These are tracks from my new album, available now at http://tuonela.bandcamp.com/album/glimpses-of-why-and-why-not. The album also includes three previously unreleased tracks.

If you like physical media, there is a limited edition of 40 copies on cdr available, all made & numbered by me :)

glimpses of why and why not 

glimpses of why and why not 8:36

Truth in a mirror may appear closer than desired 9:32

Unimagining the world 16:11

They are waiting with maps of heaven 13:24

Believing in the words of men with wisdom’s glimmer 14:57

Dressed for the dying of the light 9:34

Glimpses of why and why not - Limited Edition cdr available!

ambient

An oldie - From the album "Glimpses of why and why not" at    https://tuonela.bandcamp.com/album/glimpses-of-why-and-why-not

Buy or download at

Truth in a mirror may appear closer than desired

Krakow 10.22.10

A previously unheard early/rough mix of the first track from the Lustmord album Heresy.

Heresy was released 20 years ago this month (September 1990) and recorded in 1989.


Heretic 1 v3

Disquiet Junto Project 0036: Still Life 

The painter Clyfford Still (1904-1980) was one of the great practitioners of abstract expressionism. The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, not only houses a wealth of his works, it also has on display artifacts from Still's daily life and practice, such as his smock, his old paint cans — and his record collection. These records, displayed behind glass, include pieces by Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach, among others, and they're accompanied by a small note: "Clyfford Still was passionate about music, particularly classical music. Shown here are several samples from his record collection." In this week's project we're going to take that word "sample" literally. 

There's an interesting question inherent here about matters of aesthetic influence: how it is that the man who painted such massive and graphically evocative works was, in fact, listening to music far more figurative than the art he himself produced? The goal of this week's Disquiet Junto project is to take a shared sample of the sort of music that Still loved — a 78rpm recording of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, II. Andante — and turn it into something that might be deserving of the term "abstract expressionism." 

So, the instructions for this week are as follows: 

Step 1. Please select part of the designated MP3 of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, II. Andante.

 Step 2. Then transform that sample, through any methods you desire, into something that you feel meets the definition of "abstract expressionism" provided by the Clyfford Still Museum: "marked by abstract forms, expressive brushwork, and monumental scale." 

You cannot add any sounds to the sample, but you can manipulate the sample in any way you see fit.
--------------------------------\

I looked at Still’s abstract work, alongside his earlier work, and I decided (conveniently for me) that he was doing with paint what I sometimes try to do with sound – going deep inside former works, digging out the hidden elements inside their representational exteriors… reaching into the fractal interior, if you like, trying to pull out and display on canvas the strange misery that is part of the human condition. One of his earlier works, PH-79, struck me particularly. It is a grotesque Pieta, possibly inspired by the events of the Dustbowl, but presciently painted only four years before the outbreak of a war that would end with the revelations of the Death Camps and the generation of images that would change Art and Society forever.

Adolf Busch, whose Chamber Players recorded the piece we are using, was so revolted by the rise of Nazism that he left Germany in 1927 for Switzerland, migrating to the USA when WW2 erupted.

I chose the last twenty seconds of Bach’s moving piece to work with. More ambitious than usual, I wanted to recreate the almost unbearably sad mood of Samuel Barber’s haunting Adagio For Strings, so I stretched the sample using four different methods and tonalities and mixed them together. I then fed the sample into ambient v.3, rode the delay controls as carefully as I could and cut up the resulting track, rearranging it to suit the dynamics of the 8+ minute ambient version that the stretching and mixing had produced. I then interpolated the original sample, with its wonderful aged and shellac-surfaced ambience, near each end of the piece.

This track is a transformation, in honor of painter Clyfford Still, of a sample of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, II. Andante, culled from this recording:

http://archive.org/details/J.S.BachBrandenburgConcertoNo2 ;

More on the Clyfford Still Museum at clyffordstillmuseum.org.

More on this 36th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/09/06/disquiet0036-cstillconcerto/ ;

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

Andante [disquiet0036-cstillconcerto]

Headphones essential :)


This is a track off my new album, available now at http://tuonela.bandcamp.com/album/glimpses-of-why-and-why-not.

Free album download

They are waiting with maps of heaven

This is the title track off my new album, available now at http://tuonela.bandcamp.com/album/glimpses-of-why-and-why-not.

There is also a limited edition of 40 copies on cdr available, all made & numbered by me :)

glimpses of why and why not 

glimpses of why and why not 8:36

Truth in a mirror may appear closer than desired 9:32

Unimagining the world 16:11

They are waiting with maps of heaven 13:24

Believing in the words of men with wisdom’s glimmer 14:57

Dressed for the dying of the light 9:34

Glimpses of why and why not

Image = Praying Hands by Chet Zar

This is a track off my new album, available now at http://tuonela.bandcamp.com/album/glimpses-of-why-and-why-not.

There is also a limited edition of 40 copies on cdr available, all made & numbered by me :)

glimpses of why and why not 

glimpses of why and why not 8:36

Truth in a mirror may appear closer than desired 9:32

Unimagining the world 16:11

They are waiting with maps of heaven 13:24

Believing in the words of men with wisdom’s glimmer 14:57

Dressed for the dying of the light 9:34

Dressed for the dying of the light

UK creatives should listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK4wBWiozyM

You must hear this: https://vimeo.com/52766051

*****

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

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...

They are waiting with maps of heaven

Tuonela