rotting Figs
Peter Christopherson – In My Head a Crystal Sphere of Heavy Fluid
Lustmord – Plateau (excerpt)
Rashad Becker – Themes V
Synthetic Aurality – Alone With My Demons
Ross Wallace Chait – Find Your Beach
Saffronkeira + Mario Massa – Variazione
zheimeer – nineteen twenty (Part 2) (excerpt)
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Eclectic current – Behind the Circus Dream

Prospero's Island

Predictions of disarray

Pandaluna

A couple of tracks which had been prepared for an earlier disquiet project, and then abandoned, were resurrected and remixed. Then, a glitch collage of speech and sounds was laid over it and spookified in the Spookatorium. Then the lights went out and some eldritch horror began to seep into the room and was about to absorb my being into its foul, polyp-crawling, many fanged maw when it realised it had the wrong address and vanished, leaving seething puddles of noxious, other-worldly, Lovecraftian slime all over the place. At least, that’s what I told the cleaner.

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The Assignment: Play that spooky music.

There is just one step for this project. It is Halloween. Make some holiday-specific background music.

More on this 513th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Ghost OST (The Assignment: Play that spooky music) — at: https://disquiet.com/0513/ 

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto /

Encantor [disquiet0513]

Lost country

“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”   (Henry David Thoreau)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Track list:
Hisashi Shiarama – Technical Music Planning Fanfare
Dikyl Brobojo – It's War! (Turn On Your Radio)
Jozef Van Wissem – Spooky Action At A Distance
The Wibbley Brothers – Mornin’ Jack
Alessandro Cortini & Lawrence English – Immediate Horizon 5 (4K)
shapethrower & dot wreck – sing me an 8bit lovesong
Michael Begg – The Arctic Day
Ilaria Boffa and Vincent Eoppolo – Timete Deum
chicago_word_brigade – Dream Hall
Tangerine Dream – Rubycon (Pt. 1) (excerpt)
rabbitsquirrel – Artificial reefs made from sunken expectations
The Wibbley Brothers – Link Wray On Marimbas  (When I See You Smile)
:Zoviet:France:   – Neptune
Saáadon – Край
Trevor Wishart – Fanfare
Porya Hatami – The Black Woodpecker
Waldron, Stapleton, Sigmarsson, Haynes and Faulhaber – Sprawled Naked Across a Piano
Martin Davorin Jagodic – Tempo Furioso Lato A (excerpt)
Swoop And Cross – Skopi
Daniel W J Mackenzie – From A Forgotten Room
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Eclectic current – There are some tunes that language cannot play

Gnomikon

Stonnarck

Another Product of Obscure Research

Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.  ~  William Gibson

The flow of forgetting

Rational response

Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting. ~ William Gibson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Track list:
Charlie Haden Quartet West – Haunted Heart Introduction
Johnny Pearson – Assault Course
Colin Towns – Magnus - The Unwelcome Intrusion (from Full Circle)
Bill Nelson – Glass Fish (For the Final Aquarium)
Francis M. Gri – Dummies
Andrew Pekler – Witchita Forever
Van Shipley – Jaane Kahan Gaye Vo Din
Klaus Schulze – Blanche (excerpt)
Aidan Baker – True Dreaming (To Bend the World)
Boson Spin – Spartzge
Lera Kelemen  - Green Skin / Affective Interstice
Michael Trommer – 5 days in the Western Channel
Gate 5 Ensemble – And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma (Harry Partch) (excerpt)
Long John Baldry – Wild Mountain Thyme
Norihito Suda – Traversing a Dream from One Side to the Other
Tuonela – The flow of forgetting
Volcano The Bear – Erasmus, The Queens Dentist
Paul Kantner & Grace Slick – Titanic
Fossil Aerosol Mining Project – Arc Nexus Moon
Omit – PulseBlocker (excerpt)

Eclectic current – The flow of forgetting

Down the television sky

Made for Naviar Records' 412th Haiku Challenge. Details and other illuminations at https://www.naviarrecords.com/2021/11/24/naviarhaiku412-even-the-fields/

Territory [naviarhaiku412]

“We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations.”  ― Timothy Leary

Track list:
Spirit – Taurus
Ry Cooder – We're Quits / This Is Hickey
Night Note – NLS-2021-12-02
Nina Hagen – African Reggae
Lahtinen/Langenbach/Hoogeboom – The Boy Who Became a Bird 1
Agnostura Elwar – Left Hand Work
EnigmaCurry – Monolithic Refactor
Herbie Marks – Poinciana
Anthony Child – Bypass Default Mode Network
Wendy Carlos – Summer (excerpt)
Phillip Ramey – Dialogues for Piano and Two Loudspeakers
Nelson Baboon – Transform your mother into a proper fungus
Boson Spin – pm.1.070921
Ry Cooder – Felina
Encym – Ressip Yelten.B
Pleq and Giulio Aldinucci – Middle Point
Pril Smiley – Eclipse (1967)
the little hand of the faithful – And on this day
DarkStar83 – Beyond The Old Cold Metal 3
rotor plus – middle-thinking of changing the rectangle to a less regular shape (excerpt)
Philipp Bückle – The Road Leading Past A Place Of Execution
Barascud – Traversant la pinède
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Eclectic current – Temporary configurations

The scent of bitter almond forces memory from the darkness

Samples used include these artists and tracks: Firesign Theatre, Pharaoh Sanders , Alice Coltrane & Pharaoh Sanders,  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake (Free Audio Books for Intellectual Exercise), Captain Goodvibes, Cluster, Going Home – Fallen Soldier Tribute by Unidentified Piper, The Lithgow Highland Pipe Band, Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield, Pere Ubu, Stomu Yamash’ta and a few (culled from ancient mixtape cassettes) that I can’t identify… yet.

The rest is original tracks, re-imaginings of some earlier tracks and field recordings made by me.

This is a 320kbps mp3 – a lossless copy (flac) may be obtained by contacting me by personal message.

The scent of bitter almond forces memory from the darkness

Sumitaku Kenshin (1961-1987), who died of acute myeloid leukemia just before turning 26, devoted the last 20 months of his life to haiku.

Made for http://www.naviarrecords.com/2017/09/27/5469/ 

The title is from another haiku by Sumitaku Kenshin:

furikaereba tsuki no aru waga kage (Turning around, I see my shadow in the moonlight)(Tr. Nakaoka Naomi & Kurose Hiroko)


This track uses the following sounds:

http://freesound.org/people/bassboybg/sounds/201637/
http://freesound.org/people/ERH/sounds/69192/
http://freesound.org/people/mariiao2/sounds/240676/
http://freesound.org/people/jmfenlon/sounds/351248/
http://freesound.org/people/bajko/sounds/385279/
http://freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/63832/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDJPWqFhgQ   audio
Excerpts from “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane

I see my shadow in the moonlight [Naviarhaiku195]

Piano - https://soundcloud.com/mirandashvangiradze

Ambiences & Production - Tuonela

This tune is now stuck in my head forever: https://soundcloud.com/mirandashvangiradze/in-paris  Not a bad thing at all! This is an ambient remix. The piano is from Mira's own track, all the ambient sounds are derived from that track, nothing else has been added.

I've done a couple of old tricks and a new one, outsmarted myself and had to adjust track lengths to two decimal places and... it sort of works... Oh, and I slowed it a little to emphasise the wonderful swing of the tune. It would be a lot easier if I could play accordion! :)

Image: A 60s model stands in a bubble on the Seine in Paris;  photo taken by fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky

Mira in Paris (featuring Miranda Shvangiradze)

The Dream Garden

Augustus awoke with a glassy tinkling in his ears. It was so cold that there was a sparkle of fine frost over the dormitory. On his bed lay a long, elegant crystal, shimmering from within. It was his last dream, frozen solid.

Wrapping his ragged blanket around him, Augustus cradled the frigid fantasy and sneaked out. He felt sick with fear as he descended the steep, narrow staircase. His bare feet were numb and he clenched his jaw to stop his teeth chattering

He knelt by the grey stone wall at the end of the garden, rocking the glistening gem in his arms until the first beam of the rising sun fell upon it. The crystal gradually lost its luster, fading and shriveling until Augustus was left holding the body of a large lizard with glowing skin. Its diamond eyes faded in the dawn light.

Fighting back tears, he scraped a hole in the vegetable patch with his bare hands, burying the body with the others. As he crept back to bed, he prayed he would dream no more dreams, at least until it was warmer and they could find their own way to the garden.

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The Dream Garden

Milky Way

Uses both https://soundcloud.com/agnosturaelwar/collaborate-june-16 and https://soundcloud.com/agnosturaelwar/collaborate-june-26 , both processed with Audiobulb's ambient software.

Sonarch (collaboration with Agnostura Elwar)

Only took me 3 years to begin getting podcasts together...

They're all here:

https://www.mixcloud.com/Tuonela/uploads/
*******
You must hear this: https://vimeo.com/52766051

*****

Ed Brunsden was kind and patient enough to interview me for  his blog Desert... Mountain... Dust... recently - you can read it at https://desertmountaindust.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/tuonela-primitive-progressive.html

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Hand-crafted soundscapes and nocturnal noise...

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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~ Aldous Huxley

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it. ~ Jean Cocteau

All music is beautiful. ~ Billy Strayhorn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've become addicted to drone. Again. I was the kid with his head on the piano, listening to the overtones die away, or pressing his ear to the steel hull of the ferry, enthralled by the sounds it created. I was the kid who formed wordless songs to accompany the sound of train wheels on a long journey, or hummed along with the fan on a hot day.

In the 60s I used to play my 45s on 16, or backwards, or by hand using razor blades as stylii.

I made cut-up tapes on a cheap cassette recorder in the 70s and experimented with reel-to-reel in the 80s. 

Thank you Subotnick, Lygeti, Coltrane, Jimi, Mimaroglu, Eno, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle...

I am not a musician. I am a scavenger of sounds. I use the most basic software to process those sounds, stretching and filtering until something emerges that makes a joyful noise. Or not...

Sometimes I have a story in mind, see the structure in advance. Sometimes the sounds take over and suggest their own story.

Tuonela

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