I recently claimed my Spotify profile, and in the process started to become familiar with all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in their artists platform. One of the abilities they provide is allowing you to feature your "album pick." My current pick is "The Hidden Step" by Ozric Tentacles, a very interesting group indeed. Those are only temporary, though. In a couple days I'll be picking a new one.
Spotify also lets the artist feature one or more playlists in his/her profile, so I decided to put one together reflecting some of the music I've found interesting through the years in the general ambient or chill categories. This post goes into some of my reasoning for including each track. Of course I couldn't resist throwing in a couple of my tracks from Circadia, and I won't go into those here.
I suspect that if you listen to it, you may scratch your head as to my definition of "ambient." But I recently read an article rating the "50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time," and the author there basically said: "nobody really agrees on what 'ambient' means, but here goes anyway."
So, in that spirit, here goes anyway.
"Ocean Song" by Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson is best known to most as the co-founder and long-time lead singer of Yes. He's also had an extensive solo career and partnered on projects with Vangelis and other artists. This track opens Anderson's first, and probably most influential, solo project, Olias of Sunhillow. This may have been Anderson's most ambitious undertaking as well; not only does he sing all the vocals, he also plays all the instruments, which included a lot of exotic stringed and percussion instruments, plus synths. The effect is like sci-fi/fantasy set to music, and I think it's really stood the test of time. To my ear, this track could have been recorded this year rather than over four decades ago. I remember hearing this back then and thinking to myself "I wish I could do something like that." I wrote little songs on guitar in those days, but in my mind I imagined them coming out with this kind of big sweeping sound.
"Tuscany" by Suzanne Ciani
I acquired Suzanne Ciani's album Neverland long ago during one of many flirtations I've had with "New Age" music over the years. I didn't know it at the time, but Ciani actually had quite a bit of cred in the electronic music world. One of her early albums actually made that Top 50 list I mentioned earlier. The development of technology and acceptance of electronic music has allowed Ciani to have some measure of well-deserved commercial success. She's adapted to changing times and technologies and is still going strong at age 71. You can find out more about Suzanne at her website.
"Glass Green" by Tim Story
During an even earlier flirtation with New Age music, I came across Tim Story's Windham Hill album Glass Green, and was immediately taken. I recently saw a video of Story performing material from throughout his career, and he described this phase of his career as "minimalist." I suppose you could call it that, but I found the sound on tracks like this one to have a richness that defied that label. I've always imagined that if Erik Satie composed in the modern era, his work might sound a lot like this. Speaking of which . . .
"Premiere Gymnopedie" by Erik Satie (perf. by Alexandre Theraud)
Thinking about Satie, I realized I couldn't leave him off this playlist. He, along with Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, were French impressionist composers of the turn of the twentieth century. The latter two probably had greater notoriety in their day, but Satie is remembered now as a father of the so-called "minimalist" style, as amply demonstrated in this piece, performed tenderly here by Alexandre Tharaud. Satie was also one weird dude, as this article from The Word Detective about the origin of the term "gymnopedie" will attest.
This piece has resonated down the years, and seems to show up in a lot of places where directors want to convey a sense of deep contemplation. For example, it's this piece that's playing in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Where Silence Has Lease" as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, having ordered the destruction of the starship Enterprise rather than submit to experiments by the alien Nagillum, contemplates his final moments.
"January Stars" by George Winston
This opening track from Winston's Windham Hill album Winter Into Spring is an attempt to directly convey to the listener the chilly feeling of standing outside in midwinter, looking into the vastness of the night sky. At least that's how I felt listening to the opening dissonant notes, intentionally held to wring all the ambiance possible from them. This is just one example of the commercial successful piano work that put Winston on the map throughout the early 1980s.
"Starport Indra" by Jonn Serrie
My recollection of Jonn Serrie is that he first made his mark in the 1980s composing music for planetarium shows. In fact, I was first exposed to his work in a strange way. Back in 1988 or so, some magazine (it might have been Electronic Musician) put out an offer to anyone who was willing to write album reviews. They would send you a tape, you listened to it, wrote a review and sent it back, and they let you keep the tape. I sent off, and to my surprise they actually sent me a tape, It was Jonn Serrie's album . . . And the Stars Go With You. I put on the cassette and was immediately blown away. At the time, he wasn't using really advanced equipment or anything. His backbone instruments were the Fender Rhodes electric piano and synths with heavy emphasis on string patches. But the way he arranged it all gave me that same sense of "faraway-ness" that I got from those opening notes of Winston's "January Stars."
I'm ashamed to admit I never submitted the review. When I contemplated actually writing it, I froze. I was so intimidated by the thought of writing something that might see national publication (even if in a niche magazine) that I procrastinated until the deadline had passed. I suppose it's only cosmic justice, then, that when I looked for Stars to include on this playlist I couldn't find it. However, "Starport Indra" makes a nice stand-in and demonstrates that Serrie, too, has broadened his palette over the years.
"Floating Lotus Flower" by Kitaro
Kitaro was one of those cosmic kind of people, but he's not necessarily as quiet as some of the other artists on the playlist. He's here more as a representative of a certain style of music that's associated with him, especially his approach to the synth as a lead instrument. Where typical synth lead players emphasized blinding technique, Kitaro worked to squeeze every bit of emotion possible out of single held notes. When synth programmers name patches after you decades later, you've done something right. This particular piece really emphasizes Kitaro's ambient, spacey side, as well as his affinity for combining Eastern textures with modern and minimalist elements.
"Children's Song, No. 8" by Chick Corea (perf. by Mika Pohjola)
I first heard this piece on Corea's album My Spanish Heart. In the midst of all the other typical Corea fare, this really stood out for me. Later, I did some research and found out that Corea had written a whole slew of similar pieces and eventually tracked down a vinyl album of Chick performing a bunch of them. Eventually, I switched over to CDs and got rid of the record, which I now regret doing. Pohhola's performance here, while more than adequate, pales in comparison to my memory of the piece performed more legato and at a slightly faster tempo by the composer himself.
"Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, Sonatas No. 14 and 15" by John Cage (perf. by Cedric Pescia)
Most people who know of Cage at all these days remember him as a guy who created daffy things like 4' 33" in which the performer sat down at the piano, opened the lid, waited exactly four minutes, and 33 seconds, closed the lid, and the performance was over. Critics derided this sort of thing at the time, but in hindsight one can see that it was ultimate "ambient" music. The "music" of the piece was the ambient sound of the performance venue: people shuffling in their seats, coughing, and so on.
Earlier in his career, though, Cage composed more traditionally. When he decided that traditional tonality was too confining, one of the solutions he came up with was unique. Cage experimented extensively with putting various objects inside the piano, such as bits of rubber, screws and bolts. He called the result a "prepared piano," which sometimes sounded sort of like a music box on acid, but could also yield some very compelling sounds, as is the case on the two pieces here. Although they play as separate tracks on Spotify, Sonatas 14 and 15 are actually of a piece, and are titled "Gemini - after the work of Richard Lippold" (a sculptor who worked in wire and was a contemporary of Cage).
Another reason I included these tracks is personal. Mr. Cage is the only person in this playlist I actually had the privilege of meeting face-to-face. This happened in 1981,when he came to Wright State University for the American premiere of portions of his Etudes Australes. I was a student there at the time, and for us it was a big deal. As a music student, I had been very interested in the work of both Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. I had the opportunity to both meet Mr. Cage and to hear him discuss his philosophy of music and art more generally. How strange to think that what he strove so hard to achieve in the 1930s and 40s is now available to anyone with a little money and the time to tweak a few parameters.
"Mood for a Day" by Steve Howe (Yes)
Honestly, I really only included this piece because I like it so much. It's not so much ambient as it is mellow, so I guess you could say it's more chill. I had a classical/folk guitar for many years (it's now my son's) and tried once to learn how to play this piece. No luck. It really does set the mood for the day - it sounds like sunrise. Another thing I'm thankful to Steve Howe and this track for: they served as my gateway drug to Segovia.
"Indian Summer" by The Doors
This is the only vocal on the list (even Jon Anderson didn't get to sing!), but when I think back about the things that ultimately brought me to the ambient realm, this popped up. It's easy for me to hear why, beginning with Robbie Krieger's exquisitely Middle Eastern influenced guitar lines, played clean on (most likely) a Gibson SG. Keyboardist Ray Manzarek keeps a low profile here, sticking with his Fender Bass Piano and the occasional understated organ chord. Drummer John Densmore also remains fairly muted, with snares off lots of reverb. Morrison, for all his well-earned wild child reputation, here reveals a sensitive, even tender, side. The overall result is extremely mellow.
"The Sentinel" by Jonn Serrie
This is another track that reminded me of Jonn's work on Stars, and well, I just owe him one.
"Woman at the Well" by Tim Story
This is also a repeat of an earlier artist. I went back through Story's tracks on Spotify and found this one. Although it's credited as part of compilation, it originally appeared on Glass Green. This track is my favorite from that album. It is more in keeping with the minimalist style he was working on at the time, and also illustrates his use of traditional instruments, like piano, marimba and vibes, alongside electronics, to achieve a very personal sound. It also reveals the underlying spirituality that drives this music, being based on the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John.
So, if you got this far, I thank you, and I hope that this shed a light on some of my own musical tastes and influences. I've documented some of those more fully in other parts of this blog, and I invite you to check those out if you're interested. Please check back this weekend as I'll have a new album to featured on my profile page.
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