Today’s post is filled with organic ambient sounds to relax you without putting you to sleep.  For a while I really didn’t quite know what organic electronic music really referred to, but after seeing its use in the Ghostly Discovery app, and having it explained a little more clearly by Jakub and some friends, I think it encompasses everything not digital– instruments, vocals, field recordings, and the like.  The sound of organic electronic is generally more raw, static-ridden or slightly lo-fi, compared to it’s shiny, oft-emotionless mechanical counterpart.

Tim Hecker – Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight

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I got to see and Grouper play with my friends Jay () and Carl () in tow this past weekend at Columbia University.  Part of the Wordless Music Meets Miller Theatre festival, which boasts an incredible lineup for this season, the experience is treated more like a classical performance than a shoulder-to-shoulder club scene.  We were seated for Tim’s immersive and sometimes abbrasive set, which played a harrowing selection of pieces from Harmony In Ultraviolet and An Imaginary Country, which I’ve posted about here before, and mixed in my Mount Vision mix.  I can say after seeing Tim that he is one of my favorite ambient composers, his music just hits all the right notes and pushes all the right buttons at all the right times.

Grouper – Fishing Bird (Empty Jutted In The Evening Breeze)

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Oregon native opened up for Tim, and I was really excited to see Liz Harris perform, because I never had the time to really dedicate to checking out her music in detail.  Her vocals are as haunting as they are disarming, I think her voice is her strongest attribute, echoing within cavernous guitar effects that alternate between hazey drones and choppy shoegaze.  Not to be overlooked is the lo-fi nods in her production, with raspy tape decay permeating parts of both her studio albums and live performances.  Appropriately, her live show is complemented by visuals that mirror her desaturated lo-fi sound with sharp, fleeting reflections off water that form shapes and negative shapes, a nice visual pairing.  I’m glad I got to see Grouper perform live because it got me wanting to find out more, and from what I’ve discovered since, she has a lot to offer.

City Center – This Is How We See In The Dark

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is a group I keep hearing a lot about, I got to meet Fred and Ryan twice now, once in Ann Arbor at FFIH, and then this past weekend when they played with Shigeto at the Resonator Mag party in Midtown Manhattan.  What a bunch of super nice guys, they are also on the path to finding a new plateau of pop music, one that goes beyond one’s perception of pop to encompass raw emotion like never before.  Their live performance is visceral and gripping, challenging the senses as it appeals to them.  It just so happens that City Center and Grouper shared a split 7″ and both appear on Type records, so I had to pick that up after seeing both over the weekend.

Taylor Deupree – November

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Finally, I made a great discovery this past weekend in the music of , which happened to appear on my Last.fm player when I threw on a Hatakeyama station to help me sleep.  He is the founder of 12K records, which is the real discovery: not only is Deupree’s own music really relaxing, but 12K’s entire catalogue is both visually appealing and likely packed to the brim with solid organic ambient tunes.  Described as “a label for minimalist hybrids of electronic and acoustic music,” I only wish I had the time and ability to stream their entire catalogue and discover some new amazingness.

Posted in Music Posted by Alex on Sep 15 2009 12:30 pm

Tags: 12K, A Setting Sun, City Center, Grouper, Radere, Resonator Mag, Shigeto, Taylor Deupree, Tim Hecker, Type