IDM Mailing Archive

Hi, Just browsing the new urbansounds (looks really sharp, check it out!) and came across this in a review of Monolake's 'Gobi the Desert' : "...Unlike past Monolake releases, which used samples of chirping crickets and whirring crowds as the raw materials for rhythmic exercises, "Gobi" is beatless, and conjures its massive..." So, what Monolake stuff features this kind of stuff ? (i.e., using nature sounds for rhythms) I've always loved the first track of FSOL's lifeforms EP, because of the way they used the water-splashing sound as the main part of the rhythm... I've been looking for more music in the vein - any other recommendations? thanks, aronne

On 14 Oct 99, Aronne J Merrelli wrote re: (idm) recommendations on Monolake &:

quoted 8 lines review of Monolake's

> review of Monolake's > 'Gobi the Desert' : > > "...Unlike past Monolake > releases, which used samples of chirping crickets and > whirring crowds as the raw materials for rhythmic > exercises, "Gobi" is beatless, and conjures its massive..." >

Still plenty chirping crickets on Gobi.

quoted 1 line So, what Monolake stuff features this kind of stuff ?

> So, what Monolake stuff features this kind of stuff ?

All of it. Get Hong Kong and most definitely the more recent Interstate. F*ing MAGIC ! Not footstomping floorfillers, for sure, but just beautifully evocative organic atmospheres. And while you're about it, you may also enjoy Dettinger's Intershop (funny, just noticed the similarity of titles : Inter /state+shop) I *

On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:24:59 Aronne J Merrelli wrote:

quoted 2 lines So, what Monolake stuff features this kind of stuff ?

>So, what Monolake stuff features this kind of stuff ? >(i.e., using nature sounds for rhythms)

Um, none. To my ears, their music up until their first full length 'Hong Kong', uses analogue-style drum sounds "as the raw materials for rhythmic exercises" (to quote that Urban Sound review). A lot of their tracks use plenty of sampled nature sounds, but I never heard any kind of rhythmic connection (or counterpoint) to the beat of any given track. I still love that era of Monolake stuff. Definitely the richest, most lush sounds I have heard. The inclusion of the massive extant samples of nature just add volumes, rather than detracting as well. I'm still really impressed they didn't process them (so far as I can tell), which encouraged me to really get lost in straight up sounds of the real world. At any rate, there's definitely nothing like that splash rhythm that FSOL used. FWIW, that rhythm is sampled extant from a piece of music. ie. people are playing that rhythm deliberately, it's not just some splashing sounds that FSOL got in time. I don't remember the details of the CD the sample is taken from, but it's been sampled several times by other people - I remember a track on the first Ninja Tunes compilation used it. The source CD is some kind of "world music" thing, with a few tracks of what it calls "water music". The stuff about the FSOL sample is all remembered from a thread on the ambient list probably in 96 (or even 95 - crikey!), so if the archives go that far back you can find out the exact details. :) Michael np. Koln Kompakt Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com