Tag: ambient

The Bristol Morton Equation – new Shadows on the Snow album out on Studio4632

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Naturally, most of the words I post here are about my writing. That’s my main focus. But from time to time, there are other creative things that happen.

It’s been a while since Kendall and I had some new music out from out Shadows on the Snow project. Things have slowed down as we’ve both focused on other things.

But here we are, with a new album out on Studio 4632.

The Bristol Morton Equation is three tracks of long, evolving patterns, subtle repetition and, we hope, surprising moments.

Thanks to Candy from Studio 4632 for putting the release out. Available now to stream or download from Bandcamp.

_____

In the meantime, I am working on writing always. Lately I’ve been producing lots of short stories. It’s an interesting shift from novels. Also working on preparing the files for the updated releases of The Hidden Dome trilogy. Plan to have all those out at the start of August. Also working on final edits to Gold Embers, the third of the Chronicles of The Donner series. Yes, I have too many series, and I need to do a better job of tracking them.

I’m still writing a post a week for Pro Writers Writing, which keeps me on my toes. I’m going to be away for a while  later in the year, so I need to get well ahead on that to have a few posts in the bank. Heading off to Papua New Guinea, Korea and Taiwan. Should be able to do some great story research there. Looking forward.

Thanks for reading.

 

Venus Vulture album – Air and Eyes on Zenapolæ

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

zen154_0

In between all the traveling and novel writing and trying to get my head around the general oddness of the world, I neglected to mention that the Zenapolæ netlabel released my Venus Vulture album Air and Eyes in May.  I’m grateful to Arnd for curating this collection of five tracks – in this case effectively becoming producer as we whittled the number of tracks, and worked a couple into better shape.

I’ve always made music to listen to while I write. It usually turns out that I can’t listen to my own stuff more than, say, once, but that’s okay, there’s more out there, including lots from my labelmates on Zenapolæ.

Air and Eyes is a free download.

Muscari TZ.-1 : New Venus Vulture album out now.

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Venus VultureWhile for the most part I pursue writing as my main creative outlet, from time to time I also create ambient music.

With Kendall Keener of December Nightskies I make up one half of Shadows on the Snow. We exchange music back and forth, remixing snippets of each others work to create something new. Most of our combined music appears on archive.org, some on netlabels and  occasional pieces appearing on compilations.

Solo I make music as Venus Vulture. My latest release is Muscari TZ.-1. The long, ambient tracks, with deep levels of repetition. I’m a fan of FM3’s Buddha Machine, so much of my recent music has reflected some of that repetition aesthetic.

I first started writing music because I liked having something in the background while I wrote stories. I couldn’t find enough, so Venus Vulture was born.

Musicari TZ.-1 is available on Bandcamp. You can stream it there. If you’ve read this and it sounds like you might like a listen, PM me/comment and I’ll send you a free download link sometime in late May.

Venus Vulture track on Behemoth Compilation

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

behemoth20various20artists20compilation20coverKendall Keeler of December Nightskies has put together another compilation of ambient and dark ambient tracks.

Behemoth has 21 tracks by various artists, including my own Venus Vulture track “Components From Air Filter Residue, Daytona Speedway, February 2016”. One of my longer pieces – a little over 14 minutes – that I hope covers a lot of ground, while still being very unobtrusive.

I also sneak in with a Shadows on the Snow (my collaboration with Kendall) track “The Snake is on the Prowl”.

This follows Kendall’s Leviathan compilation from October/November last year. Many of the same artists return. This is shaping up to be a fine series of eclectic sounds. I’m honored to be a part of it.

Behemoth tracklisting – total time is almost 3 hours
1. BERTHELOT – La caverne du Behemoth
2. December Nightskies – Heaven Or Hell
3. Ari Porki – A Great And Mighty
4. Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt – Short Poem For Aretha Cooper
5. eisenlager – NCC-1701
6. Venus Vulture – Components From Air Filter Residue, Daytona Speedway, February 2016
7. Everything From Nothing And Head Joint – The Revolutioner’s Dream
8. Gun Urrainn – Discontact
9. Globoscuro – The Glowing Eye Of NGC 6751
10. Something Like Squids – Imaginary Fireflies (Excerpt)
11. Pixyblink – Observer J
12. nobodisoundz – blakk solarsolstice
13. Shadows On The Snow – The Snake Is On The Prowl
14. Hilyard – Exodus
15. Robert G. Rough- 42 Days (Part 3)
16. CNTV – Renace
17. December Nightskies With Scott Lawlor – The Judgement Of Satan (Excerpt)
18. Mach Feedback – A Fool For Illusions
19. Oystein Jorgensen – Cold Wave
20. VAULT – Presents for Katherine
21. Sir Edgar Carpenter – Perversis

Gustavius’s “am-bee-yent” photo set

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment
Gustavius's Thumbnails

Gustavius added one of my little flickr photos (the distorted car) as a favourite, which was flattering (since my flickr page is singularly unvisited – most visits seem to come from people clicking on the picture in the sidebar here, and the blog is relatively unvisited). Anyway, having a look at his flickr site I discovered his am-bee-yent set of photos (see ultra-mini thumbnails there) which are pretty cool and would look great as the covers of some ambient albums. I’m guessing this is the same Gustavius I remember from the 12k Forum online forum for discussing minimal and ambient music. Anyway, there are nearly 200 images and they’re fabulous – try running them as a slideshow with some music playing. Very Zen.