Chambo’s Top ID Music Jams from 2012, in alphabetical order:
As we wrote once before … “Less suffocated techno. More shiny fractal ambience. “Shadow from Tartarus” sounds like ice tinkling off the conning tower of Porter Ricks‘ submarine after surfacing in the sparkling glare of Arctic sunlight.”
Mike Watt, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and a dude we’d never heard of from the awesomely named “Liquid Indian” got together for these totally mellow Sandy Bull-inspired astral jams and nobody really said much about it, but it’s amazing.
Sits next to Stag Hare’s Spirit Canoes, Deep Magic’s Solar Meditations, White Rainbow’s New Clouds and Thoughts on Air’s Mallo Yallo as a stone classic of contemporary New Age. Flutes, guitars and all kinds of jingle-jangling old growth vibes.
Serious Neu!-worship from one of the Portishead dudes. ‘Nuff said.
As we wrote back when … “more music in the same vein as Sunburned Hand of the Man and Boredoms’ resinous noise vibrations. Accurately described by P4K as sounding “like a couple of fun-loving dudes trying to get a party started, but their voices have been ripped from their throats and packed together into a single gooey, wholly unintelligible ball.”
Blues Control – Valley Tangents
Hot off their blissed-out zither-heavy collabo with OG New Age legend Laraaji, these two goners return with a mellow New Age/Space Rock/Spiritual Jazz thing that doesn’t really sound like anything else out there right now. They’re due in Marfa for what should be a legendary Monday night at Lost Horse on February 11.
Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland – Black is Beautiful
Cribbing from the Quietus review cuz they nailed it:
“Blunt and Copeland’s work is like hearing rival stereos from adjacent apartments, thumping cars and treble-heavy earbuds, while finding our way within the labyrinthine metropolitan maze. Its erratic rhythmic and harmonic arrangements are akin to the upheaving asphalt that city folk walk on, through diversely inhabited neighbourhoods, over cobblestone streets, between graffitied walls of concrete and brick, around crumbling cloverleaf overpasses and into dead ends, above crooked rooftops, down diagonal fire escapes and spiral staircases, piloting the cleaved strata of competing and contested histories.”
Genuinely ecstatic tunes that bring to mind Laurie Anderson and Linda Perhacs (with whom Holter has collaborated). A welcome entry in a new genre of music currently owned by Holter and fellow traveler Julianna Barwick, which Diplo describes as sounding “like Care Bears making love.”
Monopoly Child Star Searchers – The Garnet Toucan
While his former Skaters-partner James Ferraro continues to provide the ideal score to surfing through R-U-IN?S-affiliated Tumblrspace, Spencer Clark gives us more percolating aquarium soundtracks exploring the role of parrots and toucans as “mediators between human and nature.” Yes.
What if Boards of Canada were only taking inspiration from NFB’s Cousteau catalog?
Prince Rama – Top Ten Hits of the End of the World
A genre-hopping kaleidoscope of a record that has our friends from Prince Rama making sounds described variously as “ABBA-worship,” “frat-boy dub,” “Ariel Pink goes Bollywood,” “[a] hybrid of pagan and New Age sounds”, and our favorite, “too many crayons.” Only haters complain about too many crayons.
Pulse Emitter, Date Palms, Expo 70, Faceplant – 4 Way Split
A inspired range of expansive head music that encompasses bass-heavy plankton mating calls; West Coast cruising music by way of Carnatic drones; choogly candlelit doom and “the modular hessian noise trance project” from one half of Peaking Lights. The best primer to 2012’s American underground kosmiche scene one could hope for.
An ideal soundtrack for wetlands-restoration projects.
Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras and The Congos – Icon Give Thank
“Nyabinghi drone gospel perfect for the next Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church picnic.”
As regular listeners of ID Music know, Chambo is a sucker for anything with noodling guitars and chimes, so this collaboration between top bell-ringing boss Pantha du Prince’s Hendrik Weber and kraut-guitar practitioner Stephan Abry was definitely gonna see some heavy rotation.
Voices From The Lake – Voices From The Lake
Ambient electronic music of the classic Aphex/Gas school, beloved to the expensive stereo-owning graphic designer-types who populate the Resident Advisor message boards (who are well worth listening to once you can decipher the techno/trance/house jargon).
A condensed version of this list can be found here. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned throughout 2013 for more “New Age Radio … Without All The Rules.” Only on 93.5FM, Marfa Public Radio.
Inter-Dimensional Music 