RichRock : Running Free

I’ll say I’m a dance music fan. I grew up listening to early 70’s electronic music like Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream, Didier Bocquet, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre. Then I found out about electro - I was fascinated by the concept that electronically generated music could become popular. It did. The rise of house in the late 80’s, with acid house, then moving into the 90’s with techno, then I got into ambient music around 94-95, never looked back. In fact, I have an ambient mix online for download here. I listened to all sorts, catching the wave of early pioneers of IDM like Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, any of the Warp Records posse. I never once professed to liking pop/rock music, although some bands held my attention, like Jansen, Barbieri & Karn (they of Japan fame), Bjork, Kubb, and even Fiona Apple!

Then I experienced Pete Namlook aka Peter Kuhlmann. A one-man record label, producer and produced more albums in one year than most people would in a lifetime. This guy did more for my musical interests than any other. He was a father figure to my view of ambient and electronic music, as he pushed the boundaries, exploring old school Berlin electronics, new wave ambient sounds, dance rhythms, and world music. It was a little hard to get his music though, but that was to change again.

I found the internet. Full of useful information, I trawled resources about creating music. When broadband arrived it brought two important things.

1 - The Creative Commons Licence. Without this, there is no legal way to redistribute music. This license comes in a variety of flavours, and it interested me, as I always stated on my own productions that the music could be copied, as long as my name remained as the creator of that music. I have a personal affinity with the CC license.

2 - The rise of the Netlabels. Netlabels are just that. They release music on the internet, for people to download, using the aforementioned Creative Commons license. My favourite netlabels are listed below :

• Sutemos - a Lithuanian netlabel dedicated to electronica in a variety of forms from, you guessed it - Lithuania. The site is available in english too.
• Laverna - An italian netlabel catering for electronica, with a leaning towards IDM. Pretty good, but not exceptional. Materaelectronics, Transient and D.a.f. are my favourite artists.
• Monohm - a netlabel from Vienna, mainly outputting material from Markus Brosel, who does some excellent ambient piano pieces, but also providing releases from other artists. They even have collaborations with mainstream artists like Vidna Obmana, Asmus Tietchens and Kraftwerk.
• Spheric Lounge - not a netlabel, but an improvisational/gathering/outlet for experimental electronic musings. The gist is this: Musicians gather at a location for a weekend or however long, create ambient noodlings over the weekend, then they are masterered and released on the website. Forthcoming gatherings are posted on the site too. Music varies from the sublime to the ‘why???’, but it’s a dropping in point for me every now and then.

So there you go. An update on my musical voyage. It’s going to continue for a while, what with Christian worship music and hiphop, plus the odd foray into classical tunes. A work in progress.

And look, I got through the whole post without mentioning Sigur Ros!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Music, Personal.