“Night-time, long paths” by Dalot & Sound Awakener

Maria Papadomanolaki (Dalot) & Nhung Nguyen (Sound Awakener)

“Night-time, Long Paths” is from the album “Departures”, the second joint release between Greek sound artist Maria Papadomanolaki (Dalot) and Vietnamese composer Nhung Nguyen (Sound Awakener). 

The first Dalot & Sound Awakener collaboration album “Little Things” was a more upbeat and optimistic collection of soundscapes. “Departures” also combines field recordings from cities and natural surroundings with synth sounds, but this time to create unsettling atmospheric soundscapes; darker, more mysterious, reflecting on themes like migration, and the challenges/ uncertainty of human movement around the world.

“Night-time, long path” has a pulse of sorts, a kind of propulsive breathing loop, woven through with sounds, drones and textures. It seems partly terrestrial, with hints of human voices in the fog, but also somehow not of this Earth. The field recordings here – as they are throughout “Departures” – seem smudged, giving them a kind of soft-focus dream-state quality that hints at their settings and conveys a sense of movement, exploration, dislocation, tension, and uncertainty.

That disorienting and subtle interweaving of the mechanical with the more organic sounds, drones and textures of nature and human city-scapes and travel hubs is at the heart of all the tracks on “Departures”. The album delivers something quite special, evocative of the uncertain terrain of our current altered reality as much as it is of alternative realities and journeys through space and time. It’s a place to close you eyes and let your mind wander on a journey into uncharted worlds from the safe confines of your own home. “Departures” is as fitting a way to end 2020 as anything.

“Inside” by Dalot & Sound Awakener

Continuing the instrumental theme with another atmospheric track, this time from a new album “Little Things” which is a collaboration between Vietnamese sound artist Nhung Nguyen (Sound Awakener) and Greek sound artist Maria Papadomanolaki (Dalot). Here’s “Inside”:

The album combines field recordings from cities and natural surroundings with synths and almost infinite reverb and delays at times to create 10 different and fascinating experimental soundscapes.

“Inside” here rides on a throbbing low frequency, arpeggiated synths bustling among found sounds. That combination of the artificial machine-world with the more organic sounds and textures of nature and human city-scapes is at the heart of “Little Things” and it delivers something exotic and also evocative of alternative realities.

“A Tanera Talisman” by Mairearad Green

Summer Isles from Achiltibuie, on the Coigach coast of North-Western Scotland.

There’s not much traditional folk featured PopLib, but there have been a few examples ambient soundscape music featured. The atmospheric “A Tanera Talisman” from Scottish folk composer and multi-instrumental musician Mairearad Green works just as well as an evocative soundscape as it does a haunting example of neo-classic Celtic folk.

“A Tanera Talisman” is from a new album out last week called “Summer Isles”.

If you get up past Ullapool on the North Western coast of Scotland (and not many people do) and turn left down a single track road you’ll eventually come to the end of the road at Achiltibuie and look out over the Summer Isles.

It’s a magical place, usually wet, cold and windy, but occasionally looking as it does in the photo above and on this video for the song:

Mairearad Green is from Achiltibuie but lives in Glasgow. The journey between the two places was the inspiration for her multi-part composition “Passing Places” written for performance at the 2009 Celtic Connections Festival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Jackal’s Cape’ by Dan McGirr

So much for the daily Aussie music posts during July… wheels fell off that last week. Time to reconnect, via this lovely piece from Danny McGirr, from his recent (Nov 2013) album ‘Pale at the Holy Mountain’

Can’t tell you much about Dan/ Danny McGirr except he’s also half of The Wonderfuls. However ‘Pale at the Holy Mountain’ is wonderful sound sculpture experimental ambience for fans of the ore abstract elements of Boards of Canada and Grouper.