How do you begin to write about ambient music?
Factual details like personnel, instruments used or recording location don’t add much to the listening experience.
With minimal beats and no lyrics, one recourse is to visualise locations while you listen.
The Hamburg record label Bureau B helpfully suggest a vivid range of imagined scenarios for volume 3 of their Silberland compilations. This includes crystal caverns, moonlit waters. pastoral scenes, frozen landscapes and darker territories.
Alternatively, you can simply focus on the sonic textures and the mood it inspires, In this instance, appropriate adjectives for this expertly sequenced selection of Germanic artists would include: fragile, quiet, calm, serene, shimmering, undulating, hypnotic, introspective, meditative and unsettling. Take your pick.
Some artists on this compilation are familiar, others are lesser-known names. Alongside Cluster & Eno, Moebius and Faust you can discover artists such as Adelbert Von Deyen, Deutsche Wertarbeit and Asmus Tietchens. The last of these is represented by Räuschlinge a tune which creates ”an eerie atmosphere of deep disquiet.”
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Although ambient music often serves to create a chilled domestic environment, the prompts to deep thought or relaxation here come in short doses. Unusually for this genre the track running times are relatively short with none lasting more six minutes. Eight of the twenty tracks on tracks are edited versions to maintain this abridged time frame. These therefore offer the listener brief interludes rather than the opportunity for extended meditations.
Kosmische Musik is a better label than Krautrock because the focus here is on music for the head rather than pulsing motoric. The Silberland trips are more attuned to expressways to your skull than cruises down the autobahn.
Info on all Silberland compilations at Bureau website
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