More Streaming Radio!

If you’re anything like me, you have lots of cds and probably digital music store downloads yet still enjoy listening to streams. Even if you don’t have the extensive music collection, streams still give you a good place to look. I frequently mention di.fm as a good source for chillout (and ambient and trance and…). I know that a lot of people thing radio should be free and di does offer a free stream. I really would suggest paying for the full quality streams. They are simply great (and I appreciate never hearing a commercial). Be sure to listen in to the free stuff first if you’re trying to decide.

Soma.fm is another streaming site that offers a variety of styles. Not as many as DI and they tend to be more approximate in what is played, but still good streams. Groove Salad, probably the most popular stream, is a good place to chill or head over to the Space Station Soma stream for some really easy going tracks. This one is completely free, but they would love a donation. You can donate USD 50 and get a T-shirt free (or just look at it as a really expensive t-shirt) if you choose.

I just stumbled on Calmscape recently. There’s a variety of downtempo and easy going tracks with and without vocals that seem quite laidback for the most part (as in chill-ambient). Still a pretty pleasent stream to relax to. The site itself also has CD reviews (complete with numbers of how good it is!) added every once in a while. Nice to browse around (and it’s a pretty nice looking Mambo installation from a design standpoint. Mambo is what Joomla! came from). The logo is also cool:

I meant to write a review of Stokes’ album Vast, but I think I’ll leave that for Friday. If you want a review in one word: awesome.

Abyssal Plains – Chimera EP

I know that I didn’t ever really get into posting reviews for a lot of kahvi releases, but there are a few that I have recently wanted to call people’s attention to. Other than the Stokes post from yesterday, these other two artists are guests to kahvi and, as far as I can tell, pretty unknown as of yet.

The release I’m looking at this time is the Chimera EP by Abyssal Plains. The best link I could find is Abyssal Plains’ MySpace which does help to clarify some of the musical influences that you will be able to hear. The style is epic and that really does define the shock I had when I heard it the first time. In all honesty, artists’ first albums usually have their moments and might be good, but it’s rarely in the entirety and rarely bringing styles together the way that really impressed me. The overall style keeps a chilled IDM feel much like you will find in chillout (not calling it chillout may be splitting hairs even).

The tracks give off a sort of airy feel that reminds me a lot of Boards of Canada or even Stuartt Elliott. It’s a very inviting and interesting sound that I really enjoy. The only problem with the airy sounds of the EP is they can sound very similar from track to track. I would like to see a bit more variety, but it is very excellent for one who is relatively new to the game. As for favorite track of the EP, I would ahve to say equilibrium. It blends a dominant electric melody over the airy backdrop with a good beat that doesn’t dominate when it shouldn’t.

Personally, I would love to see this artist expand. I think there is a lot of potential and a very good starting point. Pretty good now, but the next release by this artist will probably be fantastic.

Stokes – Live at Sausalito

Since I have a lot of music I want to mention about Saul Stokes I figure that starting with the newest isn’t a bad place to begin.

Live at Sausalito is a 45 minute recording of Stokes as he does what he seems to do best: create a building a twisting blend of some traditional and not so traditional instruments. As a lot of Stokes work seems to for longer tracks, it starts slow and builds. Do not let the opening fool you. This is nothing that will make you bored if you like that blend of ambient and chill that Stokes is good at. The recording quality is absolutely perfect on the live set, and the sounds are purely Stokes.

As the set progresses, it rises and falls to various ambient levels to leave you craving more until Stokes brings you back to that sweet spot. The beautiful almost purely electronic set is complimented by flutes and pianos sprinkled in the perfect places.

Though Stokes does some that is more energetic, this is a pretty mellow piece. Those that are looking for chillout will need to keep looking. I wouldn’t let this turn you away from Stokes entirely. On his site you can find a stream to listen to some of his other work as well as check out The Road is Glowing on kahvi. This set is also available on Kahvi as well as his site. I would recommend it for any ambient lovers out there or at least to hear for those looking for something very very chilled.

Kahvi links:

• Saul Stokes – Live at Sausalito
• Saul Stokes – The Road is Glowing

Happy New Year!

Welcome to another year and more resolutions! I would say that I resolve to post more regularly and what I intend to (there’s 3-5 music posts waiting to be written), but I’m pretty sure that’s going to go bad soon. Anyway, my resolution is to post more and share more music with everyone. There’s also a project coming into being that I’ll probably be looking to see if anyone is interested in helping with. Stay tuned for that as well.

A large topic of a hopefully soon-coming post is going to be Saul Stokes. Whether you heard him on di.fm or kahvi, Stokes is no newcomer. I recently added a lot of Stokes to my library and he released a new live set to the internet. Both I feel deserve to be brought up.

More soon… (and I also have a good book that I’m reading as an excuse for forgetting to post)

Kettel, Zeilenga, and headphones

After quite a while, I finally have the time and the music to really look at another album. That, coming at the bottom, will be Volleyed Iron from Kettel. First with some little news.

S. Zeilenga has released his first music video for “Where there are no roads” off of his next album. You can check out the video (Quicktime format).

On the personal front, I bought myself some new headphones for my mp3 player. I chose to go with Sennheiser CX300S headphones (that links to NewEgg who has the best price right now and other people’s reviews as well). They are amazingly light (0.1 oz) with an 18-210000 Hz frequency response. The sounds is clear and amazlingly in tune for mid and high range. The bass response is no where near muddled and only starts to become noticable on very bass intensive songs. They are also pretty comfortable to wear for a couple hours at a time. It cancels noise quite well also which can be a problem when walking (I don’t hear normal speech from someone directly next to me). Still an outstanding value for USD 50.

And now for the Kettel review. This would fall into the ambient genre as opposed to just chillout, but it is near the boarder of the two (Unlike something like Air I from Namlook or Tetsu Inuoe which I consider very ambient). The sounds are beautiful and flowing throughout employing some non-traditional instruments to almost a classical feel. What starts out somewhat odd and jumbled quickly flows into something beautiful and melodic. The entire CD flows very well together to such an extent that it looping doesn’t even seem odd. It is slow, as ambient should be, but it isn’t boring. There is a great variety of sound to relax and possibly even musically entrance you. This has to be some of, if not the best ambient I have ever heard. It is highly recommended.

1 CD, 1 DNS Change

Well, I’m not exactly keeping up with posts, but that was somewhat to be expected. I did get my cd shortly after my last post, and it was so good i had to run up and post about it. If the fact that it has been weeks wasn’t enough to imply sarcasm, let me be a bit more exact: it was quite disappointing. It’s a Nettwerk various artists compelation called Chillout 04: The Ultimate Chillout. I head one track from it on Yahoo’s Chillout “stream” (it’s not really a stream. it’s more of a streaming playlist) which follows the American view of chillout. This entire production is even a US only release. If you like European chillout (like what is on DI.fm), this doesn’t mean you like American chillout. A lot of American chillout is remixes and still contain vocals. It also isn’t very chilled; I would call it pleasent vocal trance for the most part (some is better, some is worse).

So what about this album? It is all vocal. I personally don’t see that as a positive in general, but it’s not always bad. The tracks that were literally giving me a headache would definitely be a bad thing though. There is far more trance than chill in most of these tracks and one is downright house. That I see as bad. There are a few tracks that I think fit the chilled status enough to be considered good. I got the cd for USD 10 so it wasn’t a bad investment for the 5 tracks that I like to varying degrees. Just because I think they are worth noting (as opposed to the others that I wouldn’t even put on my portible player, and I almost always move full albums). The first two are particularly good:

• At The End (Sat & Lee Howler Reprise) — iio
• Center Of the Sun (Solarstone’s Chilled Out Remix) — Conjure One (I might have heard this one elsewhere. There is also a real media demo on the album link above)
• As The Rush Comes (Gabriel & Dresden Chillout Mix) — Motorcycle
• Everything In It’s Right Place — Radiohead
• One Too Many Mornings — The Chemical Brothers (I know I heard this one before)

Well, hopefully that gives you an idea whether or not you want the cd.

Thursday night I’m going to see the Blue Man Group on their new tour. This will be the third time i’ve see Blue Man Group and expect to say nothing less than those who have not heard it are truly missing out. Even after you have heard them, you have to be there. Between the concert and another cd i’m getting for my mother (both for her birthday), hopefully I’ll have something good to tell you.

For DNS, I set up an account through EveryDNS to handle the domains on this server so cardamar.quad341.com should be working, but please continue to use chilloutmixes.com to get to the mirror. If any dns errors arrise, can someone drop me a line? Thanks

That’s all for now.

Musical Madness!!

While I admit I haven’t been doing as much with music as of late, this doesn’t mean I’ve completely stopped exploring by any means. One of my latest investments comes in the form of a subscription to Yahoo Music. I got a new mp3 player (a Creative Zen MicroPhoto) that supports the Janis (Plays for sure) licensing and noticed that Yahoo has a good selection of chill out music. It also has 120+ streams that you can listen to as well (and yes, they play music on the streams you can’t get through Yahoo). It’s a pretty nice system except that I have to use my windows computer to do it (the problem isn’t because it’s windows, it’s because I carry my mac with me everywhere). They are supposedly working on a solution (as per the faq), but I have no idea how active that is. And this has already lead me to a new cd investment. I’ll post about that after I get it.

What else is going on in the world of music? Well, S. Zeilenga is starting a new project. I love his music, so this new project is exciting for me. There is also a new mix, Ever Since The Day We Met…”, by Zeilenga available for download. It’s a quite good mix using some of the more common faces around. I don’t have the track list posted yet, but you can read it from the artwork or on Cardamar’s Mix Page. If you’re one of those S. Zeilenga fans who remembers something called “In Medias Res,” I can say that it is not forgotten and my be available soon-ish (still questionable, so no time frame).

Cardamar was supposed to have a new cd coming out this summer-ish too and that seemed to go away too? Not exactly. Technical problems (I sound like a broken record) set him back, but all is not lost. It will release substantially later in the year, but I can almost promise it by the holidays. There may also be another CD coming from Cardamar Music toward the end of this year or early next…

And let’s not forget our friend Xerxes. He has a new song available for download. Also, the Mirror Formula should either be available on iTunes and some other digital stores soon or now (not sure). Also, the mastered version may be available for download sometime in the future.

I hope this got your musical needs filled at least for now.

No real news

Well, I’ve been bad about updates. This probably isn’t going to stop. If anything, I have more to do now than before. In all actuality, I haven’t even logged into my Dofus account in quite a while. Because of this, I’m going to release my code for the dofus commerce application i’ve been writing. it’s written the way i like to write bigger projects (even though it isn’t one. it was more for an example than because it needed it). No eta for that because, well, i have to remember to do it.

Cardamar seems to be preoccupied or something, so if you are looking for the Marco Torrance album, just preorder it on cardamar’s site and he’ll probably mail it out when he has time.

Oh and I changed how my dns is handled (again). Sites may seem down for a day or two while it updates.

Music to Live By

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted about music, but these two latest albums are definitely ones worth noticing.

The first album I got was A Strangely Isolated Place by Ulrich Schnauss. Schnauss has a pretty well known name around chillout and for good reason. His music a wonderful blend of simple and artificial tones with some natural beauty. The result is quite amazing. I struggle to really be able to describe the music. It’s a blend of something like S. Zeilenga and Jon Hopkins. I love both of those artists and hence love Schnauss. This album does contain Monday – Paracetamol of which is the second song on disc 2 of “The Art of Chill.” If you have or have heard that track, it will give you somewhat of a feel for his work (though that is one of the lower-key tracks). The upbeat tracks from an artist like “Bliss” also have a similar feel. I really enjoyed the album and would really recommend you get yourself a copy.

Next was the album I probably announced a couple months ago: Reconstructed Moments by Marco Torrance. You may also know Torrance by the name of Zilent Zpott. There is more of an ambient feel to this cd than Schnauss, but it is not an ambient album. It is a very deliberate and calculated blend of emotions that can be a bit slower than some enjoy. I love well done ambiant as well as chillout. This blend that sits closer to one side or the other depending on song is very well done. I think Torrance’s ability of ambiant are really notable, but his chill is also something to observe. It’s not a generic nor as light as Schnauss’s work, but it is no where near as heavy as something like Namlook’s Silence or Air. It sits somewhere in the middle and well done at that position. To get a feel if you would like the album, I would recommend checking out the Zilence EP on kahvi.org first. I think you will be happy with what you hear.

On music-ish related news: I’m annoyed at the DNS problems I have been having with the music mirror at cardamar.quad341.com. As such, I purchased a new domain, chilloutmixes.com that also points there and will become the primary domain. Please either use the IP or use the new domain and I will probably be changing and possibly removing the old one.

Music and Zimbio (nice combo!)

As you can probably tell, I have enough trouble keeping up one blog, so my time for Zimbio has been extremely limited. Ok, i’ll be honest: non-existant. This doesn’t mean the Zimbio team hasn’t been up to anything though. In fact, a great update just took place. In fact, there was a press release about all the new changes over at Yahoo! Finance. If you haven’t gotten a Zimbio addiction yet, now’s the time to find out about anything and everything. I think I might just start a portal about Chillout Music since… i kinda like it.

Speaking of music, I ordered a cd a while ago and never heard how it was doing. It was international peoples gang 0006 from em:t records. It just showed up tomorrow (a day after i complained i hadn’t heard anything ironically) and I have to say, it’s impressive. I saw the review on Mike G’s site (no, i don’t remember his site, but he does the lounge on the chillout channel on di every other monday). It brings unique chill and some ambiant together in a very nice package. I honestly must admit my love right off the bat. If i wasn’t trying to catch up on some sleep, I’d be sure to say more.

Oh and tomorrow is a free webinar from zend. don’t forget to sign up! (check your email if you’re on the newsletter)