CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Music and Recordings => Topic started by: DNZ on May 04, 2012, 04:13:23 AM
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I've been looking for music that basically never has a high so that it never completely draws your attention. Useful for sleeping and also when with guests so that the music doesn't suddenly force peoples focus due to high volume segments. I found music that I either didn't like (elevator music) or music that wasn't as mellow as I had imagined from my memories (Chopin's Nocturnes, Lean On Me by Bill Withers, Joni Mitchell...).
I guess what I am looking for is flat background music for people to chill on and that I don't have to grab the volume knob on the boat to turn it up or down all the time. Basically, music to enjoy when not trying to focus on enjoying music.
Would definitely prefer lyricless recommendations but if there are lyrics, prefer something jazzy, soulful or Japanese.
Any recommendations?
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Ever try Bill Evans?
He is great for both focusing on the music and for times when you just want some awesome background music.
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Should mention, if you can please, recommend an album or albums for the artist, especially the good versions of their recordings :) Sounds like something I would enjoy from a quick listen on YouTube.
I am also quite partial to chamber music if anyone has such recommendations. Also, one artist who fits my description to me is Paul Collier. Really love his relaxing music and they are binaural recordings to boot.
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Yeah, hard to find music that doesn't suck that isn't intrusive. All great music tends to draw you in.
Anyway, when I have people over, I generally put on downtempo instrumental hip-hop music (much of it from Japan). Stuff like Nujabes, Samon Kawamura, Hiroto Uyama, Fat Jon, Nightmares on Wax.
Hiroto Uyama: http://youtu.be/gIWmL6Q4ZcI
Nujabes: http://youtu.be/2O0kuoiAm2A
Samon Kawamura: http://youtu.be/lK-KyKBzz7g
Nightmares on Wax: http://youtu.be/3bGhnPABGTU
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Wow, that really took the "flat" portion of the request to heart. These songs are seriously a straight line to the finish with a single beat.
I really loved one dream and nightmares on wax. Good recommendations, will listen to some other stuff by those artists.
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What about some the ambient tracks from Brian Eno?
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Some New Age music maybe? Enya, David Lanz and Paul Speer, David Arkenstone, Suzanne Ciani, etc...
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Trip hop? The Brits know how to do that.
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Trip hop?
massive attack, archive(older 90's stuff), Portish head, Moth Equals, Orange Blossom, TRICKY, radiohead(couple of their tracks are considered trip-hop), Smoke City, DJ Krush, and lot more i can't think of at the moment. i really like lot of trip-hop. just shame the genre is not well known. i usually like sitting back listening to it or use it as background music when i work on stuff.
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Excellent selection of stuff. New Age music seems to all fit right in with what I wanted. Also grabbed myself the entire Brian Eno discography. Will have to come through to find the best albums.
Man, Trip Hop is kind of creepy. Only watched on video by Massive Attack called teardrop. Not sure if I can relax to that kind of music now, hehe.
Think I have a good selection now.
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well trip-hop is weird and can be either mixed with classical,jazz,other electronic type genre,metal,rock,ect. it's basically all over the place. i like the more jazzy/classical type of trip-hop and appreciate a good added female vocals with it as well.
check out dj krush and emancipator and you know what i'm talking about. nujabes mentioned above is considered down-tempo/trip-hop as well.
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I enjoy secret garden as gentle , non intrusive and non-elevator music.
http://www.secretgarden.no/lowband/fs_sight_sounds.html
..dB
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Big fan of the impressionists. So while Chopins Nocturnes might be too strong, Debussy's preludes may be perfect. Bill Evans' style (especially during his years of substance abuse when he was a less dynamic pianist) also works well. If you're looking for songs you might recognize, Christopher O'Riley does covers of more popular groups (such as Radiohead) that are much less intrusive than say Brad Mehldau's covers.
I would recommend Nick Drake but I think its a crime that he is largely relegated to the background.
Oh and how did I not know about this place until Yesterday?
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Oh and how did I not know about this place until Yesterday?
Because we are trying to keep it low key and small. Last thing we want is the stupid arguments or nonsensical posts often seen on ...
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Understood what you guys are about and not complaining that nobody told me. Just seems so many people are here who I enjoy reading and conversing with that I'm surprised I didn't get linked in an indexed google search until yesterday.
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Understood what you guys are about and not complaining that nobody told me. Just seems so many people are here who I enjoy reading and conversing with that I'm surprised I didn't get linked in an indexed google search until yesterday.
Same here.
I found out about this forum because LFF (I think) linked this site's Koda plots over at HF. I had a laugh, and then I joined.
Gotta admit, I kinda felt like the nerd at the party who wanders into the discussion and chuckles along outside the circle.
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Just seriously extended my music library. This is a great topic and I am really happy I found Bill Evans, he is right up my alley. I need a good DAP soon so that I can stop swapping music for my 16gb nano.
@Tari
Thanks for reminding me of Debussy's prelude. It is one of those albums I chose not to fit onto my iPod previously. Any other good recommendations for similar styled impressionists? Also, which Bill Evans are the mellow, drug induced ones? I just have Exploration and Sunday Night.
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Just seriously extended my music library. This is a great topic and I am really happy I found Bill Evans, he is right up my alley. I need a good DAP soon so that I can stop swapping music for my 16gb nano.
Thanks for reminding me of Debussy's prelude. It is one of those albums I chose not to fit onto my iPod previously. Any other good recommendations for similar styled impressionists? Also, which Bill Evans are the mellow, drug induced ones? I just have Exploration and Sunday Night.
If you like Debussy, it is a good bet you'd like other impressionists, such as Ravel, Satie, and Scriabin. Debussy himself has works that are much more accessible than his preludes (if you play piano his children's corner and suite bergamasque are two relatively easy sets of songs to learn.)
A little Evans History:
Evans was ravaged by two drugs. Miles Davis introduced him to heroin, which was the "it" drug during the hard bop era. Miles kicked the habit after about five years but it plagued Evans until I believe the late 60's. I've seen it speculated that the abuse got worse after Lafaro's death and the collapse of his best trio. The time period that you'll notice this affect his work is roughly from Trio 64 through his Montreux Jazz Festival album which was a comeback of sorts. His next album, Alone, was one of the best solo jazz piano albums of all time.
He then plunged headfirst into cocaine (the "it' drug of the 70's-80's) and there was a steep drop-off in the quality of his work until a few live sets (some recorded without his knowledge) in the last year of his life: Turn out the Stars, The Paris Concert, and a fitting bookend to his life and career The Last Waltz.
Evans took a very logical, structured view of building chord structure, harmonics and tempos in his songs. The drug years largely sapped him of his prodigious mental acuity, not to mention his coordination. So the "mellower" music was from a lack of dynamism and creativity (relatively) compared to his formative years. Not as good a study for jazz piano students but very pleasant for background music.
Hope that wasn't too long-winded. I just started playing again this week after a series of injuries and am very excited.
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Good stuff. I absolutely love Bill Evans. He's my favorite pianist and maybe even my favorite jazz musician.
I'm not versed at all in Classical though. Is it safe to assume that if I dig Bill Evans that I'll like Debussy, Ravel, and the other composers you mentioned?
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Nothing's a sure bet. There's quite a few things that appeal to people about Evans' style. He has a couple key similarities to the Classical impressionist composers. One is the impressionist harmonies, in which full bodied chords (by which I mean more varied than say tonic-third-fifth) help make the actual melody instead of being in the background telling the listener what key/scale the melody inhabits. Impressionism also contains some modal elements (which Evans was in the forefront of pioneering in the Jazz world with albums such as Kind of Blue) as well as what some call "escaped chords" which occupy a key that has no real relation to anything around it and is left unresolved. It's an eerie, haunting (sometimes mildly jarring) sound when you hear it.
That is all besides for the basic tone and texture of the style. There aren't many buildups to earth-shattering crescendos- its more about the colors than strokes. The word I would use to describe both impressionism and Evan's Jazz style (which I classify as "introspective") is shimmering. The rhythms are exact (relatively) but they are supposed to feel free and fluid.
While Evans' style more closely resembles the impressionists than any other "classical" style, nothing's a sure thing. Most of the actual "melodies" in Impressionism are much more complex and less "intuitive" to the modern ear than the jazz standards (and MASH theme songs) that Evans would play. If you're interested in getting into impressionism, you can start with Debussy's Suite Bergamasque which features probably his most famous work, Claire De Lune. Try listening a few times and see if it does anything for you.
Composers like Scriabin are more impenetrable. Part of his process was a synesthesia-like association between key and color - what seem like jumbles of random notes and fragmented scraps of melodies were his idea of swirling colors on an easel. It was a very pretentious (though fruitful) time.
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Cool. You very aptly describe my favorite aspects of Bill Evans playing -- that free and fluid "shimmering" quality to his style. His chord voicing and sense of rhythm seem to blur any hard edges. He doesn't make you feel a certain way, but rather suggests it.
I'll look into that Debussy recording on my visit to the record store tomorrow. Thanks!
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I've been looking for music that basically never has a high so that it never completely draws your attention. Useful for sleeping and also when with guests
muzak!!!
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Most of the mellow music I have is creepy. Like Eluvium
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Yeah, hard to find music that doesn't suck that isn't intrusive. All great music tends to draw you in.
Anyway, when I have people over, I generally put on downtempo instrumental hip-hop music (much of it from Japan). Stuff like Nujabes, Samon Kawamura, Hiroto Uyama, Fat Jon, Nightmares on Wax.
Hiroto Uyama: http://youtu.be/gIWmL6Q4ZcI
Nujabes: http://youtu.be/2O0kuoiAm2A
Samon Kawamura: http://youtu.be/lK-KyKBzz7g
Nightmares on Wax: http://youtu.be/3bGhnPABGTU
Ohh sick music... can you list more. I liked the sound track of Samurai Shamploo.
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Elestronica type
Noiseshaper-Dunk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYcMmI_uxZU
DJ Krush-Song1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj3y5vFS3Es
DJ Krush-Days End: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2SAR7N6m_0
DJuma soundsystem-Les Djinns (Trentemoller Remix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1925vlwWj6M
Audio Lotion-Jucuzzi Jazz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVjO9dUfU8A
Bonobo Feat Bajka-nightlite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doy3-A4Vric
Shapeshifter-summer haze: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQZ0WrXoIwI&feature=related
Some hip-hop ones
Floyd the locsmif-still luv' huh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-4xd5frp4
Floyd the locsmif-one for da fan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_yp7UUoRsk
Meh... just some of the mellow stuff I listen to.
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Bill Evans fans, check out the Oscar Peterson Trio, Red Garland Trio, and McCoy Tyner Trio. Garland played piano for Miles, and Tyner played for the great one - Coltrane.
"Mingus Plays Piano" is also a lovely solo piano album. Get the 20-bit remaster on CD, the HDTracks release isn't nearly as good.
Some of my other favorite mellow albums:
Blue States - Nothing Changes Under The Sun
Brian Eno - Apollo, Discreet Music, Music For Airports (ambient genesis), Neroli, The Pearl, Thursday Afternoon
Ishq - Orchid, Sama, Fluid Earth, Lotus
Solar Fields - Leaving Home, Earthshine, Movements, Origin, Altered
Steve Roach - too many albums to list
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place, Far Away Trains Passing By, Goodbye
William Orbit - My Oracle Lives Uptown, Hello Waveforms, Strange Cargo IV:Hinterland
Carbon Based Lifeforms - World Of Sleepers, Hydroponic Garden, Interloper
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IDK if this is considered mellow but I just heard of this kid named Kuha'o Case who is blind and is 15 years old. Self taught to play the piano and can hear a song once or twice and then makes it into his own piece. He is from the same Island I am from and is trying to make his first CD. Check him out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tWrMDTVbbA&feature=plcp
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Robert Rich's "Medicine Box" is one of the really nice, newer ambient albums I've heard in awhile.
A lot of shoegaze (Autumn's Grey Solace, Love Spirals Downwards, Mira) falls into this category for me, but it's an acquired taste.