This lovely new CD arrived in the mail the other day. It seems my main way of finding cool new music has become mining old anthologies and googling the individual artists. Quench’s latest was found this way.

Like Yagya, this is ambient-with-a-beat, not a distractingly hard beat, but not wimpy-assed electro-pop either. And much to their credit, they’re not afraid of dissonance, noise or tangents in their tracks. Listening to this, I get this resurgence of post-modern academic music hate burping to the surface.

Sorry, let me clarify.

Outside the ivory tower, everything is folk music of one kind or another – even urban pop is just another type of folk music made by people skilled in a very narrow style, unaware of the larger context of their harmonies, progressions and melodies.

Well, having listened extensively to both sides, I can’t help but turn that idea on its head. When I think of modern academic music, I see an extraordinary narrowness of vision where context becomes an end in itself. With the exception of quaint, rib-elbowing references to previous styles, ivory tower music is on a teleological course, straight as an arrow from its own primitive folk roots, up through each "classical" stage of its history, to now, where, like the pope’s catholicism, it is surrounded by poor struggling fools who have lost the one true way.

Sadly, with context becoming an end in itself (Schoenberg’s 12 tone system is a prime example), people stopped listening to new academic music in the mid-20th century. Why? Because, though it was, admittedly, intellectually challenging and continued to reward the careful listener, it wasn’t made for the listener anymore. It became masturbation (and sometimes ear rape) instead of consensual sex.

Anyway, sorry, end of rant. What I’m trying to get at here is that when it comes to pushing the harmonic and timbral envelope, academics like Cage or Stockhausen no longer have corner on the market. In fact, it’s now quite the opposite. Academic music now sounds incredibly quaint and restrained compared to much modern electronica – be it trip hop, ambient or minimal experimental. And – key point – what are people actually listening to these days? And no, I don’t mean what is Homer Simpson listening to. What is the educated ear in 2009 listening to? It sure as shit isn’t some PhD bumfuck with a "Duo for cello and modified piano".

Ok, I’m done now.

I finished revamping a piece yesterday, It’ll end up being either the second or third piece on the album. It took what felt like months of agonizing to accomplish. At this stage, I think I’ve mentioned before, it’s tough to tell “the discipline of the last inch” from scab-picking. How do you tell if you’re applying all this time and brain power to “plus” the piece (to use Pixar’s neologistic verb), as opposed to worrying the fabric of it into non-existence?

Quite forcibly I’ve determined the answer is, you can tell it’s done if, in listening to it, you’re either still unsatisfied or you’re blown away and never want it to end.

Well, I went through every friggin permutation for this piece of music. It’s essentially a pretty straightforward piece. Strings, drums, bass, guitar, shaker and some simple fx. You wouldn’t believe what I went through to try and spiff it up. There is an entire other composition in the waste basket that was to serve as a three minute bridge. I ordered a CD by another Canadian artist so that I could either sample it or get some idea what I could ask for if I hired them to do something original. I spent three friggin days looking for a purchase-able fx track to replace one I’d been using as a place-holder. My DAW choked on my VSTi’s at least fifteen or twenty times, causing me to lose unsaved changes and/or VSTi specs. Hunting for those specs again in a six gig library was no fun at all.

Anyway, it’s a pretty freakin great piece. So with the confidence my first track is fine, and my second one is fine, I listened to my third one again this morning, cringing. It’s good. It’s head a shoulders better than a lot of stuff already on other people’s albums. But it ain’t good enough for me. I realized this morning that I’ve had three distinct composing styles in the past few years, since I started doing this DAW thing.

The first was all canned samples and loops. I just didn’t know anything else was possible, and at the time, I didn’t have my electronic drum kit (couldn’t play a kit anyway), I didn’t have my Motif and I didn’t have the killer softsynths I have now. It was a bigtime learning couple of years.

My second phase was fairly reliant on other people’s midi and arpeggios. All hard and soft synths come with sequencers these days and it’s dang easy to apply wacky riffs to unusual instruments – an organ riff to a bass guitar, for example. As a result, I’ve got a couple of tracks (that I really worked hard on) that rely on these ‘arpeggiators’.

Sucks when you learn something better and look back.

My current phase is all about midi, classical harmony, rich chords and progressions, deep grooves, and complex linear rhythms. This may sound like I’m all fancy-pants trained up the yin-yang. But let me assure you, I’m not. I just glommed onto about sixty ways of cheating. I don’t carry around chord charts in my head. That’s what we have the Internet for. I just listen to everything and pick the progressions that put meat on my musical intentions. You don’t need to be a scholar or an ace session guy to do that.

Anyhoo, I’m now in the unenviable position of having to turf my “middle phase” pieces. I may redo them, I may heave them outright. But it sucks that I got close to having a full album of stuff and now… not. Oh, well… when this thing is finally done, it’ll be pretty dang good. At least I’m more than halfway there.

Rigning	Will I Dream During the Process

I freaking love these two albums. I guess Will I Dream During the Process was pressed in a limited edition of 1500 and is now, though not rare, certainly pricey to buy. Me, I forked out for the 10 Euro 320bps MP3 from Sending Orbs in the Netherlands. (Man, do I ever love Paypal!)

This is my kind of ambient. The genre of Chill is somewhat antiquated these days, otherwise I’d be tempted to apply that moniker to Yagya for the simple reason that this is beat-driven, not flat-line pad ambient.

Years ago, I heard his first album, Rhythm of Snow and wasn’t jumping up and down about it. But these two are a whole other orchard of sonic juice-berries. If this were traditionally composed music, each one would be marked Largo (between 40 and 60 bpm). But the feel of the music is sometimes much faster, often getting up to Moderato (~120bpm) without seeming like it’s rushing in any way.

Anyway, the guy behind Yagya is an Icelander named Aðalsteinn Guðmundsson. On second thought, knowing he’s from Iceland, maybe I will call this music Chill. Its just too cool not to (ar-ar).

When I first listened to this CD, I found it quite glitchy (lots of little sounds were competing for attention). But after a couple more listens, it’s actually quite the funky little disc. There seems to be everything here. Ambient soundscapes, inventive electro and jazz rhythms, extremely compitent melodic and percussive synth work. Yes, it has IDM written all over it. I wouldn’t jack in my iPod and try going to sleep by it, but man… this album has serious flow…