Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 14:15:10 -0400 Reply-To: Electronic Music Discussion List Sender: Electronic Music Discussion List From: JVDL Subject: Re: new member In-Reply-To: <20010401022700.7F8472742@sitemail.everyone.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Michael you really need to correct the forced REPLY-TO part of your email, it yanks the conversation off the list and is annoying at best... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 14:37:42 -0700 Reply-To: Electronic Music Discussion List Sender: Electronic Music Discussion List From: matt borghi Subject: Robert Rich: Somnium Review Comments: To: spacemusic , Electronic Music , ambient@hyperreal.org, "ambient@egroups" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hey All, This is a review that I just finished of Robert Rich's excellent Somnium recording. Check it out! Enjoy! -matt m a t t b o r g h i http://www.mp3.com/mattborghi (new work available now) http://theorganizationofsound.com Review follows: Robert Rich Somnium Hypnos Recordings Release Entertainment Soundscape Productions http://www.rrich.com http://www.hypnos.com http://www.relapse.com >From the press release: "Robert Rich has meticulously crafted a fresh studio interpretation of his notorious all-night Sleep Concerts, incorporating newly recorded electro-acoustic, electronic and environmental textures, with elements created for the original live events. Somnium guides the listener through an ever-changing dreamscape, with levels of subtle detail that reward both active attention and background listening." It also says in the press release that this is "possibly the longest continuous musical composition ever released on any format," representing an ambient music landmark. First off this is a fantastic disc. For those of you that haven't heard about Somnium, it's in a DVD format, which is both good and bad in my opinion, it's fantastic because Somnium is seven, yes seven, hours deep, or background listening ambience, but the bad part is the only DVD player I have is on my laptop and when listening to this disc I have to listen to the annoying sound of my DVD-ROM spinning, but that's my ONLY complaint. As I said, this is a fantastic recording, and one that definitely came at just the right time. I'm glad the Hypnos, Release, and Robert Rich pursued this work. In lieu of all of the long-running, continuous-playback releases over the last couple years, Robert has, truly, created THE master long-running, continuous-playback recording. Somnium is great because it really compliments the experiential aspects of existence. You can put this recording on, and it will play for an almost half a day, which, possibly, could lead to a new beginning for Ambient music, perhaps a beginning that a reliable Audio format has kept us from for some time: Ambient music as a utility music that’s constantly playing, and compliments all aspects of daily life. A concept that Brian Eno investigated early on in some of his liner notes, but didn’t really elaborate on in his writings or his, subsequent, recorded work. But as Eno, so eloquently, points out in his Forward from Mark Prendergast’s book, The Ambient Century, recording is what really “liberated music from the moment of performance and from the performers themselves. Records meant that music could be carried and collected and listened to over and over. They allowed people to take the music home, and to choose when and where and how they would use it.” Eno’s Point is important when one considers Rich’s landmark Somnium release because the recording liberated Ambient music, Rich’s work has liberated the long-running, continuous-playback piece from a 74-80 minute time-frame, to something that’s much more easier to integrate into daily life. Somnium is a profound work and, one, that I’m sure, sketches out the future of Ambient music, and experiential listening. As a young artist working in the Ambient genre myself I can’t help but reflect on ideas such as Satie’s “Furniture Music” or Eno’s early ideas of “Utility Music” when I listen to Rich’s masterpiece. These are ideas that have not just crept into the composition of Ambient, and related music, but in fact these are the ideas that brought this music into being, recording just made the concept of “Ambient” more accessible. When I first heard talk of this recording, I thought of buying a DVD player just to listen to it, but then remembered that my laptop had a DVD-ROM, so at least I would be able to listen to it and get the idea. Somnium is a work of the future. While the accelerated pace of technology both in integrity-maintaining audio compression and the devices for playing back such audio excels I can’t say what the direction will be, but Somnium helps me look to a day when I can put on a recording before I go to sleep and be listening to a different part of that same recording twelve or fourteen hours later. Verily Somnium represents the future of Ambient music. Kudos to Robert, Hypnos, and Release for putting this fine recording into existence. A landmark has been achieved here, and history has been made.