Headphone Commute

Roel Funcken - Gorreliann Plasebant [Part 2 of 6]

It is Tuesday morning, and perhaps you’re on your way to work. Or maybe you’re already in front of the computer reading through those emails that can surely ruin your day. Or perhaps you’re just waking up to all the possibilities this day may come to offer. Being open to the “good” and the “bad” without colouring these with your expectations and simply watching things unfold — the way a flower would without judgment. To help you onboarding for your day (even if you’re not listening to this on another Tuesday morning), I’ve got a second part of Roel Funcken‘s Gorreliann Plasebant mix, which I am publishing in six parts over the upcoming weeks, as we transition into another season. Once again, I want to point your eye to the beautiful original artwork created by Funcken himself using acrylic paint and point your ear to his skill at seamlessly transitioning between the selected pieces, taking us on a gorgeous journey through another Tuesday morning. Enjoy!

Roel Funcken - Gorreliann Plasebant [Part 1 of 6]

Summer is almost over. I just took some time to travel a bit again, and as usual, when I return, it’s always difficult to get back into the swing of things. Thankfully, I have an easy task ahead of me today because Roel Funcken has done all the work for me. If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed that today I’m only publishing the first section of a 6-part (9+ hours!) Gorreliann Plasebant mix, which I will link to in its entirety at the end of this series, in which Roel traverses some of his favourite ambient and contemporary classical pieces of the day. I love every minute of it and look forward to revealing each part every week, seamlessly taking us from the end of summer into the beginning of fall. Let’s hope that I can keep this going through September! But for now, enough words! Enjoy the music! And don’t forget to check out Funcken’s latest output as part of Funckarma and Legiac, which you can find on his Bandcamp. Oh, and all artwork is taken from Roel’s original acrylic paintings!

Mike Lazarev - Soundwave Mix

I think I met Joseph sometime in 2008 when he was running his Solipsistic Nation podcast. We shared the same taste in electronic music, and in 2010 I prepared a mix called “DSM-IV-TR“. This seems to be a long time ago now, but Joseph and I still keep in touch. So when he asked me to follow up with another instalment, I gladly pulled out my latest favourite pieces to prepare this mix. These days his show is called Soundwave, where he continues to showcase some of the best artists on the scene, including many of my favourites like zakè, Billow Observatory, and Mike Cadoo, as well as co-conspirators in writing, like Peter van Cooten of Ambientblog, and many other eclectic artists, who are new to my ears and are always a pleasure to discover! My original mix premiered as episode #163 in July of this year, and today I am happily republishing it here for syndication. I think this music needs more ears, and I hope you enjoy the journey!

In this mix, I focused on exploring the very edges of the sonic landscape, where beauty and destruction lie on opposite sides of the dynamic spectrum. Between them, one can hear the transmutation between organic and synthetic, fragile and brutal, beauty and fright. I really love the distorted build-ups originating in the gentle and soothing melodies, climaxing to their concerted peaks and then collapsing into beauty once again. It’s in this contrast that we find ourselves forever bouncing between the darkness and the light, only to accept that there is no middle ground and that this journey.

Fields We Found - Looking Beyond the Trees

Fields We Found is the moniker of an artist and the newly-launched quiet details label founder, bathing our ears with ambient bliss. In the last few years, we were gifted with deep-evolving soundscapes appearing on Ambientologist, Seil Records, and Handstiched Recordings, with the most recent album, Paths, “… exploring the routes we all choose and where they take us” on Facture. Late in 2022, Alex also put out music on the beloved Home Normal, run with tremendous devotion by the one and only Ian Hawgood. Today’s mix on Headphone Commute Podcast is essentially a love letter to our mutually adored ambient imprint, showcasing a lot of the beautiful music appearing on the label. Please support the label, check out the full tracklisting and more words from Alex on the mix directly on the site: https://hcdi.gs/trees

Vargkvint - Headphone Commute Mix

Sofia Nystrand is a Stockholm-based composer with an anticipated new album M​å​nens Hav, due out on June 2nd, 2023, via the German LEITER imprint. This follow-up to her 2019 record Hav, is deeply influenced by her childhood experiences growing up in the Swedish archipelago of Roslagen. With her music, she explores the duality of beauty and brutality in nature, “awe and fear, magic and sorcery,” and how it shapes our emotions and creative expressions. For this Headphone Commute Mix, Sofia compiles a selection of pieces that she listened to while composing her album. Here, we can find all of our favourites, from Grouper to Nils Frahm, from Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres to Tim Linghaus and his collaboration with Nystrand as Vargkvint. Sprinkle in a bit of This Mortal Coil, and you will get a sense of the influencing themes that permeated the music on her upcoming release, which in Swedish means “Oceans of the Moon”.

Brueder Selke - Q3Ambientfest 2023

I am always happy to bring new sounds to your ears [and mine!], and today I’ve got a mix showcasing some special selections from the upcoming boutique music festival named Q3Ambientfest, which will take place this year in June. Creating a perfect balance between some established and emerging artists of various genres and diverse origins, this event showcases a wide range and reach of the music scene. The festival [and this mix] is curated by Brueder Selke, East Berlin-born, Potsdam-based, multi-instrumental composers Sebastian and Daniel Selke, who are also known under their pseudonym CEEYS. “Each year, Brueder Selke invite like-minded friends and renowned artists to meet on a common, physical stage, and, with performances that range between academic avant-garde and accessible pop, develop a kind of cinematic music that holds a mirror up to and makes audible the eclectic architecture of the world-famous Filmstadt Potsdam, with its neoclassical palaces and socialist brutalism.” For this hour-long showcase, they have selected many pieces traversing the roster, including music by Jakob Lindhagen, Vargkvint, Mabe Fratti, Julia Reidy, Yair Elazar Glotman, their very own Brueder Selke project, and many more.

 

You can find more details on the festival here : www.bruederselke.com/happenings/kuration

Fields We Found - chroma

I've got an exceptional podcast for you today, folks. It's not a mix but rather a continuous, single, long-playing track composed by Fields We Found. I'm sharing this fantastic music as an opening to an introduction to a brand new label, quiet details, which I will be profiling this week. Founded this year by the artist behind this piece, the imprint focuses on each artist's interpretation of the phrase after which the label is named. Spanning multiple genres, the upcoming releases explore this idea in each artist's unique way, with the catalogue and upcoming schedule including names such as the humble bee, Fields Line Cartographer, Luke Sanger, bvdub, zakè, and many others [with nearly two years of releases planned already!], whom I'm sure we'll find on these pages. Each release will be accompanied by handmade artwork, with the music and each artist's intuition as a guide to the palette and structure, available as a physical item with bespoke packaging and individual prints. It's a wonderful series to follow from the very beginning, and I am honoured to be a part of this introduction to you. I'll be back with more words on the label later this week, but for now, please enjoy this beautiful piece titled "chroma".

Make sure to visit quietdetails.bandcamp.com for more!

Mathias Van Eecloo - eisOtones 15

50 pieces from 50 releases of the year – this is the ongoing theme of the eisOtones series that we have been featuring on the Headphone Commute podcast, and this is our 15th entry (previous mixes can be found here). Once again, Mathias Van Eecloo, of [previously] Eilean Rec. and [currently] LAAPS, returns for his annual tradition of masterful selection of musical journeys. This one has been in the making for quite some time, and I only wish that I could have published it earlier in the year. But yes, it’s March 1st, and yes, we’re still looking back at 2022, and yes, I think it’s just as well since music doesn’t like to be explicitly dated. This is a very interesting selection with a really wide span of genres and labels – plenty of which are very new to me. It’s an exceptional headcleaner for the walls of the echo chamber of styles in which you may find yourself stuck. So it’s time to pop out and see what you may have been missing. As usual, please enjoy responsibly and support the featured artists!

Full tracklisting is here…

zakè - Past Inside the Future Mix

Zach Frizzell's Indianapolis (US) based label, Past Inside the Present, has been an incredible force in the last couple of years in the ambient community. So much so that when I was putting the finishing touches on my own album and thought about the best home for it, PITP sprang to mind first. You may think that I'm singing praises here as a result of that, but if you flip through its impressive catalogue, you will immediately notice the quality output from artists such as ASC, 36, bvdub, Lav, Wil Bolton, Pepo Galán, Slow Dancing Society, Celer, Purl, r beny, Endless Melancholy, From Overseas, and ... too many others to name here... and that's just in the last few years! Opening its doors in only 2018, this American imprint has established itself as one of the leading voices on the scene. It's almost hard to keep up! And I'm not even mentioning here Zach's offshoot for his own works, Zakè Drone Recordings, or a digital-only sub-label called Fallen Moon Recordings, or a sonic platform called Healing Sound Propagandist. The stellar creations that found themselves on Past Inside the Present have appeared numerous times in HC's End of the Year selections since the launch, so it's only fitting to have Zach showcase the upcoming output through this exclusive mix. Enjoy the journey, and as always, please support the label!

Stationary Travels - Annum 2022

Yes, it’s already February, and yes, I’m still looking back at all the music from last year. But music can’t be “dated” – wouldn’t you agree? I’ve said that many times before, so let us practice what we preach. Today I am very happy to share with you a selection of favourite pieces from 2022 as curated by Brian Housman of Stationary Travels. We’ve been partnering in spreading our honest words about honest music for many years now, and I’m very happy that Brian still cracks on [that’s a new British phrase that I’ve picked up here in London]. In a way, we keep each other going, sharing our very special finds, making sure we don’t go too far off the path of being real to our cause versus turning into just “influencers”- do you know what I mean? Just as I’ve done in the previous year, I’ve selected my favourites from Brian’s EOY picks in a dedicated list I titled Music For Your Stationary Travels. In return, Brian highlighted my very own choices in this very lovely post. We play this ping-pong with you, our readers, and you must admit, it’s all for a good cause. Please enjoy this gorgeous mix and support the featured artists!

More details, including the tracklisting: http://hcdi.gs/Annum2022