Music for Art: Pilgrimage

The process for my current series of paintings and drawings has included commissioning three of my favorite ambient musicians to score the as-yet-to-be-determined exhibition. These four movements are their generous contributions. I'm honored to work with such talented musicians. They created these works in New York, Brazil, and Italy - all to musically describe a "pilgrimage". I intend to have these sounds playing in the space that the work will be shown in and as an accompaniment to the book and/or catalog. Enjoy. My sincerest thanks to Black Swan, Gimu, and the Volume Settings Folder.

New Album art for Black Swan

The album art is a combination of my drawing ("Half-Seeing") and a moon/text added by Black Swan. Get a preview of the exceptional new album here:

Guest Blogger: Black Swan

I asked artist/musician Black Swan to recommend some music and movies and here are the choices in no particular order, described as albums Black Swan "wouldn't be able to breathe without":

Music:

• Loscil: Endless Falls (Spinning via LP as I type)
• Stars of the Lid - Any piece of released material
• A Silver Mount Zion - Kollaps Tradixionales
• The Flowers of Hell - O
• The Caretaker - A Stairway to the Stars
• Brian McBride - The Effective Disconnect
• Thomas Koner - La Barca
• Seefeel - Quique
• Boards of Canada - Hi Scores, Music Has The Right To Children, Geogaddi
• Pink Floyd - Anything recorded from 1983 and back.
• Troum - To A Child Dancing In The Wind
• Brian Eno - Another Green World
• Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No. 3
• Eno/Fripp - No Pussyfooting
• Raymond Scott Woolson - Accidental Grace Notes
• Johann Johannsson - Fordlandia
• Ludovico Einaudi - Divenire
• Jonsi & Alex - Riceboy Sleeps
• Max Richter - Memoryhouse
• Ólafur Arnalds - Eulogy For Evolution
• Ryan Teague - Coins & Crosses
• Resplandor - Ambar
• Saint Preux - Concerto Pour Deux Voix
• Sylvain Chauveau - Nuage
• Childs - Yui
• Asher - And invariably the blue
• Cisfinitum - Landschaft
• Biosphere - Substrata
• Godspeed You Black Emperor - f#a#, Infinity, Lift Yr Fists...
• Deathprod - Morals and Dogma
• Sunn O and Boris - Alter
• The Body Lovers / The Body Haters
• Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
• Field Rotation - Acoustic Tales
• Eluvium - Copia
• Sigur Ros - ( )
• Hammock - Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow
• Rameses III - I Could Not Love You Any More
• The Dead Texan - The Dead Texan
• Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
• Brian Eno - Ambient 1
• David Bowie - Hunky Dory
• Manual - Azure Vista
• Robin Guthrie - Carousel
• Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook - Sleeps With The Fishes
• Popol Vuh - Entire Discography
• Ash Ra Tempel - Join Inn
• Jobraith - Self Titled, Creatures of the Street
• Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure, Alpha Centauri, Atem
• Arzachel - Self Titled
• Ulver - Shadows of the Sun, Perdition City
• and believe it or not, Cake's Fashion Nugget. also:
  
• This Will Destroy You - Tunnel Blanket

You can catch this band playing the Larimer Lounge in Denver next week on May 25th

Films:

• Anything by David Lynch, John Waters, Stanley Kubrick, Gregg Araki or Peter Greenaway.
• The Road
• Akira Kurisowa's Dreams
• Gummo
• Julian Donkey Boy
• Trainspotting
• Sunshine
• The Box
• Salo (or the 120 Days of Sodom)
• Moon
• Requiem For A Dream
• The Fountain

Black Swan recently released a new LP available on vinyl or digital download. Listen to a preview here:

The first 100 copies of "The Quiet Divide" come on red vinyl! Order here.

I'm excited to present this list, as Black Swan has been my studio soundtrack quite regularly since discovering the first album "In 8 Movements". I even made a very ambient music video to accompany on of the songs from the first album:



Thanks Black Swan!

Music Video for Black Swan

I made a (very) ambient video for a song from one of my favorite recent albums "In 8 Movements" by Black Swan.

Recommended Studio Music: Black Swan (not the movie)

I've been listening to "Music in 8 Movements" a whole lot lately. Experimedia describes it this way;

"Black Swan emerges from the shadowy billows of smoke to immerse listeners in a lucid, cavernous dream, tracing silhouettes in the darkness with drowning ambience and orchestrated drones that screech and howl intermittently amongst the disorienting magnetic tape disturbances. Black Swan operates under a guise of far-away sounds traveling through murky waters, drowning the listener in its heavy-handed layers of ghostly resonance."

It really is exceptional.