lundi 14 décembre 2020

The Musical Stones of ... Doc'

 In The Musical Stones, the people who follow the Collective's work share their musical tastes, memories and luggage.

Today : Doc' from France

 

What is your first musical memory?

Classical music I guess. I loved it as a small kid even if my family was really not into it... I remember trying to play the piano that sat in our living room, and which was incredibly out of tune 'cause nobody ever played it, pretending to be Chopin or so. And it probably sounded like a hullabaloo but I loved the vibrations of the sounds of this huge instrument as I was so small.

The first album you bought?

I'm not sure about this one but I think it was Collection, a compilation of Tracy Chapman greatest hits or something like that. Or maybe a classical music compilation of night sonatas.

The essential albums for you?


That's a very difficult question, I'm not sure I can go briefly on this one. There's so many albums that changed my life or perfectly fit for a wide range of emotions moving from a day to another...
First of all Shadow of the Sun and Perdition City by Ulver, which remains my favourite band EVER. It's hard to pick one inside their high quality and vast musical universes.
 
 
I'm very fond of Emma Ruth Rundle, and again I couldn't pick only one in her solo discography. Her collaboration with Thou blew my mind and it's been obsessing me for the past few weeks. 
Anastasis and Into the Labyrinth by Dead Can Dance are definitely classics I listen to on a regular basis.

 
Oceanic by Isis, but again this scene is so creative I could pick a few between them, Neurosis and co. 
Push the sky away by Nick Cave moves me every time I listen to it, 
 
 
Philarmonics by Agnes Obel, The Brothel by Susanne Sundfør
Twoism by Boards of Canada, and of course Black Earth by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Angels Of Darkness, Demons of Light by Earth, The Healing by Echoes of Yul, Chalice Hymnals by Grails
Pain is Beauty and Abyss by Chelsea Wolfe, I love her universe and her work in general. 


Sing more songs together she made with King Dude is also very good, as well as Sex, he did solo. Blush by Wovenhand, but again, hard to pick one even in Sixteen Horsepower discography.
Most of the albums of Mamiffer, but especially The Brilliant Tabernacle and The World Unseen, I feel like their music quieten and enlighten my spirit when too agitated.
 
Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane.
 
 
 
Jackson C. Frank (eponymous album), Grace by Jeff Buclkley of course.
From Mars to Sirius by Gojira, Backspace Unwind by Lamb, Double Negative by Low.
 
 
Divenire by Ludovico EinaudiFor now I am winter by Ólafur ArnaldsGhosts by Nine Inch Nails (they released V a few months ago after I-IV in 2008).
V and Ø by Neonymus, which I discovered last year at L'Homme Sauvage festival and made me cry and travel the whole concert, this guy is absolutely incredible and genuinely touching.
 

 
If you had to choose only one album?

Shadow of the Sun by Ulver without hesitation.
 
 
The album that seems terribly underrated to you?

Hysteron Proteron, an acoustic album of Nostromo that we never really heard of
 
 
 
Your favorite album artwork?

Again Shadow of the Sun, I feel haunted by this album for so many reasons.


A film whose soundtrack stroke you?

Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch
 
 
 
Your current discoveries?

As I mentioned already, May our chambers be full by ERR and Thou is an album I listen to almost everyday lately. 
 
  
Music for Megaliths by Harvestman, a project of Steve Von Till who is inspiring by his rich creativity not only in music.
 
  
Your favorite album of the Collective?

Promises for the long ride by Caleb R.K. Williams







vendredi 4 décembre 2020

Caleb R.K. Williams "Skies"

Hello friends.

New release by Caleb R.K. Williams.

Available in digital "name your price", or CDr Limited Edtion (15 copies)

Tracklist : 


01. The Feather Eye
02. Sky Garden
03. Canopy
04. Swirling Cloud
05. Ruiner
06. No Heaven
07. Back on Wolves Plains

https://eaglestone.bandcamp.com/album/skies


































dimanche 29 novembre 2020

The Musical Stones of ... Sacha

In The Musical Stones, the people who follow the Collective's work share their musical tastes, memories and luggage.

Today : Sacha from France

 

What is your first musical memory?  
 
My father's vinyl collection. A few classics like old Elvis Presley or Pink Floyd records, some French singers songwriter (Renaud especially). The feeling that unique support has, the cracks and sound coming from the disc itself, more thant the music it holds, is something I hold dear...
 
The first album you bought?  
 
A compilation of celtic inspired music featuring a wide variety of artists (Blackmore's Night, Lords Of The Dance...). One of my childhood relics that got lost during one of our house moves...

The essential albums for you?
 
That one's tough... At the moment, I would say either (Sandy) Alex G 's Rocket or Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts Of The Great Highway.
 

 If you had to choose only one album?
 
Ghost by Devin Townsend, always there when I need calm... 
 
  
The album that seems terribly underrated to you?
 
Maybe Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears, a concept album about the genocide of the Native population of the U.S. A bold statement released in the early 60's, wich makes it even more brave... Not so many people seem to know about it, except maybe for "The Ballad of Ira Hayes".
 

 
This one or maybe Anathema's A Fine Day To Exit, criminally underrated, in my opinion...
 
  
Your favorite album artwork?

Again, this changed (and changes) all the time, I really dig Mastodon artworks, Blood Mountain in particular (I'm so happy to have finally found a t-shirt that has the goddeer on it). 
 
  
A film whose soundtrack stroke you?
 
First Gangs Of New York by the great Howard Shore, which has the unique Scorsese blend of rock n' roll and historical accuracy. That movie is so underrated...
 

Second (yes, I'm cheating since the beginning haha) is a particular song in Once Upon A Time In The West: Jill McBain's theme. Elegant, beautiful, emotional, a tear rolled on my cheek the first time I heard it in a theater... One of Ennio Morricone's greatest achievments, in my humble opinion.

 
Your current discoveries?
 
I listen a lot to two video games soundtracks: Occupy White Walls and Outer Wilds. OWW is an interesting mix between jazz, classic and smooth ambiant music, perfect when you're looking for some quiet strenght while working. Outer Wilds by Andrew Prahlow is like country got its ass in space, emotional, poetic, soothing... Two great games, each in it's own way... 
 
  
Your favorite album of the Collective?
 
Occult by C H A P E L for the dark ambiant vibes
 
 
Dry by Eagle Stone for the distortion
 
  
Brockenwood by Old Green Mountain for the lumberjack mood
 
  
Meander by Abigail Lily O'Hara for the sweetness.




mardi 24 novembre 2020

Across Tundras "The Last Days of a Silver Rush"

 Hello Friends

After the recent release of the magnificent LOESS-LÖSS, here is a new album for Across Tundras. An acoustic album, in the purest tradition of the work of Tanner Olson, spearhead of the Across Tundras project. Always as generous in its melodic approach, the 10 tracks that make up The Last Days of a Silver Rush offer a bewitching universe.

Available in digital "name your price", or CDr Limited Edtion (20 copies)

https://eaglestone.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-days-of-a-silver-rush

 


 

 

 

dimanche 22 novembre 2020

The Musical Stones of ... Michael

In The Musical Stones, the people who follow the Collective's work share their musical tastes, memories and luggage.

Today : Michael from Germany

 

What is your first musical memory?
 
As a kid I used to listen to audio dramas particularly Die drei ??? (The Three Investigators). The jazzy instrumental soundtrack - my first musical memory - was created by the great multi-instrumentalist Carsten Bohn. The original themes can be found on youtube (I highly recommend checking them out) but haven't been released officially thanks to a lawsuit.
 
The first album you bought?
 
Michael Jackson's Bad. I bought the tape in Spain during the holidays as a kid. As I had no tape recorder there I couldn't wait to come home to be able to listen to the tape. Back at home I immediately ran over to my best friend's home to listen to the album together just to find out that he also bought the very same tape.
 

The essential albums for you?

Black Sabbath: Master of Reality / Blur: Blur / David Bowie: Low / Joy Division: Substance / Love: Forever Changes / Morrissey: Viva Hate / Radiohead: OK Computer / Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dreams / The Smiths: The World Won't Listen / The Zombies: Odyssey and Oracle ...just to name a few!
 



If you had to choose only one album?
 
I don't know if this is cheating but I'd choose The Beatles "1967 - 1970" (a.k.a. The Blue Album)... Although you heard it a thousand times there is still enough to discover... and it brings a lot of (bitter-)sweet memories along.
 
 
The album that seems terribly underrated to you?

Dog Man Star by Suede... Critics preferred their self-titled debut but I (being a confused teenager) loved Dog Man Star's pathos.
 
 
 
Your favorite album artwork?

OK Computer, for sure. Although most of Radiohead's artwork is fabulous.
 

A film whose soundtrack stroke you?

The Falcon and The Snowman
... I remember singing "This is not America" by David Bowie & Pat Metheny in elementary school when I was a small boy. Many of the instrumental tracks are even greater.

 

A single track of a soundtrack that struck me is "Homecoming" by Thomas Newman on the Brothers soundtrack.


Your current discoveries?

Deafheaven... A great mixture of Black Metal and Shoegaze.
 
 
 
Your favorite album of the Collective?
 
Super difficult to say... But I'd choose The Lonely Plains Sessions #04 by Caleb R.K. Williams.



lundi 16 novembre 2020

The Musical Stones of ... Wout

In The Musical Stones, the people who follow the Collective's work share their musical tastes, memories and luggage.

Today : Wout from Belgium

 

What is your first musical memory?

I am not really sure. I grew up with a combination of Synthesizer Music (Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, all the synthesizer Classics) Classical music and Kleinkunst (songs in Dutch, mainly Boudewijn De Groot).
I was especially captured by classical music, things like the Slavonic March from Tchaikovsky
 
The first album you bought?

I was already 15 or 16 before I started buying music, because my dad really had a lot of music and I listened to the stuff he liked. I think one of the first albums I bought was Black Sunday from Cypress Hill. Shortly after that, at the age of 16  I discovered Gothic, EBM, neofolk and (post)industrial music and I started to buy (too much?) music.




The essential albums for you?

Pfffff.... with essential I mean albums that changed my musical tastes or had a huge influence on my taste. They are not "the best, or the most essential" in their genre.
 
- Boudewijn de Groot: Picknick (1967) For me the best dutch singer, and essential in my life, especially in my youth. 
 
 
- Wumpscut: Music For a Slaughtering Tribe (1993) Wauw, that was really something. I was hooked for years on this kind of music. Now, only every now and then I listen to EBM.
 
- Death in June: But, What Ends When The Symbols Shatter? (1992) The discovering of neo folk. Still one of my favourite genres until this day.


- Cold Meat Industry: The Absolute Supper (1997) Discovering my love for Dark Ambient, but then I just called it Industrial. Raison d'être, Desiderii Marginis,... . Probably my most beloved musical genre.
 
- Yahel: Waves of Sound (2000) I really loved House music, and trance music (Cosmic Cubes compilations) but somewhere in the early 2000's I discovered goa-trance, psytrance and a whole new world opened up. I still like goa-trance a lot, and is probably my favourite dance music.

If you had to choose only one album?
 
The essential Pär Boström: volume I-V  (if that would exist).


The album that seems terribly underrated to you?

An album that I can listen to again and again is New Kings And New Queens from Phragments. I dont think it is 40min long and a lot of people think that there is something wrong with my equipment when I play it but I really, really love it. I dont really know why, but I think it is great.
 

Your favorite album artwork?


Maybe the artwork from Braided Paths, a split from Sangre De Muerdago and Novemthree. The artwork is from Bluttanzt, who is one of my favorite artists.
 


A film whose soundtrack stroke you?

Pfioe, I really really like movie soundtracks so this is difficult. 
Requiem For a Dream, Clint Mansell.
Recently watched a flemish tv-show De Twaalf (the twelve), and I really liked the music by David Martijn.
 

 
Your current discoveries?

Some of the stuff I bought recently on Bandcamp: Интерkосмос by Проект Звездолет.
 

 
 Your favorite album of the Collective?
 
I really enjoy the Kaya North albums!
 

 

vendredi 6 novembre 2020

The Ivonne Van Cleef Orquesta (new release + interview)

After several collaborations with the Collectif, Ivonne Van Cleef comes back with an "Orchestra" version of four heads. Always captivating, the Argentinian project carries on with its musical experiments, in a vision of its own.

Ivonne Van Cleef, a rather enigmatic project, can you tell us more about it ?

IVC was born as an intimate, ultra-personal project with the only purpose of generating a log or collection of sounds, ideas, songs that otherwise would have ended up in the trash. As I have already done this before (and sometimes regretted it), one day I decided to start compiling it on a Bandcamp page and publish the productions of some period. The main idea was not only to make backups, but also to generate a routine that allows me to use real instruments, really improvise, record in one take and enjoy the contact with the instruments, effects and tools, a definitly analogical, concrete, tangible process, this is one of the main engines of the IVC production.

How to define the universe of IVC ?

IVC is located in a small town far from the urban center, almost in the countryside, in the middle of marshlands, rivers, gauchos and fishermen (the alluvial valley of the Paraná River). I think that all this culture influences the universe in which IVC is involved and could be summarized as rural psychedelia and all these related tags: dusty, outdoors, old tapes, cassettes, marshes, analog gear, simple drones, hypnotic, broken down, desert, western, folk, americana. After this first step of publications, we receive an invitation to co-organize a musical meeting and this is how IVC presents itself live for the first time, in a duo format, with an ambient set list, and without even being announced on the event's posters.
So different meetings and gigs took place and later on, a third member (a drummer) joined us, with whom we performed different gigs and published 2 live albums. Now we are 4, an orchestra : guitar, synths, drums, bass, studio rack and trumpet. Everyone has a defined role and instrument, that can be possibly changed, depending on tracks. At this point, we find ourselves with several realities, in principle IVC has the ability to present itself as a solo, duo, trio, orchestra and why not, one day a big band. The initial project, more personal and focused primarily on recording, is still alive and in constant production on a par with the work in orchestra format.

 

How was born and what was the process for this new album ?

This story is the starting point of the creation of this new album. It corresponds to recordings made by the orchestra in a live format : recorded live and mixed through an old Portastudio Tascam 424 cassette. For some tracks it was necessary to capture some overdub to reinforce some instruments lost in the recording of only 4 tracks, this was also done with a Portastudio (digital this time, tascam dp008ex) in an attempt to sustain the method and freshness of the recording in one take and without editing. The final mixdown was mastered at Woodbox Estudio in the city of Santa Fe, Argentina.

About the more creative than technical side, how did you proceed for the composition of this album (who brings what, how each one of you is involved, how did the ideas come...) ?

This album has a little bit of everything, some of the tracks were composed, improvised and recorded in the rehearsal room, with absolute freedom, while other ones were born from the individual project and were adapted, declined in different versions and interpreted freely by the orchestra. There is an original guiding idea which is formed from the free interpretation of the members and the use of the available instruments. In general the ideas are based on the solo project and worked on freely by the members to achieve a live performance and for each one to spontaneously contribute to this new composition.
I think there is a first idea, an initial thought, something like a path to follow which is transformed as the track is produced and even more when it is reinterpreted live. The technique is not alien to this process but rather an inseparable part of the creative process, by imposing limitations you necessarily have to adapt the idea so that it can be performed in a single shot, you cannot edit, etc... Those limits are sometimes the modeler of the idea, it seems to be restrictive but it actually also works as inspiration.


With the current health crisis, how things are going on in Argentina, and how do you organize yourselves with the members of the orchestra to continue making music ?

What is happening in my country is not different from other parts of the world. In particular the region where I live is at its highest point of contagion and continues on the path of growth. As I am writing this, a new record of deaths and infections is being announced in the country and especially in my region. This is really insane because a strict quarantine is already impossible due to the emotional wear and tear of people and that's why practically all activities continue their normal course with the unfortunate exception of artistic activities : bars, gyms, etc, are open while museums or theaters are closed. At the beginning of this year, the rehearsals were suspended because all movement of people was prohibited. Soon after this, the recording and rehearsal rooms were authorized to operate again and as our rehearsal room is located almost in the middle of a field it was possible to continue with our activity in a wide and semi-covered space, almost outside (the climate also allows it at this time of year) with a lot of respect for security measures such as distance, ventilated spaces, masks...

What are the main artists and albums that have inspired IVC's music ?

In front of this question you have to think that the path followed has to do with absolutely all the music that has accompanied me as long as I can remember. However, I think I can name a few: Morphine and Mark Sandman, El hazmereir (Laughing Stock) by Talk Talk, the works of Warren Ellis both in the Bad Seeds as in Dirty Three or as soloist, also the works of Friends Of Dean Martinez to which I could add psychedelic bands like Ramases, Love, Ultimate Spinach ... all this mixed with Argentine classics such as Atahualpa Yupanqui, Eduardo Falu or Los Fronterizos. Still I keep thinking of bands or projects like the instrumental albums of "Los Iracundos" and many others like that.



 What are your musical projetcs for the future, especially for 2021 ?

Today it is difficult or impossible for us to plan and imagine a future, the new pattern, which will be the outcome of this world history. The orchestra was talking about this topic the last time we rehearsed and the question we asked ourselves was: do we work for a live set considering that here (in South America) the summer season is about to start and cultural activities in the open air can be allowed or do we forget about this and start with new compositions? We chose the second option: working on new compositions, searching for sounds and improvisations that can be performed by the orchestra and making a live recording of this material although this time (perhaps to my regret) we would involve computer tools for the recording. I think this is a project already underway with a view to 2021. This path taken by the orchestra is parallel to the soloist work which will surely go on, because it is a constant personal need. We also got a reel-to-reel audio tape recorder (for free) that was saved from the trash. I still don't know how but I would like to include it in some future project. In our plans there's always travelling to play in different places of our country, it was our plan in 2020, it will still be in 2021 (although quite improbable) and maybe we will have to plan it thinking of 2022.

Link : https://eaglestone.bandcamp.com/album/listen-to-the-hiss-talk-to-the-dust