Catching The Waves

Eurotunnel! Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

Last month, 1.2 million Norwegians sat down and watched Bergensbanen, a documentary showing ...wait for it...seven and a half hours of the beautiful snow-laden, mountainous train journey from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, to Oslo, spiritual hometown of Earth's leggy blondes.

The NRK, the state-owned broadcasting company, has released the entire documentary under a 3.0 CC licence, meaning anyone can download, copy, remix and transmit the result, as long as they  provide full attribution. (Please refer to the site for relevant details.)

Ambient artists across the world are now flipping out. But the video is not just for cuddly, tea-drinking, sandal-wearing ocarina players. Meat-eaters are allowed to slice and dice Bergensbanen. Please do so.

What, not interested? Are you trying to tell me that nearly eight hours of a train journey might be less interesting than navel fluff? Shame on you. Here's a snippet of the journey through Finse, which doubled as the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Look, if George Lucas decided that the place was exciting, that's good enough for me.

*thinks about the prequel Star Wars trilogy*

It's still worth watching. Three cheers for imaginative Scandinavian state-run broadcasting systems and national rail networks!

*thinks about last sentence*

I need to get out more.

Found via Wired. I'm so cheap.

Etch-A-Sketch 2.0

In some electronica genres, such as IDM and Drum 'n' Bass, the drums skip, stutter and generally do everything but come up with a Unified Field Theory. The percussion to be found in Dreaming In Pieces by Hypnagog walks another path: it's well-behaved, mid-tempo dance/trance stuff that won't scare the horses. However, the synth work deserves a restraining order, an ASBO and an ankle bracelet. If Hypnagog hasn't pored over every atom of Air's magnum opus (and the most popular slice of French dinner-party electronica ever) Moon Safari, you can paint me yellow and call me a daffodil. The four tracks on Dreaming in Pieces are coated with layer after layer of melodies, diversions and digressions, all wrapped up in an analogue sensibility that en(psy)trances the ear.

During my rigorous selection process (it involves Guinness and meringues), the right half of my brain would whisper: "Meh...it's a bit leaden. It's ok, I suppose." But every time I reached for the "Destroy World" button, the left half of my bonce would butt in and exclaim: "Ooh, that glitch was unexpected. Hey, what's happening to the tempo? Wow, here comes another ice-cream of a synth. Crikey, is that three melodies at the same time? Funky, too."

My strait-jacket is tailored, you know. Only the best for CTW.

From the first few seconds of Still Dreaming, it's clear that Hypnagog (Felix Greenlees, an Australian earbender) is holding true to his stated intention to combine downtempo psychedelic breaks and IDM with his own style of psychedelic dance music. Pads, synth lines, squeaky stabs, IDM pitch-shifting: it's all there. And you get a rather nifty bassline. Job done.

Funkdiddle is full of aural cream cakes: a persuasive use of pitch-shifting and reverb in the introductory percussion section and, amongst other attractions, lots of analogue squelches. Its groove comes mostly from the walking bassline and micro-drumrolls, while the tempo variations and the cheerful, bluesy organ solos got me to the finishing line faster than a dysentery-suffering Usain Bolt chasing an Andrex puppy. Given the chance, I'd have popped Funkdiddle in your friendly CTW media player.

Next up is Tiny Little Pieces, starting with an audio sample that discusses the Biq Questions in life, followed by six minutes of soothing Spanish guitar, unpredictable diversions into glitch lay-bys, endlessly melodic synth doodling and mercurial tempo changes. It should be plain by now that this is a "headphones album"; there's so much superb work in Dreaming In Pieces that it demands your full attention, even though the overall effect is like reclining in a hammock and sipping a daiquiri. Like I said, think Air.

The last track, Reflections No.2, sounds as though Hypnagog ransacked every sine-waveish preset in his synth collection and played music that made him happy. This track will be at home in a beachside bar's dirty old stereo or in an audiophile's temperature-controlled, earthquake-proofed record collection.

And that's what I like so much about Hypnagog's release. It's as superficial or as deep as you want it to be, thanks to its constant melodic invention, restless search for smooth new sounds and a clean, spacious recording.

I hope you enjoy the album as much as I have. Bye.

*thinks*

I've forgotten something, haven't I? Ah yes, the sounds. Tut, me and my memory. Well, er, it pains me to say this but Up Records, in their otherwise razor-sharp Australian wisdom, supply only a zipped album, which means that visitors to their website can't hear their music.

*facepalm*

Fear not, Dreaming In Pieces is also featured at Ektoplazm, the suitably-psychedelic-but-I-still-got-my-shit-together-man psytrance portal/netlabel, so I'll just grab an mp3 from there and...

*headdesk*

No, no mp3 files there, either. However, at least they do stream one song, Tiny Little Pieces. So go here to hear it. Incidentally, Ektoplazm do a very good job of catering to fans of free psytrance, as their charts, download figures and frequent updates will testify. It's a fun place to visit. Chapeau, gentlemen. The website's appearance can be described as... trippy.

*slapshead*

Actually, you'd be better off at Hypnagog's MySpace page, where you can listen to all four tracks and press his Paypal button. Go on, send money around the world. Do it enough and you'll get a bailout. Heh.

Harrumph. While I am very grateful to all netlabels for their dedication and hard work in releasing CC music, I must say that persuading some of them actually to part with their music is akin to tickling trout. Fernando Fonseca's (Hi F!) recent rant on this subject ruffled a few feathers. He's mostly right in what he says, though I would have phrased things rather more gently; after all, I'm a confirmed coward gentleman. Fernando himself is vastly experienced in netaudio, helps to run the excellent PublicSpaces Lab netlabel and has linked symbiotically with the internet. Think probes and aliens. Ouch.

Yes, I know, CTW is a minefield of CC netaudio information. And I'm handsome. Control that jealousy, people.

Hypnagog - Dreaming In Pieces EP (link to zipped album in MP3, FLAC and WAV)

Hypnagog website

Up Records and Ektoplazm

The Glue Factory Beckons

It has long been my intention to make Catching The Waves superfluous to requirements. Some of the snarkier of you out there may have thought that that day was reached at least a couple of years ago, but it has come to my attention that there are now quite a few folks who are actively promoting the cause of CC music, whether they be musicians, netlabels or CC portals. I'll keep CTW going for a bit longer, but I think it's only fair to remind my rabid, locust-like readership that there are plenty of people who do what CTW does and more, only far more frequently and much more professionally.

*Millions of voices cry out: "Freedom!"*

Not convinced? I give you Exhibit A: Phlow's Advent calendar. (I've burbled on about Phlow before, and about how they're a force for good. If CC music ever joins the mainstream, Phlow will hopefully be at the heart of it.) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that if you're interested in Creative Commons music and would like to know more, you could do a lot worse than pop over to Phlow right now and open a few windows in their beautiful Advent calendar, which contains various netmusic luminaries' "Best Creative Commons Music Moments in 2009". Hidden behind each window are five-track mixtapes, five recommended netlabels and five recommended albums for 2009. In short, you'll find many interesting things to hear and explore, thus helping to make CTW less relevant and more redundant, something that my bed and sore ears are only too happy to admit.

But be warned: Phlow's standards slip sometimes. Don't believe me? I give you Exhibit B: click on the outmoded recording format and enter a world of pain.

Cough, Please

These six tracks by Melbourne musical urchin Synaecide are a grimy compound of electro and, I'm sorry to have to use this term in the presence of women and children, IDM. They're also louder than a drag artists' karaoke night. Not knowing whether Synaecide sports an outrageous afro, I can't say if he follows Phil Spector in all things - but his production values mimic the incarcerated producer's famed "wall of sound". Your ears will fill with as much gritty electronica as they can take. This would quickly become tiresome were it not for the fact that the music is dynamic; there are breathers, changes of tempo and most welcome changes of volume, thus ensuring that Scientifica remains engaging.

First off, there's some delicious sampling work in Venom (feat. Anamé), where a cigarette lighter never sounded so good. The whispered vocals seem a little low in the mix until Anamé opens her lungs and the track soars, backed by chilly background vocals and synths that might as well have been replaced by a recording of barrage fire.

Stuttering and bit-crushed vocals feature heavily in The World Is High, a serving of gritty IDM that, like a few of Synaecide's compositions (see the reviewed remix of Halogen's Length and Brecht) doesn't really hit its stride until the track's midpoint. But it's worth the wait.

Dissolve (feat. Dima Shafro) gets through a few distorted, angsty vocals before dropping a rather catchy electro riff. It doesn't do much else, but it's almost a relief to find a relatively straightforward electro track slipped in between the chaos that surrounds it. After testing it to destruction in CTW's Sound Pound (you don't want to know), I've come to the conclusion that the amount of enjoyment derived from Dissolve, and specifically its layered high/low synth riff, depends on the volume at which it's played. Try going to 11.

Today's recommended track is The Penny Drops, in which Synaecide, thanks to more sampling cleverness, literally spends drops a penny like it's going out of fashion. Electronica fans will enjoy the coinage abuse and go on to appreciate the growling, juddering yet jaunty electro bass, a tangled lead riff that would feel at home in the soundtrack of a filmed Philip K. Dick novel and the eventual appearance of a call-and-response riff - another characteristic but pleasurable compositional motif of Syn's. File under "Gifted". Right - deep breath - it's SoundCloud player time:

The rapid-fire chiptune arpeggios that mark the start of Close Bracket (feat. Apache) soon team up with glitchy percussion, yet both quail when faced with an epic electro-sort-of-trance wall of sound, and a clever-clever vocal that just about holds its own with the electronic fireworks. It's energy on a stick.

The title track delivers yet more electronica impressiveness: drums that splatter all over the place, a (Great) wall (of China) of synths, high strings and a gnarly bass, which, taken together, will result in complaints about poor sportmanship in World Cup qualifiers ringing in the ears.

It seems that Synaecide, curse him, is blessed with the ability to churn out memorable music that walks the fine line between "bloody noisy" and "invigorating". Want further proof? Try his Scientifica II, an estimable track from the equally estimable Continuum, a compilation of brain-spankingly ambitious IDM from, er, the IDMf netlabel. (Continuum deserves a much, much longer review but I'm kicking it out of bed because I need some sleep. Don't look at me like that - taxis don't come cheap.) Suffice it to say that the IDMf crew and members, to drop into London vernacular for a moment, are having it large.

For those of you who require sparkly things to attract your attention, please see below. Ooh, shiny.

My thanks to all at IDMf for the consistently entertaining releases. I'm sure they'd have to lie down in a darkened room if anyone from Teh Internets were to send them a "thank you" email. By the way, does anyone else think the term IDM would be more palatable if it were pronounced "iddum"? No? How very dare you. Mark my words, you'll all be sorry.

Synaecide - Scientifica (link to zipped album & individual files)

Various Artists - Continuum (IDMf007) (link to, etc.)

IDMf netlabel