A letter to a friend

I'm glad you like my Indistinct Borders theme. The book that inspired it and my Karelia album was written before WWII - "Chronicals of Lake Narocz", a travelogue based in what is now Belarus, but was then part of greater Poland. It is long out of print. By the wonder …

Two days in a life of travel: Mon 15 and Tues 16 October 2007

These words, my thoughts commuting to London and Reading.

Monday 15 October: My London Commute day. A walk down Charring Cross Road and a dip into my regular port of call, Henry Pordes Books. Two books of film poster art "The Queer Movie Poster Book" and "Polish …

Landschaft now on Wikipaedia

I have decided to start cleaning up the Wikipaedia Ambient page and it's child pages. It's a bit inaccurate and very incomplete. As a start I've added Landschaft! It's on the English edition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_music - scroll down and see me in …

Another Landschaft release pending...

I have found a forgotten couple of pieces in the Landschaft vaults that I recorded one late night on my trusty Korg Karma. Well they are super Combis really that I built to learn how the instrument works. Lots of cascading glissando vibes and the like. I think they …

Review Formication: Icons for a New Religion

1. Arise or Originate
Rotate, reverberate, melody. A search in the void. Searchlights across an empty sea. Nihilistic exposition across the void to an audience of zero,,,, Formication, in this opening to their audience hold out an olive branch, a white flag, place …

Review Mark Tamea: Buried Traktora

This album achieves a rare success - extremity with meaning. This stream of conciousness review flowed straight from the Landschaft pen - here it is warts and all!

1. Switched and 2. Behind Orderly digits
Are one piece - Tamea's familiar diptych foirmat - one piece …

Review Mark Tamea: Energy Does Matter

1. Caapi and 2. Lutea Pixeluna
Starts off with some nice radio noise and a gutsy swoopy bass, taking us into a held note, building suspense, then seamlessly into a big melodic tension build-up and on to a closely sequenced metalic percussion. Transitions, working down …

Living in the past ...

Readers of this blog will know Landschaft's fascination/obsession with nostaligia; our idealised interpretation of the past. Today I took a trip over to the US Holocaust Memorial (USHMM) website at http://www.ushmm.org/ I found an image of Narocz, the inspiration for …

Policy statement Landschaft CDs

My cunning viral marketing plan is this:

I provide to my VIRB friends CDs at cost of postage plus £4-00 GBP. The £4-00 is to cover duplication cost, box (some are super jewel cases that are expensive - see http://www.superjewelbox.co.uk/ ) and artwork (some is …

Wendingen - intrigued read on ...

I chanced across the Princeton Architectural Press book about this amazing publication, "Wendingen" ISBN 1-56898-276-3 on the Charring Cross Road -book Nirvana as those who know it will testify. Wendingen is graphic art heaven from the fertile peroid between the wars. …

A little more about Landschaft

The potted history of Landschaft (translation "countryside") is at my main website at http://www.landschaft.co.uk/ (see the first column sub-heading Manifesto). I call myself Landschaft via a fascination with old maps photographs and travelogues of Central and Eastern …

Photography

Now my music albums are all uploaded, time to concentrate on my other passion, photography. I love the composition of curves and trees and, influenced by Antonioni's "Blow-up" I tend to concentrate my landscape photography on England's Victorian city parks. Green Park …

And death shall have no dominion

The Daily Mail, an Englaish newspaper has been giving away episodes of the classic 1974 TV series The World at War ... It's been a sobering experience contrasting the presentation of history 30 years ago with today's documentaries. Then, the footage comprising the …

The Hours

My exploration of nostalgia drew me to the acclaimed movie The Hours. A hugely complex matrix of choices and regret - as one critic on IMDB pointed out: "as we get older we accumulate memories". And taking that thesis further, we tend to build structures on and around …

Landschaft VIRB site goes live

Today, my basic VIRB site goes public. I need a rest from making more music - my Nostalgia album, recently completed really drained me. I am taking time out to create a new sound library on my instruments, promote my work - I now have 5 complete albums published. I may …