At Water’s Edge looks into unexplored corners of ambient electronica to uncover beauty in unexpected places. Music is everywhere–sometimes pretty, sometimes dark, always beautiful. awe.fm
Music is everywhere, in everything: in the hum of a city,
in the pulse of construction machinery or a heartbeat,
in footsteps, in laughter, in breath, in the shuffling of an impatient audience…
and, like John Cage’s “Four minutes and thirty-three seconds”,
all you have to do is sit and listen.
At Water's Edge, 4 July 2015: Rhythm As Rebellion
It is Independence Day in the United States. There is so much going on in this country and around the world, that the mind boggles.
Independence means many things to many people, and this past week has seen many major legal decisions that honor freedom and independence--while at the same time other forces work to restrict that freedom.
This battle between one and the other creates a kind of rhythm, a pendulum swing, a pushing and pulling of our collective ethos and our individual minds.
So this week's At Water's Edge features those rhythms, in the form of new music by artists who skirt the line between ambient and "other", using rhythm as rebellion.
Every art form, every human institution, every religion, every civilization, begins as rebellion of some kind. It is human nature, then, to attempt to analyze and discover what "works" about these rebellions and create formulae to recreate them, to such an extent that they become brittle--failing to recognize, again and again, that it is the innovation and creativity that sparks the human spirit. When evolution within a form is no longer rewarded but vilified, then that form has died.
Ambient music is still evolving, but in many ways is beginning to crystallize. When "schools" form that attempt to create formulae out of elements that "work", and explorations beyond those formulae are rejected, then those very elements are in danger. It is no longer art, it is formula.
Today's program highlights ambient artists who rebel against that crystallization. There are more, thankfully, than those represented here.
Keep exploring. Keep evolving. Keep rebelling.
Nataraja - Jack Hertz
auralfilms.bandcamp.com/album/nataraja
- Harmonic Flow
- Nataraj
- Rain of Ice
- Troubling Questions
- Anandatandava
- Clipping Memories
- The Weathervane
- Ozone Rising
- Seer
- Gong Circle
Spiritual Haven - Russell Suereth
cdbaby.com/cd/russellsuereth2
- A Magic Flight
- Distant Voices
"Falling Toward Polaris" - Phillip Wilkerson - Swiftly the Sun
phillipwilkerson.bandcamp.com/album/swiftly-the-sun-2
Cousin Silas and Friends vol. 4 (waag_rel073)
weareallghosts.bandcamp.com/album/cousin-silas-and-friends-vol-4-waag-rel073
- "Incidental Melody" - Cousin Silas & David Gerard
- "Seven Hills" - Cousin Silas & Fourth Dimension
- " The Hidden Star Map" - Cousin Silas & Har
- "Emergence" - Cousin Silas & Kuutana Serenity
The Eye of Imagination - Christopher Alvarado
auralfilms.bandcamp.com/album/the-eye-of-imagination
- Plateau of Icons
- Allure of Xenon
- Castle in the Air
- Eclipsed in the Flare
- Enigmatic Zephyr
- Copper Eyed Effigy
- Lambent
- The Webbed Forest
- Crest Of The Future