Some time back the script handling the downloads for some of my free albums broke and as a result, a lot of those releases have been unavailable for a while. I finally got around to re-uploading “Evening Conversations” and it is now hosted on Soundcloud.
“Evening Conversations” was recorded live on 11th June, 2007 at Small’s in Hamtramck, Mi for “The Big Art Show“. It is a live remix of material from Life Toward Twilight‘s album “I Swear By All The Flowers“.
So I’ve been working on my follow up to “I Swear By All The Flowers“, and part of that process has been spent drawing inspiration from other people making amazing antique sounding ambient music. So I decided to put together a short mix of some of the stuff that has been rotating around my playlist.
Tickets are available for DAMNED IV. I will be providing ambient mixes for the art gallery all weekend. Description of event from site:
On October 27-29 2011 in Detroit comes an extraordinary assemblage of artists from across this world to display their most introspective creations at DAMNED IV – An Exhibition of Enlightened Darkness. From the infamous to the freshest of local and international talent, this prodigious congregation will allow us a glimpse within the diverse shadows of id and ego…of overall mind and encompassing soul guaranteed to intrigue, disturb, inspire or repulse. Rising from within the ashes of the historic institution of Devil’s Night, this is not Halloween-themed art but an immersion within the immeasurable realms of consciousness through an elegant ambiance of live strings and cirque/butoh-inspired performances.
This track has a lot of technical history. The melody was composed years ago and I originally proposed it be used in collaboration with a friend of mine who was going to record some vocals for it. That never quite materialized so I finished this piece to be included in the Sepiachord Passport CD sampler. We decided to ultimately not include it there since the piece is so minimal and ambient and didn’t really fit with the other material on the disc.
There are a few companion pieces to this that need finished and could make a new album.
Music from my album “I Swear By All The Flowers” will be played at Corpus Illuminata, an art gallery featuring, “one part exhibition of anatomic-inspired artwork, one part museum of medical antiquities and one part academia of accredited presentations”. The event is in Detroit this weekend, August 12 & 13, 2011. See their sites for details:
All Life Toward Twilight material is now available at a “pay what you want” price in high quality downloads.
http://bottleimpproductions.bandcamp.com/
New material forthcoming. There is a small, ten minute dark ambient piece ready for publish. Will be download only. A follow up to “I Swear By All The Flowers” is mid-production.
The simplest way to sell you on this CD is to tell you that it was created entirely of antique sources, sampling music boxes, and wax cylinders to great effect. The entire album is restrained, soft, and pretty. As atmosphere, it’s nearly perfect.
That said, there is not so much that is intensely beautiful about the album, nothing to really draw you in, nothing that will haunt you hours later (with the possible exception of “sunrise”, the final track, performed on a lovely out-of-tune piano). But while this is to say that the work is not a masterpiece, it is certainly well executed and well worth multiple listens.
Evening of Light posted a new review of “Edison’s Frankenstein”:
Frankenstein, made in 1910 by Edison studios, is one of the oldest horror movies, though not one of the better known ones. According to this feature, all but one of the film’s copies were lost, and it resurfaced as late as the 1970s. Silent movies are usually supplied with a score from some stock music archive, but Daniel Tuttle, the man behind Life Toward Twilight, apparently wasn’t content with the versions of this film’s score that were out there. So, he set to composing his own. The project took some years too attain final form, but in 2008, the release was there, combining the original film with new score, and including a CD with more extended versions of the soundtrack compositions.
As can be expected, the approach is from the direction of dark ambient and industrial electronics, not a bad choice, even for a movie from a different period. The soundtrack combines simple piano melodies, synthesizer waves, drones and some quite heavy noises and percussive sounds here and there. The combination of film and score works very well, in particular in the part in the first half of the movie where Frankenstein conducts his experiment. The impressive stop-motion animation of the monster’s alchemical birth in the cauldron is accompanied by intense industrial ambient, both elements enhancing each other and forming the highlight of this release. After this climax, the pace of the movie slacks a bit, depicting the haunting of Frankenstein’s bridal night and the subsquent ‘dissolution’ of the monster in a less impressive way than the parts that came before.
All the same, this short film is a pleasure to watch, especially for historic reasons. In addition, the soundtrack adds a lot to the movie’s atmosphere, not in the least because the alternative (stock piano music) could be considered particularly gruesome (cf. [YouTube]). If you’re interested in old (horror) movies and post-industrial music, Edison’s Frankenstein is excellent value for money. And if you’re not convinced, and want to try before you buy, the soundtrack can be downloaded for free from the artist’s webpage.
At Bottle Imp Productions, there is a sale on “We Waited For A Subtle Dawn“, which you can buy in high quality MP3 format for $2.50. This will only be valid for a week or so.
A review of the album from Grave Concerns E-zine:
Much of the material on this album was originally recorded two years ago, but Life Toward Twilight composer Daniel Tuttle has re-released it with additional material after a long hiatus, during which he cared for his fiancée, who was dying of cancer. Given the circumstances behind this release, it’s immediately striking how unsentimental even the new material is. Rather than focusing on emotional reactions, Tuttle’s work seems to be a meditation on mortality itself, replete with clashing cymbals, martial drumbeats, and orchestral strings that call to mind the Darwinian hymns of Boyd Rice and Albin Julius. Though there are quieter moments, like the operatic vocal interludes of “Eclipse II” or the lovely nocturnal soundscape of “‘Time,’ She Says,” these softer elements are ultimately overwhelmed by the clashing steel and industrial clatter of “This Peculiar Phenomenon,” the thunderous timpani of “Might And Wrath,” and the and the dark bombast of “‘Time,’ She Points Again.” Even “Nightmares Away From The Moon,” which begins so subtly with distant conversations and eerie, languid pianos, eventually builds into a cacophonous crescendo, this time conjuring a grim Oriental exoticism with wailing Tibetan horns. Perhaps the future will see Tuttle exploring grief and melancholy, but the militaristic ambiance of this release seems starkly unforgiving of such sentiments.
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