Poordream - Ninetynine (2014)

My recent “discovery” Poordream – Ninetynine was released a week ago. I was bored, so I decided to visit some music label’s sites and, by chance, found it in the Tympanik Audio website. Wasn’t expecting much and boy, how wrong I was.

The album opens with “Despair”. Is it despair really? The piano part is sad indeed, but the rest not so much. I would say that the end of the track evokes something opposite of despair, that is, hope. Nevertheless great opening track. The samples used in “Urbanies” makes us imagine an urban scenery, but they don’t appear through the whole song so that scenery is lost in the middle (maybe it was intended). “Bangla Razor”, on the other hand, makes us think about India, thanks to the bass sequence that is followed by the singing of some Indian folk. “Ninetynine” is a cinematic piece which uses recordings of instruments such as: cello, violin and a classical guitar. “Open Probability” is the only track of the album with vocals it in, they sound authentic and are very atmospheric. In “Backbiter” we find an electronic beat accompanied by cello/violin parts, from the fourth minute the track speeds up and introduces an Australian instrument rarely used in electronic music, digiridoo (at least I think that it is digiridoo). “Flying Blind” is my personal favorite. It really makes you feel like you are flying over the mundane things and I presume our lovely Schopenhauer would be satisfied with it.

Saltillo - Ganglion (2006)

In this post I would like to present an album of a very talented man - Menton J. Matthews III, better known as Saltillo. Apart from being a music producer, he is an illustrator, comic book artist and plays such instruments as: cello, viola, violin, guitar, drums, piano, bass. “Ganglion”, his first album, was released in 2006. What’s so special about it?

Well, it’s a mix of heavy electronic beats, classical instruments, and cool vocal samples that  meets perfectly, creating great music. The album starts with “A Necessary End” which is my favorite track. Nice piano chords, delicate female voice and quotes from Julius Caesar create such an unique atmosphere that it really makes you think about “the end”. The second track “Giving In” is as good as the first, but it creates less heavy feeling thanks to the vocals.

All tracks are really, really great and I recommend listening to them in a row. Maybe it’s not the most cheerful album you will ever hear, but it will evoke some important (at least for me) emotions.

And so it began.

In my first „musical” post I’d like to present an album of a Swedish duo – Carbon Based Lifeforms called "Hydroponic Garden” released in 2003. It’s kind of a special album for me, because it got me into electronic music in general.

At the time (2006 I think) I was listening only to drum and bass, if we are talking about electronic stuff that is. One day, my friend, who also liked to dedicate his free time listening to music, started talking about a track that he had discovered by accident on youtube. It was the third track of this album – MOS 6581. Then he showed it to me and, like him, I was blown away by it. We listened to it a couple of times saying “Do you hear that?! That’s awesome!” (well, I’m sure we used different words, but you get the idea).

Few days before writing this post I’ve listened to this album again to refresh my memory and I must admit that, after a couple of years, it is still great. I was listening to it at the train station and in the train and it was a nice travel. The delicate sounds of the tracks provoked a sensation of being a witness of this “theatrum mundi” instead of the normal perspective of participation in it, of being an actor playing his role. Such calmness, change of a viewpoint and temporary transcendence of the ego is a sign of great art, isn’t it?

CBL site

Hydroponic Garden (2003)

The beginning of the end.

Some people in order to polish their English go to Malta, others create a blog. When I first heard that we will be obligated to do such a thing, I thought: Oh my God! I don't like to write!

But here we are.

The theme that I have chosen is <drumroll> music. And “Why?” you may ask. F. Nietzsche said that “Without music, life would be a mistake”. Although he was referring to a specific kind of music, in accordance with his philosophy, it’s hard not to agree with him. This particular form of art is something important to me as I spend at least one hour a day listening to it. It’s really strange how a set of acoustic waves (because that’s what a sound is, a wave) can have such an enormous impact on our emotions. Nowadays we have a lot of music genres, which can provoke a sense of joy, sadness, calmness, tension, etc. and I will try to cover as much as I can to expand your idea of what music is or can be.

For now I will leave you with a quote of another German philosopher, that is, A. Schopenhauer “The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence”.