NGOMA Polyrhythmus: Recent Episodes
Dj Zhao
BOOKING: ngomasound@gmail.com __________________________________ 06.05_Manual for Togetherness, Düsseldorf 13.05_Emergent Bass, Mensch Mier, Berlin 06.28_Fusion Festival, Berlin ________________________________
Born in Beijing and based in Berlin, Dj Zhao is a musicologist and rhythm ambassador, applying historical materialist analysis to the evolution of social music, and bringing a poly-cultural understanding of rhythm to his deeply percussive cross-genre sets. Not restricted by style or convention, Dj Zhao draws from wildly different times and places, connecting the global North with the South, acoustic and electronic, traditional and hyper-modern.
New School Amapiano strains such as Sgija is darker and rougher, with more aggressive log-bass, and tends to be slower, around 110 bpm (although here pitched up to the classic 114). Sgija dominates this mix but several other styles which are sometimes more pop and groove oriented are also represented in the second half, including some Nigerian amapiano inspired Freebeat.
SAT.25.OCT.C4R4(live)ObstsalatEmmallicDj ZhaoYummy Indian snacks by Sticky FingersDoor: 22h / 10 EurosCentral Berlin ocation to be announced: ngomasound.com TRI-CONTINENTAL celebrates adventurous urban electronic music of the Global South: Nigerian Cruisebeat, Saudi Arabian Samri, New school Brazillian Funk, Dominican Dembow, Lebanese Dabke, South African Gqom, Jamaican Dancehall...TRI-CONTINENTALis a safe space for people from all over the world, for the exchange of vibes, moves, flavours, and ideas, and welcomes anyone interested in advanced rhythm science rooted in ancestral sonic traditions.Information, location, and more: ngomasound.com
In Lagos slang, "mara" means "crazy, wild", and "cruise" means "fun, a good time". The loosely defined but at the same time distinct fresh style of music known as “Cruise Beat” or “Free Beat” began to spread from Lagos on TikTok and other social media in Nigeria around 3 or 4 years ago. A kind of “Anti-Afrobeats”, Cruisebeat is largely a reaction against the by now ubiquitous and internationally popularised sound of Naija Pop with its slower tempos and languid, introspective, romantic themes reminiscent of Zouk/Kizomba. In sharp contrast, the younger generation is making music at much higher tempos, with cocophonous use of samples and an irreverent, rebellious, riotous modus operandi. Cruisebeat is the new Punk. Continue reading: https://ngomasound.com/2025/05/13/mara-cruise
Predominantly Muslim music from Palestinians, Algerians, Moroccans, Syrians, Pakistani, Egyptians, Indians, and Hausa seamlessly woven and juxtaposed as not only a tapestry of cultural cross pollination but a vision of future regional, cultural integration and unity.3 of 3 in a series of hypnotic and ecstatic Rhythms and melodies in anticipation of increased West Asian, South Asian, South East Asian, East Asian, and African cooperation in matters of rhythmelody as well as economy, diplomacy, security. A sonic vision of a potential Asian Union as part of BRICS and rising multipolarity.
Predominantly Muslim music from Palestinians, Algerians, Moroccans, Syrians, Pakistani, Egyptians, Indians, Hausa, and Mongolians seamlessly mixed and juxtaposed as not only a tapestry of cultural cross pollination but a vision of future regional and cultural integration and unity.2 of 3 in a series of hypnotic and ecstatic Rhythms and melodies in anticipation of increased West Asian, South Asian, South East Asian, East Asian, and African cooperation in matters of culture as well as economy, diplomacy, security. A sonic vision of a potential Asian Union as part of BRICS and rising multipolarity.
Predominantly Muslim music from Palestinians, Algerians, Moroccans, Syrians, Pakistani, Egyptians, Indians, Hausa, and Mongolians seamlessly mixed and juxtaposed as not only a tapestry of cultural cross pollination but a vision of future regional and cultural integration and unity.1 of 3 in a series of hypnotic and ecstatic Rhythms and melodies in anticipation of increased West Asian, South Asian, South East Asian, East Asian, and African cooperation in matters of culture as well as economy, diplomacy, security. A sonic vision of a potential Asian Union as part of BRICS and rising multipolarity.
21st Century African Futurism, steeped in tradition and cross pollinated with many other strands of global dance music.
Gqom is South African rhythm tradition shaped by the social reality of neoliberalism under a corrupted ANC, after Mandela having had to make major concessions to foreign pressure, unable to carry out the land and property reforms that were central to his post-independence program --- high crime rates, high levels of social tension and conflict, high levels of discontent and anxiety.As manic, brooding, and heavy as the best doom metal, but you know, FUNKY. Some real scrunch-face type stuff with relentless energy; most definitely not for the faint of heart.The structure and form is drastically different from "conventional" dance music of the Afro-American tradition: almost no straight 4/4 patterns, instead, all triplets like house-tempo Juke/Footwork; sometimes there are major sound events that happen only once in a track; the drum rolls are often placed at the BEGINNING of bars rather than the end; the highs most often keep a rigid repeating pattern, while the drums and bass do variation underneath (flips the scrip completely). 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
Futurism in Europe, the sonic avant garde, for the past half century or more, has proceeded on a total rejection of tradition. A cultural product of post-modernism and historical nihilism, the assumption rested upon is that the past is only shit and must be destroyed, wiped clean, to have tabula rasa - which is nothing but a fantasy, never mind the result of false understanding. So what we end up with at Atonal or Transmediale is an aversion to melody, a rejection of musicality, thousands of artists making bleeps, bloops, rigid, mechanical, inhuman forms, all of which mono-cultural, mono-rhythmic, and deeply pessimistic. But in the end, contemporary European electronic music, for all its rhetoric and pretence at "futurity", fails to innovate, and is today in 2024 still near entirely reliant on innovations made 40+ years ago in Detroit and Dusseldorf -- clubs are mostly still playing the exact same single untz untz rhythm pattern. Futurism in the Global South is the opposite. Firstly there is a formal revolution every few years in which new palettes, new rhythm patterns, and new dynamics emerge. In South Africa alone, we have seen radical new styles like Gqom and Amapiano within just the past decades. Secondly, contemporary African electronic music is characterised by an EMBRACE of tradition, and not only those of the music makers themselves. In a heavy bass number, all of a suddent bursts of ecstatic deep jazz saxophone. Forms like Samba, Jamaican dancehall, etc., etc., are often alluded to and paid respect or re-interpreted. Angolan Kuduro often references Brazillian music as well as include Portugese influences; Amapiano encompasses near everything that has happened in not only African but also African American music during the past century, from jazz to house to hip hop and reggae, but done in unmistakeably South African ways. There is no allergy to melody, no fear of musicality, no aversion to sentiment -- and it is often the contrast between challenging and even abrasive timbres and bits of traditionalism that sometimes even celebrates dripping wet romanticism that gives the music that much more progressive power._____________________The horrors unfolding around the world today in 2023 can be seen as the birth pangs of a new, more just and peaceful world to come. Along with the final and real removal of colonial forces and increased cooperation with the multipolar world, we will see, are already seeing, authentic economic development, connection, and integration in and of the motherland. In the next decades to century or more, the humanist technologies of the Global South will thrive, multiply, and cross pollinate. Now is a time to mourn, to struggle, as well as to celebrate the deep, world historic changes taking place, and what is to come.We should dance not despite, not in trying to forget, the violence and sadness of current conflicts, but in the realisation that this is the end of the imperialist era; and in solidarity with the rise of multi-polarity, envisioning a bright future for the formerly colonised.
Futurism in Europe, the sonic avant garde, for the past half century or more, has proceeded on a total rejection of tradition. A cultural product of post-modernism and historical nihilism, the assumption rested upon is that the past is only shit and must be destroyed, wiped clean, to have tabula rasa - which is nothing but a fantasy, never mind the result of false understanding. So what we end up with at Atonal or Transmediale is an aversion to melody, a rejection of musicality, thousands of artists making bleeps, bloops, rigid, mechanical, inhuman forms, all of which mono-cultural, mono-rhythmic, and deeply pessimistic. But in the end, contemporary European electronic music, for all its rhetoric and pretence at "futurity", fails to innovate, and is today in 2024 still near entirely reliant on innovations made 40+ years ago in Detroit and Dusseldorf -- clubs are mostly still playing the exact same single untz untz rhythm pattern. Futurism in the Global South is the opposite. Firstly there is a formal revolution every few years in which new palettes, new rhythm patterns, and new dynamics emerge. In South Africa alone, we have seen radical new styles like Gqom and Amapiano within just the past decades. Secondly, contemporary African electronic music is characterised by an EMBRACE of tradition, and not only those of the music makers themselves. In a heavy bass number, all of a suddent bursts of ecstatic deep jazz saxophone. Forms like Samba, Jamaican dancehall, etc., etc., are often alluded to and paid respect or re-interpreted. Angolan Kuduro often references Brazillian music as well as include Portugese influences; Amapiano encompasses near everything that has happened in not only African but also African American music during the past century, from jazz to house to hip hop and reggae, but done in unmistakeably South African ways. There is no allergy to melody, no fear of musicality, no aversion to sentiment -- and it is often the contrast between challenging and even abrasive timbres and bits of traditionalism that sometimes even celebrates dripping wet romanticism that gives the music that much more progressive power._____________________The horrors unfolding around the world today in 2023 can be seen as the birth pangs of a new, more just and peaceful world to come. Along with the final and real removal of colonial forces and increased cooperation with the multipolar world, we will see, are already seeing, authentic economic development, connection, and integration in and of the motherland. In the next decades to century or more, the humanist technologies of the Global South will thrive, multiply, and cross pollinate. Now is a time to mourn, to struggle, as well as to celebrate the deep, world historic changes taking place, and what is to come.We should dance not despite, not in trying to forget, the violence and sadness of current conflicts, but in the realisation that this is the end of the imperialist era; and in solidarity with the rise of multi-polarity, envisioning a bright future for the formerly colonised.
Music to die for, in celebration of life and a bright future for West Asia. These 3 mixes in the series were inspired by the rapproachement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the movement towards rapproachement between Syria and Turkey, and the recent developments in West Asia towards peace and stability after 40 years of continuing foreign invasions and bombs which destroyed hundreds of cities, killed tens of millions of civilians, and created hundreds of millions refugees.
Music to die for, in celebration of life and a bright future for West Asia. These 3 mixes in the series were inspired by the rapproachement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the movement towards rapproachement between Syria and Turkey, and the recent developments in West Asia towards peace and stability after 40 years of continuing foreign invasions and bombs which destroyed hundreds of cities, killed tens of millions of civilians, and created hundreds of millions refugees.
Music to die for, in celebration of life and a bright future for West Asia. These 3 mixes in the series were inspired by the rapproachement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the movement towards rapproachement between Syria and Turkey, and the recent developments in West Asia towards peace and stability after 40 years of continuing foreign invasions and bombs which destroyed hundreds of cities, killed tens of millions of civilians, and created hundreds of millions refugees.
A booming trip around the world in beats, verses, and bass, at around 100BPM, the tempo faster than Hip Hop, slower than House, and which is much neglected on Western club dance floors.There is probably much new territory for listeners to explore, but also a few G.O.A.T. numbers which literally everyone will recognise, but unlike how you have ever heard them before.
A booming trip around the world in beats, verses, and bass, at around 100BPM, the tempo faster than Hip Hop, slower than House, and which is much neglected on Western club dance floors. There is probably much new territory for listeners to explore, but also a few G.O.A.T. numbers which literally everyone will recognise, but unlike how you have ever heard them before.
Another booming trip around the world in beats, verses, and bass, at around 100BPM, the tempo faster than Hip Hop (80), slower than House (120), and which is much neglected on Western club dance floors.
A booming trip around the world in beats, verses, and bass, at around 100BPM, the tempo faster than Hip Hop, slower than House, and which is much neglected on Western club dance floors. There is probably much new territory for listeners to explore, but also a few G.O.A.T. numbers which literally everyone will recognise, but unlike how you have ever heard them before.
Preceded by 2 hours of slow and uplifting Cumbia from an 8 piece live band from Portugal, the hall was relaxed, full of good cheer, and the crowd was ready for a different vibe. This set took them from deepest night to the first rays of sunlight.
Euphoric and organic fusion of African, Afro-American, and Afro-European rhythmic sensibilities and production styles... Africa is the Future.
Euphoric and organic fusion of African, Afro-American, and Afro-European rhythmic sensibilities and production styles... Africa is the Future.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo and high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy Afro-Futurist rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
First single from the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
From the upcoming 3 volume HARDER series of seamlessly mixed mash-edits of uptempo high-energy global rave music.
Satanic Memphis Murder Rap and Dirty South Hiphop fused with Grime, Bass, and Dubstep instrumentals.
Fuck your political correctness. This is the voice of the otherwise voiceless, testament to the real lived experience of people so marginalised that they literally live outside of society. This culture must be celebrated with sober and deep recognition of the harsh and alienated social realities of racialised capitalism which shapes it. This music must be loved with full awareness and despite of the fact that gangsterism is a blight on African American communities.
After the Black Panthers and other similar inner city Black and Brown Marxist revolutionary movements were systematically destroyed in the infamous "Counter-Intelligence Program" of 1960s repression, organisation leaders framed and imprisoned or murdered by FBI age, this culture of gangsterism which valorises criminality was born. This is the nihilistic sound of revolutionary energy decapitated, confused, mislead, turned inward, causing harm to each other rather than working to overthrow the oppressors.
Musically, complex polyrhythms in the verses replicate the patterns of African drums, and delivered often with a ferocity and intensity that is the ultimate expression of late capitalism. The alienation, anxiety, frustration, rage, and sadness in this music speaks to all of us.
Theorists have described how bourgeois society deprives citizens of both a sense of adventure and of community. To people locked into a predictable life of school, employment, and retirement, their everyday existence a dull cycle of work, consumption, and sleep, the life of the criminal is the exact opposite, and captivating in ways their own lives can never be. This is why suburbanites mimic the style, language, attitude and posture of inner city gangsters. Trap music reproduces a feeling of danger, of intensity, of life and death urgency, and allows people who live safe and boring lives to briefly approximate a feeling of being truly alive.
Hood music is also a narrative of clandestinity, of trust, of honor, of unbreakable familial bonds, of real friendship and real enmity with very, very real consequences — a sense of true community which the comfortable classes entirely lack. When a real loss of agency and immediacy is assigned to the middle and upper classes, whose existence consists of tedious complacency and suffocating security, it of course isn’t morally wrong for them to try to fill this emptiness.
Trap is perhaps the most direct reflection of our times, where young people face grim personal prospects in a diminishing job market, amidst escalating economic, political, and environmental crisis. Trap music exactly mirrors the coldness, meanness, brutality, abjection, dehumanization, and desperation of late capitalism. Extending what Young Jeezy said about the rap game being the same as the trap game: the trap game (selling drugs) is a microcosmic facsimile of macrocosmic capitalism. Reality in the hood, a vicious cycle of addiction, suppliers, gangs, crime, police, and prisons, all part of a system designed to sustain this process, is a perfect miniscule model of reality around the globe, a larger vicious cycle where powerful states administer political and physical violence, destabilize resource-rich regions, manufacturing terrorism, while arms dealers make trillions, and corporations exploit the global South, devastating the natural environment. Trap music comes from a visceral experience of survival on the love-less streets, but is a mirror image of the world at large: a neo-Darwinian nightmare in its rawest form.
Satanic Memphis Murder Rap and Dirty South Hiphop fused with Grime, Bass, and Dubstep instrumentals.
Fuck your political correctness. This is the voice of the otherwise voiceless, testament to the real lived experience of people so marginalised that they literally live outside of society. This culture must be celebrated with sober and deep recognition of the harsh and alienated social realities of racialised capitalism which shapes it. This music must be loved with full awareness and despite of the fact that gangsterism is a blight on African American communities.
After the Black Panthers and other similar inner city Black and Brown Marxist revolutionary movements were systematically destroyed in the infamous "Counter-Intelligence Program" of 1960s repression, organisation leaders framed and imprisoned or murdered by FBI age, this culture of gangsterism which valorises criminality was born. This is the nihilistic sound of revolutionary energy decapitated, confused, mislead, turned inward, causing harm to each other rather than working to overthrow the oppressors.
Musically, complex polyrhythms in the verses replicate the patterns of African drums, and delivered often with a ferocity and intensity that is the ultimate expression of late capitalism. The alienation, anxiety, frustration, rage, and sadness in this music speaks to all of us.
Theorists have described how bourgeois society deprives citizens of both a sense of adventure and of community. To people locked into a predictable life of school, employment, and retirement, their everyday existence a dull cycle of work, consumption, and sleep, the life of the criminal is the exact opposite, and captivating in ways their own lives can never be. This is why suburbanites mimic the style, language, attitude and posture of inner city gangsters. Trap music reproduces a feeling of danger, of intensity, of life and death urgency, and allows people who live safe and boring lives to briefly approximate a feeling of being truly alive.
Hood music is also a narrative of clandestinity, of trust, of honor, of unbreakable familial bonds, of real friendship and real enmity with very, very real consequences — a sense of true community which the comfortable classes entirely lack. When a real loss of agency and immediacy is assigned to the middle and upper classes, whose existence consists of tedious complacency and suffocating security, it of course isn’t morally wrong for them to try to fill this emptiness.
Trap is perhaps the most direct reflection of our times, where young people face grim personal prospects in a diminishing job market, amidst escalating economic, political, and environmental crisis. Trap music exactly mirrors the coldness, meanness, brutality, abjection, dehumanization, and desperation of late capitalism. Extending what Young Jeezy said about the rap game being the same as the trap game: the trap game (selling drugs) is a microcosmic facsimile of macrocosmic capitalism. Reality in the hood, a vicious cycle of addiction, suppliers, gangs, crime, police, and prisons, all part of a system designed to sustain this process, is a perfect miniscule model of reality around the globe, a larger vicious cycle where powerful states administer political and physical violence, destabilize resource-rich regions, manufacturing terrorism, while arms dealers make trillions, and corporations exploit the global South, devastating the natural environment. Trap music comes from a visceral experience of survival on the love-less streets, but is a mirror image of the world at large: a neo-Darwinian nightmare in its rawest form.
Satanic Memphis Murder Rap and Dirty South Hiphop fused with Grime, Bass, and Dubstep instrumentals.
Fuck your political correctness. This is the voice of the otherwise voiceless, testament to the real lived experience of people so marginalised that they literally live outside of society. This culture must be celebrated with sober and deep recognition of the harsh and alienated social realities of racialised capitalism which shapes it. This music must be loved with full awareness and despite of the fact that gangsterism is a blight on African American communities.
After the Black Panthers and other similar inner city Black and Brown Marxist revolutionary movements were systematically destroyed in the infamous "Counter-Intelligence Program" of 1960s repression, organisation leaders framed and imprisoned or murdered by FBI age, this culture of gangsterism which valorises criminality was born. This is the nihilistic sound of revolutionary energy decapitated, confused, mislead, turned inward, causing harm to each other rather than working to overthrow the oppressors.
Musically, complex polyrhythms in the verses replicate the patterns of African drums, and delivered often with a ferocity and intensity that is the ultimate expression of late capitalism. The alienation, anxiety, frustration, rage, and sadness in this music speaks to all of us.
Theorists have described how bourgeois society deprives citizens of both a sense of adventure and of community. To people locked into a predictable life of school, employment, and retirement, their everyday existence a dull cycle of work, consumption, and sleep, the life of the criminal is the exact opposite, and captivating in ways their own lives can never be. This is why suburbanites mimic the style, language, attitude and posture of inner city gangsters. Trap music reproduces a feeling of danger, of intensity, of life and death urgency, and allows people who live safe and boring lives to briefly approximate a feeling of being truly alive.
Hood music is also a narrative of clandestinity, of trust, of honor, of unbreakable familial bonds, of real friendship and real enmity with very, very real consequences — a sense of true community which the comfortable classes entirely lack. When a real loss of agency and immediacy is assigned to the middle and upper classes, whose existence consists of tedious complacency and suffocating security, it of course isn’t morally wrong for them to try to fill this emptiness.
Trap is perhaps the most direct reflection of our times, where young people face grim personal prospects in a diminishing job market, amidst escalating economic, political, and environmental crisis. Trap music exactly mirrors the coldness, meanness, brutality, abjection, dehumanization, and desperation of late capitalism. Extending what Young Jeezy said about the rap game being the same as the trap game: the trap game (selling drugs) is a microcosmic facsimile of macrocosmic capitalism. Reality in the hood, a vicious cycle of addiction, suppliers, gangs, crime, police, and prisons, all part of a system designed to sustain this process, is a perfect miniscule model of reality around the globe, a larger vicious cycle where powerful states administer political and physical violence, destabilize resource-rich regions, manufacturing terrorism, while arms dealers make trillions, and corporations exploit the global South, devastating the natural environment. Trap music comes from a visceral experience of survival on the love-less streets, but is a mirror image of the world at large: a neo-Darwinian nightmare in its rawest form.
Satanic Memphis Murder Rap and Dirty South Hiphop fused with Grime, Bass, and Dubstep instrumentals.
Fuck your political correctness. This is the voice of the otherwise voiceless, testament to the real lived experience of people so marginalised that they literally live outside of society. This culture must be celebrated with sober and deep recognition of the harsh and alienated social realities of racialised capitalism which shapes it. This music must be loved with full awareness and despite of the fact that gangsterism is a blight on African American communities.
After the Black Panthers and other similar inner city Black and Brown Marxist revolutionary movements were systematically destroyed in the infamous "Counter-Intelligence Program" of 1960s repression, organisation leaders framed and imprisoned or murdered by FBI age, this culture of gangsterism which valorises criminality was born. This is the nihilistic sound of revolutionary energy decapitated, confused, mislead, turned inward, causing harm to each other rather than working to overthrow the oppressors.
Musically, complex polyrhythms in the verses replicate the patterns of African drums, and delivered often with a ferocity and intensity that is the ultimate expression of late capitalism. The alienation, anxiety, frustration, rage, and sadness in this music speaks to all of us.
Theorists have described how bourgeois society deprives citizens of both a sense of adventure and of community. To people locked into a predictable life of school, employment, and retirement, their everyday existence a dull cycle of work, consumption, and sleep, the life of the criminal is the exact opposite, and captivating in ways their own lives can never be. This is why suburbanites mimic the style, language, attitude and posture of inner city gangsters. Trap music reproduces a feeling of danger, of intensity, of life and death urgency, and allows people who live safe and boring lives to briefly approximate a feeling of being truly alive.
Hood music is also a narrative of clandestinity, of trust, of honor, of unbreakable familial bonds, of real friendship and real enmity with very, very real consequences — a sense of true community which the comfortable classes entirely lack. When a real loss of agency and immediacy is assigned to the middle and upper classes, whose existence consists of tedious complacency and suffocating security, it of course isn’t morally wrong for them to try to fill this emptiness.
Trap is perhaps the most direct reflection of our times, where young people face grim personal prospects in a diminishing job market, amidst escalating economic, political, and environmental crisis. Trap music exactly mirrors the coldness, meanness, brutality, abjection, dehumanization, and desperation of late capitalism. Extending what Young Jeezy said about the rap game being the same as the trap game: the trap game (selling drugs) is a microcosmic facsimile of macrocosmic capitalism. Reality in the hood, a vicious cycle of addiction, suppliers, gangs, crime, police, and prisons, all part of a system designed to sustain this process, is a perfect miniscule model of reality around the globe, a larger vicious cycle where powerful states administer political and physical violence, destabilize resource-rich regions, manufacturing terrorism, while arms dealers make trillions, and corporations exploit the global South, devastating the natural environment. Trap music comes from a visceral experience of survival on the love-less streets, but is a mirror image of the world at large: a neo-Darwinian nightmare in its rawest form.
Do not expand your musical borders. Abolish them completely.
A total departure from drum-centric dance music, this 3 hour sound collage is pure listening. Densely layered, painstakingly detailed, yet immersed in silence and emptiness, representing the quiet, beautiful, and deep end of Collective Improvisation, Modern Composition, Free-Jazz, Musique Concrete, Spectralism, Microsound, Just Intonation, and Drone.
Potentially functioning in similar ways as ambient, but this is not ambient, because it rewards not only passive, background listening, but also active, focused listening. The aim is 3 hours the listener will likely never get tired of, in one lifetime.
Dialectical sound: improvisation is the thesis, composition is the anti-thesis, and this mix is the synthesis.
Featuring the Marxist composer/improviser Cornelius Cardew, the group he founded AMM, the music of affiliates, and much, much more.
Tracklist:
Xavier Garcia - 6 regards sul L Boca Raton - Tables 1 Anne Lockwood - water gong Steve Roden - Truth Is The Bell (Saarbrucken) kevin drumm • taku sugimoto DEN 1 Kenneth Kirtchener - february 19, 2004 Steve Roden - Bell Is The Truth (Berlin) Unknown - Amann Kenneth Kirtchener - february 19, 2004 David Toop -01 - Falling Light sugimoto, taku (1965)04. spoon river i William Mathews - Field Guide John Tilbury & Eddie Prevost - D Anthony Braxton - Dedicated to Ann and Peter Allen Steve Roden - fruit pants jacob_kirkegaard--swimming_pool Marc Favre - Le beau corps d'ether Cornelius Cardew - treatise CD 2 AudioTrack 02 RLW - Kleine blaue Hybriden Filipe Pires - Litania Kenneth Kirtchener - august 18, 2001 David Toop - DecompositionDecay Gerard Grisey – Tempus ex machina pour six percussionistes Sainkho - Tovarishi Bill Dixon - Places And Things Michael Pisaro - pi (920-994) Gerard Grisey – Anubis-Nout - II. Nout Alvin Lucier - Horn (James De Corsey) john butcher - Soft Logic RLW - ikk - purpur - scharlachrot ISMU K.L.P.L Thomas Koner - Tu, Sempre AMM - Meantime AMM - Conduit John Wall - Rumble-Hard-Abrupt Polwechsel - Not Forgetting the Forgetting Gerard Grisey – Anubis [tres precis] Bernard Parmegiani - Étude Élastique RLW - Restless Occlusion Xu Cheng - My Livingspace 4 RLW - In Acht Kenneth Kirtchener - october 13, 2001 Kaija Saariaho - Poèmes de Saint John Perse - I. The bird, most ardent for life Kenneth Kirtchener – september 2, 2003 Sainkho - Cschai-Su Kaffe Matthews, Andrea Neumann, Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura - March 16, 2002 IRR. APP - A Body Rendered Disjecta Membra Through The Application Of Dust Pincher Appliances Sainkho - Tovarishi Bernard Parmegiani - Étude Élastique Eiko Ishibashi - Ichida Part 1 IRR. APP - track 9 Kaija Saariaho - Les vieux naturalistes français Gerard Grisey – Partiels pour 18 musiciens James Tenney – Form 3 (In Memoriam Stefan Wolpe)