Flowing melodic impressions soothe and relax your body and your mind. You are transported to a magical place as warm and soothing and fragrant as you could ever emagine. You are filled with a sense of serenity and well being that nourishes your soul. The warm Summer wind carries to you in perfect harmony the haunting howling of the wolf and the soothing melodies of the piano, woodwins, and strings creating an atmosphere of total peace and tranquility.
Having always made records that exist at the margins of descriptive language, this project by Austin, Texas' most spaced-out duo, Stars of the Lid, is their most ambitious to date, featuring 11 tracks parceled over two CDs (or three LPs), four of which are multi-part suites. Taking a step further down the road they embarked upon with Avec Laudanum, the duo have expanded the pure space and black hole vistas they offered on Music for Nitrous Oxide and The Ballasted Orchestra to embrace small melodic fragments that seemingly endlessly repeat through minimally varying textures. The effect can either be soothing ("Requiem for Dying Mothers"), hypnotic ("Broken Harbors"), or unsettling ("Austin Texas Mental Hospital"). The trademark analogue guitar/tape cut ups are ever present; what would normally be considered the sound of a guitar is nowhere in aural earshot…
A Celebration of Diversity Presented in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations.
Here is the place to find peaceful relaxation, a place to connect to the music of nature and the natural world, and to reconnect (using recorded sound and soundscapes) with the slower natural pace and tempo of Life.
A.K. Salim (Ahmad Khatab Atkinson) was an ex-reed man who retired from playing in 1943 to arrange and compose for several jazz and Afro- Cuban bands. This 2-CD set draws together all the recordings he did as a leader for Savoy Records in 1957-1958. Most of his work here reflects Salim’s deep knowledge of blues and his arranger’s talent for setting down relatively simple lines combining down home traditionalism with harmonic sophistication. His unpretentious arrangements have an unmistakably visceral quality and offer a fine framework for the eloquently powerful soloists of both reed and brass sections.
The fifth volume in the Future Sound of Jazz series is a double-disc set including a range of techno, jazzy and experimental tracks from Nonplace Urban Field, Bjorn Torske, Chaser, Max Brennan, Fauna Flash and Force & Paul, among others.
Simon & Garfunkel's second album, Sounds of Silence, was recorded 18 months after their debut long-player, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM – but even though the two albums shared one song (actually, one-and-a-half songs) in common, the sound here seemed a million miles away from the gentle harmonizing and unassuming acoustic accompaniment on the first record. In between, there had been a minor earthquake in the pop/rock world called "folk-rock," which resulted in the transformation of their acoustic rendition of "The Sound of Silence" into a classic of the new genre, complete with jangling electric guitars and an amplified beat that helped carry it to the top of the charts.