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Available to stream (free) or purchase via Ultimae on Bandcamp -CLICK HERE
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Comfortable Void by SYNC24:
Yet another audio gem from Ultimae on Bandcamp. It’s given me a creative injection as I trudge through the N-th week of chapter 8 of my latest piece of work – The Social Club. It’s a proper detective novel but one set in the post-apocalyptic universe of Yellow Dawn – in London, taken over by the Power of Eight (a Business Cult that first raises its head in the pre-Yellow Dawn novel Iron Man Project). I’m loving the visuals and the opportunity to write something “Orwellian”. This piece of music has lifted me up into a new level of creative flow. Like popping a cap on a stim-pipe and biting down for the thrill of the first neurochemical rush. Stunning soundscapes, from shadowy moods that range through the tension of uncertain threats and out into the bass-thumping, adrenaline pumping energy of action scenes.
IRON MAN PROJECT { novel } Ex-special forces man, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of brutal reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.
Photograph by Christer Fredriksson – Available in print from Art.Co.Uk
I find it so difficult these days to find music that really inspires me. Not from lack of choice but perhaps too much of the same. There are grades of talent, like any creative output, and once I find an artist that fulfills my taste within that grade – all other artists have to match otherwise I just don’t gel with their sounds. Hybrid, for example, top of their game in the sci-fi dramatic soundscape. Solar Fields, top of the pack for moody ambient electronica. Gary Numan, the grand grampy of left field electro fused with punk, rock and a more recently emerging NIN industrial vibe.
Thanks to the mailing list of A Strangely Isolated Place (.com) I’ve now discovered the seriously brain tweaking talents of Sarah Badr. Working under the project name of FRKTL (frāk’təl), Badr is an audiovisual artist and experimental composer with output created through signal processing, field recording, and live instrumental sampling.
If you’re into ambient and electronic then I highly recommend you subscribe to ASIP’s website. Every few days he (Ryan) drop’s an audio treat into your inbox.
White Light – Ryan Griffin- gets into a narrative mix – via ASIP
Another audio gem from the harlequin king within his – a strangely isolated place– handing out his gifts of music for moods and soundscapes to write or dance to.
I’ve subscribed to the ASIP site and every few days get a new delight materializing within my inbox.
You can download White Light, safely and for free, here (click the link and scroll down to the download option).
I’m heading off to Sicily soon. A road trip through coastal towns and hired guides taking me to sites of ancient history. This mix arrived in my inbox and I dipped in for a sample and it just utterly grabbed me. Perfect for this moment in my life. The trip is going to be pretty spectacular because I’ll finally get to visit Taormina in the flesh. This is a place I first found through research only, and used in the novel Dante’s Fool (1999), and more substantially in the novel Iron Man Project (2004). So this free mix download is going to be the soundtrack to some awe-inspiring memories I reckon.
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This mix marks a new phase for Ryan Griffin. In his own words:
This is one of the first mixes ive put together with a complete story in mind. It began after I watched a video which showed five men as they stood on the ground as an Atomic bomb was detonated 10,000 ft above their heads. It’s pretty powerful and thought provoking for so many reasons. For example, this ‘test’ would never happen today with real people, so I found it ridiculously intriguing to watch and listen to, but it also made me think about what would’ve happened for real, when a nuclear bomb was dropped during wartime. From the very first moment; what you see, what you would think, how the country recovers, the thoughts the victims go through, the hope it inspires and the new life it creates. Pretty deep I know, but I really enjoyed trying to pick tracks which invoked these emotions and told a story from start to finish.
- Ryan Griffin- A Strangely Isolated Place
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TRACKLIST
01. [The Drop] “Five Men At Atomic Ground Zero”
02. [The Moment] Norge – 165 Minutes With You (Forthcoming on ASIP)
03. [The White Light] Segue – House Of Cards (Dewtone)
04. [The Realisation] Wolfmaps – Landforms (Futuresequence)
05. [The Angst] The American Dollar – Par Avion (Self-released)
06. [The Clearing] Four Tet – Peace For Earth (Text)
07. [The Realisation] Max Cooper – Gravity Well (Forthcoming on Traum)
08. [The Determination] Lusine – Make It Easy (John Tejada Remix) (Ghostly)
09. [The Hope] Loess – Sofar (Toytronic)
10. [The Return to Life] Crisopa – Gaviot (n5MD)
11. [The Complicated Memories] Onego – Ne Serdis’ (Forthcoming on Fuselab)
12. [The New Life] Martin Nonstatic – Vertraumt (Subspiele)
13. [The View From Above] Aurastore – Outside The Sol System (Energostatic)
Five Men Stand Under A Atomic Bomb As It Detonates At Ground Zero
The video Ryan references is this one.
Words by [StakkMoneyTV] On July 19, 1957, five Air Force officers and one photographer stood together on a patch of ground about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They’d marked the spot “Ground Zero. Population 5″ on a hand-lettered sign hammered into the soft ground right next to them.
As we watch, directly overhead, two F-89 jets roar into view and one of them shoots off a nuclear missile carrying an atomic warhead.
They wait. There is a countdown. 18,500 feet above them, the missile is intercepted and blows up. Which means, these men intentionally stood directly underneath an exploding 2 kiloton nuclear bomb. One of them, at the key moment (he’s wearing sunglasses), looks up. You have to see this to believe it.
IRON MAN PROJECT { novel } Ex-special forces man, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of brutal reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.
I first discovered this creative enigma (now revealed) back in 2010. Somebody showed me a short video that struck me as a glimpse of somebody’s dream – sliding precariously along the edge of sanity between wonder and nightmare. Behind the incredible visuals and electronica (ambient, synthpop, and trip hop) was a potent sense of complex thought and planning. Here was a mystery worthy of Dale Cooper versus Windom Earle. Or even of Holmes v Moriarty if those Victorian legends were placed within a Steampunk context. The clues, woven through visual metaphor and titles creating coded references to a word or phrase, built up over time in videos released through iamamiwhoami’s YouTube channel.
On a personal level it was evocative of the cypher clues laid down in the sci-fi cyberpunk novel EDGE, where a scientist finds evidence of corporate espionage but needs to crack a code to expose it. Or the darker novel, Dante’s Fool, where a London police detective desperately tries to decipher coded squares tattooed onto the victims of a cult – the trail of symbolism leads him to discover demons lurking amongst the heads of a corporate giant.
The creative output of iamamiwhoami placed me in a state of excited anticipation. Who was the female artist who never quite revealed her face? Always obscured by make-up, dirt and the detritus of Mother Nature and artistic lens distortion. Who were the musicians behind the blissfully weird electronica? And what the heck did it all mean?
And so the mystery grew – as did the collection of video clips and music.
Here’s a taster from those early days.
An explanation follows, whilst many of the YouTube video pages contain some interesting comments and theories.
The early videos display a series of digits, like a code, as part of their title. Mapped onto the alphabet, you get such words as (officinarum) (welcome home) and (mandragora). Mandragora officinarum refers to the mandrake root, which has strong associations to the occult, witchcraft and study of hallucinogens. The mandrake root is supposed to grow beneath gallows thanks to the ejaculated semen of male victims of hanging. And in Nordic myth, the mandrake is a plant root that craves to be human.
Enjoy the videos, enjoy the music. Enjoy the visuals and the symbolism.
iamamiwhoami released their first studio album Kin in June this year (2012), available on CD or MP3 download.
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Some of you may already know of Mark Van Hoen. I’ve only just discovered him; I feel like I’ve stumbled through an abandoned chemical plant, walls daubed in sinister graffiti, into a subterranean chamber full of lurid coloured gemstones that radiate sonic pleasures. The man is a highly gifted musician travelling a fairly lonely and remote path through the musical landscape. There’s an audible starting point, carried signals of a distant shore – the 1970s and early 80s – a musical groundwork that strikes chords of Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosy. You can see a route that wanders near to Eno, Aphex and Boards of Canada. But van Hoen is his own beast. The Crowley of Ambient Industrial Electronica.
This track – Look in my Eyes – captures the essence of modern Mythos. The fusion of raw, articulated sounds, repeating and overlapping into a symphony of trance capable of transporting your conscious mind to the Ancients. Great video too. The visual fragments from a sanity-blasted mind that’s about to free-fall from this reality into the Outer Chaos. Beyond the Quantisphere.
Look Into My Eyes – Mark Van Hoen (Locust)
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British born, he now lives and operates out of Brooklyn New York. Location of H.P.Lovecraft’s Horror At Red Hooktale.
There’s a fantastic selection of tracks to stream and listen to on Mark van Hoen’s soundcloud page. They provide a sample of works from 1982 to 2011. Some are much less Mythos, straining towards melodic – even bordering on retrospective 1960s psychedelic sound or mid-90s dance scene. Others are simply wonderful and edgy. They all highlight a broad range of serious talent. You should check it out. Click image below.
This is a bit of a very rare treat. Digging through my old vinyl collection a couple of days ago I came across a promotional copy of “For Future Reference” an album by the early 1980s synthpop band Dramatis. (Rocket Record Company: Train 18). I stuck it on and found myself flashing back to a much younger version of myself, pure nostalgia, sitting here in the Sky Bunker on a hill in Bristol… recalling a teenager in Newcastle with daydreams of being an author.
The treat came when I realised that I had almost no recollection of the B-side. It was like finding some lost treasure. One of the newly discovered tracks is this one, Ex Luna Scientia.
It’s got hallmarks of early E.L.O and Queen but still carries a flavour of Numan.
Dramatis are Cedric Sharpley (drums), Chris Payne (vocals, keyboards), Russell Bell (guitars, keyboards) and Denis Haines (keyboards) who were all originally members of the backing band for Gary Numan prior to 1981; Sharpley and Payne were also members of Tubeway Army – the punk rock and new wave band that helped propel Numan into the electro stratosphere with the incredible Replicas album in 1979.
Here’s some artwork from the front and back covers of the Dramatis album:
This isn’t dishwater electro – this is solid ambient bliss
Download via A Strangely Isolated Place
Another audio gem from the harlequin king within his – a strangey isolated place – handing out his gifts of music for moods and soundscapes to write (and do other things) to.
I subscribed to this WordPress site and every few days get a new delight materializing within my inbox.
Not all ambient is made the same and quite often I find myself relegating some of these collections to the last folder in my collection, reserved for periods where I’m not looking for inspiration – just soft noise. However, this collection by Andy Green is possibly one of the best ever made available through ASIP. It’s got all the hallmarks of early 1990′s club culture with audio-gravity wells dragging you down, momentarily, to the roots of 80′s acid and 70′s progressive electro sounds of Alan Parson’s project. This is a definite must to add to the front of your collection. Download it now.
I bought this as part of my monthly hunt for new tunes to feed my creative needs – music that provides a structure to firm up my imagination, music for my writing.
However the album had a totally different and profound effect. I’m a great believer in dream visualisation. Shaping ideas and goals within the mind and visualising my life where they’ve materialised into reality: it can be a fun, entertaining and highly motivational exercise.
This is an exceptional piece of music. Drifting off to sleep with this playing, the sounds become a landscape for your imagination to step into and explore… forming the terrain at the same time as moving through it.
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The album has become a touchstone for my dream visualisation sessions. If you’re into very chilled, evocative and emotive ambient electro then this album is a must purchase.
Stunning ambient electronica by Stellardrone – Milliways, music to write new worlds to
Jaw dropping soundscapes to tingle your eardrums and send shivers up your spine. Click repeat and drop out of reality into your sci-fi and dark fantasy realm of choice. This is writing music of the utmost highest quality. The echoey tick-tock of dreamy perpetual motion, uplifting the imagination in a giddy swirl to realms of deep space and what lies “beyond the stars”.
You can learn from about this music from the awesome blog “A Strangely Isolated Place“, homage to Ulrich Schnauss and all things ambient. You can listen to the mix there via soundcloud or download (free).
Writing music for the day: AES DANA – Natti Natti (ANDROCELL rmx)
I’ve just spent an hour writing to this. Carbons (genetically engineered slave workforce) and The Changed – survivors of Yellow Dawn left altered at a molecular level by the first pathogen.
