Sounds from Innerspace

innerspaceboy · 05-12-2016, 06:01 PM

DigitalMusicNews.com reports that Apple will be terminating their iTunes music service within 2 years' time. This follows a Sept 2014 article professing bleak iTunes revenue forecasts for the next 5 years - a projected massive 39% plummet from previous revenue. Today an article in MacWorld countered the rumor, though the fact remains that the service is no longer a money maker for the company.

Apple's newer streaming service, Apple Music generates $65M in monthly revenue, though CNet analyst Lance Whitney points out that this accounts for a mere 1% of Apple's revenue. Even still, Whitney calls attention to an important factor of Apple's business model -

Quote:

Apple doesn't necessarily introduce individual new products or services with the goal of making lots of money. Instead, the company sees new products and services as a way of luring users into the Apple ecosystem. By offering a "compelling music experience," as Munster puts it, Apple hopes to sell more iPhones. Selling more iPhones means more users who will purchase items from iTunes and potentially buy other Apple products and services.

I personally have never seen or used the iTunes market. Are there any users among our ranks sorry to see the service die? And does this news mark the beginning of the end of purchasable digital music as it is by and large replaced by streaming?

How do you feel about the news?

innerspaceboy · 05-14-2016, 12:29 PM

A friend from one of the vinyl communities I frequent kindly recommended that I explore the Austrian Recollection GRM sublabel - a series of reissues of records and archival recordings from Groupe De Recherches Musicales, produced by Peter Rehberg in coordination with Christian Zanési & François Bonnet at GRM under the parent label, Editions Mego. They contain fantastic specimens of experimental electronic / Musique Concrète and certainly right up my alley.

I compiled a complete v0 label archive last night in order to survey their recordings and was surprised to find that a few of the albums are reissues of another favorite sublabel of mine - France's Philips Prospective 21c siecle. (Certainly indicative of their quality!)

Here is the Discogs index, featuring recordings from Bernard Parmegiani, Iannis Xenakis, Jean-Claude Risset, Pierre Schaeffer and others.

And as my friend kindly noted, this is the only way you'll find "Presque Rien" in its entirety in a vinyl format.

Thanks my man for tuning me in!

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard · 05-14-2016, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by innerspaceboy

How do you feel about the news?

I use iTunes only because I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone, so it makes sharing music between devices much easier. I plan on switching to Samsung when my phone contract is up however, and I'm hoping to find a better music app at that point because iTunes is really starting to get on my last nerve. Shutting down music downloads wouldn't have much of an affect on me regardless though, because I don't ever buy my music through iTunes.

innerspaceboy · 05-14-2016, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qwertyy

I use iTunes only because I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone, so it makes sharing music between devices much easier. I plan on switching to Samsung when my phone contract is up however, and I'm hoping to find a better music app at that point because iTunes is really starting to get on my last nerve. Shutting down music downloads wouldn't have much of an affect on me regardless though, because I don't ever buy my music through iTunes.

I'm glad you have a light at the end of your misadventure with Apple. Your options for media management and playback increase exponentially when you come over to Android, as I'm sure you're aware. If I can be of any assistance with software recommendations when that day arrives, please let me know.

innerspaceboy · 05-15-2016, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rostasi

Just so there's a timeline sense about the INA/GRM.
All that Peter "Pita" Rehberg has done with friends
is reprint some of the early recordings of the GRM
which was begun by Pierre Schaeffer back in 1958
which was an outgrowth of the original GRMC of 1951
which had among its ranks the best musique concrète
composers of the day. Peter pretty much dissolved
Mego in order to concentrate on his new found interests
in these classic works and composers. When the great
François Bayle became its director in '66, he was not only
its longest-lasting director - over thirty years - but actually introduced
the amazing acousmonium setup as well as integrated the studios
with the Institut national de l'audiovisuel to create the current INA/GRM.
This place is an amazing amalgamation of sound and visual technology.
Working with their software has been incredibly liberating for me.

My word, rostasi; that was a magnificent response! I seldom receive feedback from my journal posts (likely due to my nuanced and hyper-specific fields of interest), so when I receive a communication like yours I am especially grateful.

Music communities like the private and secret groups I engage on FB and forums like MB have provided a rewarding social dynamic which has been sadly absent from my physical interactions in my very tiny RL world.

Richard Tirendi's modern adage that "if you're the smartest one in the room then you're in the wrong room" has been painfully evident in my day-to-day interactions. But these virtual communities have afforded me contact with individuals with all manner of specialized knowledge and enrich my cultural understanding through posts just like yours.

Thank you!

If you'd care to share, tell me of your experience working with their software! How did you become involved, etc?

Chula Vista · 05-15-2016, 04:10 PM

I also use iTunes but since buying a Galaxy phone, Chromebook, and switching over to Chrome on my main workstation I've been using Google music more and more lately.

innerspaceboy · 05-15-2016, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chula Vista

I also use iTunes but since buying a Galaxy phone, Chromebook, and switching over to Chrome on my main workstation I've been using Google music more and more lately.

Curious Chula - I presume the persistent issue remains that non-commercial / private label / independent music is not available for purchase from Google Music. And there is likely a similar issue with rights litigation restricting some commercial music from being made available.

But what about the magic 20,000 track limit. How do users with hundreds of thousands of tracks use Google Music?

I'm still trying to find a viable legal solution for users who already have large libraries of their own. A personal server is practically free to setup and costs nothing to maintain monthly. It gives users total control and limitless accessibility to tens of terabytes of their media from any device. Will this method come to replace the streaming fad by which users don't actually own ANYTHING?

Chula Vista · 05-15-2016, 05:52 PM

Dude, I'm in over my head here. I'm not that savvy with all this new technology. Sorry, I can't answer your question. I've been slowly transferring my iTunes library over to Google. The coolest thing with the Google/Chrome platform is that whatever I do with my Chromebook or Workstation is immediately available on my phone.

My new guitar amp has an aux in so I plug my phone in and can jam to anything in my Google library. That's about as technical as it gets with me.

innerspaceboy · 05-19-2016, 10:09 PM

Things have been really crazy lately with all the wedding preparation, so I've found myself setting aside an hour at the end of each day to slow everything down, read or write, and to play some pulse-slowing field recordings and ambient music to steady my mind.

One album that I keep returning to, sometimes multiple times in a row is a collaboration between Biosphere and The Higher Intelligence Agency called Polar Sequences released on the highly sought-after Beyond label.

The album is an exceptional example of arctic ambient - with its cold and desolate air and a meditative, drone-like quality.

The liner notes reveal that the album is, in fact, a live recording capturing concert performances of the two artists together in Tromsø, Northern Norway from 1995.

Quote:

'Tromsø, 70 degrees north, in the Arctic region, in the middle of the most active northern lights zone. In summer time, land of the midnight sun. In winter, total darkness.

In October 1995, as part of the annual Polar Music Festival, Geir Jenssen of Biosphere and Bobby Bird of The Higher Intelligence Agency, were commissioned by Nor Concerts to collaborate together on a musical project to take place in Geir's home town of Tromsø, Norway. The brief was for them to perform three concerts, using sounds sourced from the area as the basis of the music - the machinery of the local mountain cable lift, the snow, the ice etc…

The performances from which this recording is taken, took place on top of a mountain above Tromsø, in a cabin reached by the cable car, in which the audience were transported up the mountain in turn.'

The album was originally issued in a limited run of 5000 in 1996, and later reissued on Headphone Records in 2003.

Give a listen to the opening segment, "Cimmerian Shaft"

and the stark album closer, "Meltwater"

innerspaceboy · 05-20-2016, 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rostasi

Regarding "arctic ambient," not all of the pieces here are ambient,
but they do use icebergs as sound sources. I have one that I
created a little over a year ago here.

The producer of the recent KLF drone releases spoke highly of Polar Sequences, and recommended Nautic Depths - North Passage (el culto) and the artist, Netherworld for further listening. I'll be exploring them in the days ahead.

Icebergsongs is a noble undertaking. It's great to see artists uniting under an important environmental theme, and I enjoyed the compositions I experienced when I visited the page. Thank you!

But your own piece from the series was something else entirely. I was instantly intrigued by the opening 30 seconds of chveang kau’k and knew right away that I needed to give it a proper listen in my circumaural monitors. I'm glad I did because it was a most rewarding listening experience. From what sounded like audio interpolation, I wondered whether the piece was produced using Paulstretch or a similar dilation agent. I was entranced by the nuanced ever-shifting character of the drone - subtle variations in frequency, intensity, and balance which transfix the listener's attention in a zen-like state of conscious and subconscious focus.

I'm equally curious about the source audio, the process, and the (perhaps Indonesian?) title, (is that, "change you?").

From what I was able to find, it appears your work explores many subjects I enjoy, such as Eastern Philosophy, Fluxus, Situationism, Information Theory, Psychoacoustics, Generative Music, Interactive Art and Installation work, Field Recording, Electroacoustics, etc.

Similarly astounding was your roster of fellow musicians with whom you'd had the pleasure to study. To a humble student such as myself, (with a portrait of Stockhausen hanging amongst my wall of musical heroes), I would love to survey more of your work.

05-15-2016, 04:10 PM	#256 (permalink)
Chula Vista Toasted Poster Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: SoCal by way of Boston Posts: 11,332	I also use iTunes but since buying a Galaxy phone, Chromebook, and switching over to Chrome on my main workstation I've been using Google music more and more lately. __________________ “The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

05-15-2016, 05:52 PM	#258 (permalink)
Chula Vista Toasted Poster Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: SoCal by way of Boston Posts: 11,332	Dude, I'm in over my head here. I'm not that savvy with all this new technology. Sorry, I can't answer your question. I've been slowly transferring my iTunes library over to Google. The coolest thing with the Google/Chrome platform is that whatever I do with my Chromebook or Workstation is immediately available on my phone. My new guitar amp has an aux in so I plug my phone in and can jam to anything in my Google library. That's about as technical as it gets with me. __________________ “The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”