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Landschaft

Ambient / Classical / Experimental

Nottingham, United Kingdom

About

Landschaft is about re-discovery, re-birth, resurgence. That marvellous Latin word Resurgam; "I shall rise again". It is about probing moods evoked by remembrance and experience. About old maps and photographs; rediscovered histories. It is about distilling those mood feelings down, adding in one's own perceptions to generate a synergy of the two: one's own experience added to one's perception of history. In other words the components that make nostalgia. The ode to joy or the prayer to the souls of the departed. Music, amongst all of the arts is the medium best placed to do this through modulation of key and tempo. The found sounds and whimsy of Colleen and the slowed down orchestras of Stars of the Lid are spiritually close to what I am trying to achieve. With an admixture of Cliff Martinez, successor to Brian Eno.

I have set up a web shop on my main Landschaft page. I can't really afford to send out the free CDs that I used to to anyone who asked. I do continue to trade music with friends though.

"Indistinct Borders" [ landschaft 001 ], the start of the Landschaft journey, inspired by a collection of photographs of the pre-WWII German countryside. The music a collection of Satie-esque piano reflections interspersed with low key electronic works. The mood is dark green. From recollections of the lost and waning cultures of central and northern Europe I was inspired to create these mood pieces. At indistinct borders past histories are forgotten and maps are burned. Bones, ghosts and fragments of barbed wire are the only reminders of conflicts past. The flatlands of Northern Europe, scorched by conflict, destroyed, reborn, and destroyed again. A demolished City where wildflowers silently grow, cities renamed, reborn and renamed again. In the Landschaft, unbroken miles of conifer, 10,000 lakes where voices and music sink slowly to the lake floor. Legends born of optimism and fear promise rescue and a reversal of misfortune. But in the borders, no one remembers and all that remains is dust... I have revised the cover artwork and repackaged in a super jewel case in May 2009.

"Karelia" [ landschaft 002 ], happened by accident. It is an extension of the Indistinct Borders exploration. The mood remains dark Green, but shot with splashes of sunlight glimpsed through trees. I rested the music for a year or so and added sonic components to broaden the depth and width of the stereo image. Title piece, Karelia was a pure stream of conciousness event which surprised me. I happened across a beautiful resonant drone experimenting late one night with a Korg Karma synthesiser and I captured a 35 minute monophonic tone drifting the sound when the time seemed right. A simple response to the monophone's call was then etched over the top with Greenoak Crystal - a wonderful VSTi. Partner piece, Narocz is a sample based below the lake wash of marching pebbles across a forgotten shoreline. Inspired by a long out of print autobiographical travelogue "Chronicles of Lake Narocz" by Polish author Mieczyslaw Lisiewicz. The cover art - presented here on VIRB in square jewel case format is, in the real thing, a DVD Super Jewel Case format piece, crafted sleeve artwork, comprising Japanese hand printed paper and lettering inspired by master typographer Jan Tschichold.

"Nostalgia" [ landschaft 003 ] Most of the pieces are sparse piano based meditations with subtle ambience to add space, depth and modulation, and is something of a personal journey. The album is a distillation to 12 tracks; the best of a 24 track cycle. The cover photograph was taken by my father in 1947 in Singapore - the first of his extensive collection of photographs that I have restored. The mood is orange fire and gold leaf. Preview MP3 available on this VIRB site.

"Concerto No 1" [ landschaft 004 ] A work that evolved quickly and to a great extent under it's own momentum. A late night session of ideas-sketching produced a remarkable Korg Karma layered orchestral cycle. This turned into quite an upbeat Stravinski like gallop with pizzicato strings driving the piece along to a big mellow horn section crescendo. There followed a chamber music version - a perky stripped down skeleton of light instrumentation. Both of the upbeat versions remain in the Landschaft vaults. I then headed it off into darker water - the whole piece was time stretched by a 5 times multiple and a violin solo was laid over the top that turned it into a haunting pastoral epic more in the Vaughan Williams vein. For the sleeve art, I have produced a post-modern take on the classical sheet music folio with a wonderful typographic ornament - a fleuron, from a piece of found typography.

"Tone Poem for Hidden Places Viewed from a Train" [ landschaft 005 ], a canonical/fugal piece of rotating cycles in the dronology sub-genre. Dark, mesmeric, uplifting.

the lifting clouds reflected on water.
over bridges and earthworks.
when drewdrops form and are splashed by unknowing footfall as night turns to dawn.
a clattering wind in trees picks up crow call transported.
reflected in glass.
a journeying soul opens one eye in near sleep and absorbs in a moment this wonder and a mile is gone before a minute has passed.
repeating.
convergence and divergence eddies and ripples in this landscape of I know not where.
in my journey this day to see a friend.

"Jute" [ landschaft 006 ] I was playing around with some out-takes from my "Nostalgia" sessions, overlaying the same piece of music and staggering the start of the layers emulating a canon or round and it sort of took on a genius form of itself. A wonderful happy accident. Hear the extract of the final 67 minute piece here. It sits in the same sonic territory as Eno's Apollo and the Cliff Martinez Solaris soundtrack. 48 hours from start to upload! A preview MP3, an extract of the first 5 minutes or so is presented here - note you have to scroll the player down to see it. I do urge you to buy the full album that comes in a limited edition DVD format super jewel case with a hand made cover art insert. This is the sixth Landschaft album.

"and now the trembling light" [ landschaft 007 ] 17 October 2007. Cascades and glissandos, slowed-down church organs, a shimmering harmonic tension holds the listener in it's thrall; an epic in two parts in a vast reverbarent space. Inspired by a wonderful pastoral verse by Samual Palmer, "Shoreham: Twilight Time". The title, a metaphore for Palmer's own life-work - twighlight time: a fleeting moment of clarity before darkness closes in. Palmer's family destroyed much of his work immediately after his death evaporating his lifetime achievements. But "Shoreham: Twilight Time" survives and I wish to celebrate it's preciousness in one of my most harmonically structured works, it's title taken from this poem that I quote in part: "And now the trembling light Glimmers behind the little hills and corn, Ling'ring as loth to part; yet part thou must And though than open day far pleasing more (Ere yet the fields and pearled cups of flowers Twinkle in the parting light); ..."

"Silence" [ landschaft 008 ] Made in November 2007 A tonal exploration of the mystery of the Silence.

Beyond the wall where the heavy limbs of trees in silence hold their secret,
is the garden where I picked up wind-fall fruit.
And the air is alive after a pause for thought, as I go on my way,
resting upon the certainties of yester-year,
that I promise will be my tomorrow.

"The True Path" [ landschaft 009 ] Made in November 2007, my most challenging work to date. Two vast slabs of sound each around an hour long. Part I, a solemn hymn; part II an epiphany. Both are near monotones. Each piece interplays very subtle repeating phrases - each identical in melodic content, but in differentiated temporal layers. Canonical in the tradition of Bach and Pachelbel. My aim has been to produce a work that is repeating but in such a rarified fashion as to approach abstraction - that stimulates the mind to build it's own pictures from a whole that is greater than the sum the parts. I commend you to listen to these works in a very quiet space, perhaps late at night with the volume turned down low or through high quality headphones. I have in July 2008 made five artworks to complement the soundwork, and have re-worked the cover-art - now an all transparent Super Jewel case with the inner and outer facing surfaces, and the CDs themselves referencing sections of the five artworks.

"Dark-Ambient Sampler" [ landschaft 010 ] Compiled 24 January 2008. Remixed edits of Silence 1 and 2 and The True Path, all 8-9 minutes long. A compilation I have put together for reviewers, press packs, lables etc. Presented in a CD format Super Jewel Case with new original artworkprinted on fine art archive-quality paper. The CDR is also archive grade; a Taiyo Yuden disc of exceptional beauty - so much so I have not printed on it!

"The Beginning of the New Winter" [ landschaft 011 ] was given a working title "October Sketches" during composition. It comprises a series of lightly composed or improvised pieces commenced late September and completed early November 2008, just as winter's bite set in. I started the project with no particular aim, and the moods and pictures developed and coalesced, forming, by the third piece into a tightly wound concept - of season and the mood evoked by the onset of winter.
Pastoral in theme, Sketch No 1 "The Smell of Wet Leaves" is a live improvisation that just flowed out of my hands, taking no more than a few minutes to record and edit. Pure stream of consciousness, and the way I like to compose. The inspiration was drawn from a countryside walk in a glorious autumn morning, a chill in the air and the musky smell of wet leaves sat low against the earth.
Sketch No 2, "Promises Remembered" completed 25/09/2008 is a reflection on commitment. The mood hangs off single sustained notes, that pause as if in thought.
Sketch No 3, "Reflection on Hope" a partner piece to Sketch No 2 completed 17/10/2008. A longer work for church organ that meanders, ascends and plunges, wrapping itself around a tonal progression and simple melody, finding it's way. Allegorical, casting about seeking resolution - then gathering together to a melodic conclusion, finding itself. I like the fragility of this piece. It nearly crumbles to nothing, but in there is a vestige of optimism -
Sketch No 4, "I Hear the Bells Peal at St Leo's Across the Low Ford" is about place and memory; a 12th century church tucked away near my home surrounded by a road, railway and industry - a little piece of rural England overtaken by the city. I recall the toll of the bells when, as a child I listened to Tuesday evening practice from my bed, their comforting cycles sending me to sleep, slowing and gathering momentum, blown on the wind.
Sketch no 5, "The Cracked Willow: cannonical, reflective, building and then subsiding. The shattered body of a willow where waters flow no more, of the Leen, a river upon which once Byron cast rose petals by Newstead Abbey in England's heart.
Sketch no 6, "A Valediction: The magpie's dawn" is a blustery, robust work. A beech wood torn by the wind thrashing the moon with it's outstretched limbs on a turbulent autumnal daybreak, with a tiding of magpies as witness to a goodbye.
Sketch No 7, "Limpid Winter's Call" and Sketch No 8, "A Tree for a Man" both explore, in improvisation, a single theme. The first is spare single live take with no edits or overdubs; the second, drawing on the same tonal references, a more orchestral and composed work, shimmering, ascending.
Sketch no 9, "Crows Wing Nailed to a Gate" completed 5 November 2008: A big, blustery conflicted piece with two parallel themes fighting against each other for ascendency. It has a tension unlike the other pieces on the album. It is a warts and all improvisation with no corrections or edits whatsoever! The flaws add to rather than detract from the piece I think.
Sketch no 10, "The Beginning of the New Winter", title piece of the collection. Long, mesmeric, as gently contoured as the mysteries of a new drift of snow.

"Walpurgisnacht" [ landschaft 012 ] Walpurgisnacht is a partner piece to my collection The Beginning of the New Winter; Walpurgisnacht being the close of the old winter; the witches night, St Walpurga’s night. A festival of such potency that Christians, pagans and Satanists lay claim to it across the breadth of Northern Europe. It is the festival marking the transition from winter to spring; 30 April/1 May.

In this dawn of the new season, where lapwing crowds rook among the fresh turned clods, a look to the light over winter’s stone shoulder, on buds parting the musk scented earth, make their silent homage to the sky as winter gives way to spring this Witches Eve. And in the Beltane fire is kindled a mystery for another day.

"Zamek" [ landschaft 013 ] Zamek was a long time in the making. It's a 74 minute epic, and a 13 minute excerpt is published here. Play it loud.

The winternight,
Ivy leaves cast for a prophesy,
Briars woven for a song,
Rusted iron and broken stone,
All in a ring cast upon the earth.

Upon the sunrise frost,
Venus, the morning star,
Casts an ambiguity of light,
On the cusp of the seasons,
Inert among the landscapes of this blasted castle.

Each of my albums Beginning of the New Winter, Walpurgisnacht and Zamek suggested a connectedness. I have grouped them as a tryptych that I have titled "Dark Seasons".

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